Ideas and concepts for my personal universe

Currently, the A110 galaxy (also known as The Milky Way) is the most populated of all currently inhabited galaxies. This is because it is the birthplace of 4 of 7 of the known sentient races, and was the first to be colonized due to 1 of those 4 races being Humans. Even so, it’s still only 0.057% explored.

There are only 8 other galaxies that’ve been inhabited, all of which are positioned entirely random (yet enormous) distances from A110. These distances are colossal because the means of travel to get to them are only by wormhole. The technology using Metaspace to get to other galaxies is impossible because the DMS slug cannot be shot fast enough to travel even a fraction of that distance.

Instantaneous matter transporters ala science fiction are quite difficult to create outside of Metaspace travel, but even that is somewhat experimental and unstable. Not to mention the philosophical quandaries that arise from tearing something, or someone, apart on the microscopic level then rebuilding it in a new location. This lead to intensive study into quantum mechanics, specifically quantum tunneling, by the military. After hundreds of years of research, enough progress has been made in this field to allow for relatively simple teleportation. Quantum Moles are special small devices that can take any item placed inside it and ‘burrow’ a quantum tunnel between it and any other Mole. This technology is also being used by the military for special Instantaneous Personal Short-Range Transportation Devices, their alternative names are Blink modules.

After Dark Matter was used as the key to unlock the door that was Metaspace, it was also discovered that Dark Matter was merely a product of Metaspace, and was after that regarded more commonly as Metamatter. Still, the scientific nomenclature for it remains Dark Matter so to keep past scientific journals relevant. When Metamatter enters our reality, it creates an otherworldly “smearing” effect, as photons that hit it freeze in place while on its surface instead of being absorbed and reflected. This is due to its timelessness.

Although the use of the Gregorian Calendar is still prevalent, the new Postgregorian Calendar has started to take its place in professional settings, such as large businesses and for measuring time scientifically. It’s a altered version of it’s predecessor. There are still 12 months, but now each month boasts an even 4 weeks, each week also includes an extra day between Sunday and Monday named Tuneday. This calendar also does not include Leap Years.

Legally, planets with multi-cellular life forms are off-limits to explorers, and deeds made by the explorer are immediately reinstated to the SOU. This deed is then handed down to the Bureau of Multi-cellular Alien Life Preservation to set up blockades and other protective measures to prevent poachers and general traffic from interacting with them. This is so the natural order of evolution

The flipside to rations are Nutrient Supplements, having all the required building blocks for living compressed into a tiny pill form. Their size means that more can be packed into a smaller container, making shipping and selling much easier. But the newer efficient design is known to inadvertently break spirits, turning an important part of everyone's day into a drab husk of what it once was. Currently the biggest market for Supplements is in the Talons. Civilian sales favour Rations more for their bigger variety.

Packed in some first-aid kits are Accelerated Regeneration Hypos, or just Acreypo’s for short. They do relatively the same job as a Melding Torch, but instead of forcibly cauterizing a wound shut it pumps the area with large amounts of nutrients, then releases a special serum of sterile Jypatomozine (a bacterial gel cultivated for its strange stem-cell like regeneration abilities when inside a host). The wound then heals at an alarmly fast rate. Although this seems like a miracle cure, it can only fix physical injuries, and smaller ones at that. Tests show that if too much is applied it can lead to horrifying tumorous deformations that expand uncontrollably.

Brand names on food mean almost nothing nowadays. All businesses are required by law to make all food chemically the same as to keep as many citizens as possible healthy. This accidently meant the removal of confectionaries. The SOU has made an effort to bring these back, as ‘junk food’ helped keep its citizens mentally healthy. So corporations were allowed to then sell things like Recreational Confectionaries (Small balls of concentrated synthetic sugar (syther) and nutrients; also known as RecCons) and Carbonated Beverages (Pretty much just carbonated Nutrient Syrup with added sythar; nicknamed Carbs).

With the removal of more conventional Earth drugs, like Cannabis, Alcohol and so on, this created a happier place overall. But criminals like their narcotics, and a lot of more space-age drugs came into the spotlight. One of the more common ones is called Mesh. It’s made from a plant that thrives in a vacuum, so farming it is very hard. Still, crimelords go out of their way to harvest it because of it’s stalk. When turned into a fine oil, it can be either ingested, injected, or dropped in through the eye. It causes a sense of euphoria in every action of the user. You crash after about an hour depending on the dosage and your species. Although initially addictive, manufacturers usually mix it with harsh chemical products to make it so.

Over time, like all languages, it’s been mutated from its original form. The abbreviation GCSL was more often pronounced as a word, leading to a trend of people writing it down as whatever it sounded like. In the present, the official spelling of GCSL has changed to Geksel and is written as such in official documents. Since it’s also the language that traveled with Humans into space and is taught in all educational facilities, it garners hundreds of dialects. Some of these dialects are so warped that they are unofficially considered their own languages. Geksnest, Geksden, Santsel, Hearthsel, Fathomsel are the names of the dialects in the spatial regions The Nest, Edens Ring, Santus Wall, The Hearth and The Unfathomed respectively.

Soon after this, the crew were mauled by a group of wild animals. Their tactics were reportedly very complex, probably too tactical for any sort of wild herd. One of the reported deaths showed that a crew members had died housing an illness unregistered in the Medica Compendium, so a Quarantine Dysphere was set up to stop traffic to the planet and a team of medical professionals began work on a phagacide. While researching however, one of the field agents observed particular behaviour from the animals that were infected by the plague. They exhibited strange behaviours, ones found specifically in early sentient life. At the scouts request, they ran the Denzel-Turing test on a contained animal. Sure enough, the infected animals passed while the uninfected ones didn’t. 

This created a problem, as the Vis (what they were now known as) were still dangerous and feral, and had garnered a reputation for being what seemed like an antagonist from some sort of science fiction serial. But by law were extended temporary civil rights until proven to be non-sentient. Their extermination was halted indefinitely, and the construction of schools and medical centres were set up around their planet. This caused some unrest in the outside world, as the misconceptions and rumors being spread about how dangerous the Vis were was starting to grow more fearful. Thus began a long and hateful introduction of the Vis into the SOU and society.

The SOU set up the BodyTrust system, where they’d take DNA from willing volunteers to create mindless clones for the Vis to take over. Of course, DNA needed to be constantly donated due to legalities relating to disease immunity. The reason for this was because when the Vis inhabited animal bodies, most of the time speech or complex communication of any kind was almost impossible. Putting a newborn Vis (meaning their original host died, so the virus would proliferate in the body until the flesh is consumed, leading to an entirely new Vis) in a body capable of such communication would help race relations, not to mention make them seem much more approachable aside from the horrible rash. The program took a lot of time to grow in size because of the now deep seeded mistrust of the Vis.

The SOU was aware of the backlash that was the Vis’s involvement in normal society. They were a hive mind after all, and a virus that wiped the hosts individuality for their own. So, in an act of desperation, the SOU tried to quell these statements by performing genetic experiments on the second generation of Vis newborns. Since the SOU monitors all births and deaths, they made sure to stay ahead of the game by restricting Vis mobility to their home planet. Whenever an old Vis died and a new one was about to be born, they made modifications to their virus form. They would genetically separate them from their hive mind and stunted their after-death reproduction, making them almost sterile. 

Looking back at it now, the SOU deeply regrets tampering with nature's natural progression. Since the Vis’s thinking was based off of multiple minds planning tactics, they lost a lot of basic functionality. They didn’t possess any ambition, they became incredibly impulsive and couldn’t think about how actions in the present would affect them in the long term future. They also lacked a proper family unit due to their asexual reproduction. This was in the past filled by the hive mind, but now only served to show how bad at socializing they were. This lead to constant loneliness within their population, which in turn lead to struggles with depression and anxiety.  Because of their already poor long term thinking, most Vis turned to synthetic means of happiness, the most common being drugs. The usage of narcata most often lead to high crime rates, which continued to perpetuate their already negative stigma.

The Vis’s introduction into the SOU was the longest out of every race, only being accepted recently in 2495. This is because of the self proclaimed Freebodies. They are just normal people who are still afraid of what the Vis use to be capable of. Most are uneducated in Vis history and biology, usually believing that the Vis still infect people, acting as sort of body snatchers. This was never the case of course, but fear mongering can turn the anyone into a bigot. They actively protest political events trying to help people accept Vis. Hate crimes are rampant, with multiple snake-oil salesmen asking for money to fund a ‘cure’ for the Vis.

During the time leading up to the inclusion, gun manufacturers began a trend of producing anti-vis weaponry. Things like Curiary gel. They used the unfinished formula for the phagacide to create a new gel that wouldn’t kill Vis, but put them into writhing agony for a couple minutes. They went as far as to make Auto-gel Compensators specifically for it which were included in the Vaccinator fully automatic pistol design. These are now banned and are considered hate symbols, but are still being cycled through the black market due to their long production.