The book I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month this year is a fantastic space opera. And what is a good space opera without faster than light technology?
The Moebiverse uses hyperspace, a fourth dimension of space that exists in addition to the regular 3D universe. This version of hyperspace is curved so that any straight-line trajectory will end up back in the normal universe at another place faster than it takes light to get there through normal space.
Since hyperspace is outside of the universe, it is impossible to run into anything while in hyperspace, unless it is right next to you in hyperspace. This detail was inspired by the Stargate SG-1 episode “Fail Safe,” where they make a hyperspace jump from one side of the Earth to the other. Adding my own twist, you cannot enter hyperspace when the density of material is too high; it can only be done in empty space. This also means that if there is mass where you exit, you will skip like a rock off a pond and exit a few light seconds away.
Faster-Than-Light technology is notorious for being very hard to imagine without allowing time travel, as I’ve explained in this blog post and this video. There is a saying: FTL, relativity, causality; pick two. However, as I explained in this video, there is a loophole. We can choose an objective reference frame, and if this frame is only special when FTL technology is being used, relativity is still preserved in slower-than-light regimes, embedded within a non-relativistic FTL-inclusive space-time-plus.
In the Moebiverse, the objective frame is relative to the Shaper’s Path, a chain of galaxies which move conveyor-style at extremely high speeds through the universe. I do have to think more about this, though, because there are other galactic chains with their own velocities, and I guess an objective cosmic frame through which they move.
Speaking of galactic chains, let’s move on to how time travel does happen in this universe. That’s right, there is time travel, but I didn’t want the characters to just be able to do it whenever and to whenever they want. So I set up the Moebiverse to have repeating history. Every galaxy along the Shaper’s Path is the same galaxy, 400 years apart, and the time it takes to move from one position in the chain to the next is exactly 400 years. So if you can travel between galaxies, it is the same thing as traveling through time.
Of course, traveling to another galaxy is not as easy as traveling to another star. Stars are light years apart, but galaxies are millions of light years apart. If it takes hours to travel to nearby stars through hyperspace, it will take hundreds of thousands of hours to get to the nearest galaxy. That’s thousands of years. So in order to travel through time, you need something else. At this point, I’m still at the “just use a magical artifact” part of the time travel worldbuilding, and haven’t built up much theory around it.
Speaking of magical artifacts, the Moebiverse has djinns (called talias in-universe), objects that go back in time and become their past selves in an infinite loop. For reasons no one knows, these objects grant people magical powers. For instance, the elemental medallions in MoebiusQuest grant the wielder limited control over their respective elements, and in MoebiusWar the evil Spellcaster’s staff allows him to manipulate others’ emotions.
And that’s how the faster-than-light and time travel science works in the Moebiverse. I hope I can finish this book soon; I’ve been under a lot of stress lately and haven’t made the NaNoWriMo word quota at all this past week. Nevertheless, I have pushed on a little further every day and I am determined to continue until the end.
(Last-minute update: I wrote 2200 words yesterday, which is 3x more than my other days this week, so my momentum might make a comeback!)
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