Bonus: A Modern Assessment of Portal Physics

And their impact on the multi-dimensional, socio-political landscape

Good morning! This is a bonus chapter for my on-going crime/scifi/fantasy serial Tales from the Triverse.

This bonus is a fun lore dive, for anyone who likes to indulge in such things. If you haven’t been reading the story you can catch up by jumping to the first chapter here:

#1 Prologue: Two Hundred Years Earlier

---

A Modern Analysis of Portal Physics
And their Impact on the Multi-Dimensional, Socio-Political Landscape

By Erik Faliszek, MPhys, University of Oxford

That there are portals in our world is an uncontroversial observation, so much so that it is easy to forget that this state of affairs is still a relatively recent phenomenon. In this, the 200th anniversary year of ‘the Joining’, we are taking the opportunity to look back at two centuries of altered history and cast an eye on the future. All syllabi across the university will be incorporating this focus, given that the existence of portals drives every aspect of modern life: this is equally true whether you are studying physics, English, art or engineering. No part of our world or our lives has remained untouched.

Much is still unknown about the root cause of the Joining. It appears from spectral analysis of the portals and the direction of degradation across the dimensions that the ‘ground zero’ was indeed on Palinor, in the vicinity of Fountain University. All scientific reasoning aside, there is also the simple fact of the matter: they have magic, and we do not. Despite Max-Earth’s advanced technologies there is no indication that they have the ability to render portals across space-time. That Fountain University was also the home of famed Palinese academic, scientist and physologist Kaenamor cannot be coincidental. What we understand of the history of that university is that it was the epicentre of magical studies on that world in that time. What precisely occurred on that fateful day remains largely unknown, not least due to few survivors of the portal manifestations - but also as a consequence of Palinor’s continued policy of non-cooperation on such matters. The official line is that Fountain University had nothing to do with the Joining and that the event is as much a mystery to them as it us to us. It does not require having a Master of Physics from Oxford to identify the flaws in that particular theory.

Rather than try to bend established laws of physics to accommodate portal logic, instead we have the sub-branch of portal physics. Established in the early 19th century by the Royal Society, this was an attempt to provide a translation layer of sorts between standard physics and portal physics. There is much we still do not know, but some facts have been established:

1. Conservation of inertial energy. An object travelling at X speed into a portal will exit the corresponding portal still at X speed. Portal travel does not exert any additional directional forces on the object.

2. Portal travel is instantaneous. Passing through a portal is similar to walking through a doorway, in that it is instant and without any sense as to having ‘moved’ further than from ‘A to B’.

3. Although physical matter passes through portals easily, many forms of energy do not, including light. This is why portals appear black to an outside observer, and it is not possible to view what is on the other side before passing through. Similarly heat does not pass through the portal, nor radio signals. It is effectively impossible to observe the other side of a portal using any current known technology, including Max-Earth technology, without physically travelling there. Passing a cabled sensor, such as a camera, does not return a signal due to electrical disruption.

4. A consequence of this partial filtering is the effect on stored power and magic¹ when passing through portals. Battery storage and power generators from Max-Earth rapidly degrade and fail when passing through to Mid-Earth. For example, a power cell in a robot body from Max-Earth which should last hundreds of years will degrade over a matter of hours when brought through to our dimension. It is impossible for a Max-Earth machine to travel to London and then on to Palinor, as the additional portal travel causes complete power shutdown. A spell cast by a competent wielder in Palinor will remain active if brought through to Mid-Earth; however, new spells cannot be created outside of the Palinor dimension. It is not yet understood why this is the case, and the two phenomenons may not be connected despite seeming to exhibit similar results. Some theories posit that differing resonant frequencies across the dimensions cause the degradation, but this has not been clearly demonstrated.

5. Dimensions are locked together spatially and chronologically. Time passes at a synchronised rate across the three known dimensions. 30 minutes here equates to 30 minutes on Palinor, for example. An unanswered question is how the time slippage between the dimensions originally occurred. Max-Earth, for example, is 600 years ‘ahead’ of our Earth, despite currently seeming to be synchronised. Palinor is so deviant from either of the other dimensions that it is not possible to make a time comparison. Relative daily time, for practical uses, also need to be taken into consideration, much like when travelling or communicating between continents. Due to relative rotation, Max-Earth is six hours ‘ahead’ of Mid-Earth and Palinor is four hours ‘behind’. Therefore travelling through a portal from mid-afternoon Mid-Earth will mean arriving in late-morning Palinor or mid-evening on Max-Earth.

6. The original portals which opened in 1772 remained the only known portals for nearly 40 years until the manifesting of the Atlantic portal. Subsequently the Addis Ababa portal opened in 1829, proving as significant to Ethiopia’s trajectory as the London portals were to the Kingdom of Great Britain. More recently smaller, ‘splinter’ portals have been detected, always in close proximity to the ‘main’ portals. It is not known why portals continue to manifest, with the most commonly accepted theory being that the original spell cast on Palinor is still somehow active. That the relevant Palinese authorities deny the existence of such a spell and refuse to take any responsibility for the original portal manifestation does not dissuade many from this hypothesis.

7. Functioning portals are bi-directional. That is, portal transit works in both directions. As trite as the ‘doorway’ analogy is, it remains the most easily understood description for both the experience and the behaviour.

8. Not all portals function correctly. The two London portals provide reliable transit to their counterparts in the other two dimensions. However, Palinor and Max-Earth are both host to non-functional portals created during the Joining. It is theorised that these were intended to connect Palinor and Max-Earth directly, but for unknown reasons the connections were not successful. As a result, Mid-Earth and London in particular has become the central node in the portal network - in other words, to travel to Max-Earth from Palinor requires travelling through Mid-Earth (hence the coining of the somewhat derogatory term ‘Mid-Earth’). See attached illustration.

   

It is easy for us to assume that the existence of portals is natural and inevitable, as we approach the 200th anniversary of their appearance. It must be remembered that they are man-made and that their manifesting during the Joining event was a massive intervention that irrevocably altered the trajectory of all three dimensions. One only has to compare our 1970s with the 1970s experience by Max-Earth in their own timeline to note the divergence. This was, of course, the source of much consternation and near-conflict in those early years, especially around the Napoleonic War and the quelling of the American revolution - both events which played out very differently in Max-Earth’s history.

While the nature of portals is of immense scientific and philosophical interest, there is no escaping that the interplay of dimensional-political movements is equally important. The science and the social cannot be regarded separately, whether we’re discussing the aloof computer-driven space society of Max-Earth or the secretive city states of Palinor.

Perhaps most intriguing, given our knowledge of these three dimensions, is the logical conclusion that there most be more dimensions yet to be discovered. Dimensions in which portals have not manifested, their timelines allowed to continue uninterrupted. Dimensions so different to any of the three we know that they would be unrecognisable.

Portals continue to be the most exciting, dangerous and difficult scientific development since early man first picked up tools.

1. I use the term ‘magic’ advisedly. I am fully aware that it is still a controversial term to use within the scientific communities of Mid- and Max-Earth, but lacking any better noun I will continue to use it for purposes of clarity, and to frustrate my more reactionary colleagues.

---

Thanks for reading! The next main chapter of Tales from the Triverse will be dropping on Friday, so keep an eye out for that.