M.A.R.S. Multiverse

## Intro for Authors & Audiences

Innovation Education Creating Opportunity

(Champions' Club / Site Map / YouTube)

Media Art Research Stories (MARS) is the fiction and futurism half of this wiki. Fiction, particularly science fiction, is a proven path to inspiring creativity and innovation. Our setting is one that plays with real physics to allow speculative forms of travel like Faster Than Light (FTL) jump drive and exploration parallel universes. This opens up story possibilities, allowing countless heroic journeys. Aside from FTL it has an entirely real engineering design basis as developed by literature review of NASA, ESA and commercial technology that exists in the real world. Our setting also has the most important quality of being great fun - so here we go!

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**Submitting an article is easy:**

1. Write the article here on the wiki.
2. Refine it to the final draft stage.
3. Link it into the appropriate pre-post page (i.e. if fiction, use fiction pre-post).

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## Era & Origin - In Universe

Unless otherwise indicated assume all materials linked into the multiverse are from the 2130s or were revised in the 2130s by the archivists of the Martian Century centennial project (covering the century and key formative events prior to it).

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Materials refer to or are from the convergence zone of G136B - our region of the multiverse. There are two versions of this project, one for release to the Federation public and another secret archive kept for Dimensional Science Directorate (DSD) internal use only.
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## Collaboration - Author Notes

In this multiverse setting we share stories and articles. Your fiction ends up in a part of the multiverse with the physical laws, the physics, that matches your story. You are welcome to write in any genre, not including adult, mature or legally prohibited content. Others are welcome to interact with versions of your stories through the writing device of dimensional travel - making this a multiverse. There are three general zones to the multiverse:

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**Class A Parallel Realities**: Physics in these universes, known as parallels "in character", matches the known scientific physics of our universe. There is no faster than light (FTL) tech (communications or travel), no time travel, no artificial / controlled gravity, no perpetual energy, no true Artificial Intelligence (AI), no supernatural or para-natural powers except for Class A Psionics. These minor powers include the ability to mentally travel into other parallel realties, even mentally trading places with other people and some extra-sensory perception. Amnestic pharmaceuticals, drugs that modify or erase memory, are available in these realities. The stories set in Class A parallels could happen in our mundane reality. Powers are so subtle that even advanced science may not have discovered their existence. Dimensional projection tends to be secret, dismissed as imaginary or both.

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**Class B Parallel Realities**: These parallels allow a few significant effects and powers, such as Jump Drive (a form of faster than light travel) and physical portals to most other realities. Beings in class B universe can have super-powers impossible in a class A parallel but can not be god-like. These Class B Psionics and even the most advanced technology still do not allow major effects like time travel, true AI, artificial gravity, perpetual energy or easy FTL (outside the limits of what a Jump Drive can do). These realities lack FTL communication as a plot device - characters must risk travel without FTL messages. The Psionic powers in a class B universe allow for "low magic", which can be two of three factors (moderately powerful, versatile, fast) but this type of power is extremely difficult to learn and sometimes subject to risk. Ritual magic, for example, can be powerful and versatile but is slow and risky. Strong telekinesis is possible and fast but is learned as a single power, with other powers learned separately. Fantasy settings are certainly possible in class B parallels.

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**Class C Parallel Realities**: This region of the multiverse has even more flexible physical law than the class B zone. Nearly anything is possible, especially if the specific universe is "far" from the class B zone. God like beings can abound, time travel happens, though extremely powerful effects may work to prevent such events (i.e. powerful beings may not allow time travel) depending on the specific universe. Any story can be told in a class C parallel from galaxy spanning space opera to high fantasy. Some rare beings are able to affect multiple parallels, but only a handful of realities can be controlled and only in the Class C zone where beings of such vast power can exist.

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## Sci-fi Focus - A Martian Century

One solar system, nearly identical to our own, is the focus project of this site. In parallel 136B, a class B universe, the year is 2132 CE. Humanity has made great progress with settlements and nascent governments across the system. The solar system is vast and much of it remains unexplored. Simple life of great variety has been found on Venus, Mars, Ceres and many moons in the outer system. The first Mars expedition of 2032 discovered ancient alien relics, transforming the human perspective. Genetic and cybernetic modification has expanded the definition of what it is to be human, though old prejudice and discrimination has been replaced by the new. Humanity still struggles to find its way. In 2107 the first Jump Drive exploration vessel successfully reaches Alpha Centauri and by 2132 there is a thriving settlement with tenuous explorers venturing even farther out. The Free Martian Republic, a founding member of the Free Worlds Federation, commissioned a centennial database looking back at one hundred years of history from a Martian perspective: A Martian Century.

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Selected stories on this wiki will be adapted and presented as that fictional Martian project. We hope to build this fictional future history to help imagine what our real future could be and to have great fun along the way. Contributors, including our campus staff and students, seek to build a better future. Exploring possibilities through fiction can inspire innovation. Many student media, art and research projects may also relate to the collected works on this wiki, perhaps we can even help humanity explore Mars before 2132!
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## Schwartz Institute (DSD)

The Dimensional Science Directorate (DSD), publicly the Schwartz Institute in many parallels, is the most established human interdimensional organization. In most parallels, like 136B, the existence of dimensional travel is a closely guarded secret. The Institute is publicly known for its many high quality, tuition free universities and associated research corporations. Secretly, the institute is known as the Directorate or DSD - an organization dedicated with protecting humanity in all parallel realities against alien and advanced internal threats. Most governments support or at least deal with the DSD as the Schwartz Institute and it has deep influence as a part of the military industrial complex. Most governments are completely unaware of multiverse travel. The DSD tends to commission projects like "A Martian Century" 136B as cover operations for intelligence gathering. The Martian centennial project is exactly this sort of massive intelligence operation, suspected by few even among closely allied government agencies.

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Parallel 136B (and the wider G13X group) is a backwater in the multiverse, topologically far from the chaos of class C realities. There are relatively few of the alien "precursor" relics typically present in the Sol system and their reverse engineering has not radically advanced human technology. Aside from improved materials science technology is low-baseline. While the existence of extraterrestrial life is acknowledged by mainstream society due to precursor finds, living alien contact is late and not anticipated before the 2150s. Undocumented alien events likely have occurred as timeline has developed in mysterious ways. The history of post-12th century Earth has strange deviations from most baseline realities. Paradoxically most nations and events have similar timing and cultural development despite significant divergence. Indigenous populations around the globe have a much greater genetic diversity and disease immunity indicating extensive contact between prehistoric populations - likely due to divergence prior to the younger dryas period. The great pandemics of the Americas thus did not occur and European colonial activity was curtailed - instead there was more trade, negotiation and integration than armed conflict. Baseline United States of America (USA), Canada, Central America and South America is instead the United American States (UAS) and became a nuclear super-power after a second great war similar to the baseline WW2.

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Russia maintained superpower status until the domination of Earth by the Solar Authority. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) preceded the first great war in 1894 and was not dissolved until 2008 when its open economics reforms caused a global financial crisis. Soviet influences are, however, clear in the organization of Lunar Society as it dominates the people of Earth. Global civil rights reforms were championed in the 1870s and 1890s leading to far less racial and identity strife than is typical, though environmental and financial crisis was more extreme than on baseline Earths. A third world war with limited nuclear exchange, an event previously known only in Class C universes, destroyed many records and has made modern historical analyses difficult. An unusually acute artificial intelligence crisis resulting in widespread industrial and economic impacts also occurred in these realities. These sorts of anomalous historical developments have made parallels in the 130B range the subject of DSD scrutiny.

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Though non-existent in class B parallels the instances of the SCP (Secure Contain Protect) Foundation has had contact with the Directorate. DSD strategy in the class C zone tends to mirror SCP strategy in a desire to research the anomalous rather than eliminate it. Much interorganizational contact is by way of the Red Sea Corridor, an unusually large border zone, near class B parallels, that tends towards instances of SCP-093 (Red Sea Objects). This micro-zone consistently exhibits more of the same timeline events as in the 130B range, though only in the pre-disruption realities. Parallel realities disrupted by the extraterrestrial "Red Sea Entity" radically deviate from the 130B pattern as soon as the entity makes first contact. This correlation has gone unexplained for nearly eighty years, since initial studies uncovered it in late 2053 (date varies depending on parallel file).

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## Core Topic Index

* A.I. & Augments
* Aldrin Foundation
* American Psionics & Apollo
* Ancestor Synod
* Ancestor Theory
* ARC-1AC34 Gibson
* Archer's Five Parsec Drive
* Big Questions
* Clades of Humanity
* Class A Parallels
* Class B Parallels
* Class C Parallels
* Convergence 136B
* Cycler Towns
* Cybernetics & Genemods
* Divergent Anomaly G13X
* DSD Schwartz Institute
* Exotic Drive Tech
* Fermi Paradox
* Fringe Movements
* Highports & Defenses
* Human Governments
* Human Machine Interface
* Parthians & Hypatians
* Precursors & Aliens
* Precursor Technology
* Megacorporations
* Multiverse Physics
* Multiverse Topography
* New Immortals
* Reality Bending & Quantum Density
* SSN-9917 Novgorod
* Sci-Tech-Psi Rating (STP)
* Seed Clones
* Starcred vs Solcred
* Stellar Cartography J5 & J10
* Strategic ARC Locations
* Strategic Authority Locations
* Strategic Federation Locations
* Strategic Miscellaneous Locations
* VIPs of the ARC
* VIPs of the Authority
* VIPs of the Federation
* VIPs of minor affiliation
* UFS-22010 Aldrin
* World War Three

* A.I. & Augments
* American Psionics & Apollo
* Big Questions
* Clades of Humanity
* Class A Parallels
* Class B Parallels
* Class C Parallels
* Convergence 136B
* Cybernetics & Genemods
* DSD Schwartz Institute
* Exotic Drive Tech
* FWF-803 Constellation
* Human Governments
* Human Machine Interface
* Precursors & Aliens
* Multiverse Physics
* Multiverse Topography
* Parthians & Hypatians
* Megacorporations
* New Immortals
* Sci-Tech-Psi Rating (STP)