Wormhole

A Wormhole (also known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is a phenomena linking two distant points in space.

Around 100 million years ago, the Elders established a network of stable wormholes across the Milky Way galaxy for the purpose of supporting long-distance, interstellar travel. Although the Elders later repurposed the system to supply power to the Galactic Shield, after their ascension, it was adopted by starfaring species for its original purpose, and is now one of the primary methods of interstellar navigation by species in the Milky Way. The topology of the territory claimed by galactic species is more heavily influenced by the wormhole network than by the adjacency of systems in real space.

Shorter-range dynamic wormholes are created by jump drives, and are utilised by species to navigate through systems and across the space between stable wormhole emergence points. Skippy also has the ability to create micro-wormholes, which are undetectable, sub-atomic wormholes that can be used by Skippy to send messages or manipulate events across long distances.

## The Elder Wormhole Network

The Elders established a network of stable, traversable wormholes throughout the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies, between 80 and 130 million years ago. The Elder wormholes allow the instantaneous crossing of large distances; up to hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of Light Years.

Wormholes are arranged into networks with varying numbers of wormholes in each network. Each is managed by an AI which operates in Higher Spacetime. In order to prevent long-term damage to the underlying local spacetime, each wormhole does not open at the same location for each emergence, rather it opens along a pre-determined figure-of-eight pattern spanning multiple light-years. The wormhole emergence points are typically located in interstellar space in order to avoid any gravity wells or astronomical hazards from drifting too close and disrupting the wormhole's operation.

Elder wormholes are formed by drawing energy from higher spacetime. Each wormhole opens for several minutes before closing and moving on to the next location on its route. It will continue to do this as long as it is active. While it is believed that the Elders originally built the entire network as a transport system, they later repurposed it as a power conduit to feed the Galactic Shield. As such, the network design is not built with efficient transport between star systems in mind; it's designed to most effectively route power to the shield through higher dimensions. This leads to a confusing and counterintuitive structure that joins seemingly random points in the galaxy. Navigating between two relatively close points in real-space can, in practice, involve transiting to the opposite side of the galaxy and back again. Large swathes of the Milky Way are not covered by wormhole networks, meaning any sentient species in those regions of the galaxy are in relative isolation.

### Wormhole States

Elder Wormholes are designated as being either **active, dormant** or ***broken***. Active wormholes are well mapped and their emergence patterns are well-known throughout the starfaring species. The predictability of wormholes is such that any variation in a wormhole emergence, however minor, is cause for concern among the senior species. While all species are aware of the concept of dormant wormholes, many of the wormholes that are currently dormant became dormant long before they began mapping the network, and therefore the full map of all wormholes, regardless of their state, is not widely known. Skippy has the ability to temporarily reactivate dormant wormholes, either manually, or automatically via a Wormhole Controller Module, giving Humans a significant advantage when navigating the galaxy, and giving them the ability to create systems inaccessible to other species such as Club Skippy.

### Wormhole Shifts

Periodically (over thousands of years) the wormhole network shifts, with some dormant wormholes becoming active and vice versa. This results in subtle changes in the politics of the galaxy, with important planets suddenly becoming isolated, and isolated planets suddenly becoming important. It was a wormhole shift that initially led to humanity being introduced to the galactic war on Columbus Day. Starfaring species simply accept the wormhole shifts as an unexplained quirk of the network. In reality, the shift is caused by the network rebalancing itself to maintain power to the Galactic Shield. It needs to periodically do this as the higher dimensional "force lines" shift as the galaxy rotates. In order to maintain the power flow to the shield, the network will trigger sudden, ad-hoc shifts if the network topology is unexpectedly adjusted and becomes unbalanced, such as when Skippy moved the Backstop wormhole closer to Earth.

### Types of Wormhole

* **Standard wormholes** - the majority of wormholes are standard, joining points within the Milky Way
* **Super-Duty Wormholes** - Far rarer, these are long-distance wormholes, requiring more power, that can join points in the Milky Way to satellite galaxies such as the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy. These are not used to feed the Galactic Shield, rather were transport links for the Elders who were using the satellite galaxies to mine the materials to create the shield effectors.
* **Password-Protected Wormholes** - There's only one known password-protected wormhole (in Sculptor), that requires the transmission of a code through higher spacetime to open. The assumption is that the Elders established this security requirement due to the network cluster holding something very important

### "Screwing with the Network"

**SPOILER ALERT!**

*The section(s) below SCHMAYBE includes **Spoilers**.*

Skippy's ability to operate in higher spacetime allows him to communicate with the AIs that control the wormhole networks, thereby giving them instructions. Skippy undertakes increasingly bold measures to manipulate the wormhole network to help The Merry Band of Pirates in their missions, from reactivating dormant wormholes, moving or repointing wormholes, to using the wormhole as a "Bagel Slicer", thereby allowing the pirates to destroy Maxolhx warships and acquire the pieces necessary to create Valkyrie. While the wormhole controller AIs lack the breadth of intelligence and sapience of Skippy, they are still Elder technology, and therefore are intelligent. As Skippy manipulates each network, the network AI becomes increasingly suspicious of his instructions, usually resulting in him being locked out from any further requests. The more individual networks Skippy screws with, the less of the overall wormhole network he will be able to exploit. Some wormhole AIs are openly hostile to Skippy, in one case, calling him a "traitor", presumably for his role in The AI War.

The Pirates "broke" a wormhole by forming a jump wormhole through a stable Elder wormhole.

In order to trick the senior species into believing that Humanity had the ability to selectively crash the wormhole network at will, Skippy sent a wormhole cluster into a self-diagnostic, which gave the appearance that the network had crashed. The back-channel communication between the wormhole networks when it came back online gave another Elder AI the means to send a message to wake the Sentinels. Humans were subsequently blamed by the senior species for waking the Sentinels by screwing with the network - which was partially true.

## Jump Drives

*See: Jump Drives*

Jump Drives are devices built into starships that allows the formation of a dynamic wormhole to allow the ship to travel long distances instantaneously. The wormholes created by jump drives are typically shorter range than the stable wormholes of the Elder network (typically less than 10 Light Years), and making them ineffective for cross-galaxy travel. Jump drives are typically used to transit into and out of planetary systems and to traverse the interplanetary space between Elder wormhole emergence points.

Rather than pulling power from higher spacetime like Elder wormholes, jump drives operate by channelling power from the ship's reactor into drive coils via drive capacitors. These exotic matter components then distort spacetime, allowing the formation of the wormhole. Once a wormhole is formed, the ship is committed to transit, and instantaneously passes through the event horizon. If, for some reason, the ship is unable to successfully traverse the wormhole and emerge at the other side, causality is violated (the ship actually emerges before it enters), the energy is released catastrophically, and the ship is destroyed.

Targeting of the wormhole's destination requires advanced navigation calculations. While Skippy can programme extremely accurate jumps accurate to within a few kilometres, for most starfaring species, the margin of error for a jump destination is quite large. The jump drive typically requires recharging after a handful of jumps (depending on the distance of each jump and the available charge in the capacitors). Recharging the jump capacitors requires the ship to remain in local space, potentially for hours, until the capacitors receive enough charge for a jump. Over time, drive coils become misaligned, reducing the efficiency of the jump operation. Drive coils are susceptible to damage and wear, meaning that sustained use without replacing the coils can render the jump drive inoperable. The drive capacitors hold a considerable amount of energy, and a direct hit on full capacitors during space combat can cause a devastating release of energy that can engulf other ships over a wide area.

The creation of an Event Horizon is usually accompanied by a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), which can be extremely dangerous to any unshielded biological beings in the vicinity. The burst is easily detectable by sensors over long distances, meaning they can be used to identify the arrival of a ship into a region of space. Senior species have technology which allows them to direct their GRB in a particular direction, thereby allowing them to jump into an area undetected.

Outbound jump wormholes can be prevented from forming through the use of **dampening fields**, generated by devices built into starships. The probability of forming a jump wormhole increases the further the ship moves away from the centre of the field, which is why aggressors will typically saturate an area with multiple overlapping fields.

Elder wormholes operate in interstellar space far from gravity wells such as stars or planets. Similarly, jump wormholes cannot be formed into or out of gravity wells. When operating near planets, ships must climb to "jump distance" in order to form a stable jump wormhole. Skippy has the ability to flatten spacetime in a local area, which gives the ability to form a jump wormhole inside a gravity well.

## Micro-Wormholes

Skippy has the ability to create stable micro-wormholes; these are wormholes with Event Horizons on a sub-atomic scale. The wormholes are not detectable by any current species, making them very effective as a means of surveillance or subterfuge. Skippy can communicate through the Micro-wormhole, and can also project himself through the link, influencing computer systems on the other side. Micro-wormholes are severed when Skippy passes through another wormhole (such as one created by a jump drive). This means the micro-wormhole and Skippy must remain in the same local spacetime in order for it to be usable; Skippy cannot create a network of micro-wormholes and then jump away. The most effective way of exploiting micro-wormholes in an area is to embed one in a stealthed missile and send it to the destination through normal space.

## Wormhole Tactics

* A spacecraft exits a wormhole at the same velocity that it entered. This influences space combat, as, before jumping into a battle (or into orbit of a planet), a ship will need to adjust its velocity to match the intended speed at the destination.
* When a spaceship transits a wormhole, there is a period in which the ships sensors are overwhelmed, effectively blinding them. The more senior a species and the more advanced the sensors, the shorter the period of sensor blindness.
* The need to recharge the jump drive capacitors influences starship tactics, as a crew would typically want to retain enough charge in order to make an emergency jump in the event that they encounter trouble. Fully discharging the jump drive capacitors renders a ship 'stuck' in local space until the capacitors can be recharged, leaving the ship limited to navigation through normal space using their engines and therefore vulnerable to enemy ships.

## Beyond *Expeditionary Force*

### **Stable Wormholes**

* A network of stable wormholes constructed by an ancient civilisation is a pivotal part of the *Stargate* universe
* The Rings in the *Expanse* universe, operate similar to stable wormholes
* The discovery of a stable, navigable wormhole is a major plot point of *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine*
* Although not referred to as wormholes, the *Jumpgate* facilities in the Babylon 5 universe operate in a similar way to a stable wormhole network

### Jump Drives

Technology which overcomes the physical limitations of light speed allowing *effective* Faster-than-Light travel through shortcuts in space is a major theme in Science Fiction. While the specific operation of the technology often varies, the idea of 'shortcutting' space by manipulating spacetime is a common approach, For example, Hyperspace in the *Star Wars* universe or Warping in the *Star Trek* universe. The phrase "Jump Drive" appears in several Sci-Fi universes, such as *Battlestar Galactica* and Isaac Assimov's *Foundation* series and in computer games such as *Stellaris*.