Negative Plane

An oddly realistic painting of the Negative Plane... but who drew this?

Everything that happens in our plane is determined by a simple, yet curious rule: All things seek the lowest possible energy state. For example, if you let go of a ball halfway up a hill, it will fall down instead of rolling up. It is curious enough that the universe is seemingly described by a quantity which is calculatable and measurable by mortal beings, but possibly the most bizarre ingredient of this law is that there is no apparent reason to favor low energy instead of high energy. This apparent mystery has a very simple solution: Just as our plane prefers low energy, there is a parallel plane which prefers high energy: the Negative Plane.

This simple change of rules has drastic effects on the cosmology of the Negative Plane. In general, energy is required to keep a system in order. Since on this plane everything tends to the maximum energy state, the natural tendency is towards order, instead of disorder. For example, ordinarily you can’t unmix salt out of a glass of water by stirring it, but on the Negative Plane, that’s easy to do. On the other hand, you can’t mix water and salt by stirring it.

This tendency towards order is completely antithetical to the existence of life. Most – if not all – organisms in the universe rely heavily on water. Dissolving substances in water is the bread and butter of all life, but this is incredibly difficult in the Negative Plane. If a normal human were to be transported there, their blood would be separated into its constituents, meaning no oxygen would be able to reach their cells, and they would slowly suffocate.

But even assuming there would be oxygen to begin with is quite hopeful. An oxygen molecule is a bound state of two oxygen atoms, meaning its energy is lower than that of two separate oxygen atoms. In the Negative Plane, such a molecule would never form to begin with, and if it appeared there already formed, it would simply break apart. Indeed, the same would happen with all molecules.

It goes even deeper, though: Not only would molecules break into atoms, but the atoms themselves would also break down into their constituent particles, and matter as we know it simply can’t exist. It is possible to form a more exotic type of atom, however: Positrons can be bound to positively charged nuclei, and electrons can be bound to negatively charged nuclei. This leads to an interesting feature of the Negative Plane: Positively and negatively charged matter coexist, but are separated, because of the tendency towards order. This leads to a division at a cosmological scale: Some regions of space are made entirely of negative matter and others are made entirely of positive matter. At the interface, the two types of matter continuously annihilate and recombine, effectively creating walls of extremely high-energy radiation between different regions. This doesn't mean there are only a negative and a positive region, though. Instead, there are "bubbles" of negative matter within regions of positive matter, and vice-versa. The bubbles just won't mix with the surroundings, like droplets of oil immersed in water.

The last curious characteristic of this plane is that gravitational effects are reversed. In order to maximize potential energy, objects curve spacetime such that they drift further apart from each other instead of closer together. This prevents the formation of planets, and so there are almost no solid surfaces in the plane.