Energy logistics

## Overview

Energy transfer over vast distances requires conditions that cannot be achieved via classic means, such as regular propagation through space. Hard limit on its speed prevents those means from being used over vast distances between stellar spheres: acceleration over the limit is impossible, because it demands infinite energy even for massless particles.

Because of this limitation, alternatives had to be investigated. Thanks to the first stellar sphere around Home's star, Homelanders had necessary resources and energy to launch a large research projects, aimed to find the way to overcome aforementioned speed limit.

Years of extended researched have brought first results. Apparently, there was a way to transfer energy faster than the speed limit allowed without breaking laws of the universe. Such a way would not make particles travel faster; instead it would provide a shortcut in space-time, reducing travel time while keeping the speed below the limit.

Called 'shrotcuts' for convenience, they were the only chance for transferring energy and to construct more stellar spheres.

## Issues

First theories about shortcuts revealed myriads of issues that must have been overcome before using them. In particular, shortcuts are very unstable. Anything passing through them would've led to a catastrophic collapse and immediate destruction, which excluded traversability completely.

Subsequent research addressed these issues one by one, until construction of an artificial shortcut became feasible and later, ordinary.

The most important problem with collapsing shortcuts was resolved by exploiting phenomenon of vacuum fluctuations, which provided necessary arbitrary negative energy density. It kept both ends of the shortcut relatively stable, allowing particles to pass through it and send a message back before a collapse could occur.

## Limitations

There was a hefty price to be paid for overcoming shortcuts' issues. For instance, they could've only been microscopic, as macroscopic version had proven to be impossible to construct.

Another problem was caused by mass. While massless particles passed without any issues, massive particles never came out of the shortcuts, sometimes causing catastrophic collapses in the process.

Such limitations forced Homelanders to master remote manipulation of massless particles to be able to interact with matter and energy on the other end of a shortcut.

Electromagnetic waves, magnetic fields and similar phenomena have been in use since then, manipulating objects on the other end of a shortcut.

## Remote activities

Typical first step for remote acitivities is also the hardest: massless particles are used to carve crude tools out of asteroids or even dust, because such tools could craft more sophisticated ones with higher speed and precision than particles.

This tool chain reaction leads to eventual construction of space infrastructure, necessary for stellar spheres' creation. Over time, increasing number of calculation power, energy provided by the spheres and tool sophistication led to exponential growth of construction. At some point, hundreds of millions of stellar spheres had been constructed simultaneously.

Nowadays, energy and information is being transferred nigh-instanteniously through myriads of microscopic shortcuts, connecting various infrastructural objects, energy and calculation spheres and forming the foundation of Homelanders' civilization.