The Sphere

The first thing you need to know about the Sphere is that it’s not a sphere.

The Sphere is a geodesic polyhedron.

Beyond the Sphere is the Blue Sky; also the Dark Sky. But the panels of the polyhedron are neither opaque nor transparent; they reflect (and do not reflect) both the interior and the exterior in equal measure and thus, it is impossible to see within the Sphere from without, or without the Sphere from within.

The Sphere is an island, a particle, floating in that which we call the Imagination or also the No-Place. It is not real, yet it is real. It is real because I am telling you about it. It assumes a reality. It cannot not exist, for it does exist, right now in these unwieldy words.

Unwieldy words give rise to unwieldy worlds. The multiverse is not truncated but flows out to eternity like the spilling of water and as water evaporates it does not disappear but is merely altered.

The environment inside the Sphere might remind you of a desert. The sand is white-yellow. There is sunlight and there is darkness but they are mere simulations. It is night for one hundred minutes. It is day for one thousand. It is night again; who knows how long it will last. There is no moon or stars. There are no clouds. The sky within the Sphere is empty.

Within the Sphere two great trees interlock, for this is the truth of Yggdrasil. Roots and branches entwine with roots and branches both downwards and upwards, the Tree is not visible. It is unknown whether it is the Cause or the Consequence. We only know it exists because of the way it shifts matter around it.

The energy made manifest within the Sphere splits it through the centre as a great Prismatic Column. The Facility has been built around the Column in order to contain these great energies. The Facility has only one objective: avoid Event-Y.

Event-X is inevitable and cannot be averted.

The Facility bends beneath the gravity of the Prismata, but is not broken. The Sphere holds. The energy of creation is routed through Synaptic Switches and into vast vats of Neurochemical Reagents.

The Facility is surrounded by 65,536 black monoliths.

The energy of the Prismata is dispersed within these dark surfaces and within them can be seen dancing motes of colour as new universes are birthed. Yet each monolith can store only so much energy. It is the job of those who work at the Facility to ensure the balance is maintained and to adjust the flows when necessary.

The flows are controlled by unlabelled buttons and switches. Each Department has a User Manual that is one million pages long. The people who work here are called Homunculus and they wear tan uniforms with name patches sewn on. Their consciousness is fleeting and limited; they have no back story that is not an illusion and they serve no purpose except to adjust the flows.