articles
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15-May-2021

the colossus tear in a nutshell

Alberich Canderwell
Professor of Contemporary Astropolitics
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See The Sights As They Were Intended

Introduction

As we approach the 10 cycle anniversary of our System’s most recent calamity, it felt poignant to revisit my thoughts on the event with the insight afforded by a decade of observation and experimentation. As is so often the case in research, each step toward understanding only serves to further highlight how little we know, though I do feel I can speak with certainty on several conclusions.

In the time since the Tear, I—along with my esteemed colleagues Professors Locke and Kherza—have conducted extensive investigations into the cause and nature of the cataclysm. Through generous contributions from the Expedition Front, Bharvale University, and (notably, to a lesser extent) the Central Meridian Interplanetary Committee (CMIC), we have made great strides in our understanding of the event — though were it not for certain obstructions, those strides might have taken us a damn sight further down the path by now…

In any case, it is my academic duty to share that which might help our System as a collective to understand the events that shaped it, and continue to shape it. To that end, I give you: The Colossus Tear in a Nutshell.

Before the Tear

Let us begin with a little terminology. I frequently hear people who are not familiar with the intricacies of
cosmic architecture Which, to add a definition to a definition, does not concern the study of ‘space buildings’, as one particularly bright student once asked me several weeks into a semester, but instead entails the study of the constitution of the (un)natural universe
ask if it ought not be Colossal Tear, instead of Colossus Tear. This is a common misconception, symptomatic of the widely unheard of (or unspoken-about) Colossus Thread: a previously visible manifestation of the otherwise Invisible Landscape.
The Colossus Tear refers then to the pulling apart of this Colossus Thread. Given that prior to this tearing, our dimension was seemingly isolated from others, we can assume with a high degree of certainty that the Colossus Thread is best thought of as having been a seam in the fabric of our reality. Historical examination of the Thread (at a time when such examination was possible) had paid little attention to its purpose, and it was generally hypothesised to be little more than a cosmophysiological phenomenon that pointed to, but did not conclusively prove, the existence of the Invisible Landscape.
We now know, from our vantage point of hindsight, that the Colossus Thread was indeed the seam-line keeping our reality as we knew it intact, though that is not to lay blame on my forebears for their oversight. In a System as astrodynamic as our own, observations of this nature are commonplace and rarely cause for intrigue. I confess that I myself, on numerous occasions and in multiple publications, dismissed the Colossus Thread as little more than a spatiotemporal anomaly that was of casual interest at best. In fact it was often a source of animated debate between Rufus, Evelyn and myself when we were all still doctoral candidates at Titania, with the three of us harbouring very different views as to the significance of the Thread. Evelyn, as is so often the case, was the one most correct.
For the majority of those in our field prior to the Tear, attention was almost exclusively reserved for The Chaos, though whether the Colossus Tear is considered a sub-cataclysm of The Chaos or a catastrophe in its own right remains a (sore) subject of contention — particularly for those securing progressive rounds of grant funding (even in spite of the Front’s suspiciously boundless resource). In my view, such argument is redundant — both fall under the broader school of astrodynamics & cosmic architecture, so to prattle about claiming ownership is to simply waste time better spent unravelling the mysteries of our universe (though Kemwyn Escher, current academic lead for the CMIC, would do well to wind their neck in).

Examining the Cataclysm: Thoughts, Theories, Speculation

There is no doubt that the radical distortion of our cosmic landscape in the wake of The Chaos was the cause of the spatiotemporal disruption that made the Colossus Tear inevitable, though what specifically it was about these distortions that actually lead to the event remains mired in conflicting hypotheses and half-baked methodologies. Our best hope of understanding the exact way in which The Chaos brought about the Tear is through direct observation, made possible by the Tear itself having opened a recursive temporal window, through which several research teams have been dispatched to investigate. Should they ever return, we may have our answer.
For now, the prevailing model is Cosmic Exertion theory. Here, the Thread is viewed as having been a weak point in the constitution of our dimension, that underwent undue strain following the introduction of Chaos energy to our astrophysical milieu in the wake of The Chaos. Natural forces like gravity and electromagnetism, and higher order forces like the arcane and the occult, had never been observed to elicit a reaction from the Colossus Thread (though perhaps they had, and we simply hadn’t been paying close enough attention). But there is something fundamentally different about Chaos energy, the specifics of which we are yet to fully understand.
Whether Cosmic Exertion theory will hold up to scrutiny or not, what we do know is that the tearing of the Colossus Thread was, for want of a better term, messy. I’ll never forget Rufus’s particularly imaginative description of the scene as “the whole universe pulling apart like melted Calandiran buttercakes”. That which was sat upon the seam at the time was worst affected, though the damage pervaded throughout the entirety of our known reality, often in unpredictable and frankly inconvenient ways.
Whether this was the end of it, or merely the first iteration of a larger scale cosmic dereliction, remains to be seen.

Charting the Invisible Landscape

If The Chaos taught us about the temporal constitution of our dimension, then the Colossus Tear did the same (and then some) for our understanding of its spatial constitution. Perhaps more accurately, it taught us that not only is the Invisible Landscape very much real, but it is a seemingly infinite vista, across which endless realities are sprawled like points on a map (unsurprisingly, astrocartography has become a booming industry in the wake of this realisation).
This metaphor is perhaps best treated as just that, however. It seems that the Invisible Landscape is better thought of as a lattice rather than a flat plane, with ‘stacks’ of dimensions interlaced or folded over each other in a convoluted, yet distinctly layered, formation. If nothing else, this understanding certainly gives credence to there quite literally being higher planes of existence, though this should of course be taken to be a purely geometric description and not a judgement of quality.
It is this convolution that gives rise to the term ‘Crossing the Fold’, which is how we describe the act of moving between dimensions via the temporal windows that opened in the aftermath the Tear. Temporal windows are best thought of as interdimensional ‘splinters’, openings in the Landscape that permit transit between dimensions (and despite our initial best efforts, seem impossible to close). Indeed, to travel interdimensionally is to traverse the Invisible Landscape, an act that despite considerable advances in health & safety legislation, still bears significant risk.
The obvious reason for this is that the realities that await on the other side vary wildly in their feelings toward extradimensional hospitality. Some, for example that which houses the humorously named ‘planet Earth‘, take an ambiguous at best approach to outsiders, and as such the common consensus from interdimensional travel bodies is that you only make the crossing under the auspices of an experienced guide. Others are merely not equipped to accommodate travel yet: the tragedies that befell our own System in the months before the launch of the Exposition Fleet remain painfully in our memory, and we were relatively quick to respond. Other dimensions haven’t been quite so motivated, to disastrous end.

Astrophysiology in a Nutshell

The less obvious — and therefore more compelling — reason that interdimensional travel remains so risky is that we simply do not know enough about the Invisible Landscape yet for us to feel truly comfortable wandering the Fold. The astute amongst you will have noted my use of the term astrophysiological, as opposed to astrophysical, which is not an oversight: we have strong evidence that the Invisible Landscape is very much a living entity. Though discussion of the intricacies of this evidence goes far beyond the scope of this primer, it would be an incomplete introduction were I not to give you the top level insight:
Responsiveness to the environment might seem like a tricky concept to parse, given that the Invisible Landscape is the environment (at least for us), but even without scientific enquiry, the responsiveness of the Landscape to changes in its surroundings is readily apparent to anyone spending even a moment within the Fold. Given that landscape cognition is a burgeoning field yet to even establish a methodology, yet alone retrieve any meaningful data, the question of whether this responsiveness can be considered awareness is currently irrelevant.
Growth & change have been far easier to measure, even given our limited understanding of the true extent of the Landscape. In the brief time since measurement of this type has been possible, we have witnessed huge dynamic shift in the composition of the Landscape through a range of observation methods. One such method involves monitoring window drift, which refers to gradual change over time of the location of a temporal window relative to a fixed point in the cosmos. Since these windows are embedded deep within the bedrock of the Invisible Landscape, they provide a robust means of tracking the change of the Landscape cycle-on-cycle. Projection models suggest that Outer Meridia ought to start thinking about their relocation options.
Metabolism, respiration and temperature regulation are all processes that have been observed to occur within the Invisible Landscape by cosmobiologists. However, they’re a rather dull bunch and so is this particular field of their enquiry, so I shan’t alienate you by delineating their obnoxiously tedious research methods.
The cellular composition of the Landscape has already been touched upon in abstraction earlier on, but to revisit the concept for clarity, we believe that the interdimensional spaces that occupy the Landscape perform similar functions to cells in an organismal structure. Quite what it is the Landscape is expecting of us remains a total mystery, suffice to say that whatever we’re doing seems to be working, so probably best not to interfere — for obvious reasons.
It perhaps has not escaped your notice that the most compelling of the life processes is conspicuously absent from this list. I’m afraid at this point, we simply do not know whether the Invisible Landscape is capable of reproducing, or whether it even needs to do so in order to propagate. The implications of such an enquiry would of course be astronomical in consequence, particularly if we were to find evidence that suggests the Landscape is not the only entity of its kind. I believe research of this very nature was carried out at the Forsaken Circle, but discussion of that matter is liable to land one in hot water and I am very much a cold shower kind of fellow [must remember to edit this part out — could raise suspicions]

A Note on Travelling Intradimensionally

It would appear that everything that is true for interdimensional travel is also true for intradimensional travel; much like the internal structure of a biological cell, our cosmic architecture is bristling with what we refer to as ‘microlandscapes’. These microlandscapes are the very bedrock of our reality (and very possibly others too, if they share a similar astrophysiological profile), shaped by endless cycles of cosmic shift and continuously evolving. The gaps in this existential bedrock are where all perceivable reality takes place — think of it as if we were residing within the eyeholes of a very fine (very large) Niamine cheese.
Traversing the microlandscape, more commonly known as portalling, is still not a well understood phenomenon, and experts tend to advise minimising the amount of time spent Within the Fold as we do not yet know what the long-term effects of molecular transit might be on our health. A number of recent studies have independently corroborated the adverse effect that temporal desynchrony has on cellular composition through dysregulated circadian function, though said research was funded by the Calderwit Wayfarer Co., who have been openly and aggressively against the use of portals for reasons that most likely have everything to do with market share value.

Professor Alberich Canderwell, OME is a leading expert in contemporary astropolitics, and is widely considered to be the System’s foremost authority on The Chaos. He currently lectures on Modern History and Political Duplicity at the University of Bharvale, and has co-authored several works on the astrodynamics of cosmic architecture with long-standing collaborators Rufus Locke & Eveyln Kherza. Alberich currently resides on Midhaven, along with his extensive array of rare books, his flock of tantarian fangles, and his collection of vintage soaps.

Image courtesy of the Expedition Front

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