The Lower

In the thousands of worlds connected to the Nexus, the communication channel closed abruptly in each location, but none but the primal source could know. In some worlds, the Nexus collapsed with a loud bang and violent detonation killing thousands. In other planes, where the singularity was mostly mathematic in nature, there was a pop and the door was cement.

This was not the first time the flimsy communication bridge had gone down since its creation. Imagine every captain of a pirate fleet using ropes and empty soup cans to communicate during a storm. Every so often a reality broke the whole damned Nexus disconnecting nearly every string. Today the break was much more worrisome, it had been timed to end a conversation, either the power of the discussion displeased the Multiverse or worse yet, there was interference.

The Oldest, the wise creature from The Lower knew no creature capable of inflicting such direct harm. No one outside the handful of inhabitants in the Lower even knew of the existence of the Dot, much less knew of a way to reach down and sever these bonds. The initial strike was not raw power, it was targeted. Whatever, or whomever, had done this hadn't bothered giving a warning or bragging. Posturing was for the weak. Ants were not warned before they were crushed.

The creatures of the Lower, this new world, were intrigued by this strange turn of events. With intelligence and age came a better understanding of the beauty and complexity of the Multiverse; this was unseen. With the exception of the Oldest, all elders were surprised. Oldest alone knew the Sixth Attraction was on its way, and with it came oddity. This was the first wave of what was sure to be a tsunami.

He smiled internally, it - the Attraction - had begun.

The unique central phenomenon upon which the Nexus and all worlds were attached was named the "Dot" because of its shape. It was a single tear, a dimensionless point in the fabric of this primitive world. A heavy machine made of crystal was used to focus power and hold the Dot in place. The device bent space around the Dot to keep it anchored in space the same way table legs were lifted to keep a rolling glass from falling off it.

The creatures of the Lower were routinely (every million years or so) forced to reconnect one or more of the bridges to the Dot as the Multiverse expanded and moved. Today, the entire network had failed. All links had all been blown down like they'd been sitting in a strong wind. The creatures of this ancient world knew it was pointless to reconnect the bridge without understanding what had snapped it in the first place. This would take time.

***

The Lower was a strange cold world. The laws of physics here were substantially different from those of most other places. In fairness, that could be said of most dimensions. Nine different sub-atomic forces attracted matter as it formed from waves into very malleable physical constructs. To an outside observer, this place looked like a dark oiled sea of black snowflakes, where each crystal was defined by multiple complex spikes. Here, delicate-looking crystals had arms. Some flakes were flat, others curved, while the rarest structures were spherical.

This entire world was nothing more than a oscillating sea, the tides pushing gently upon millions of shaved ice structures between rock formations. The mere fact life and intelligence arose in this barren world was in and of itself remarkable, unless one understood how life evolved. The Lower, like the dimension called the Cold, was very large and adjacent in the Multiverse to many other dimensions. The Lower did not seem to border the Cold, but it did touch part of the Purple, the home of Malik. Once the Sixth Attraction came and passed, it would be easy for the creatures of the Lower to bend the energy in parts of their own world and destroy the Purple. The Metils had no idea what kind of danger they were in.

But there were more pressing matters at hand.

The Lower was built on nine elementary forces constrained by a trio of equations. They all operated in relatively the same scale. Here, no force outshone the others; none was more intense or more important than the others. On Earth, gravity, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force, appeared unrelated in strength, reach, and influence. A magnet capable of influencing local magnetism was powerless against gravity or the weak force. In the Lower, the forces were all interdependent, yet non-unified. Those preoccupations were better left for the moment to physicists.

The crystalline flakes of the Lower were flowing in space, like drops of water in a sea without gravity. On any given day in the Lower, millions of crystal flakes interlocked with others, some breaking off. In the tar-like soup, the broken pieces reformed at slightly different angles, giving this world a unique way to evolve. In the rarest of cases, a flake slowly formed a rounded hollow pocket in which life could arise.

Within each of these spherical structures, much like a human cell, the ballet of black spiking branches could be halted long enough for smaller, weaker elements to evolve. These crystalline bubbles, precursors of life if they settled on a fiery wall of black snow, could, with time, create intelligent life. As a consequence, creatures in the Lower were all single-celled individuals.

In the Lower, time passed slowly. Each new life-form required millions of human years to evolve. Unlike humans, relying on their reproductive cycle, in this dark place, life was random. Once it was formed, though, it was eternal. Life here was powerless at first until it developed the power to act upon its environment. Since all forces were related, the control over any force by a creature gave it power over all other forces. This was a world in which, if given sufficient time, gods were born.

There was only one species in the Lower; a bored eternal race. These sentient beings were, for lack of a better description, old wine refined corked for millions of years. With a single exception, the living creatures shared a strange state of mind, an uneasy balance between eternal madness and dazed boredom. Because life here was so rare and difficult to create, every infrequent war brought this race to the brink of extinction. Today, six creatures were at least partly awake, and seventy-eight meditated out of consciousness. On the dark walls of this world, a hundred or so younger creatures listened in the conversation, but were powerless to move.

In the Lower, only one creature distinguished itself from the rest of its kind, one called simply the Oldest. The larger creature was driven by a great purpose. It alone believed life is worth pursuing and that in the future, it would escape this boring prison. Its patience was legendary; it has never engaged lower forms of life on the Nexus until now. Today was exciting.

The Oldest was born in a time when the Multiverse was in its infancy. He is the only one who had ever seen or remembers an Attraction. In fact, the Oldest was born between the first and the second Attraction, billions of years ago. Oldest never saw a successful Attraction, one with the power to heal the Multiverse that worked. Each of the four Attractions he'd witnessed resulted in amputation. Dimensions, hundreds of them vanished each time and he was powerless to pick up the pieces as part of the Nexus went dark. This time would be different.

His fellow creatures from the Lower refused to think an Attraction could even work. They dismissed the lore from the first Attraction. After all, why should they take the Oldest's word? He admitted he hadn't seen it. The Oldest knew better. The tales that predated even him spoke of the miracle called the Attraction. It was beauty and regeneration. He'd seen four failures.

The Oldest had one dream only, one secret which gave him patience. He had the desire to see the other worlds of the Multiverse. He dreamt of beautiful places connected to the Nexus. Armed with a belief his only chance to escape the Lower was the window created by the Attraction, he waited - alone.

Oldest knew there was one single exception to impermeability. Once every two or three hundred million years, a creature is given by the Universe great unlimited power, one is to be permeable. It alone is free of the walls, free to slide between words animated by the Multiverse itself as if no science binds it. To this creature, he calls the Attractor, the worlds are all connected. Physical restraints are lifted in pure violation of science and logic.

The Oldest knew, one day, the Attraction would return. He armed himself with Herculean patience and waited. The Metil Ambassador had confirmed it; the boy changed worlds. The creature from the Purple moved between the veils, and if the story was true, Malik had allowed a creature from the Cold, named Sophie to move alongside him. The Oldest needed to be part of this adventure.

Early in the life of the Multiverse, the creatures from the Lower found the Dot. It was a point in their space where nothing could exist. Like the eye of a hurricane within another storm, the natural singularity floated, defiant. It destroyed crystals as it slid from one location to the next. The creatures of the Lower harnessed the singularity. The Dot was some common bond between multiple worlds. It was the belly button of the Universe itself.

Inventing the Nexus wasn't the hard part. Since the singularity was present in each world, making it vibrate in one world also made it vibrate in the others. Like a giant column of smoke used to communicate across large distances of the Navaho desert. The creatures of the Lower began to monitor the Dot. It only took a million years before intelligence from a different world replied on the other side. Slowly, a world at a time, information began to flow across the membrane like a small tambourine skin.

As the creatures of the Lower learned about other places, their thirst for expansion grew. Creatures with the power of gods rarely take well to physical restraints. But even they were unable to break impermeability. They realized singularities, either the Dot or others, were nothing more than a cheap black and white television given to a prisoner to pass time.

With enough time, all the old creatures of the Lower lost interest in the Dot with the Oldest as the exception. When the Metil Ambassador called for the meeting, the godlike creature awoke. Maybe the tale would forecast the arrival of the Sixth Attraction. Hopefully, the automated systems who had spoken before him over the Nexus hadn't damaged his plan. And if they'd harmed the Attraction, god help them.

The Oldest believed there was a way for him to take part in the Sixth Attraction, regardless of the condition of the Nexus. The toy called the Dot was now inconsequential to him. He was a prisoner, locked away in the most secure of prisons. If given enough time, the conditions would allow him to escape.

The creature was pulsing, alone.

It was ready.

A majority of the other creatures from the Lower were slowly being aroused from their slumber. Irrespective of the Attraction, the Nexus was now broken and needed repair. The Oldest was disturbed by the speed of events. He knew things would move quickly, but for a creature of his age, anything on a scale of hours felt rushed. For example, he had moments to speak on the bridge before it snapped open. He gave only a part of his message. Hopefully, that would suffice. The boy would come soon. His mode of communication to the Purple and the Cold was down. There was also the matter of the intruder who'd just snapped open the Nexus like a twig.

"The Cold," questioned a automated Guardian talking telepathically to all other life from the Lower, "it lives. We need to know the speed of its unfolding.”

A good understanding of the term “unfolding” is pivotal to any child’s view of Multiverse physics. Time is the great uniting factor of most worlds. In each slice of the Multiverse, time evolves and unfolds at a different speed. Minutes, in one realm may be seconds or months in an adjacent place. The temporal unfolding between worlds resembles the flow in adjacent rivers; each runs at a different speed, but all rivers flow downstream, not upstream.

The same way, the speed of the water in a river is not equal in every corner of the waterway. Unfolding varies at every location of a world and the monitoring of unfolding is the way to take the pulse of the Multiverse. Monitoring, the relative unfolding between adjacent worlds, is one of the most useful tools used by the creatures of the Lower to monitor the Multiverse. For example, if one day a polluter releases sludge in a waterway the water will become more viscous and change speed. The change in speed can offer guidance on the type of pollution.

The principle of worlds slowing down or speeding up as to their unfolding is called "bending" or "warping.” This relative energy isn't easy to understand. To match the speed of cars traveling on two adjacent sides of a highway, if a road was alive, one could simply shorten a lane traveled by the slowest car by bending the road. As the bent road shortens or gets longer to travel, the cars will appear to match speeds. The Multiverse, before an Attraction, warps.

The Guardian added, "The Metil's Purple world unfolds at 16, and the Cold unfolds at only 0.0012. There is no noticeable warping." The artificial intelligence spoke so everyone could hear. The six Guardians were analyzing what remained of the machine that held the Dot and the Nexus in place. It looked like a large black crystal, a city-sized, floating in crystal-shaped oil. The Guardians needed some time before the sleeping creatures of the Lower could fully awaken, so that they could help with repairs. The Dot, channeling the energy of this realm, created the Nexus. It was complex even from a God's perspective. It was formed by hundreds of millions of crystals, each vibrating at different wavelengths and interlocked in a precise way to amplify resonance. The Dot, the Nexus, and this technology was beyond the comprehension of anyone else in the Multiverse except one.

"Accelerate the awaking of Asrk-Al. He will be able to analyze and provide guidance as to these comparative unfolding speeds. We need him to enlighten us and the others," said a Guardian. The Oldest was silent, he was deep in thought.

Finally Oldest spoke, "There is no need."

"Venerable one?"

"The beauty of the Attractor is as I predicted. The unfolding of the Cold and the Purple appears, at a glance, unchanged. The unfolding speed seems irrelevant. My hypothesis is again wrong." The creature was giddy. A brown sphere of crystals was blinking with many colors. "We may be faced with a bi-polar Attractor, or the Attractor simply does not care about unfolding. Either way, this confirms we have entered the Sixth Attraction." The happiness in the voice was infectious. "This is wonderful news."

"Ancient one, the Nexus is broken. A force attacks and you are pleased?"

"The Attractor can come here. The same way some forces in other worlds have two poles, a positive and a negative counterpart, the principle of the Attractor may also bend around a bi-polar curvature of the Multiverse."

"A creature in each of two adjacent worlds?"

"Yes. Ignoring, for the moment, the different repercussions associated with a gender-directed Attractor, I believe a bi-polar Attractor, with two parts, each from a different realm would function more effectively - but who knows."

"Oldest, I read all of your research and I remain confused."

"Understandable. These concepts are untested; they are mere theories. I must assume my lore remains partial. The Ambassador said the boy from the Purple is with the girl in the Cold. That is the first violation of my theory. He also explained that the girl followed the boy into the Purple. I believe the boy may have slid her alongside him. The Attraction is always chosen with one at the heart of a beautiful and tragic story. The Multiverse does not play games. It does not satisfy itself with mundane things. It enjoys the Attraction. Nothing is more exciting than discovering and validating new science. What I do think is that the Multiverse will slowly bend, aligning the unfolding between the Purple and the Cold, irrespective of the nature of the Attractor. These worlds are linked. They could be merged."

"Venerable one. Your words are beyond our comprehension. We all require more explanation."

"In time. For the moment, great damage is being inflicted on the Multiverse. We must act carefully and with respect as to not interfere with the Attraction."

"How severe will be the damage?"

"All other Attractions took years to arrive and unfold. We saw them, and each time, we knew what portion of the Multiverse was being wounded. Raging wars were ongoing. At this time, there is total peace. There is no known reason for the Attraction to occur at this moment unless the hurt is invisible, in The Cold."

"How much time do we have?"

"We cannot know," replied the Oldest. Deep in the sea of dark crystals around them, pulses of energy began to shoot out of the Nexus. They were resonating along discrete mathematical series. "The unfolding of the Purple and the Cold begins. They are at opposite spectrums. We seem to have a large temporal buffer before these two worlds were to align," The Oldest continued with an air of satisfaction. "I believe we," it corrected itself. "I have time, but for a different reason. If we trust the Metil accounts, there have already been multiple jumps between realms. Impermeability has been violated on multiple occasions already. Either the two worlds unfold in unison, or the new Attractor has special abilities."

As he spoke, a second stronger pulse of resonating energy emanated from the large black structure surrounding the Nexus. The strange force spread outwardly from the point into the Lower. As it moved away from the Nexus, it was powerful enough to break the tip of some crystals. This was new power, unseen power. The Oldest knew one thing for sure, he had personal knowledge of every type of universal energy, so this was, likely part of the Sixth Attraction.

All of the Guardians, seeing the pulse spread, concentrated. Their collective wills rearranged floating crystals to form a wall, moments before the wave reached their own crystal forms. Without reprise, every crystal forming the Nexus began to hum. The noise was generated by energy deep within the center of the structure. This new problem was much more powerful. The Oldest observed the beauty of this new energy, the fight was pointless.

"The Dot," said one of the five Guardians. A third detonation, stronger resonated seconds later. It spread outward throughout the Lower until it hit the improvised wall. In its way, larger portions of structures were snapped off. The wall remained stronger than this latest pulse. "What's happening? Could this be a new realm arriving? Via the Dot?" asked a Guardian.

The Oldest was fascinated and knew. His own body, a bubble of vulnerable crystals, was a short distance behind the wall. He was in awe but had to be careful. "Under normal circumstances, I would say yes. Today, I hesitate. The energy is very sophisticated. There are harmonies, patterns. The timing is of no coincidence. The Multiverse..." The Oldest was interrupted this time by a cluster of smaller waves released into their world from the Nexus. Each increased in intensity and destructive power. “The Attractor has no need for this, it must be...” the word he kept to himself was harassed.

"We must align the outer casing of the Nexus around the Dot to avoid destruction," said the Oldest gently. In a world made of crystals, loose energy waves were bad. The energy pouring from the Dot was not kind.

Then the Oldest had a better idea. The others read his mind. "No," started a Guardian, "we must wait for the others to wake. We cannot take such hasty action without a full vote. We should align the casing as you first suggested. That is what the regulations require."

The Oldest refused to hear what others felt was common sense, "I authored the regulation, prepare to do as I say. I wrote you,” he said to the Guardian. Then came a different type of pulse from the Nexus, a louder one, a deeper one. The energy moved both away from the center of the pulse and back like a shock wave. Each shard it touched was sent flying. This was alien in nature. As this blast reached the wall, it punctured it in places. The Oldest felt the heat against himself, but he was fearless. He welcomed this, hoping he was right. The entire device holding the Nexus shook from its core.

Time was limited.

More than energy rippled into the Lower. Something, or better yet, someone was kicking in this singularity. It had no patience.

The Oldest closed his mind. He was powerful and a God here. This was no time to hold back, there was no need to shield himself from the others in the Lower. Energy erupted from him as he spoke softly. "Align the casing, now,” he willed to be. The Oldest placed the full force of his mind behind the command. In his head, he saw the millions of crystals forming the casing tighten and interlock in a dense configuration. The words made the entire structure respond. It compressed the Nexus, and in turn the Dot a tenth of its size. The crystal structure was now a diamond. He sealed the structure shut, the Dot blinking at its heart. In the darkness of this world, his spherical body glowed from the strain.

None of the Guardians opposed the Oldest, nor stood in his way. Such a Herculean effort in the Lower was rare; not to mention dangerous. Today, no one would challenge the Oldest and the Oldest didn't give a damn. The Attraction had begun, there was no room for hesitation. Certain parameters of the structure, like a snowball rolling down a hill, began to change. The crystals moved microscopically and macroscopically. The noise poured out of the Dot, muffling the Nexus. The resonating vibration didn't completely stop. The Oldest looked up, he knew this invader was, at best, delayed.

"Troubling," said the Oldest to himself. "I am unable to fully align the Dot; it still resonates."

"Yes, troubling," replied one of the Guardians.

A second Guardian offered, "I have found the location of origin of the energy which destroyed every branch of the Nexus."

"Where did it originate?”

"The energy flooded from the Multiverse itself. Into every branch between the Dot and the Nexus. Every realm. This is unlike anything we've ever encountered. The damage was made at the L-A-133 branch. Someone forced open the fabric of the Multiverse itself."

"Open the fabric? You mean created a singularity."

"No. This was much different."

"How?"

"I am unclear. I have never seen anything so sophisticated." There was shock in the Lower. The Oldest remained composed. The Guardians took some time to analyze the assault. As they did, the humming of the Dot tripled to return to alarming levels. "There are still more questions than answers at this point," said a Guardian. "The alignment failed," it had to warn. "Energy, a strange force flows only through the Dot. Every branch of the Nexus has been severed. I fear if we repair the Nexus and reconnect the branch, the new connections will be severed immediately."

Oldest spoke to himself. "Whoever is knocking to enter our world is persistent." Oldest looked at the entire casing. It was holding. "You said the energy is structured, that is unlike the Attractor. What type of vibration is coming into the Dot?" Questioned the Oldest.

"A simple modulation," replied a Guardian.

Oldest was worried, this meant not only had something hurt the Multiverse so deeply to cascade the Sixth Attraction but this force for bad was now using Attraction energy, structuring it and using it to further hurt the worlds.

"Could it be a voice?" Does the translator understand it?" demanded a second Guardian to the first. It took some time to review the data. Finally the first guardian added "The vibration is not an incoming stream of data into this realm. The stream is... outbound."

"What?" choked Oldest.

"Outbound?" questioned a second Guardian.

"Yes. The signal we measure originates from here, and manages to seep through the casing of the Nexus, going out over the Dot." They could all hear the panic in that. The folly of what the guardian was suggesting made others recoil.

The Oldest and the five guardians felt a rare common emotion; vulnerability. Absent the arrival of the Sixth Attraction, they would conclude the Lower had a spy. Nothing else made sense. The Guardians had much experience with new realms. Sending messages; trying in a clumsy way to communicate with the Lower. Only the Lower knew how to use advanced material dynamics to generate and read echoes from a different realm. The technology was similar to a sonar, used to read the shape the bottom of the ocean. Or in this case, the top of it. A pulse could be sent through a singularity such as the Dot to gather information about a realm, then returning a pulse back deformed by the data. The technique was so complex that none had ever mastered it outside of the Lower.

Whoever was making the Dot vibrate today was a formidable foe with equal or greater technology than the Lower.

"Wake all of the others, I must know if this is the Sixth Attraction," said the Oldest.

"Awakening takes time."

"Time, we may not have," said the Oldest, "wake them now or I will."