Difference between revisions of "Upwarp"

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== Environment ==  
 
== Environment ==  
  
The city that comprises Upward sprawls across a vast 2-dimensional plane, with many buildings and other elements extending both up and down from the common ground-point. Everything is laid out in polar coordinates from a center point, and faint gridlines can even be seen at the fringes or in undeveloped areas. Circles within circles march in towards the center, while streets either follow the curve around, or radiate in different ways outward from the core. The central point is a single bright point of light called the Aleph, and a solid beam of light emanates both directly upward and downward from it called the Axis. The Axis appears to reach infinity in both directions, and thus can be seen in the sky of any part of the city. There's a theory that the Axis is one single line that eventually wraps around the curved space to return to its origin--nobody has been able to actually test this by flying in either direction to find its end. Its primary function seems to be a reminder of where the center is, and how close you are to it.  
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The city that comprises Upwarp sprawls within a massive, three-dimensional spherical volume, with buildings extending above and below what could be called the 'ground', a transparent plane upon which all things in the warp anchor. Buildings, parks, streets, all are laid out in polar coordinates from the central origin of the volume: concentric circles of buildings ring the core, while streets either follow the circular curve between them, or radiate from the core at random points of the compass.  
  
The city itself consists of many varying Zones, for which different visual themes and Augmented-Reality (AR) overlays exist. In many cases entering a Zone includes a change in one's entire sensorium (if so equipped) to match the new area. There are also countless datafeeds and communication channels ready to be accessed from anywhere--Upwarp is very much oriented around digital information and communication. The fact that it might even be a virtual environment itself doesn't tend to bother anyone living there, since they're already at home navigating multiple layers of reality.  
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The plane is the reference for gravity both above and below, but it is only partially tangible. Buildings anchor to it as solidly as bedrock, but an individual can move through it as one might through a sheet of ice. Roads and sidewalks run back to back across its surface. At the fringes of the developed areas, faint gridlines can be seen glowing along the plane.
  
It doesn't hurt that it simply ''looks like'' popular conceptions of cyberspace, as well. The default look is that of a glistening glowing city of the future, the sky a perpetual twilit sunset of pink, orange, gold, and darker blues. Buildings are darker colors with neon glowing highlights in all colors, and everything is in precise geometrical patterns, arranged on the polar grid. ''Neuromancer'', ''Snow Crash'', ''ReBoot'', and ''Tron'' all inform the aesthetic style.  
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At Upwarp's heart is a single bright point of light, called the Aleph. From it, a solid beam of light called the Axis projects above and below the city seemingly into infinity, like an otherworldly tentpole for the sky washed in a perpetual twilight of pink, orange, gold and indigo. There's a theory that the Axis is one single line that eventually wraps around the curved space to return to its origin -- nobody has been able to actually test this hypothesis by flying in either direction to find its end. The current consensus is that the Axis serves primarily as a point of reference, allowing one to judge orientation and distance from the core.
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The city is comprised of many varying Zones, for which different visual themes and Augmented-Reality (AR) overlays exist. In many cases, entering a Zone includes a change in one's entire sensorium (if so equipped) or matching suite of sensory inputs to match the new area. Additionally, uncountable datafeeds and communication channels permeate the volume, waiting to be tapped from anywhere -- Upwarp is very much oriented around digital information and communication. The fact that Upwarp itself is a virtual environment doesn't tend to bother anyone living there, since they're already at home navigating multiple layers of reality.
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It doesn't hurt that it simply ''looks like'' the Jungian conception of cyberspace, as well. From afar, Upwarp is a tremendous, glowing, three-dimensional quartz, with buildings of darker colours outlined in neon highlights of every hue. It is a glistening city of the future, the spherical sky coruscating through the colours of twilight on a roughly diurnal cycle. Everything within is laid in precise geometrical patterns, arranged meticulously on the polar grid.  
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''Neuromancer'', ''Snow Crash'', ''ReBoot'', and ''Tron'' all inform the aesthetic style.
  
 
== Upwarp Science, and The Aleph ==
 
== Upwarp Science, and The Aleph ==

Revision as of 11:36, 26 April 2015

“A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding." William Gibson, Neuromancer.

Upwarp is a warp of Puzzlebox, now reorganized into a city of reason, science, information, and customized environments.

Environment

The city that comprises Upwarp sprawls within a massive, three-dimensional spherical volume, with buildings extending above and below what could be called the 'ground', a transparent plane upon which all things in the warp anchor. Buildings, parks, streets, all are laid out in polar coordinates from the central origin of the volume: concentric circles of buildings ring the core, while streets either follow the circular curve between them, or radiate from the core at random points of the compass.

The plane is the reference for gravity both above and below, but it is only partially tangible. Buildings anchor to it as solidly as bedrock, but an individual can move through it as one might through a sheet of ice. Roads and sidewalks run back to back across its surface. At the fringes of the developed areas, faint gridlines can be seen glowing along the plane.

At Upwarp's heart is a single bright point of light, called the Aleph. From it, a solid beam of light called the Axis projects above and below the city seemingly into infinity, like an otherworldly tentpole for the sky washed in a perpetual twilight of pink, orange, gold and indigo. There's a theory that the Axis is one single line that eventually wraps around the curved space to return to its origin -- nobody has been able to actually test this hypothesis by flying in either direction to find its end. The current consensus is that the Axis serves primarily as a point of reference, allowing one to judge orientation and distance from the core.

The city is comprised of many varying Zones, for which different visual themes and Augmented-Reality (AR) overlays exist. In many cases, entering a Zone includes a change in one's entire sensorium (if so equipped) or matching suite of sensory inputs to match the new area. Additionally, uncountable datafeeds and communication channels permeate the volume, waiting to be tapped from anywhere -- Upwarp is very much oriented around digital information and communication. The fact that Upwarp itself is a virtual environment doesn't tend to bother anyone living there, since they're already at home navigating multiple layers of reality.

It doesn't hurt that it simply looks like the Jungian conception of cyberspace, as well. From afar, Upwarp is a tremendous, glowing, three-dimensional quartz, with buildings of darker colours outlined in neon highlights of every hue. It is a glistening city of the future, the spherical sky coruscating through the colours of twilight on a roughly diurnal cycle. Everything within is laid in precise geometrical patterns, arranged meticulously on the polar grid.

Neuromancer, Snow Crash, ReBoot, and Tron all inform the aesthetic style.

Upwarp Science, and The Aleph

Upwarp concerns itself quite a bit with the Datasphere--that collection of information, communication, and constantly-created sensor readings from theoretically everywhere in the 'Box. It is vast enough to be considered near-infinite in scope, potentially even holding information on things that haven't even happened yet. However, with any sufficiently large set of data, the task of sorting and collating and making any sense out of any of it becomes a task in itself. This breaks down to what Upwarp denizens tend to call Research and Science. Sorting and filtering oceans of information, rendering them down to usable forms and readable archives, is considered Research. The practice of finding interesting ideas within that sorted data and doing something new with it is considered Science.

The primary way in which information is gathered is through the Aleph. It's still unknown what the Aleph actually is, because while it could theoretically contain information about itself, finding that is just as difficult as finding anything else specific. The popular theory is that the Aleph is a singularity containing the remains of the old Datasphere of Puzzlebox, which collapsed in on itself some time after the Magic Mirror system shut down, possibly also taking old Upwarp with it. It is functionally an infinitely vast source of information; but with no inherent organization, what one can access is uncontrollable. Physically accessing it is near-impossible as well. Upwarp denizens are much more comfortable sifting and filtering a few different realities or infostreams at a time--but trying to directly experience the Aleph, essentially seeing everything all at once, is madness-inducing. Even a brief, temporary immersion remains a difficult endeavor, but remains as a sort of initiation ordeal for many of the Research consortia. Thus, appropriately, most of them are just a little bit mad. The most common way to access the Aleph is to simply drop probes in from nearby and suck up what you can over time. A cloud of data-probes ring the Aleph in all three dimensions, fueling the Research consortia in the innermost ring. Ringing around that are the Science Zones, which tend to also maintain the databases of information deemed complete.

Proximity

The existence of the Aleph also very directly informs the structure of the cityscape. In closer proximity to the center, information naturally grows more accessible, systems tend to work much faster, everything is extra-efficient (aside from the mad experiments in the Science Zones). Thus, the truly limited resource of Upwarp is space.

While Downwarp is sometimes considered an experiment in artificially-limited resource scarcity, Upwarp is an experiment in unlimited resources but artificially-limited proximity and space. Zones can be located anywhere, but only without overlap, which means that closer in to the center there's less space, but a more desirable location, while on the outer rims, there's plenty of space but a less optimal data flow overall. Sections of city can grow upward and downward from the equatorial plane, but there's some functional limitations to extending too far in either direction.

The limitations of space are more or less enforced by a transportation network limited in speed. Roads and highways are still mostly necessary, though they the aerial versions can more easily break the polar coordinate layout, so they tend to be more common. Actual individual vehicles are mostly for show, since using the transport network could just as easily be done in a tiny personalized pod. The main limitation here is that for the most part there is no teleportation allowed. There are quick-travel pads organized by radial sector, but these are more "fast travel" stations, and are much farther apart in the outer Zones.

Both the transportation restrictions and the space-allocation system are managed by a subsystem that remains in the background, interfacing through software agents when necessary. Citizens of up tend to assume it is not sentient, but it has never shown concrete evidence either way, so they have affectionally nicknamed the entity Null. The main issue that anyone has with Null is that it is perhaps too strict on requirements of space usage. Essentially, to keep ownership and stewardship of a given Zone or smaller space within it, someone must actively be using it. The criteria has, of course, been tested extensively and has been found to be relatively simple in practice. A citizen needs to regularly upkeep their zone by moving around within it, giving a certain amount of attention to it. This can also be delegated to other people, but only to a point. A random stranger can't camp out in someone's yard to prevent it from changing, but a citizen can designate someone to patrol the boundaries, making sure that their favorite spot isn't suddenly reallocated to someone else. This doesn't happen randomly--there's plenty of accessible data to tell you rates of expiration and how often one needs to upkeep on zones that one owns (info on zones other people own are not shown, by design). The closer to Aleph one gets, the more desired the space is, and the faster claims decay.

The Zones

The various chunks of cityscapes are, in a very literal sense, functional Temporary Autonomous Zones.

Temporary

Using the underlying system built into the subatomic structure of the local physics, a zone can be created and filled with just about anything. In the AR overlays, space is still at a ratio of 1 to 1--things can be seen that aren't there, but for the most part physical things you'd want to interact with are created out of the city's smart-matter. However, spaces and the things that make up the zone must be actively maintained or used to keep from being reallocated. For example, you could create a sprawling fantasy monarchy, but be constantly patrolling the borders to make sure some part of it doesn't suddenly turn into someone else's space opera fantasy.

Of note, people will remain, but places and things may vanish or turn into something else. There is a certain amount of negotiation with the allocation system in keeping some personal (important or often-used) things, but an also-limited inventory to keep those in. The limitations are artificial, but intended to provide structure to an otherwise infinite space.

Autonomous

Zones are managed by their initial creators, and Null maintains access and privacy controls that manage who can go to one or even who can see one. Some Zones are entirely invisible (and thus private) to anyone not living there or on the guest-access list. Zones are also characterized by varying visual themes and settings--a naturalistic setting could be right next to a huge chunk of city. The main principle in play is persistence--spaces do not overlap each other except at the edges, and people can't pass through each other even if they're virtual projections. Roads and aerial highways are always public,

Zones

Zones can be created by an individual or by a collection or group. Folks can carve out a personal bedroom, house, or larger region by sending a request to Null, with varying degrees of preference for location. Subspaces can be managed within a larger Zone (the interior of a building, a single apartment space within a building, etc). If a general proximity preference is given (close to Aleph, close to other preferred zones), the space is created and allocated the space available up to the size requested. If no preference, then the space is created in a random location--and the creator is relocated to it.

As an example of how this all works (as assumed by scientists studying Null): Nik decides he wants a new lab, close in to the Science zones. He requests of Null a small city-block-sized space. Null finds a spot close enough that's about to expire, keeping watch on several other suitable but less-preferred locations. Three other requests come in shortly afterwards, with similar preferences. Null weights the requests in order they arrived, and performs a lottery based on that data. Nik wins, and is teleported to the empty zone, and given access to customize the space as he wishes. The others in the queue get similar spaces as they become available, even though not all of them are the favored location.