So, honestly this doesn’t make sense even in my absolutely madcap macrosetting, so you won’t be hearing from Kul-Kashan the Relatively Wise this time. No, this will be straight from me. Well, not exactly straight. And so, I present my take on Swirling Rainbow Vortices: queer rainbow surfers in space!
The Spiral
Nestled between the Padrigin Belt and the Black Nebula, is The Spiral, a city that extends its esoteric arms far into the cosmos. It is the birthplace of humanity as we know it, and where we have lived for all of living memory. Each tiny star is a human home, where we live and work from inside our warm suns, connected to the Synaesthesic Network directly through our brains, commanding the automatons that do our work for the betterment of civilisation. Truly a utopia, where all can live without fear of death or harmful contact with others.
The Surfers
There are always, however, those who do not appreciate the safety that the star-cocoons give. They are the few modern humans who decide to leave the Spiral, crafting fragments of long-dead suns into surfboards to ride the waves of the cosmos. Most die in solar storms, or get caught in the wrong asteroid field, but there are a few that, through a mixture of skill and sheer luck, find something out there in space, passing out of the present and into legend as the heroes of humanity that little children are told stories of in hushed tones. They are the Surfers, explorers of space and conquerors of the known universe, and some of the unknown universe too.
The Bifrost
However, the Surfers would be nothing without the Bifrost that allows them access to the universe in its glorious entirety. A phenomenon only recently discovered by humanity, detection of the Bifrost by human perceptions is only possible if the person has been exposed to the Synaethesic Network before the age of 4, leading to most Surfers being under the age of 80, very young indeed. Research has deemed that it has something to do with changing how the Astral Self functions, allowing one to find the Bifrost all around them.
But what exactly is it? From what we have gleaned from interrogations with Surfers, it is a rainbow wave that can be summoned from everywhere, allowing travel by surfing along it with the aforementioned starboards. Using it, anywhere can be reached with relative ease. The people who use it also reportedly have no trouble breathing in the vacuum of space. They use it like a highway to evade authorities and discover the interesting corners of the universe. It has also been stated that when using the Bifrost, all destinations are a maximum of five days’ surfing away, no matter the actual distance.
Some people particularly attuned to the Bifrost are capable of accessing the Rainbow Vortex, a small organ in the ear that is grown after early exposure to the Syaesthesic Network, though most humans cannot use it. Those who can, however, are able to connect to the Network from anywhere in the galaxy and, through strange psionic powers, can alter the very fabric of reality around them. These people, called the Starchildren, are almost inevitably the greatest Surfers of the group they associate themselves with, and have a mastery over the Bifrost most can only dream of. Truly they are forces to be reckoned with.
This Idea In The Future
This is one of my favourite things I’ve done yet here, and I do think at some point I will have to expand it into its own thing. Perhaps a GLOG hack specifically about this idea? Not sure, but until then I hope you can find something good in here!
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