Portal

Portals are a foundational element to the parahumans multiverse.

Examples

• Professor Haywires Portal<ref name="3.4"/>
• Unspecified portal in Europe<ref name="16.1II"> The folder to the right was Professor Haywire. Multiple personalities, with each personality living in one Earth. He’d gone full mad scientist and opened the first portal we’d known about. We’d later found out there was one in Europe and, apparently, the one in Cauldron. - [https://www.parahumans.net/2019/08/13 Excerpt from From Within 16.1</ref>
• Cauldron's portal network<ref name="16.1II"/>
• Smugglers Portal in White Rock<ref>Interlude 12.z II</ref>
• Brockton Bay Portal
• Post-Gold Morning portal network

Details

Succinctly, portals are holes in reality. They appear in controlled and uncontrolled and allow travel across the multiverse lattice; i.e. they let people travel to other worlds.

Portal appearances are dictated by their creation;<ref name="fw3">“Here,” Golem said. He indicated the portal. It was the same rip-in-reality style that Kenzie’s cube made, rather than the electricity-framed doorway that Teacher’s tech tended to produce, or the three-dimensional-hole style that Faultline’s group and Khepri had made. - Excerpt from From Within 16.3</ref> Palanquin ones are three dimensional constructs in space, Warden tech creates tears in reality, while Teacher's students construct<ref>Leaving the medical room, they entered a hallway. At one end, a portal was open, the edges ragged and crackling.

“I’m still refining transportation, but this works. We’ll need to take three trips to get where we want to be.”
[...]
Through the portal, a smell of burnt ozone in the air, they were on a rocky clifftop. Rain pattered down around them.

Another device was rigged. Ten people with white shirts or white clothes were working on it. An archway with power from a chain of six generators feeding into it.
[...]
The gate that was hooked up to generators was being powered. Electricity crackled, arcing inside the gateway until it looked like the ‘door’ of the arch was a solid pane of crackling energy.
[...]
Then he strode forward, into the electricity. William could see him flinch at the touch of electricity, the burning of clothes.

Not perfect. Worse, if that broke his concentration, augmented as it was…

Better that it happen now than later.

He marched forward, his strides long. His hands pushed his sweat-damp hair out of his eyes and against his scalp.

Lightning kissed him, and then licked across his arm, up to his sleeve. The arm burned, and the sleeve was set on fire. Another shock made his body go stiff, and he felt one of the things slip out of his hold. His back.

He staggered through what felt like a very long tunnel, collapsing to his knees. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y II</ref> Cauldron's method creates near seamless portals.<ref>A woman stood there, dark-skinned, with her hair cut into a short style that was more utilitarian than stylish. She wore a doctor’s lab coat and held a white plastic clipboard with both hands.

That wasn’t the startling thing.

At a point halfway inside the barn, there ceased to be any barn at all. White tiled floor and white-painted walls stretched a distance behind the woman, and the ceiling was all glass, hiding a smooth distribution of flourescent lights that made it all glow evenly. - Excerpt from Interlude 12.5</ref>

Creation

• Doormaker
• Professor Haywire
• Combos
  • Dimension manipulators
    • Labyrinth
    • Myrddin
  • All-or-nothings
    • Scrub
    • Foil
    • Ashley Stillons
• Trigger Event (opens a micro portal into the parahumans brain)

History

Background

With the fall of Eden at Cote D'Ivorie several portals were opened throughout the multiversal worlds.<ref>Interlude 29</ref>

Later Cauldron gained access to a parahuman that was able to close most of these.<ref> Assuming that Cauldron's operatives maybe killed Eden but then just sat on their hands/died, the Endbringers don't exist, the cauldron vials aren't spread out, and there's less of the really powerful parahumans here and there who're capable of acting decisively. Gates to other worlds are left open, feeding into Cote D'Ivorie, spitting out more than a fair share of Case-53 like monsters, only in a very tightly occupied space. If West Africa survives, it's either as a world power or as a mutant-occupied area. If they find Eden's corpse, well, you've got a whole other mess, because they're going to be less careful and organized about it. Assuming they don't accidentally revive Eden, there's going to be a lot of failed doses. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>

The hole between realities that Professor Haywire created led Earth Bet to discover Earth Aleph, this almost sparked a war.<ref name="17.3c2">Explanation isn’t in story, but I’ve given it before. Bet’s and Aleph’s residents almost came to war, over fear of what would happen if one earth tried to prey on the other for resources. Bet had more firepower. Major players in Bet (some who’ve been named already) offered concessions, and taking the name ‘bet’ was one of several symbolic measures. - Comment by Wildbow on Migration 17.3</ref> Thankfully several agreements between the governmental entities of the earth's preempted this.<ref name="19.7">“There’s sanctions, treaties, truces. If you open this hole to Earth Aleph, it could mean a war between universes.” - Excerpt from Scourge 19.7</ref>

However the Hole was largely restricted to allowing the transmission of data through radio waves.<ref name="17.3c1">Mostly radio waves, but there’s also an exchange of media and regular transmissions of news and data (mainly but not wholly) for research which is how Alec was able to get his hands on DvDs from the other world. Comment by Wildbow on Migration 17.3</ref> The hole itself has filled in with concrete creating guarded facilities that stopped anyone from going in or out. The only concession was communication devices feed through the concrete which allowed the exchange of knowledge.<ref name="R71">Only information can get through because they set it up that way - massive facilities and a lot of concrete on either side, only cables feeding through, and no apparent way for people to get from one side to the other. - Post by Wildbow on Reddit</ref>Besides research, media was one of the few things that could be traded back and forth through the hole - leading to the trade of books, movies and DVDs of TV shows.<ref name="3.4">Having tired ourselves out, we’d all collapsed on the couches and watched some of Alec’s movies from Earth-Aleph, the alternate Earth that our Earth had been communicating with since Professor Haywire tore a hole between realities. Media was one of the few things that could be traded back and forth through the hole. Long story short, you could get books, movies and DVDs of TV shows from the other world, if you were willing to accept the price tag. The benefit? I got to spend the afternoon seeing how the other universe had handled episodes one and two of the Star Wars films.

Fact: they were still pretty disappointing. - Excerpt from Agitation 3.4</ref>

A portal created by some Smugglers caused a heap of trouble.

In December 2009,<ref name="17.1e1">"We have family over. Your Uncle Felix came all the way from California. I think they might want to spend some time with you this Christmas.”. - Excerpt from Migration 17.1</ref> the Endbringer known as The Simurgh accessed a vault containing Professor Haywire's technology using it to create a functional large-scale version of his inter-dimensional door. The Simurgh used this technology to create two gateways - one between Earth-Aleph and Earth-Bet and one between a part of Cauldron's research facility and Earth-Bet. The portal dumped the buildings, soil, plant life and the residents from both locations into Madison, Wisconsin.<ref name="17.6e1"/>

Story Start

The single portal had become a fact of life for both universes.

Post-Echidna

A new way to create portals was discovered to help contain a threat.

Palanquin created five other portals publically and three in secret, later events incentivized them to make many more.<ref>the Doctor [said]. “Or try, as it may be. That’s one Endbringer we should be able to drive away. As Weaver said, we may have to evacuate the planet if this doesn’t work. Faultline, your assistance would be invaluable on that front. You’ve already created nine, I believe?”

“Three of which were supposed to be secret,” Faultline replied.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll pay for several more, at major locations, and we’ll arrange your transportation.”

Faultline stared at the woman. “No, Doctor.” [...] She turned to Chevalier, “We’ll give you a discount. Escape routes in major cities across America. Leading to the world that the Brockton Bay portal goes to.” - Excerpt from Scarab 25.5</ref>

Timeskip

The Simurgh accessed Earth Shin and brought several of the Capes there into Paris during the endbringer attack there. to fight the assembled Capes who were intent on fighting the Endbringer.<ref name="25.6">Paris, December 19th, 2012 // Simurgh
Notes: Victory by Scion.
Target/Consequence: see file The Woman in Blue. See file United Capes. - Excerpt from Scarab 25.6</ref>

This may have been thanks to the technologies Professor Haywire.

Post-Timeskip

Two years after the fight with Khonsu portals existed throughout the world.

Gold Morning

Khepri used Doormaker to make thousands upon thousands of portals during the fight with Scion.

Post-Gold Morning

The City regularly opened portals to uninhabited worlds in order to extract resources from them.

Post-Fallen fall

The Portals in the megalopolis were attacked by various groups. They used tinker devices to expand them outwards, trapping many people in alternate worlds and cutting parts of the city off from each other.<ref>Pitch 6.9</ref>

Post-Goddess' Takeover

The parahuman prison had its portals cut off.

Post-Time Bubble Pop

Teacher was able to open the portal to previously quarantined sub-dimension containing shards.

References

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