Space

{{#if:Victoria to CryptidBreaking 14.12|

“	Powers don’t work in space. We’re tethered to the agents and if you move far enough away the power doesn’t feed in. You wouldn’t get any tinker inspiration. When Sphere was trying to build the moon base, he had to build on Earth and send stuff up.	”
{{#if:Victoria to Cryptid| —Victoria to Cryptid{{#if:Breaking 14.12|, Breaking 14.12}} }} }}

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Space</default></title>

<image source="image"><default>File:Placeholder location.png</default></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label> </infobox> Space refers to the entire multiverse except for planet Earth.

Upper Atmosphere

Space is traditionally defined as beginning 100km (62 mi; 330,000 ft) above the Earth's sea level, but some vestiges of atmosphere continue to extend for many hundreds of kilometers beyond that.

In Earth Bet, the Simurgh rests in the upper atmosphere<ref name="I16.3e1">Sixty-two miles above the surface of the Earth, the Simurgh changed the course of her flight.

Following protocol for when Dragon was deployed on a mission, the system routed the message to one of Dragon’s satellite systems. The resulting message was scrambled by the dense signature of the Endbringer en route to Dragon.

Receiving the garbled transmission from the satellite, a subsystem of the Dragon A.I. proceeded to sort it. A scan of the message by a further subroutine saw it classified as non-pertinent, and a snarl in the code from Defiant’s improvised adjustments to her programming saw the message skip past several additional safeties and subroutines. The message was compartmentalized alongside other notes and data that included flares of atmospheric radiation and stray signals from the planet below; background noise at best. - Interlude 16.z</ref> or in Low Earth Orbit. While winging a lazy orbit in Earth's thermosphere, she is beyond the reach of conventional weapons.<ref>The Simurgh was currently directly three hundred and fifteen kilometers above Spain, in the Earth’s thermosphere. It was the Simurgh that offered the most clues about what the Endbringers did in their periods of dormancy. The Endbringer winged a lazy orbit around Earth, beyond the limits of conventional weapons, and the highest resolution camera images showed she barely moved. Her eyes were wide open, but they did not move to track any cloud formations. She was, despite appearances, asleep. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5</ref>

Many parahuman abilities stop at the edge of the atmosphere. In some cases, this is a Manton Limit to protect the parahuman (for example, a teleporter who teleported themself into hard vacuum would obviously place themself in danger).<ref name="R1">Uphill/doomed project from the start. Shards are situated on Earth, reaching through realities for corona pollentiae. Powers don't really go into space, because, well, you've got the shard situated on the planet, and their reach is stretching, stretching up & out to the person with the shard. Do they exceed the shard's reach?
Broken shards don't care so much, some powers can draw energy in other ways, but by and large, powers stop being responsive or start getting fucky at some point between the upper atmosphere and 400k km out. Many powers are manton limited so they don't actually get out into the vacuum.
[...]
He likely had the means of creating the moon bubbles and tertiary systems and life support and keeping it running... but maintenance starts getting tricky. The first option is that the shard goes 'this is worth the effort' because Gramme is giving the shard fuel for something interesting, and all is well except for whatever it is that the shard was so keen about. The second option is that the moon base works fine, the first colony gets out there, and then somewhere along the line Gramme's well of inspiration and his eye for key details in his tinkerings just... stops. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> Clairvoyant's power was one that was confined to the limits of Earth's atmosphere.<ref name="30.4e1">Some were objectives I couldn’t identify, even with the clairvoyant. He only saw within the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere.
[...]
My ranged capes aimed for portals once again. This time, I put the exit portals against Earth’s atmosphere, aiming for the general direction of a satellite.
It took thirty seconds of sustained fire before Shén Yù’s power stopped telling me it was a weak point. Other thinker powers in my range were giving me similar feedback. A cape with perfect eyesight was telling me it could even see the explosion. - Speck 30.4</ref>

Low Earth Orbit

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) refers to the region from 160 kilometres (99 mi) - 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) above sea level. This is home to many satellites, including (in our world) the International Space station at 400km up.<ref>Wikipedia: Low Earth orbit</ref>

Several satellites orbit Earth Bet for applications in communication,<ref>“You’ll each be provided with a satellite phone before you leave, with mobile phones to use when the towers are in operation again. - Snare 13.1</ref><ref>Only two kids were sleeping there, both clearly brother and sister. It was as much privacy as she was going to get. She plucked the satellite phone from her pocket. - Interlude 14</ref><ref>My phone lit up as a connection was established to a satellite.

A moment later, the connection was secured.

The clock changed, followed by a time zone and a symbol. Four forty-six, Eastern standard time, Earth Bet.
[...]
Towers surrounded Brockton Bay, set on mountaintops and high ground within the city itself. It necessitated a careful approach. As we passed between two, I saw that they were communication towers, crafted to put satellite dishes at high points rather than provide shelter. - Venom 29.1</ref><ref>PRT divisions and precincts in neighboring cities were all too willing to send along staff and officers to assist, but her firm requests for the fundamentals -for computers, printers, satellite hookups, electricians and IT teams- were ignored all too often. - Interlude 13</ref> internet,<ref>“No,” I heard Tattletale, “Separate power source, buried deeper beneath the building. Same with the computers, there’s nothing upstairs or even in the city that could turn them off. They’re hooked up to that power source, they’ve got internal batteries, and the only external connection is by satellite linkup. They might terminate our connection to the computer database via the satellite feed, but not the lights.” - Parasite 10.3</ref><ref>You state your location as the north end of Brockton Bay, profess to have a generator and satellite internet. Ok, not unheard of. - Interlude 19.y</ref> TV,<ref>The first things I’d done after Coil’s men had unloaded the furniture and supplies was to hook up an internet connection and computer and get my television mounted on a wall and connected to a satellite. - Infestation 11.1</ref><ref>“Nuh uh. No way. If you two want to play hardass mom and dad and be controlling assholes, okay. But you can’t tell me I can’t watch T.V.”

“I mean you won’t get any channels. There’s no cable, no digital connection and no satellite. Only static.” - Monarch 16.6</ref> observation,<ref>“Yeah, and unless something’s changed,” Kevin said, “The only person he listens to is me. He’d come when I was alone, when the weather was bad or in the dead of night, and however he comes, nobody ever followed him here.”

“They can’t follow him with cameras or satellite, I heard. Have to rely on eye witnesses and global communication to track him.” - Interlude 18.x</ref><ref>And then there was Nilbog. The data focused around him. The city was quiet, and the roads leading into the city were being watched by satellite. - Interlude 26.x</ref> and imagery.<ref>The war room sat opposite Aisha’s room, on the same floor as his. It wasn’t large, but it didn’t really have to be. Satellite images of various locations around the city had been printed out onto four-by-five foot sheets of laminated paper, rolls shelved on the wall with labels in marker. They varied in size, with some extending over the whole city, while others covered the various territories. - Interlude 15.y</ref><ref>“Los Angeles?” Chevalier asked. “What area?”

“That area,” Defiant answered, looking at the computer.

Chevalier nodded slowly.

Golem stared at the screen. He could see the satellite image, the concentric circles that marked the area around the blinking blue dot. - Interlude 26a</ref> Dragon also has her own satellite network to use for remote access,<ref name="II16.1 eDragonLimit" /> communication,<ref name="I16.3e1" /> and backups.<ref>Example: one phase of the peripheral systems check involved collecting the uploaded data that had been deposited on the satellite network by her agent system, the onboard computer within the Cawthorne rapid response unit. Her last recollection was of transferring her consciousness to the agent system while it was en route to deal with the Undersiders. Stopping them from walking away with the tier 2 and tier 3 confidential data was high priority.

The agent system’s onboard computer was rigged to upload complete backups to the satellite every 3 minutes and 15 seconds. All backup information was encrypted and disseminated to the satellite network in chunks. When the backup was needed, the process reversed and everything was downloaded, which was what she was doing at the moment. She would get all knowledge and recollection of events between the time she backed up at the core system and the last backup of the agent system.

Given that the main computer hadn’t received a signal from the agent system, and that the agent system hadn’t responded to any pings from the satellites, she could assume the Cawthorne model was probably destroyed. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5</ref><ref>Years ago, Saint had preyed on Dragon, shutting off her ability to connect to her satellite network, using several of these same mechanisms to slow down and hamper whatever mech or device she was inhabiting. He would kill her, block any final uploads, and leave her to self-revive from an hours-old backup with no knowledge of what he’d done or how he’d beat her. - Last 20.a</ref> Multiple space programs exist.<ref>Posted on August 15th, Y1:

To call the efforts of everyone involved heroic would be grossly understating things. This IT project required the efforts of seventy eight PHO staff members, employees of Stateside Online, former officials of the US government, former members of the United States space program, members of international space programs, the Guild (Masamune in particular), and numerous independent experts and volunteers. - Glow-worm P.1</ref>

Satellites are still in use during<ref>“I tried to set things up so we’d have some way of maintaining communications and getting some information in, getting information out. Like, I told people about what you said about Scion hating duplication powers. Anyways, only the very high tech and very low tech have really survived. Satellites and hard copies.” - Venom 29.1</ref><ref>My ranged capes aimed for portals once again. This time, I put the exit portals against Earth’s atmosphere, aiming for the general direction of a satellite.

It took thirty seconds of sustained fire before Shén Yù’s power stopped telling me it was a weak point. Other thinker powers in my range were giving me similar feedback. A cape with perfect eyesight was telling me it could even see the explosion. - Speck 30.4</ref> and after Gold Morning.<ref>People got lost or stranded in the wilderness on Earth in 2012, with all that world’s satellites. It can and will happen in new universes. - Glow-worm P.6</ref><ref>Shower: It’s interfering with others’ ability to access things. It might not seem like a problem here, because you’re close to the home node, but there are people on the periphery or far-flung regions and they’re going from satellite to ground to satellite to here, across several Earths. - Glow-worm P.7</ref><ref>His computer had a battery of its own, and the machine it was hooked up to gave it a satellite feed. In a vast sea of darkness, with much of the city unlit at this late hour, people were retreating to Gary’s tent. - Interlude 7.y II</ref><ref>“Overlaying to satellite image of the area.”

On the largest screen, a map appeared, just large enough to have the New York district in its bottom left and Brockton Bay in the top right. Icons with their own abbreviations worked into them were scattered across the city, many flowing from the same general point. - Polarize 10.3</ref><ref name="II16.1 eDragonLimit">“As was I, for the latter part. Dragon is immensely powerful, but she, like any tinker, is dependent on her pre-established work to function at optimal capacity. The Dragonslayers knew this and used it against her in the past. Teacher used it against her here. With no satellites to use for remote access except the ones she deployed after passing through the portal, she was limited in what she could do. If she dies without redundant systems and infrastructure behind her, she dies for good, just as any of us would.” - From Within 16.1</ref><ref>The main screens switched to each show half of an overhead view. Satellite camera. The epicenter of the attack, the clouds of smoke from the resulting destruction, and those cracks that spread out, like that from the tap of a hammer on a windowpane, except in three dimensions, not two. A city in black and white, with a shadow of gold due to the prevalence of the solar windows reflecting tinted light down onto snow. - Interlude 17.z II</ref><ref>“I don’t know what it is. The capes in Breakthrough’s area have gone quiet. Phone lines are down, satellites are struggling with all of the interference. But we can’t reach them.” - Interlude 17.z II</ref>

Parahuman abilities generally begin to display issues at some point between the upper atmosphere and 400km out; the main portion of the passenger supplying the ability remains on Earth, and the connection between the parahuman and their passenger suffers from the distance. The precise point where issues arise varies, however, with the passenger being more lenient if the parahuman is doing something interesting (i.e. generating conflict). In addition, "broken" passengers and powers that can absorb energy can overcome this limit.<ref name="R1"/>

Higher Orbits

The Moon

Sphere sidestepped many typical power restrictions by manufacturing<ref>“Powers don’t work in space,” I told him. “We’re tethered to the agents and if you move far enough away the power doesn’t feed in. You wouldn’t get any tinker inspiration. When Sphere was trying to build the moon base, he had to build on Earth and send stuff up.” - Excerpt from Breaking 14.12</ref> his construction drones<ref name="R4">kagedtiger
This is all good information (thanks for that, I'm a Mannequin fan), but I guess my bigger question is this: how do Architect tinkers build these large-scale constructions by themselves? Sphere was just an easy example. In an effort to avoid scaring you away, I would add that I really only require the broad strokes.

Wildbow
Time, efficient use of resources.
Sphere might have created something like a glass spinner, which would work around a plotted path and gradually form a structure made out of one of his altered, ultrahard, selective electricity conduction glass materials. Workstations that convert supplied sand into raw material, workstations that harvest sand, and have his 'workshop' sprawled out across a beach, which he consumes to produce his dome on the water's surface.
They're not really drones or AIs, though. He manages and pilots and fine tunes a lot of it. But he can work from terminals while keeping an eye on the actual goings-on. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref> on Earth Bet before rocketing them to the moon to construct a base out of Regolith. However, he went mad after his family was killed in a Simurgh attack.<ref name="11d eMannequinStory">"Mannequin. Original name Alan Gramme. Tinker, originally went by the name Sphere. Specialty is in biomes, terraforming and ecosystems… or it was."

Colin nodded slowly. He knew this, but it was reassuring to get a recap.

"He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon. He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding. And he was putting it all into effect. Until-"

"The Simurgh," Colin finished.

"His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined. Everything fell apart. He went mad. He cut himself off from the rest of the world. Literally sealed himself away." - Interlude 11d</ref> Sphere never completed this project: the half-built and abandoned base remained on the moon.<ref>"Nine-eleven didn't happen here. Endbringers did. They have one dollar coins in this America, not bills, and they phased pennies out. Um. There's an installation on the moon, half-built and abandoned. I don't know. Stuff is different." - Migration 17.6</ref> Note that this project was doomed to fail from the start regardless of the Simurgh's interference; unless events there proved "interesting" for his agent, he would likely find himself running out of inspiration and struggling with maintenance.<ref name="R1"/> His agent is explicitly dissatisfied with him,<ref>Keep in mind, also, that the shards aren't inclined to let people sit around and spend months of time working on side projects without getting any dose of conflict. What happens is you get Spheres and Professor Haywires and Leets. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> and Sphere's other major projects would still make him a vulnerable target to the Endbringers.<ref name="15.5 c3">And I should stress that weak points aren’t necessarily just areas which are geographically vulnerable. There’s places where there’s ongoing conflict (like we might point to the middle east over the past decade), places where it takes little effort on the part of the Endbringer to deal maximum devastation (ie. a nuclear power plant, military bases) and spots where a great many resources are invested (be they great minds collected in one place or major projects like Dr. Gramme’s major projects in trying to save the world). Did anyone else catch the mention of the water crisis? Leviathan isn’t always attacking cities, and the world has only so much accessible freshwater. - Comment by Wildbow on Colony 15.5</ref><ref name="11d eMannequinStory" />

Before her arrest, String Theory threatened to knock the Moon out of orbit using her "Firmament-driver" device. This was kept secret from the public, and she was successfully arrested.<ref>"Upgrade of the F-driver."
"The Firmament Driver," Defiant explained, over the earbuds. "At the time of her arrest, String Theory was threatening to use her Firmament Driver to knock our moon out of orbit."
"And we didn't hear about this because-"
"Morale," Defiant replied, as if that was explanation enough. - Extinction 27.4</ref> Had her plan come close to fruition, Scion would have intervened.<ref>Part of Scion's motivation in doing so was to prevent a scenario where the shards couldn't find hosts (for much the same reason, he would have gone out of his way to stop, say, String Theory). - Spacebattles</ref>

The Simurgh first appeared from behind the Moon, flying down to Lausanne.<ref>The Simurgh had approached from the far side of the moon and descended to hover just above the tallest building in Lausanne. - Scarab 25.4</ref>

Interplanetary & Interstellar Space

Were an Endbringer thrown into Earth's Sun, the interdimensional portals that provide their bodies and powers might cause damage to the star.<ref>If one threw an Endbringer into the sun, though, given what the core is, both in immensity and that it's essentially a doorway into multiple realities, a lens to make the Endbringer projections manifest as reality, they might risk putting out the sun, or at least disturbing it to the point that Earth was gravely affected. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref><ref name="R3">I said 'might' - it's sort of up in the air, what happens if you... throw an adaptive denser-than-physics mass of interdimensional doorways into the sun.
Even beyond that, individual powers pose questions...

• Behemoth. Dynakinetic engine in the middle of a fuckton of energy? Enough said.
• Leviathan, probably the least dangerous (though you're talking an excess of the [spoiler](#spoil "interdimensional doorways")) to throw into the sun, but also hardest to catch and keep hold of.
• Simurgh, mass scale telekinetic with a keen ability to process communications, working out means of producing signals via. butterfly effect and solar winds. Ambient static and signal noise on Earth starts sounding like a song...
• Khonsu just makes his portals. What goes in doesn't necessarily go out. Sit in the middle of the sun and just let gravity bring energy into his fields. Release.
• Tohu and Bohu? Bohu is a macro scale space warper with an eye for design and the ability to control more space as she remains stationary. Put her in the sun, let her gradually assert more control...

- Wildbow on Reddit</ref> They would also probably exert their powers on a scale that could have repercussions back on Earth.<ref name="R3"/><ref>Keep in mind, also, that the Endbringers (in jobbing mode) tend to wait until the enemy has an advantage before stepping it up a notch. This allows them to conserve their inner reserves of power (which are vast, but they're playing a constantly escalating game, and they're aiming to maintain it over 300 years.)
Throw them into the sun and they'll have no reason to hold back at all - they'll just spend all their reserved power at once. Saving it is useless, since they're stuck in the middle of a superdense star. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

The possibility of a host species evacuating large portions of their population from the planet is one the Entities considered long ago. Tinker shards that could grant mass-evacuation capabilities deliberately sabotage themselves to prevent a host from accomplishing such a thing, although individuals could potentially leave.<ref name="R2">By and large, the shards would sabotage attempts at going to space. Even Sphere's moon base was probably doomed from the start.
[...]
Avatars like Scion are there in part to ensure things continue smoothly. If people decided to mass evacuate, he'd step in.
[...]
It is a built-in limitation. Individuals could theoretically leave (Legend?), but mass transportation options would likely be sabotaged (like a Squealer spacehulk, or Sphere's power, for example).
[...]
[Eden shards] tend to be missing /current/ limitations; the ban on space travel is something that would be long-established, valid across multiple species. Other stuff varies for different plans of attack and the like. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> Were large numbers of parahumans to leave the target planet, an avatar like Scion would step in to stop them.<ref name="R2"/><ref name="SB1">They don't want people leaving the planet they're working with. A very good reason to have an avatar like Scion around. Probably wouldn't draw his notice until people with shards started leaving in any greater number.
Anyway, joking about star wars aside, the question of how the shards would deal with a species that already has spacefaring abilities is an interesting one. Possibilities include:

• Going after one planet with a high influx of people and a steady growth rate. Operate as normal.
• Divide into sub-shards, have each worm becomes two or three avatars. Probably a slower development rate, but they can still operate on multiple key planets, and work in concert, treating a system as a single planet, for all intents and purposes.
• Broadcast a signal to all their entity buddies in that overarching section of space, so anything passing by is liable to reroute and home in. Easily ten+ entities working together. -

Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>

There are a number of possibilities for how Entities would deal with a civilization that already had routine space travel.<ref name="SB1"/>

Intergalactic Space

The Warrior Entity and Thinker Entity selected Earth as a target while they were still well outside the galaxy cluster in which the Milky Way resides.<ref>The entity is approaching the galaxy cluster in question now, and it sees its counterpart doing the same, if at a slightly slower pace. Both are trailed by a cloud of shards now, each cast off in such a way that it won’t reach its target location until a set time and date. - Excerpt from Interlude 26</ref>

References

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