Calcodynamics: Calcimistry & Calcic Physics

Some hard rules (almost) on working chalk at the ribbon level.

Calcimistry

The nature of the Switchboard as regards chalk boils down to a couple of fundamental rules;

The Fundamentals

• All things in the Switchboard are made of chalk.
• All things exist in a pattern-ribbon duality, in which equations can be used to weave ribbon into pattern, and to unweave pattern back into ribbon form.
• Interactions between things in the Switchboard happen at the ribbon level, and so, pattern must partially or fully unravel back into ribbon form for it to interact with other ribbon.

In addition to these rules is a final one;

• The properties of all things (patterns) in the Switchboard are a result of their weave, and ‘properties’ themselves are weave.

From these do we get the beginnings of the Switchboard’s chemistry, the Calcic Chemistry, as it were.

As a note, it must be mentioned that the result of all things being made of weave, the Switchboard bears a marked difference from ours by virtue of the absence of the atom. In the Switchboard, the atom does not exist. There is only chalk.

The World Without Atoms

The ramifications of the elimination of the atom from the universe building tool box is such that what resulted from its existence and the rules it both created and was bound by must be replaced. We accomplish this using the chalk weave and the pattern-ribbon duality. Iron, for example, is hard, lustrous when polished, sonorous when struck, melts at a fixed temperature and a list of other qualities. These are all products of - in our world - its atomic makeup. In the Switchboard, iron’s properties are the resultant of the various property weaves within it, the quantity and type of which determine the nature and behavior of all things in the Switchboard.

Property Weaves

Property weaves are thus the cause of all macroscopic material properties held by things in the Switchboard. Hardness is a weave, and the absence of that weave is the cause of softness. Sonorousness upon physical blows is a weave as well. A weave controls the temperatures at which things melt and vaporize. Elasticity, texture, luster, resistance to corrosion, malleability, solubility, even color - all properties you can imagine are a result of weave baked into the pattern of the thing in question. The ‘amount’ or ‘thickness’ of the weave correlates with a mathematical scaling of the property it controls, in that thicker hardness weave results in harder objects, for example.

Weave Chemistry

It follows then that the Weave Protocol which allows manipulation of weave and ribbon should then allow for the manipulation of weave in patterns in the Switchboard, and this is correct. The Weave Protocol does indeed allow for modification of weave within pattern, through unravelling pattern back into ribbon through the Five Straits, and altering the ribbon-state pattern as one sees fit. It should even follow that one could ‘build’ things purely from property weave, and this is true too. But Weave Chemistry is governed by a series of rules that add a layer of difficulty and constraint to what can be achieved by the Weave Protocol.

For one, creating property weave from weaving ribbon chalk is prohibitively difficult. Taking hardness weave for example, one could take a scion of hardness weave and replicate the pattern, but doing so is nigh impossible as property weaves as a whole are folded using immensely complex equations to produce exponentially more complex weave, and the equations for folding property weaves are…

…perhaps unknown to all of Strider kind? Closely guarded secrets? Available to be found but hidden in the depths of the most treacherous Vaults or on Striders lost in Isalveh? Plenty of options here. Considering the nuances at play here, they might as well not even exist.

Compounding the problem further, property weave cannot be isolated in pattern form. All attempts to do so result in the realization that it is simply too unstable to exist outside of the bulk of other property weave and the bulk of the weft material that makes up an ‘object’ in the Switchboard. The only means of ‘moving’ or interacting with property weave in any real way is via natural reactions between weft - much like conventional chemical reactions - or via various forms of ritualism. In the between-state of the ritualism, property weaves can be extracted from one thing an immediately woven into something else, never given an opportunity to be wholly isolated, and thus collapse under its own instability.

As such, nearly all property weave that exists must be extracted from things that possess it. Unravelling pattern in the Switchboard with a fair bit of delicacy and precision can yield property weave proportional to the amount present in the pattern; there is more hardness weave to be found in steel than rock, and in rock than wood. Extraction and utilization of property weave is thus done primarily through the chalk ritualism. This is of course subject to a number of factors ranging from how easily an object in the Switchboard can have some property extracted, to the ritualist’s own proficiency in the Weave Protocol and the calcic ritualism.

The creation of property weave, however, is ironically best done through the natural processes that exist in our world. Armillary stars create the Wellsprings, and Wellsprings create the planets, and in the planets are the various patterns from which you would typically extract property weave are formed. The sheer complexity of a planetary equation is among the few things capable of folding the chalk from the Wellsprings linked to it via the seed clause, into the various patterns that become ‘things’ as we understand them, from rocks and trees to ore and metals. From these do Striders obtain property weave through various familiar processes; freezing, burning, crushing, mixing, separating, crystallizing, distilling, what have you. Chalk ritualism - as mentioned above - remain the foremost way to obtain property weave.

When this property weave is extracted, it takes the form of light paper almost, intricately patterned, thicker than normal paper, virtually indestructible in this physical ribbon state, and looking every part as something from a divine beyond. In this state can property weave be stored or used in further rituals by ritualists for a litany of purposes; modifying existing patterns, creating new ones, or casting calcic abilities in combat. Hardness weave, for example, inculcated into a shield weave enhances its defensive capabilities. However, property weave is also an expendable resource, and the usage of weave in this manner resolves it out of existence.

Calcic Physics

We must define some rules that govern the mechanics of chalk in motion, and other relevant phenomena.

Inductive Weave

There exists a phenomena inherent to some kinds of naturally occurring weave in which the weave is able to move from pattern to pattern by ‘inducing’ itself in a target pattern while expending its ‘presence’ from where it originated from. More simply put, heat and other phenomena in the Switchboard are weave that can spontaneously or otherwise move from pattern A to pattern B, in a manner that the amount of weave present in A reduces, and the amount in B increases. The efficiency with which heat-weave moves between subject patterns, as well as the ability of something that is heated to store that heat, are controlled by property weaves that bear real-world names of thermal conductivity and thermal capacity.

The two primary inductive weaves in the Switchboard are heat and motion. Motion can induce itself into other weave through avenues as simple as touch, translating almost perfectly to the real-world observable phenomena. Heat on the other hand, has a caveat, in that it is - in practice - more so motive weave that disperses its motion into the locality.

Problem: What prompts motive weave to disperse as heat?

The answer to this is - incredibly - nothing. There is no ‘why’.

As the doctor put it;

“I feel the desire for an answer here stems from a misconception. For example, suppose I asked you “What makes things fall down?” and you answered “gravity”. What’s actually happening here? You could say that the word ‘gravity’ is merely a label for a set of phenomena, namely the things-fall-down-set; in which case, if we taboo the word “gravity” and replace it with its meaning, we get ‘things fall down because of the things-fall-down-phenomena’. Similarly, we might notice that “gravity”, as a word, is an empty model. It provides no predictions. It doesn’t tell you how fast things fall down, when they fall and when they don’t, etc. It is not useful. The true answer to “what makes things fall down” is just: they do, and we simply observe that they do. We can describe how they fall down in more detail, specify the conditions, establish patterns of what things fall down when and how fast, but there is no “why”. It simply is.” “Likewise, motion simply does disperse over time into what we perceive physiologically as “heat”. We can specify in more detail under what circumstances motion does this, at what rate the motion degrades, etc. But there is no why.”

Light

For the longest time, the Switchboard had a problem of light - or rather how light in the Switchboard worked. Due to the fact the verse has no atoms, and thus no electromagnetism, it is by extension lacking the various phenomena dependent or defined by the existence and nature of electromagnetism. This is in part why the Switchboard’s internet analogue - the DevitNet both exists and exists the way it does; the Switchboard has no electromagnetic waves and thus no radio and radio communications.

We thus had no way to justify the existence of Light, and the issue sat unresolved for the longest time.

Until;

Light is an inductive weave that transmits color information. It is easily blocked by even thin boundaries, and without quantum mechanics there are no lasers to prevent it from dispersing. Its usage as communication is therefore limited to the scale of, say, binary code transmission via the mirrors and lamps of a lighthouse. Light is produced by specific materials - you can decide which - and obeys the simple laws of geometric optics, which means it allows for things like lenses.

Above is the good doctor’s proposal, and perhaps the most salient proposal on the mechanics of light we have. I cannot think of any conceivable way to expand on the fundamentals, and as such I simply break down these fundamentals and tackle each in how they might be interacted with as mechanics of the verse.

Light is an inductive weave that transmits color information.

This bit is the most immediately satisfying, as it solves the one problem that really mattered to me regarding light; baseline mechanics. With equations being responsible for folding chalk into weave, it is thus incredibly easy to say that the various equations of the Switchboard - especially naturally occurring ones - for reasons, have clauses built into them that light is produced from the process of folding chalk.

Light is produced by specific materials - you can decide which

Other things in the Switchboard, such as materials or minerals that glow, do so by having the emittance of light written into their patterns.

It is easily blocked by even thin boundaries,

Fairly straightforward, though it begs the question of if transparent and translucent objects exist. Since they do, we must ascertain why light behaves differently to a window and a brick wall. My first, immediate answer is to refer back to Calcic Chemistry and propose the idea of ‘opacity property weave’, and that patterns with greater and lesser opacity are thus more or less resistant to the surface-level alterations or inductions caused by light. Low opacity patterns allow light to pass through, rather than induce its effects on the first struck surface. High opacity objects obstruct light, catching much of its inductive effects on their immediate surface, and producing shadow behind them.

A thought that strikes me though, is that with light transmitting color information, does this mean that patterns in the Switchboard have no color until they are lit? I assert no, and instead, objects in the Switchboard have color by virtue of property weave, and in fact, the calcic Weavesight would let you determine the color of an object in a dark room - with enough Weavesight proficiency - by simply studying the pattern. Regular sight however, requires light to - say - ‘activate’ the color-weave on the surface of a pattern before it can be viewed. Armillary star light is pure white, and thus only induces brightness of existing colors in an object’s property-weave. Colored light, created by equations, interacts somewhat differently, the induced color being folded in with the existing color and causing chromatic changes as we expect and observe from light normally.

and without quantum mechanics there are no lasers to prevent it from dispersing.

This is a statement, but also;

and obeys the simple laws of geometric optics, which means it allows for things like lenses.

I think we can’t really have lasers as we understand them, but I do think it’s possible to maybe, ‘pipe’ light down a tube using the mechanics of total internal reflection, considering light-weave still follows the laws of optics. It did then make me wonder how mirrors would work in the Switchboard, and whether there would be some means of manipulating opacity property-weave to make that possible. I pondered the idea of opacity being expressible as a numerical value capped at 100% and tending to zero, and then going beyond zero ‘wrapped around’ the mechanics of opacity to give you reflectivity, but after thinking about it further, I felt it would be simpler to have opacity and reflectivity be distinct property weaves.

This does mean we need to discuss the various combinations of opacity and reflectivity and how objects with mixes of both behave when light-weave strikes them. Consider the table below;

	Low Opacity	High Opacity
Low Reflectivity	Light passes through strongly	Light is reflected weakly
High Reflectivity	Light passes through and is reflected weakly	Light is reflected strongly

Regarding how light functions with lenses; it simply does. That much is settled.

Its usage as communication is therefore limited to the scale of, say, binary code transmission via the mirrors and lamps of a lighthouse.

Regarding dispersal, light in weave form remains similar to conventional light in how it disperses, however weave light’s own minor instability means that after dispersing far enough, it eventually resolves into chalk dust and saturates the environment, raising the overall level of latent chalk. More powerful light sources create weave less susceptible to dispersion, allowing it to spread and illuminate longer distances and larger areas.

One of the major concerns of mine during the work on realizing light in the Switchboard was that there would be no means to do so without integrating quantum mechanics. I did not like this, as I considered it an inelegant solution to have developed thus far a relatively functional world using novel mechanics - only to balk at the finish line and throw in the towel. I was simply opposed to having these dual fundamental systems that didn’t play very nice with each other.

More practically however, I was averse to integrating quantum mechanics to explain light as it thus asserted the existence of electromagnetism, and by extension other electromagnetic phenomena, such as radio waves. The existence of radio waves in particular prompted the question of “Why do people not use Wi-Fi in the Switchboard?” Radio waves would invalidate the need and thus existence of the DevitNet.

The doctor’s suggestion was workable, but inelegant; they - the denizens of the verse - simply didn’t know anything other than light existed. They just didn’t look in the right places, or have any cause to look for anything in the first place. In truth, this works; the existence of the DevitNet would solidly dissuade most endeavors to find an alternative, and even if it - radio waves - were to be discovered, it would still be lacking compared to the DevitNet in various spheres, such as the inability to use it for Kache-Krashing operations.

The worldbuilder within me set about seeing how this could narratively be harnessed, such as having radio wave installations serve as a low-throughput, high-importance communications line for emergencies and high-priority or confidential transmissions like downed ships, Spyndl communications, the like (something that the microlNet would come to serve as, expanded upon under Communications and Compute). I played around with it even being a plot point that some antagonist faction was using radio waves - which they discovered and deliberately kept secret - to communicate and organize in a manner that the protagonists always seemed to be a few steps behind of.

Fortunately - depending on how you view these things - it didn’t come down to that.

pNarrat: Bright Weaving

A litany of things produce light in the Switchboard. Among the most notable are many instances of chalkweaving; more elementary acts of chalkweaving, usage of complex chalk ritualism, and particularly when using various calcic-based techniques. But why is this so?

Initially, my justification was this;

It could even be said that in instances of chalkweaving, producing light-weave is a very easy way to ‘burn off’ excess chalk that would be too much of a hassle to re-assimilate and/or utilize in other means. Even skilled Chalkweavers have tiny bits of waste chalk they can’t harness or simply is too minute to expend effort worth harvesting, and so in the clauses of the operation of their computational strait, excess chalk is woven into light of established hue and intensity, and this light - being inductive weave - induces itself on the patterns surrounding the light’s origin.

Things that glow in the Switchboard, or at least varying collections of things, do so because the weaving process isn’t wholly efficient, and just like Striders flare excess velocity upon landing at a destination as heat, various equations have clauses built-in to dissipate unneeded chalk as light.

Hex argued, however, that physics (and mechanical equivalents of it, such as what we have in Samsara) wouldn’t differentiate between what is useful and what is ‘waste’, as waste is entirely an anthropocentric - human-centric - concept, far removed from the uncaring, impartial on-goings of sciences. While this is a thoroughly correct assertion to present, I do believe it stems from misinterpreting the original writ above, which described light as ‘waste’ solely because chalkweavers declared it so. I imagine the problem though, arises from the idea of the equations declaring some measure of chalk as waste and thus folding it into light, which would not be a logical dynamic to exist.

The real crux of the problem of this idea, is that it would mean skilled chalkweavers wouldn’t emit light in their practice of chalkweaving, which is the direct opposite of what I wanted to achieve with regards to the visual elements of narrative.

Behold the rectification; the emission of light in various exercises of chalkweaving is instead a clause built into chalkweaving itself that indicates a litany of things, in particular the amount/density of chalk in chalkweave, and the proficiency with which the chalkweaving has been performed.

This means, most simply;

• Chalkweaving involving a lot of chalk produces a lot of light.
• Chalkweaving done really well produces more light too.

In practice, it tracks quite well when you consider phenomena such as the Switchboard’s armillary stars, basins of colossal quantities of chalk, and how they are immensely bright, giving light to the entire Switchboard. Chalk rituals as well - under these rules - emit considerable amounts of light, and more so when they are done with as stringent as possible adherence to their schema.

In addition to this though, is the relevance of light to the concept of Infamy that exists with regards to Striders in the Switchboard.

Hyperweave

By most metrics, chalk can be viewed as somewhat inert. Chalk in latent dust form, solid crystalline form, activated ribbon form, bound pattern form and stable weave form all share a somewhat common thread between them; they are stable forms of chalk that outside of most calcic interference, will remain in their current states. There is a final form of chalk however, that is defined by the extreme conditions necessary for its formation - and by extension the extreme nature of the chalk itself.

This is chalk in the ‘hyperwoven’ state, more commonly referred to as hyperweave.

Nature & Formation

When pattern undergoes the rather unrefined physical compression, it can be done to a fairly considerable degree with suitable conditions - but only up to a point. Beyond a certain threshold, the unstable structure begins to show signs of failing, and the distinction of and within the pattern gradually begins to degenerate. The resultant is a churning, furious, calcic slurry, merely awaiting an outlet under the immense pressure. As it is nearly impossible to exert and maintain uniform pressure across the entire compression front, inevitably something must give in the over-structure, and the pressurized calcic slurry surges out and forth - crackling with violent animation - as hyperweave.

Upon being provided with an outlet - an aperture - hyperweave is able to form and be released into the local environment, the preferred shape it takes being that of frenzied, discordant bolts, crackling outwards and in nearly random directions. Typically, once hyperweave is released into the environment, it is skewed by minute spatial distortion, and thus typically crackles towards the most chalk-dense entity in the vicinity - this often being Striders, presenting a considerable hazard towards them.

The manner in which hyperweave is released is determined primarily by the shape of the aperture that is provided to the undifferentiated calcic slurry that serves as its birthplace. With no true aperture provided, hyperweave surges outwards towards the most calcically dense subject in the vicinity, and - if possible - tears the aperture from which it emerges open further, resulting in it beginning as a fairly powerful release, then tapering off at the end. As it is released, the pressure exerted by the compression front is no longer present, and the repulsive support substructures violently restore themselves to their original state, resulting in the hyperweave structure collapsing as it travels, in an attempt to restore itself to the original pattern shape from which it was made. The degeneration of the pattern structure, however, is often permanent, and hyperweave tends to resolve itself into calcic ribbon once released into the environment.

That being said, for the brief moments it exists, it is a truly mighty phenomenon, travelling at speeds rivalling the Strider Protocol and inflicting considerable lattice damage to whatever it strikes. Based on the release aperture it is provided, hyperweave can be restrained to beams, increasing its lifespan in the environment, the distance it can travel, and its destructive potential.

Utilization

One of the larger-scale applications of hyperweave exists in industry - SB_Technology - as hyperweave is an immensely effective means to move colossal amounts of chalk over equally colossal distances. Emitter and receiver apparatus are able to form and launch beams of hyperweave, and ‘catch’ it at a destination. When working under ultra-long-distance applications as this, relay apparatus that re-compress hyperweave midflight, as well as rifled release apertures that stabilize it via applying spin are used to move hyperweave across interplanetary distances, facilitating grand applications such as Wellspring drilling and powering interstellar fleets - and even small, even minuscule applications such as powering minute devices.

Further elaboration on this will be done in SB_Technology.

On smaller scale however, hyperweave is used by Striders and other denizens of the Switchboard as a weapon, due to the considerable unravelling effect it has on lattices.

Effects

Being hit by hyperweave has been described as - and is particularly similar to - being hit by the full calcic radiance of a armillary star. Though less powerful, it rips and cascades through the lattice of a target, inflicting considerable unravelling, and saturating a target with unharnessed, wild chalk. It takes on inductive properties and can ricochet throughout the lattice, and even strike a target, reform, and ricochet to another target, chaining between them and doing substantial, though diminishing damage.

One of the greatest dangers presented by hyperweave is hyperweave formed from pattern that is able to re-differentiate itself with time, resulting in hyperweave that can resolve into - say - the large object that was compressed to form it. Should this re-differentiation happen within the lattice of a Strider, the results can be catastrophic, akin to detonating a bomb within their very body.

Chalkweaver Combat

Hyperweave saw inevitable adoption in combat due to the considerable damage it does to all that it strikes, as well as its chaining, unravelling and inductive properties. How each individual subject used hyperweave - harnessing its raw damage potential, suppressing unravelling power, or spreading inductive power - is up to them. But those who can harness hyperweave cultivate considerable notoriety, as hyperweave in use is a memorable, visual spectacle, one to wow allies, foes and onlookers alike.

Generally, forming hyperweave in combat must account for the context that is an active engagement, and as such, forming hyperweave needs to be fast to be worthwhile. For this reason, Striders who are able to harness hyperweave are only capable of doing so via exploiting the foundational mechanics behind its formation, via assistance by some other power they possess - and often a mix of both. It is very commonplace to see Pale Amarans use hyperweave, as one of the most practical ways to get the compressive force needed to form hyperweave, as well as a large enough supply of chalk to compress, is through curvature manipulation and access to the Stardrip Cycle respectively.

Proposal: Hyperweave ‘Cooling’

Thanks Hex. As the name states, this section deals with hyperweave. As such the section on hyperweave - here - is recommended reading.

The Doctor’s Remarks

During the revision of the hyperweave concept, the good doctor closed with some notes;

In our case, there’s also something like a hydraulic press effect Keeping the pressure from all sides is difficult So the “bolts” of chalk you’ve talked about are like… stray strips of the ribbon crackling outward at the weakest point of the pressure

Light (like) holding a light in your hands and seeing rays come through the gaps in your fingers.
Or squeezing playdough.

(…)

There’s an interesting mechanic you could play with here.

(…)

Equations are complex enough that sometimes the folding pattern is beyond analysis There’s simply too much going on It’s the reason you can’t replicate a person, for example But this also sort of implies… that whatever the equations are that do dictate a person’s lattice… …they are finer than normal The folding pattern is especially efficient with a person This further implies two things Compressing a person to the point of hyperweave would be extremely difficult But if you did

It's a nuke.
It's a fucking nuke going off.
Like a star going supernova.

Almost right. It’s like a star. Period Do you see where I’m going with this?

(…)

It might feed into an idea I had about how Striders maybe die in the Switchboard...

(…)

Just the opposite.

(…)

How they're
born?

One thing that’s slightly bothered me is the rather fast and loose way you play with evolution It kind of violates the sensibilities of finding a watch in the desert and deducing a watchmaker. Where’s the watchmaker in the Switchboard? In our world, the actual science behind the origin of life and evolution of intelligence is extremely complex and intricate Buoyed by the carefully balanced interplay of multiple mechanics I’ve always felt your explanation was lacking just that one essential bit of “where it all actually comes from” Cryo, do you know how the stars in our world work?

(…)

In our universe, there is the force of gravity. This simply says that mass attracts mass. Left to its own devices, matter would clump together, becoming denser, attracting matter even more strongly And this would accumulate mass until the whole thing forms a black hole, and even then it wouldn’t stop What prevents this from happening then?

(…)

In our world, this is prevented by nuclear fusion The more pressure you put on atomic nuclei, the closer you get to crossing a threshold where the nuclei fuse When they do so, the nuclei get faster, and release photons, which knock into other nuclei, and together create a radiation pressure that pushes outward, balancing the compressing force of gravity Though occasionally, jets of solar matter will spurt out from the star in a coronal discharge, a solar flare

(…)

Do you see it yet?

(…)

Check it: In the Switchboard, information has mass, which curves space. Like in our world’s general relativity, this curvature can attract more information mass. At the dawn of the universe, perhaps there’s simply scattered bits of blank ribbon. But quickly, even the slightest amount of information will attract more.

(…)

Are stars
Are stars hyperweave?
Are the Armillary stars hyperweave? 
Is that we're you're going?

As the information compresses

(…)

Whatever simple folding patterns exist Shatter Become finer Creating new folding patterns more intricate and infodense than could be created otherwise Structural equations arise out of folding patterns, out of the forced pressure of information curvature On that scale The churning of patterns The incomparable pressure

Are you pitching a model for the genesis of the Switchboard itself?

You get the same crackling jets of ribbon This time carrying incredibly complex, infodense patterns Cascading out into the vacuum of space Slowly losing momentum… Collecting into vast swaths of chalk It has to be what I said about stars.

(…)

The ribbons lost momentum and crystallize Embedding complex structures Waiting to be thawed out. In the Switchboard, as in our world You are starstuff

So, cooled hyperweave... gave rise to life?

(…)

But in the switchboard

(…)

You’re not really star stuff It’s not that the star is producing substances that can’t be created elsewhere

(…)

It’s the info. So yes. Armillary stars are hyperweave.

Cosmological Genesis

There are two critical takeaways from the good doctor’s notes;

• Armillary stars are, in reality, colossal hyperweave engines.
• Cooling hyperweave can give rise to the emergence of complex weft structures.

This proposal is a revision to one of the most pivotal, foundation mechanics upon which the Switchboard operates; spontaneous equations as described under the mechanics of chalk. These were equations that, under the right conditions, arose from latent chalk in the environment and folded chalk around them into incredibly complex patterns. But what on earth could be the ‘right conditions’? What would be the seed necessary for such a thing to take place.

The doctor outlined the answer to that question already, but I will restate it here; hyperweave cooling.

Spontaneous Equations

Relevant reading for this section include Hyperweave and Hyperweave Cooling.

The armillary stars of the Switchboard, churning basins of the most packed hyperweave in all of the Dancirah, illuminate the Switchboard with their deific glow. Even as their massive information density ensures all that strays too near is pulled into their violent interiors, on occasion, flares of stellar matter - the most dense hyperweave in the damn universe - lash out from their coronas, and enter interplanetary space.

As this hyperweave cools and reconstitutes back into pattern, it becomes skewed by the locale in which it finds itself - adding impurities almost - and the resulting pattern is the indescribably complex chalk that makes up the pattern of fold equations. Bearing a relatively self-correcting nature, they evolve and are realized in ‘finished’ forms, growing in complexity and viability over the course of iterations, taking in more and more of the Switchboard as skews to their lattice structure and overall functionality.

This phenomenon is called Equation Spontaneity, and spontaneous equations - and the armillary stars of the Switchboard by proxy - are the source of all complex pattern in the Switchboard.

These equations act on the latent chalk in the environment and yield a variety of phenomena. Particularly, spontaneous equations are the source of the Switchboard’s many cosmological structures, such as the Wellsprings, planets and other oddities. Seeding planetary equations, they then evolve over time, they then weave chalk attracted towards their growing information density into planetary material, and further skewing of the equation’s calculus yields the planet’s qualities; mass, gravity, spin, spin axis, day and night cycles, biomes, the like.

In addition to this, spontaneous equations seed the formation of Teks, as the Astrolabe facilitates the conditions for their arising from seemingly nothing, to serve the its purposes of smaller-scale remote computation.

Where the cooling of hyperweave is truly remarkable however, is in the seeding of elementary life. The mindspun are elementary intelligences seeded from the cooling of hyperweave that has been skewed by the presence of higher intelligences. They roam the Switchboard in a manner not too dissimilar from the ancient First Thinkers, and inhabit ‘vessels’ throughout the Switchboard to more meaningfully interact with it.

The scientific consensus on how the Strider and Weave Protocols and the Third Kin arose was from cooling hyperweave skewed by Astrolabic calculus, the Astrolabe itself stoking the flames and manning the forge that would yield the Switchboard’s mightiest entities and the powers that made them so.

Link to original

pNarrat: The Building of All Things

It is greatly encouraged to read this heading either when wholly new to Project Samsara, when one has a passing grasp of it, or when has a strong grasp of it, and seeks answers on subjects that I might not have tackled. Generally, there is no wrong time to read this heading, as it works both as a prologue and a conclusion, primarily because this is less about Project Samsara itself, and more so about the methodology of the worldbuilding behind it.

One of the largest problems I dealt with when building Samsara was when I killed the atom. It was very unceremonious if I recall; it was agreed upon between the good doctor and I that the vision I had for Samsara could not be realized while the atom still drew breath, and so we killed it. Excised it wholesale from the writ of the canon. There was no mourning.

What followed was many, many months of immense inconvenience that stemmed from having to engineer physics without the material bedrock of physics. What replaced the atom was chalk, but it wasn’t a clean organ transplant, and much had to be shuffled around, torn down, rebuilt. Iterative hell. Light and electricity were among the largest problems; for the longest while I could not explain how a toaster oven worked in the Switchboard, nor how you’d even see one if it did. It was a very trying time for myself as a worldbuilder. But remarkably, we pulled through. We did eventually have more answered questions than not, and enough of a foundation upon which to build the various things we needed.

Which led to a very fascinating conclusion; more of Samsara than I care to list was about mechanically justifying the working of things that already worked.

The atom is a very convenient thing. When building fiction in a world where the atom is still alive and healthy, so much can be handwaved that you start to take it for granted. You can simply say the pavement was hot in a scene, and it’ll be understood that it was a sunny day. Just as you can say a character placed a phone call, or a car stopped moving after hitting a wall, or that a character wore a jacket to stay warm on a cool day. It seems to simply just work but in actuality there’s quite a bit of mechanical complexity behind it all. The caveat is that all of that doesn’t matter unless you decide it does, because it is simply how we understand things work.

A common bit of writing advice is that characters don’t randomly begin explaining how the combustion engine or a radio works because otherwise you’d have to explain who in the scene doesn’t have working knowledge on how very pedestrian aspects of life work, and why its relevant to fill that knowledge gap in this very moment. The rule extends to fantastical things like magic systems as well; characters will not randomly begin explaining your complex magic or power system without very believable cause, and thus you need to communicate the quirks of your system to your reader - because these random mechanical exposition dumps are almost always for the perceived benefit of the reader - in far less overt fashion than a literal informational brochure read off at them by your established smart character.

All this flies out the window though, if you eliminate the baseline mechanical operating layer upon which all that pedestrian working knowledge is built. Suddenly it does matter how the combustion engine and the radio works, because there’s no manner by which you can justify those things working exactly the way they do if you’ve previously established a clause that throws the burning of petrol to produce motion and the existence of radio weaves as rules of the universe into question. But this problem is met by the second problem that characters in this no-atom world will still not spontaneously begin explaining how their world works because they don’t exist - in a sense - for the benefit of the reader. They exist as entities in their own canon, which means they have a completely different cache of baseline rules and thus pedestrian knowledge of how their own things work, and it would be very strange for them to begin explaining this within the context of how those things work without atoms because they shouldn’t even know what atoms are.

There’s a point to all this and it goes like this; much of the worldbuilding found in this document of Calcodynamics, and other documents like SB_Physiology, SB_Technology, Communications and Compute, SB_Biota, SB_Astromechanics and perhaps a couple others has all been an attempt to reach the same mechanical phenomena we’re familiar with but from a completely different starting point. The aim of many of those documents is effectively to say “Much of how the Switchboard universe works is incredibly familiar and even identical to how our own world works, but with the caveats of some plasticity in some places, and an entirely foreign mechanical foundation.” The end goal really was to have sunny days produce hot pavements, even if the underlying mechanics of how that cause produced that effect are very different. Samsara essentially makes use of an abundance of simulation; familiar problems, mostly familiar solutions - but deeply unfamiliar methods of reconciling the two.

And as such, it helps to read through many of the documents above with the mindset that Samsara doesn’t ‘play’ too different from what you are familiar with, but different enough to get the sense that this world is not your own. In actuality, much of the finer bits of Samsara’s mechanics are a sole concern to worldbuilders such as myself, and most are content to have sunny days produce warm pavements, with the understanding that the deeply unfamiliar mechanics of the world still produce enough familiar reactions such as this to make the canon understandable and thus feasible to maximally engage with.