Zycopential
The third ever surveyed dimension was one of its kind. All of the probes immediately shut down after crossing the gateway, and the readings were unclear. Contact with the dozen marines sent as a recon squad was also lost before any could say a thing. Only this time, the gateway was kept open long enough for a burst of energy to rush into the room and wreak havoc.
The portal room was repaired, and I.D.E.A.’s engineers tried to figure out what happened and came to the conclusion that they opened the gateway to a powerful source of energy. Several attempts at other locations showed the exact same results until one of them surmised that they may be trying to step into a dimension of pure energy. The idea made its way up the ladder, the desperate context helped it be seriously considered.
From the prototypes...
A new trial launched, in an absorption cell, supposed to take and store any raw energy that may come out of the portal. The experiment lasted four days, during which energy continuously flowed in and out of the room. It was terminated when the structure’s integrity was at risk. By then, the cell had absorbed a phenomenal amount of energy, far more than it was designed to store.
The next issue was to make use of this new kind of raw energy. It was neither thermal, electric or anything known to the Terrans. But all knew that conversion of what they called Z energy into electricity was the key to solving the energy crisis and the most brilliant engineers and physicists were put on the job.
...to modern reactors
It took less time than expected. Turned out Z energy was able to be captured just like nuclear energy and transformed into electricity through the same process, albeit more resilient to make up for the difference in raw quantity. The conversion rate was about 5% at the beginning, and it still solved most of the crisis. Nowadays with a 50% conversion rate, the whole Dominium produces more energy than it is able to consume.
Z reactors contain a small gateway fixed to Zycopential, constantly open and auto-powered. The energy that flows out of the gate is harvested in the core and a small amount is used to keep the reactor active. The rest is then directed outside across the complex network of cables and storage units. A reactor is enough to power several buildings on Terra all year long.
Infinite source
There has been a growing concern in the scientific community around the source of Z energy, Zycopential. Its existence was providential and it was so clean and rich that it is now the sole source of energy for Terra and all the most important dimensions of the Dominium. Should the dimension be depleted of its power, the whole multi-dimensional civilization would certainly crumble as it has no alternative. Most wave off the idea, thinking that the universe of each dimension is supposedly infinite, and the quantity extracted from Zycopential to power even a thousand dimensions worth of civilization would still be infinitesimal compared to the size of a universe. Nevertheless, others are not so sure and argue that since it is impossible to explore the dimension, no reliable information about its size can be extracted.
Despite the tens of thousands of dimensions explored today, none similar to Zycopential has been encountered. The finding of the source of Z energy was not only incredibly lucky, it was also a one-in-a-million chance.
This is freakin awesome!