Dimensional Anomaly

In the aftermath of The Pale Hands Crisis - in part caused by The Garbage Man detonating the Menger Catalyst at the deepest extent of the Glass-Block Fortress - aspects of the Manifold Sky's already non-Euclidean nature nature were exacerbated in new and unexpected ways. Aside from a general increase in the rate of expansion observed in places like the tension of the Sky Lattice in Petalcap Vale airspace, the most noticeable change was the discovery of the heretofore considered mythical phenomenon of 'dimensional anomalies.'

Manifestation

Objects that encounter a dimensional anomaly find themselves briefly encased in a pocket of distorted spacetime as they suddenly, and without warning, transition across the fifth spatial dimension normally inaccessible to three-dimensional objects. While travelling across a boundary between cube layers (see Localization) normally entails traversing normally hidden spatial dimensions, these transitions are normally deterministic; the Navigator's Guild has made an entire powerbase off of being one of the only organizations that truly understands all the connections that currently exist and how to safely traverse them via aircraft. Instead, objects travelling through a dimensional anomaly leave their original location as expected and are deposited in the same location - apparently failing to make the transition at all - or in a similar position in a wholly unexpected cube's airspace. This mistake of destination can have dire consequences where the destination is underground, underwater, or otherwise in a hazardous environment (i.e. Bleaker's Void).
Occasionally, it may be possible to see a region of space undergoing a 'dimensional crisis' - a phenomenon where the risk of encountering a dimensional anomaly is unusually heigtened. These pockets of space may appear 'off' in some way, whether due to an unusual color (i.e. composition of dustwisp clouds in a foreign cube) or a visible distortion in images beyond the usual transition layer. These distortions can last from minutes to days, and unusually widespread or prolonged dimensional crisis activities may warrant updates to the Navigator's Guild Hazard Index. On the other hand, a visible dimensional anomaly that can be seen to lead somewhere that would be otherwise safe might serve as a useful means of evading pursuers. In any case, dimensional anomalies collapse quickly after a certain amount of mass transitions through them, though they have not been known to 'snap shut' fast enough to damage solid objects.
In general, macroscopic solid objects retain their integrity while passing through a dimensional anomaly, though liquids and gasses may be separated from themselves during transition. For example, a NG-1a "Green Conure" NavGuard Fighter that flew through a rainstorm might carry a flurry of droplets and exhaust fumes through with it as it dives through a commissure and is affected by an anomaly, but it would not be itself torn apart by the transition unless it appeared in a physically impossible location. At the same time, whatever lies just beyond the anomaly is ejected back through it in the direction of travel of other objects. For example, if that same Conure appeared under the sea near the Rostran Archipelago Confederacy territories, its passage would be accompanied by splash of water in its original airspace before the newly-formed air bubble around the aircraft collapsed to crush it.

Localization

Dimensional anomalies are probabilistic phenomena and could hypothetically occur anywhere within the Manifold, but, in practice, they are only a danger in the usual places where more than one cube layers meet - namely, the inflection layers that conjoin tesseracts and the commissures that conjoin cubes within a single tesseract. Baryonic matter approaching or passing through the micro-gravity layer is necessary, but not sufficient, to trigger a dimensional anomaly. Speed is the major determining factor in whether or not an anomaly will take place, with the risks being near-zero until one approaches the local speed of sound.
Notably, because the speed of sound is much lower in fluids, every commissure became very slightly more humid in the aftermath of the Pale Hands Crisis as water molecules deep in the oceans of the Western Tesseract - less tightly bound to one another than in solid objects like volumes of rock - became more likely to undergo spontaneous transition through a spatial anomaly. Radioactivity also increased slightly in these regions, especially during the seasonal radiation maximums in the Northern and Southern Tesseracts, because charged particles are bits of matter that are also moving at relativistic speeds.


Encrypted message, Voer Offur's eyes only

- BEGIN TRANSMISSION -
The Garbage Man did successfully manage to damage the Manifold Sky as an instance with his actions at the base of the Glass-Block Fortress. ComInDS engineers at Oxo believe that the instance is stable at this time, but repairs are currently underway to prevent the damage from spreading to important underlying systems. Auxiliaries have been activated to recover any other objects which may present a similar danger in the future. Be on the look out for potential incursions from adjacent Unallocated Space; prompt and detailed reporting is of vital importance. In the mean time, please remain on station and await further instructions. - O.B.
- END TRANSMISSION -

Type

Natural