Ogel Universe

NECESSARY CONTEXT

"Parallel Planets" are the planets touched by the Vortex, a natural phenomenon that transports matter, living things, and people, from Parallel Planets to planet Sharitarn. All Universes touched by the Vortex are "identical" at Astronomic Scale, and the Parallel Planets are the ones in their respective Universes that occupy the same position of Sharitarn.
Earth is the Parallel Planet of our own Universe.
The laws of Physics, the past and the future of Parallel Universes changes a lot, as does the surface of each parallel Planet and the sort of things that exist up there. But the Universes only remain in reach of the Vortex for as long as they are identical to Sharitarn Universe in the number of stellar bodies, shape and relative positions of them. Not just in Sharitarn stellar system, or galaxy, but in all Universe.
There is no case of different Universes developing independently the same Language, or nations with the same border and History, or individuals with the same names or faces. However species do evolve independently in different Universes. No Universe has all sorts of animals and plants that exist in other, and no one has all kinds of life, but there is some degree of repetition. The Vortex brings a considerable percentage of humans, and humanoids, for instance.

Preface 

We can escape death forever here on Sharitarn. Stay over the ground in flesh and bone talking with people: doing business as usual. That’s something no one can hope for back home, in the home world, the never forgotten place I will never see again.
Here on Sharitarn use of magic stored in objects is for very few, make the actual spells is for even less people. Notwithstanding, any one who has the resources and the contacts can step outside the shadow of mortality for indefinitely.
To make that step is necessary to die, strictly speaking. That is not the death as we are used to think it back home trough, it is identical to vulgar death in all aspects except for on but that one is the crucial one: durability. Death as we know on Earth is very durable, mostly irreversible. The man who pays a necromancer to change he into an undead comes back ours lather, one couple of years tops, and will never have to worry about ageing again. It is not Immortality, as the nice fellow behind the balcony scrupulous repeated to me half dozen times when I was looking to buy my own package. There is no actual “immortality” because anything can be destroyed one way or another.
Few individuals as old as the one I will talk about still walk under the stars or talk with others who are not about as ancient as themselves. This elder one however can be found on pubs open to mortals and undead alike. In fact, I was instructed to look for him in a place like that, and pretend to not know who he is at least until we had become acquainted. The last instruction I ignored for respect to the person, and I believe that respect was helpful to get his initial sympathy.
He was alive when planet Earth didn’t yet existed, long before Mimbao itself was founded here on Sharitarn. The Vortex caught him from his home world during a period of Sharitarn know as Era of Desolation, right in the end of it actually. Was them that the first Mage University was founded. From that University the Mage’s Brotherhood grew to make humanity the dominant specie on Sharitarn few thousand years later.
Guy seems to be amazingly humble for one whit his status and experience.
Maybe is that last one what make him so unpretentious, I can’t tell. Most undead who are older than me, but still far younger than him, pass the impression to be arrogant and vain. While those as old as he aren’t usually seemed or talked to.
On the other hand, few citizens of Mimbao have a past as colourful as his, and few non-mages enjoy his status in the minds of those who know the History of Mimbao well. Is possible that what made him so peculiar was not the brute passage of time but the lack of need to prove himself. The number of magic Ways must be in a few thousands, and this fellow created one almost by himself, I don't imagine one can go much higher from that.
Whatever the case may be I do love his personal story. He is the major creator of the Way of Teleportation Magic, and owns knowledge impossible to find among the living since before the Scar Age.
Unfortunately for the city which adopted us both he does not writes anymore, nor accept invitations to teach, no matter how much insistent the students are.
That was the reason why I was send to talk to him, to see if I could persuade the man to teach Teleportation Magic again. Would be nice for Mimbao if I could, and for the entire Mage's Brotherhood as well, since the magic Way in question is lost for living mages. No one else follows the Way, and just a few precious basic spells are kept in circulation.
All I got for my effort was a bit about his personal history. And about his home Universe. That’s what I am about to share with you.

PARADOXICAL STATE

At least as important as how magic works in a given Universe is whether or not is possible to travel faster than light there. In Earth Universe is impossible to reach the speed of light, as you may know. In Ogel Universe, on the contrary, is possible to do so by achieving a state of matter know by Ogel civilization as “Paradoxical”.

Takes a little more than two months for a ship reach Paradoxical State, the exact time necessary for that is fix, scientists have it calculated up to a ridiculous degree of precision.

Takes exact the same time to go from PxS to normal. The distance between the point of beginning and the point of end does not affect the travel much. It is considerably less than one second for anywhere in Ogel Galaxy, which obviously is identical in Astronomic scale to both yours and the one where we are. More than a dozen Galaxies are reachable in three or less seconds, discounted the time to enter and leave PxS of course.

The technology available in Ogel by the time when my fellow undead was a living men on his home Universe did not allowed a ship to stay more than three seconds in PxP. The stress to maintain the state was too high to the machinery, and worse to the crews.

After each travel a complete diagnose of all systems was needed. Repairs had to be made. Broken pieces will need replacements more often than not. Living organisms demand time to recover. Another jump is not possible before months, neither for the ship nor for the crew.

The Space Traveller

Ogel is the parallel planet of Sharitarn in its Universe, as Earth is in ours. Like our home planet it is populated by humans, who are genetically similar to those who evolved on Shartiarn and no other intelligent specie. All we know about Ogel is from the time when the ancient drowned.


"When I was born Space Travelers had been exploring the Universe for about 10 generations, or 212 years.
Those travelers must begun professional life between 7 and 10 years, that’s the window of opportunity to adapt the human body to PxS experience. Even them, Space Travellers seldom pass the age of 40. Most die some point between 30 and 35 years, killed by one among the many diseases caused by their profession.
My people do have this marvellous mean of transportation. On the other hand, their communications are still restricted to velocities far bellow the speed of light. Technological advancement will probably solve that (probably have solved, actually, since the last information we have about the Universe of Ogel is from about 68 millions of years ago). Regardless, for the moment in my memories the intrepid explorers of this Universe must face long periods of isolation in their crippled ships silently floating in no man’s land.
No, not even land, actually. No man’s empty darkness.
What sort of people they are, you could ask me. Those humans who challenge this void all their lives, cutting their brief lives briefer still."
As all of his particular kind of undead my informant has the aspect of a corpse left for years under the ocean, in a very cold part of it. They have no organ left in the physical body, but that is compensated by spectral version of what they had, and those spectral vocal cords do produce deeply impressive tones. Most drowned fellows drip constantly, they keep themselves wet because that allow their spectral organs to work better, supposedly makes them feel "alive". My informant keeps his body white, covered by a thin layer of salt, as if he had little nostalgia for tactile sensations.
His long hair is green, left loose to fall in front of his face as much as over his shoulders, and is the only part of him from where drops sea water. The color probably is an effect of his transformation, not the one it had in life.
I asked him nothing, but he had my attention.



"Planet Ogel has one single continent. It has the shape of a bowtie not unlike those you Earthling men like to wear. Covering the planet from Northeast to Southwest.
A hot volcanic region cuts the globe on what would be at both ends of this tie.
The middle of this is a single nation named Buldurga Republic. A Confederation, mostly similar to USA on your planet short after the period know as World War II.
Society is distinctly androcratic, but not as much as the one we live in now, ratter somewhat between whey was your Earth in that city.
Two conditions have to be fulfilled for who want to have political participation: two years of military service and the money to buy the weapons of personal use.
Slavery is legal in my home world, and unlike what happens here up there it is largelly ethnically based. Largely, but not exclusively. The existence of slavery is a Historical and cultural fact, but our economy does not turns around slave work as it used to in Earthling 1500, when your planet was touched by the Vortex for the first time.
For centuries before my time the right of property over people have been a tradition, instead of a necessity. To own other talking beings is pleasant as you know, at least for most mortals. Personally, I must admit, it don’t attract me much. At my age, mindless skeletons are more practical and demand less patience.
Any way: each three generations every slave-lineage has the right of serve a military force and gain freedom by doing that and surviving. Thanks to that law slave population is slowing decreasing.
Slaves start military life with no money, no weapons to carry, in the worse possible condition. Still, some do reached the top positions in our society from that point.
Some criminals are convicted to slavery every year, what is slowly changing the face of slavery from something based in captured war prisoners to something ‘homemade’. Kill prisoner soldiers became more popular than slave them for some reason. I don’t know if there is some practicality involved or not, maybe is just a matter of fashion.
Real Economy in my youth is only beginning to feel the effects of space-travel. That surprises most people here on Sharitarn, especially those from planets with some degree of technological advancement and free commerce but no interstellar travel. Most imagine that being able to probe all Galaxy and far beyond it would transform the lives of every single person in their home worlds, for day to night. That is not what happened for us.
Since no intelligent specie was found yet, no lost alien ruin with technological treasures either, the only thing coming from distant stars for decades was minerals. And like your Universe and in this one the same elements are present in all parts of the Universe, what greatly reduces the chance of those hoping for step in some amazing treasure of inorganic nature.
Despite the mining operations, to keep permanent bases in distant parts of the Universe do cost more resources than it generates. Save for a few exceptions where for particular reasons the costs are lowest than usual, or the profits higher.
The hope of everyone is that in five decades large populations will be able to move to 72 different planets, seven of them located in other Galaxies. That will not happen for considerations of immediate nature, no one expects profit from the operation in their live times. Is a matter of mere vanity or a sense of pride for the great achievement of humanity, all depends to whom you ask about the subject.
I hope that covers the general situation. That was my home planet, the place I learned about in my childhood. My father was born a slave. He took advantage of the Third-generation Law and changed his fate by serving the army. Thanks to that, I was born free and poor.
Aptitude tests opened to me the door of space. When I was 7 years old my father inscribed me in the space program. The window of opportunity for enter the career being between 7 and 10 most parents wait a little more, starting that young gave me some advantages in adaptation. I suppose it also costed me something in social skills, from the point of view of those on Ogel. Since I was meant to live and socialize with other space travelers that was not a huge lost in my father’s eyes.
Before 7 the passage trough Paradoxal deforms the human body, creating a unique and monstrous abomination, shapes and details varies but is always something no human would hesitate in put are it’s misery. After 10, the travel stress brakes the body from inside out, leaves major injuries, and kills the person after three or less travels.
Even for those who enter the career at ideal age our kind of travel is hard to endure. On consequence of that is the reduction in life expectancy, I already told you that we almost never reach 40. Less obvious consequences are constant pain in the bones, headache, violent unpredictable humour; this list goes one and on, and despite our timeless existence I do not care for extend the subject any further.
All that taken in account is a well-paid job. Gives us a comfortable enough life, monetarily speaking. A life free of the risk of unemployment as well, what is not a small convenience in Buldurga economy.

Around my 21ᵒ birthday, a contract gave me the first opportunity to visit Ogel. I took that gladly, knowing that would likely be the my last chance to see my father in person. My mother had died about two years before and my only brother was in the military. He was prisoner, in the hands of an enemy nation what was one more reason why I wanted to be on Ogel and provide some support to my old man.
Despite the passage of time, I still think about him as “old” man apparently!
Father has old for human standards, and even in my oldest memories he looks like a person tired from living. A fighter, bold and decent. Tempered with a hidden layer of sadness noticeable even for a child sometimes.
I was surprised to know by his messages that he had brought a slave woman to live with him. She was not old enough to be my sister, but was younger than him, and had already lived as his wife for some years when my feet touched Ogel again.
Father had not freed his life companion yet, given the general superstition against that; free your woman from slavery is said to bring bad luck, especially when you do love her. The advisable in to free your lover in testament, so her freedom is effective only after you die and there fore when the bad fortune can no longer reach you. I don’t know why, but the old man was considering the possibility of anticipate his lover’s freedom to her next anniversary.
Beyond that and his reluctance in speak about my brother everything seemed as one would expect. Even the second subject wasn’t that surprising since my father never was generous in share his feelings.

Outside the family house was the same Ogel. Small wars between peripheral nations, Buldurga growing influence in the global competition for power slowly but also safely. The plans for the first migration intended to form a full self-sustained colony in another solar system. That step in Human History was still 50 years in the future, but the necessary preparations where in every mind.
The ship for 300 thousand people was in construction since before I was born, and now it could be seem as a point of light near to the horizon for those flying above the clouds. Most passengers would have to be older than 10, unfortunately for them. They would make one single travel in their lives, and they would never come back.

Since my life expectancy was more 15 years, optimistically speaking, this plans of colonization sounded as remote to me as Astronomic events such as the death of Ogel’s star.
Only one thing made the future colony of Red Tree relevant to me. Nirz, my free companion, my “wife” as you Earthling say, was heavy with a child. She did not told me that in person. I found on my travel bag the small yellow flower customarily used to deliver this new. The flower was inside the box of synthetic leather where I used to keep my painkiller device. That was a place where I had to look short after the fly, and where nothing could fall by accident. Also, Niriziadlinix knew me well enough to know that I would not go for the painkiller before the pain became unbearable, what means I would not have chance to see the flower before the ship leave me on Earth. Nirz probably did not knew if the baby would be boy or girl when we said our good byes and see you soons. When I landed on Earth she had passed the sixth month and could get that information by consulting any diagnosis machine. The small Geologist probably had not looked for any kind of medical support or information. I say that because Nirz hated doctors, their gadgets and their drugs. Even the painkillers, which are an essential element of life for those who live inside spaceships, the small woman avoided as much as she could. The mother of my son trusts, trusted, her traditional shamanic rituals. Those rituals are not magic as far as I can tell, more likely half self-hypnosis and half superstition. There is beauty and some degree of effectiveness in them, but the first largely surpasses the second. So yes, even my free companion uses the electrical device to easy the after-jump sensations. That pain is too strong for any shamanism know in my home Universe. The day-by-day waves can be administrated. They came and go for no reason, usually in the worse possible moments. Well, illusion spells are another case entirely; but those don’t exist up there any way. Ogel had grew since my depart. There was many more towers on my city collecting sun energy to feed our artificial lights in the underground tunnels where most people live. Only a small portion of our energy came from this solar captors above the clouds, most came from Geothermic Stations. Solar energy is safer, geothermic plants on my home planet are subjected to unpredictable tectonic occurrences which burn the facilities and the people working in them. Logically most people working in this distant outposts far bellow the city tunnels are slaves. Down there their juridical status of property is barely irrelevant, except for being the reason why they are there. My father lives in city limits but in the opposite extreme, so close to surface that his street ends at an access door. There is a dozen houses or less between his place and that last line of civilization. Few cities of Ogel have residents above the ground. Mostly because of temperature, since even on the tropics is too cold on surface. The sun never is visible, much less the moon, and very little energy reaches the ground from sky. Spaceports and Solar Stations are the only large structures made by us to endure the fast gelid winds. My father hunts wild animals on the surface, they provide exotic materials for a large number of expensive products highly valued by the rich people who live in ideal profundities, in the middle layers between those subjected to atmospheric events and the deepest ones where any fail in maintenance means death by suffocation. Military people and those with military past often get homes close to surface. While the poor who came from rich families more often than not go down. I was in a train, moving from Spaceport to a transport stations in one of the 11 sectors of Port Buldurga, the capital. My plan was to expend the day sleeping in the Capital before take the train to my father’s town.
Moments before I had opened my electric painkiller bag, and the yellow flower from space was now safe inside my belt-pocket. Squeezing accumulated free time not enjoyed and personal favours I had got 13 days to be with my family; effectively a little more than 11 days, after discount the day for recovery and the time inside trains. This line where I was had been build for a much larger number of passengers than it usually transports. That must be so because a huge number of people must reach the Spaceport each time a ship is ready to leave Ogel for the first time, and they need to move fast because keep ships waiting is expensive. After the first trips the spaceships mostly bring cargo. Few people in each crew ask for permission to visit the planet, and not everyone who asks is granted one, because Space Travelers are object of envy, suspect, and despise
So most among us choose not to go back to Ogel, and instead stay in their cabins when orbiting the planet. They will visit the stores in the orbitals docks and sometimes go down to the Port Area for recreation a couple times, but nothing else. So, there was half dozen people with me in that train wagon spread through two hundred empty seats. Three where clothed as space travellers, the rest in civil clothes.
Recover from space travel takes days, and veterans may develop enough resistance to function during this time but we never became immune to it.
Someone described the sensation for me as ‘my bones where cracking, and hot sand was entering by the cracks’ is not a bad description. The hallucinations are a secondary discomfort by comparison, but the fact that they are sometimes indistinguishable from reality and may last for hours do make them more dangerous than the pain.
A fellow space traveller was using his electric painkiller. The small black circles on oposite sides of his forehead where easing the pain. Is unadvisable to do that in public, since the procedure leaves you entirely defenceless. However he was not alone, his friend was watching his back. I would have to wait until reach a motel room.
Trying to distract myself from the possibility of a crisis happen in the meantime my eyes met the face of this beautiful woman, who was dressed as a civilian.
Is uncommon for women to travel alone. It often happens inside spaceships, where many unmarried lassies do live by themselves and the crews work more or less as a large family. And is not as rare in orbital docks as it is on the surface of Ogel, probably because the culture in orbital docks is a sort of mix between the way of space travelers and the ways of the planet. Shabo, the girl, seemed sad. Neither shamed nor afraid by being alone among strange men. I was not sure if she had noticed my curiosity when it was interrupted by a wave of pain coming from inside the bones of my legs. Was a small one, a three minutes crisis, but was enough to take my senses and freeze my body in an stiff bow right where I was sit. Shabo helped me up after a last and more violent spasm throw me on the floor. She was a nurse and had some healing gel in her bag. We started a conversation more or less naturally, she knew that the hallucinations are the real danger after an episode, and that they sometimes lead to violent behaviour. However, they not always happen and frequently don’t go beyond meaningless surreal incursions and colour changes easy to ignore. Fortunately, that was one of those times without serious consequences.
She told me that an accident had destroyed the medical installations she worked at. Until the repairs, she was in unpaid vacation. Rent was paid for the company, but food was not. And since the people who works at Orbital-Port have a quota of free transportation passes valid to all Buldurga the 21 years old gal decided to expend some time on surface.
Shabo was going to a small city near to the sea, where prices are low and the chances to found temporary work are high. The money the would get renting her room on the Port should more than suffice to compensate the costs of rent a place in the small town, and get a job would make the adventure a bit more profitable even. Was a non-official arrangement, against some rules, but she trusted the space traveller to leave the agreed payment and no one really cares much about those regulations. Shabo was sad only because she would be far from her friends and from everything she knew.
Somehow we ended in my motel room. Shabo lost her virginity that cycle.
Loose virginity could affect her live, and not for the better. Was not my plan, or hers, but it happened. We ate breakfast together and I did my best to hide feelings of guilt that could ruin the humour of that day.
My father looked older that he was in my memory, maybe older than he was in my imagination. Still younger than the man I was used to see on mirrors. Hunt wild beasts on surface is a hard life on Ogel, but one that does not ages people as fast as the Paradoxal State does.
Shabo accompanied me to my father’s house and stayed with me during those days. She knew how long our relationship would last, and how hard would be for her to find a husband after I leave Earth again.
On the other hand, the nurse had no living relative. Without a mother, father, or older sibling to look for a husband in her name the woman most likely destiny was to die single. Four to one, by statistics. That before we met and she loose virginity. Her situation became worse, because of me; but considering how bad it was before you may understand why she was not seem the change as something as terrible as it looked to me.
Well maybe guilt made me a more tender lover. Who can tell?
I had only one more day before take the train back to port. Repair turns waited for me inside the space vessel. The original meaning of this trip was to expend some time with the old man, and I ended up most the time dedicated to the lovely nurse. So that day I reserved to do some hunting whit my dad. None of us intended to actually kill anything, we just wanted to walk together through snow for a few hours.
The beast jumped from behind a rock, far closer to the access doors than its kind usually goes. It was hurt, probably run in the wrong direction after being shot by another hunter. I will never know if the animal escaped this other hunter or killed him, it was a top predator so is unlikely that other animal could have done that wound.
What I do know is that it was a huge and furious beast. My father shot it in the chest twice, right in the brown line that is the only part of the animal not covered by long white fur.
The animal was too close, and moving too fast. When I found the trigger of my rifle the beast was dead, but my father was on the ground next to it. The impact broke his neck, old man died immediately and without pain. I am still grateful to the gods for that small kindness.
I left the precious beast behind. Father’s four slave men would normally cut it in pieces and carry the parts to the vehicle parked a couple of kilometres away. I couldn’t care less about them, and the dead animal. All I wanted was to carry my father’s corpse home.
We left the dead animal behind.
That night I couldn’t sleep.
Without think I left the house, and took the secondary access to surface.
I knew the door itself would be locked, since a strong tempest was happening outside. But I had with me my tools and had opened many doors like that before.
Thinking about that, I do not think I wished to die. Probably I would not leave, just open the last door between me and the deadly ice storm and look the darkness outside. Feel the deadly cold, a painful sensation so distant from the hot sand inside my bones.
I never reached that last door. The Vortex caught me in the middle of an access corridor forbidden to anyone except the people who work in maintenance of this outside-door, and those using it to come back from surface in emergencies.
Sharitarn was harm and a huge moon welcomed me. Was the most amazing hallucination I ever had! Except for the obvious, you know”.

_Except that it was no hallucination, you mean.

Type

Universe