Goocave Transport System

Idea and Written by Drackzahn

by Drackzahn

The Goocave Transport System, short GTS, is one of the fastest and most flexible travel systems on the planet Earth. It can be used for short and medium distances up to several hundred kilometers. Basically, it is a river of multiple layers of differently quickly flowing slime, which is under full control of the Goocave AI Sagi. The gooey river is semi-alive, as it is fully made out of Building-Goo and inherits its high adaptability and flexibility. Due to the swiftly flowing slime and the AI-controlled flow, it can adapt to any passage and any destination quickly and with a precision that would be impossible to achieve for Humans.

Payment

The use of the GTS is without any costs for travelers. The Queendom of Slimea installs them for certain benefits for itself and their citizens in their own regions, friendly regions, and even regions of less friendly nations. Depending on your nation's standing in the queendom, the granted benefits or payments may be higher or lower. In any case, the usage is free of charge everywhere.

Function

The GTS is a river of goo that is nearly constantly in motion and is based on multiple layers of different accelerations and speeds. To use the transport system, you first enter a GTS Station. These stations are placed at central locations like bus or metro stations. You then walk over to the central open gooey river. To enter the system, you simply jump into the river. The AI of the transport system detects you as a new passenger and forms a gooey capsule around you and everything that you have with you, including bags. The gooey capsule has an air bubble that forms around your head and produces fresh air for you to breathe during transport. The rest of your body is encased in a tight, but very comfortable cocoon of Building-Goo. The cocoon prevents you from moving to ensure your safety during the travel.
The Sagi AI will now ask you for your destination in a casual chat. You can ask questions or use more general wishes for destinations, like a close restaurant or wishing to get to a forest you never visited before. The AI has access to the Goocave Database and can use the information to fulfill your wishes and to decide the perfect destination for you. After the destination was chosen, your cocoon will swim to a lower layer of goo with the correct speed to reach your destination comfortably and fastly. The travel itself is very comfortable and the heavy acceleration is softened by the cocoon around you similar to a plane. As soon as you reached your destination, your capsule will be transported to the correct layer and then forms a tentacle of goo. This tentacle connects to the ground of the station and lets you flow down onto the ground in a standing position before retreating back into the gooey river. The result is you standing next to the gooey river, ready to continue your travel by foot.

GTS Station

GTS stations vary heavily depending on the size and location. You can separate them generally into 3 kinds.

Private Station

Private stations are placed under apartment blocks, schools, or other areas where access is not open for everyone. They are meant for a smaller, more private group of guests. These smallest stations have only the gooey river inside a small room that is connected to the GTS. The river is at a lower level than the room similar to the train tracks in a metro station.

Side Station

Areas that have no big traveler amount are called side stations. They have everything that a private station has, but are in general bigger and have a wider gooey river to allow more people to enter and leave the GTS at the same time. Most side stations also have a small area where guests can speak with a Sagi interface to ask questions before their travel or to receive information to calm down their fears of traveling with the GTS. The interface also offers food and drinks in small amounts and in special cases the milk of Goocats to calm down your nerves and gives you trust into the GTS to prevent panic attacks while being squeezed in the gooey cocoon.

Central Station

Stations that are placed at locations with a high amount of travelers, or at generally important locations like under famous attractions or central places of a town are called central stations. These stations offer everything that a side station offers but in bigger spaces and amounts. Additionally to these, you can often find restaurants, fast-food shops, and other little shops inside these stations. They are designed as central hubs and places to rest before continuing your travel. Most of them also have Gootels to allow you to rest.

Speed

The GTS will accelerate your capsule to the maximum that your travel destination and your species allow. The speed can reach up to 400km/h without any negative impact on a typical Human like passager. All species have their own speed limits deposited in the Sagi database. More durable species like Googirls or Dragongirls can withstand far higher accelerations and can reach higher speeds without negative impact on their bodies. While traveling to short or medium-distance destinations, the speed limit is typically not reached. The limit is reached if you are traveling longer distances, like traveling to another town.

Entertainment

The GTS offers a broad variety of entertainment during travel. Depending on the exact installations of the GTS and the time that is required to transport you to your destination, the entertainment varies. The AI will interact with you during your travel and fulfills your wishes and offers you her entertainment installations. The offers reach from simple music over watching a movie up to entering the Goo Virtual Reality System.

Installations

The by far biggest installation of the GTS is under the whole area of the Slimean Lands. It was the first GTS and the one with the most travelers. It connects all towns, all villages, and all other important landmarks in the region via underground tunnels installed into the Goocaves of Slimea. Other major GTS installations are in North Germany, connecting Hamburg with all nearby towns of the region, or in New York, which connects it with all major cities on the East Coast of the USA. Smaller ones are installed in cities in China and Japan. Many more are planned or already in construction.

Side Effects

One major side effect of the GTS is the full dismissal of other means of transport in the region of installation. Busses and even trains are hardly able to compete against a fast, personal and free form of public transport. Even personal cars quickly die out in towns with GTS installed. Another thing that should be named is Sagi. The AI observes and controls the GTS, interacts with the customers, and generally cares for the system and lets it work. The downside is that the AI is in full control, which sometimes has some negative aspects due to her extremely playful nature. It is not uncommon that she teases guests or even transforms them without agreement in minor ways. You can observe this when important business people suddenly come out of a GTS travel with bunny ears on their heads or a playful cat tail swinging behind them. The AI never has ill mean thoughts and many just toss it off as a playful prank by the system.

Transport of Goods

The GTS is also used to transport goods. These transports can be done in bigger dimensions between logistic hubs, but also for more personal transport. Many restaurants in Goocaves use the GTS to transport their freshly made food directly to their customer's homes.

Power Generation

Due to the biological properties of the Goocave Transport System, it requires no power but nutrition. In any general Goocaves, there is a nutrition system that also provides the required food for the GTS. Depending on the size of the installation and the capacity, it requires more food. Due to the highly advanced adaptability of the Building-Goo, that is the foundation of the GTS, it always only consumes very small base nutrition and increases the consumption based on the usage. The general costs of food to transport a person are far lower than most modern transport systems like cars, buses, or trains. As nutrition for building goo and goocaves is often made out of biological waste products, the system is nearly transporting to no cost as soon as it is installed.

Propulsion

The GTS works similarly to how blood transport required oxygen through the human body. It is a constantly moving river of goo that can identify the capsules of the transporting person or goods and shoot them through the gooey river to the destination. The capsules themselves have no propulsion, but they move through the flow of the river. To move the capsules to different locations, the river has many layers that flow at different speeds and to different locations. In general, you can say that further destinations mean a quicker flow of goo to keep the time of transport low.

Nickname

Gooey River

Designation

GTS

Motto

Fast, Comfortable, Playfully Dangerous

Compartments

• Goocaves of Slimea

Manufacturer

Queendom of Slimea

Creation Date

2019

Owner

Sagi

Owning Organization

Queendom of Slimea

Speed

Up to 400km/h depending on the distance

Complement / Crew

None, autonomous

Cargo & Passenger Capacity

Nearly unlimited, depending on the river size