Higgstech

Cage The Beast

I sort through my haul of scrap, dedicated to finding a relay capable of handling the load, even if only for a little bit of time. The warp drive on the Viritine is a little beyond my abilities. Frankly, it's beyond my comprehension, but it's simple enough to take something off and put a new one back on.
Fraeia follows me everywhere I go, shivering as they try to shake off the sickness that comes from cryo. They watch me like a hawk, despite how dark it is. I don't blame them. A human repairing one of the valuable ships in their navy? I'd be cautious too.
The gaze is uncomfortable like my every move is being judged in silence behind their furrowed brow. When we make it back to the warp drive, I speak, "Did Viritine wake you up?"
Their face softens as they bring a hand up to their chin. "Yes." They sound lethargic but aware as if drifting in and out of deep contemplation. "She didn't mention you."
"Where is she now?"
Fraeia shakes their head then glances around the room. "Everywhere."
I drop to my knees and pull the damaged relay from its socket. "She won't speak to me. I called and called, but-"
Fraeia cuts me off, but in a soft and careful voice, "Awfully bold of you to assume a goddess is compelled to speak."
I drop the relay then turn and look at them with a raised brow. "She's no goddess of mine."
Fraeia chuckles. "She's a sapient being. She speaks when she pleases. Her mind is focused on more than the here and now."
The new relay locks into place and sparks fly out of the panel. Lights flicker on throughout the ship, blinding both of us. I feel gravity reassert itself and my legs start getting restless. I shield my eyes and smile. "There we go."
Pools of the fluid floating in the air fall and fill every compartment, making the water level rise even higher. The fluid seems to glow in every color, an aura of variable hues. I stare in disbelief. I'm standing knee-deep in prism.
Fraeia nods as I stand up, their gaze fixed on the warp drive. I look and notice how the frosted window is now clear, allowing one to look inside without obstruction. Within, I see a black hole. A perfectly dark void suspended in the center of the drive's shell.
My jaw drops. It's massive, the event horizon being fifty meters in circumference, at least. It's beyond me. I love it, but I wish I knew more. How do they manage this? The ship is ancient so it makes sense. They've had more than enough time to feed this beast. Are they using the singularity's pull against itself?

Arrogant aren't we? Higgstech is a human term, a misleading one at that. By manipulating fields generated by quantum particles, we tame gravity. It's not just the Higgs field though. Higgstech manipulates all particles responsible for mass and weight; muons, and gluons. It's particularly troubling how we fail to take note of the most valuable piece of the puzzle.
Higgstech is about black holes above all else. These anomalies have fascinated us for years but we only learned of their potential through the eden. They gave us our first warp drives. Black holes are outside of our space-time, a pocket of infinite density that consumes everything in its path, even light.
Higgstech is complicated, and I'd be lying if I said I know how it works, but I do know a thing or two about why it works. Let's get started.

Function

Higgstech refers to any technology that manipulates gravity. There are numerous ways it can be done, but most of it centers around exploiting contained singularities. These lie at the center of a black hole and are what the black hole is. What you see is the event horizon, where light can no longer escape the gravitational pull.
By caging the beast, we can use its bizarre qualities to bypass the physical laws we are forced to obey. We can alter the event horizon, shape it as we see fit. Not any old black hole will do. You have to create one, a miniature singularity.
Once contained it's free to use, its stability maintained so long as there's power. Then again, if spinning they are practically unlimited energy sources on their own. They emit radiation and decay over time.

The eden navy

eden ships have a unique quirk about them: their ships don't explode. eden vessels implode when destroyed. This is due to many factors but it boils down to age and the nature of the higgstech they use.
eden ships are ancient. It's common practice to jettison waste from the ship into the warp drive to "feed" the singularity inside. eden ships can produce some of the largest warp drives and often require retrofitting as the millennia tick by to handle the increasing size of the singularity.
When a ship is destroyed, the power can no longer sustain the containment of the singularity. Normally this doesn't matter. Any other ship would explode normally. Their singularity evaporates in fractions of a second because of how small they are. On an eden vessel, the singularity is bigger. It takes more time to fizzle out, about 2.46 seconds on average. More time leads to a contained explosion that is overtaken by the gravitational pull.

Examples

• Warp Drives: The best example of higgstech is the warp drive. By expanding space behind a vessel, and pinching space in front of a vessel, a ship can fall into the dip and travel without worrying about velocity and distance.

• Inertial dampener: Another example is the inertial dampener. The singularity is used to push against active G-forces, preserving the ship and crew in rapid acceleration and deceleration of their vessel. It also allows one to generate gravitational forces, which is why we dont float around in our ships. This is essential for any ship and it's surprising how few have it.

• Weaponry: Gravity is a tool but it can easily be a weapon as well. The eden use higgstech to level cities and crush ships under their weight. Even their run-of-the-mill weapons use it. Their projectiles are faster and hit harder than they should.

I turn back to Fraeia and cock my head. They appear to be bracing themselves for something, their eyes focused on the radioactive "medium" flooding the ship. I shrug. "My suit can handle it for a little while longer. You seem fine. What's the issue?"
They smile and I feel something pulling at my feet. I look down and see the fluid moving, then rising into the air. The force picks up and knocks me down. I try to get up as the liquid merges within the confines of the golden rings spaced throughout the ship. Every drop finds a place within the containment field as if forced into a transparent horizontal cylinder stretching from bow to stern.
A shadow dances through the medium, a formless thing that is easy to spot but hard to follow. It disappears through the rings above me, the reemerges as if darting from one side of the ship to the other. While quiet, I can almost hear laughter. It sounds odd, the way laughter sounds when you hear it in memory.
Fraeia steps forward, calm and unphased. I practically skip behind them. I've never seen anything like it.
"Viritine?" I call.
"Amberlie? Where are you?" The shadow darts pauses and spins then darts to the next section as if searching for me. When she sees me, the form condenses, no longer a shadowy mass but something more human, like a silhouette. "Thank you."
I nod in reply and take a few seconds just to stare at her. I guess this would be a prime example of higgstech being used in art.