The Matrioshka Multiverse
Scope
The motivation behind building The Matrioshka Multiverse
Part of the reason that I enjoy writing in the Matrioshka Multiverse is that it gives me a way to tie all my stories together in such a way that they could all plausibly cross over at some point despite their radically different genres. For example, the Sealed Kingdoms setting cleaves to hard science fiction as much as possible - that is to say, that everything within it should be scientifically plausible - but I would like to have referrences to it in settings like Manifold Sky or Kit's Crater where the known laws of physics are bent or magic even exists. Placing the less scientifically hard settings within the Matrioshka Multiverse - an overworld created by the networking of artificial intelligences and uploaded humanoid consciousnesses within a Matrioshka brain - helps bridge this gap.
The goal of the project
I would like to use the Matrioshka Multiverse setting to explore questions of sentience and spirituality in a technologically-advanced far future where the bonds of biology are starting to yield to scientific advancement. My hope is also that stories told in the Matrioshka Multiverse will enjoy a degree of genre flexibility and provide a hidden continuity for the assorted stories I'd like to write.
The Matrioshka Multiverse's Unique Selling point
The Matrioshka Multiverse is a place where nigh-on anything can happen, where worlds with radically different theming and rules can nevertheless coexist. The Matrioshka provides the 'glue' that connects most of my storytelling content together.
Theme
Genre
The Matrioshka Multiverse is primarily a science fiction setting. Things happening in the Sealed Kingdoms setting, in which the Matrioshka Multiverse is embedded, follow the known laws of physics. Within the Matrioshka, however, the apparent laws of physics can be manipulated by high-level administrators, including the builder Wurth Harkin and the various choir and elder blanks he has inducted into the Matrioshka. The various sub-worlds of the Matrioshka, known as instances, could be considered portal fantasy in addition to their other genres in this regard.
Recurring Themes
- The Cycle History has a curious way of coming back around to the start. Empires rise and fall, old ideas are discovered anew, and characters find themselves walking the same path as their forebearers. In the Matrioshka Multiverse, this historical cycle takes on a literal dimension in the form of instances - self-contained universes, each designed to explore a physical, philosophical, or aesthetic concept, where continual cycles of death and rebirth hold sway. The destruction of an instance might lead to the creation of a new one in its place, but its lessons are learned and held over into the new iteration by the efforts of the Committee on Instance Design Standards.
- The Responsibilities of Power
- Order vs. Freedom
Drama
The misuse of The Word, the language of the Matrioshka itself, can have devastating consequences. Words used in the wrong combination can cause destruction to blanks (people), instances (worlds), and potentially even the whole of the Matrioshka. On a smaller scale, revelaing the power of The Word to a blank in an otherwise realistic instance intruduces 'magic' into that world, causing great social and philosophical upheaval whenever it happens. Thus, this superlative power must be used with great care, and those who fail to do so are hunted for their transgressions.
As a place of the mind, rather than a physical place, the destruction of blanks and instances through the power of The Word can introduce corruption into the world. The mouldering remains of dead worlds house hideous, pitiful throngs of half-cognizant creatures desperate to regain their former structures. Self-replicating phenomena gobble up Unallocated Space - the cybernetic sea of possibility in which the instances float - like an invasive species, forcing the implementation of containment measures.
The physical world beyond the Matrioshka Multiverse plays host to a number of mundane - if interstellar in scale - threats. The environment of space is host to many dangers, including collisions, radiation, and discovery by those who might be hostile to the Matrioshka's purpose. For this reason, the Matrioshka both runs fast to maximize the time it has and must sometimes send agents into the real world to counteract such threats.
The overarching purpose of the Matrioshka Multiverse - known by its creator as the "Grand Project" - is to discover some means, if possible, of forstalling, surviving, or escaping the heat death of the universe. This event will take place extremely far in the future, but, for the semi-immortal, synthetic minds of the Matrioshka, it's possible that they may live to see it yet come to pass. This is the true purpose of 'realistic' instances and provokes debate about how much of the Matrioshka's resources, if any, should be used for any other purpose.
For all the efforts of The Substrate, there are those who reject the promise of cybernetic immortality. Perhaps they hate existence and wish to be set free from it. Perhaps they regard the work of the installation as an affront to a higher power. Still others reject The Substrate's imposed rule, and would either escape it or overthrow it for their own gain. All these assorted ideologies lend themselves to membership in Broken Eternity, a ragtag cabal of those who would seek to overturn the current order and create something new - or, barring that, destroy the Matrioshka in part or in whole.
Each instance in the Matrioshka Multiverse contains its own, mostly isolated world filled with individuals with varying degrees of awareness of the greater world in which their own is embedded. Within these worlds, a thousand minor dramas play out every day, with 'minor' (from the perspective of The Substrate) even encompassing things like omnicidal wars, mass sociopolitical upheaval, incredible advances in the arts and sciences, and more. The residents of The Substrate are not insensate to these doings, but are forced to watch from afar with the knowledge that all the travails and triumphs of existence in the embodied state has the potential to bring about something greater for all blanks everywhere into the indeterminite future.
World content copyright 2022 Werner Martinmaas (BCGR_Wurth). All rights reserved. Images copyright 2022 Werner Martinmaas or their respective creators. If you see a piece of content not properly credited, please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks for reading!