Portable Folder

A.K.A. Personnel Folder.

Though it’s called portable most models in use by the Trident Coalition Armed Forces are heavy and clunky, not all that easy to carry around.

The burglar Virgil has a prototype which is lighter and more easy to carry, which makes it easy to use while climbing around on the facade of buildings, with the intent of using the Folder to get inside.

The most common Portable Folder is a metal cylinder, twenty centimeters long and ten centimeters in diameter, with a leather shoulder strap for carrying purposes and three dials on the side of the cylinder. The fold is projected out of the side at a 90 degree angle to the dials. The first dial sets the width of the event horizon and the second dial sets the height while the third one sets the distance to the destination. The operator aims the Folder in the right direction, sets the dials, and the event horizon appears, as a hologram which shows what’s at the destination, to make sure you don’t get hit by a vehicle on the other side, end up above water or inside a solid wall. The last one can be especially hazardous to your health. If more than one person is using the fold, the operator wait until everyone is through before stepping through, since the fold automatically collapse thirty seconds after the device passes through the event horizon.

To prevent misuse, places like banks, power stations and military installations have Folder Countermeasures that makes it impossible to get in with a Space Folder.

People can use the Portable Folder to travel great distances on the same planet, as it compensates for the rotation being faster at the equator than the poles, and thus you don’t hurt yourself when stepping through. It also compensate so that the emergence point from the fold is aligned vertical to the planet core, as long as the event horizon is also vertical. This applies to people on the ground, stepping through from one place to another.

It is not possible, however, to fold space from one planet to another, and just step through. The Portable Folder can not compensate for two different planetary orbits, rate of rotation and alignment to the surfaces of the planets, all at the same time. There is a rumor of an upgrade, that makes it possible to step through from one planet to another, as well as travel through time, but nobody can confirm whether it exists yet.

Midshipman Paolo Garcia was able to improvise a method for him and Private First Class Gabriel Trent to get from the moon Ogygia to its planet, Calypso, using a Portable Folder and the built in Navigational Folder on the escape pod from TCSV Odysseus. By using making the escape pod fall he got around the fact that you can’t step from one world to another and that there was no vehicle on Ogygia capable of escape velocity. The method is now known as the Garcia Maneuver, and strongly advised against. Paolo and Trent survived the maneuver against the odds.

Utility

It was discovered when two criminals modified a Navigational Folder and used it to break into a bank vault on a space station. Since then bank vaults and other sensitive areas are protected against folds in space. Portable Folders are used by the military and law enforcement when needed. They are many folders in Aeolus City Space Port, where they are used to load and unload cargo as well as for crew and passengers to get aboard and off spaceships. In tall buildings they are used so that you can get from the lobby to the top floor by only climbing one flight of stairs. On at least one occasion Viktor Laszlo has used a Folder to assassinate someone, by going to the bathroom at a party, opened a fold into the home of his target, on the other side of the city, and stabbed the target to death, before re-joining the party with a near perfect alibi.

Parent Technologies

• Space Folder

Children Technologies

• Folder Countermeasure

Access & Availability

Military and some companies have them, as well as some criminal organizations.

Discovery

Two criminals of a cephalopod species used a modified Navigational Folder, that they’d stolen, to get into a bank vault on an orbital space station in the Tantalusian System. They fled to a cargo hold where they found a ten year old human boy, whom they took hostage, After two hours of hostage negotiations the boy convinced the criminals that he would help them use the Folder to get to their ship for a cut of their loot. He tricked them and got them expelled into the vacuum of space, without endangering himself. He told the authorities that the money was expelled too, except he kept it all and then patented the modifications to the Folder.