The Wolverine Truck Stop and Motor Lodge

No Time — Truespace

“The fabric of the surface of space is profoundly stiff. Because of this, the knots that form in 3-space have constraining effects on the random motions of surrounding space. These constraining effects are felt by other ‘particles’ even at great distances.”

The view on the vast display zooms out and continues. A counter and receding nested squares appear, indicating orders of magnitude in space. A glow of color emanating from the original location symbolizes the constraining effects of the knot. The zooming out of the field of view accelerates.

“These constraining effects are referred to as ‘forces’ because they influence the movement of other knot-particles. Depending on the particles involved, these constraint-forces compel motion toward the source of the force, or in other cases motion away. Such force-effects can be an important influence even at inter-particle distances as great as one decillion minimum spatial units.

“There are four main forces that constrain the motions of space and compel particle movement—“

“Excuse me,” the prince interrupts.

“Of course.”

“So,” he frowns, “these ‘particles’ are not fixed in their location?”

“The question of an absolute location system in space is complex,” the voice replies, its sound filling the glowing air. “While it is possible to define a location grid based on the ‘grain’ at the foundation of space, no individual grain last longer than a single chronon, unless they become knotted. A ‘particle’—one or more spatial distortions forming a knot—can move frictionlessly across ‘space’, effectively propelled by the random activity of neighboring distortions. Depending on the nature of the formed knot-particle, the motion will either be exactly one khoron—the minimum unit of space—per chronon, or is constrained to be less than one khoron per chronon.”

After a moment the prince nods, and the voice continues.

“The various forces differ in their strengths and ranges of influence. Here—” The display show two black particles approaching each other, but then shying away. “—we see two proton-particles being repelled from each other at a distance by the ‘electromagnetic’ force, but if they are compelled by sufficient inertia to approach closely enough—” The two black spheres now fly toward each other with greater speed, which allows them to overcome the repulsive force and reach a closer radius where another force symbolized by a separate color holds sway. “—then they will be bound together by the ‘strong nuclear’ force.”

“Such a combination of protons, or protons and neutrons, is called an atomic nucleus. Very low-velocity electrons can then be trapped near the nuclei by complex interactions of the electromagnetic and strong nuclear forces.” The scale of view zooms back another four orders of magnitude. “The resulting structure is called an ‘atom’.”

The prince nods, frowning in thought. The ‘atoms’ that they are looking at now are immense: twenty-five orders of magnitude larger than the knots at the foundation of space that cause them. Even so, he has already learned his lesson. He will not ask whether these ‘atom’ structures are the inhabitants of 3-space that the Great Work concerns itself with.

Although his lessons have already come so far up in the scale of complexity, he has a feeling that they may still have some way to go.