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Page 13.
Chapter 5. Meme Juice, Part II: Temporale
 Over a billion years ago, inside our universe, a forgotten super-race of beings constructed a self-replicating mechanism called the Temporale. It is a transportation system that cuts across the natural limits of time and space. It successfully creates a way of going sideways around natural laws limiting the speed of travel, approaching an absolute ceiling near the speed of light.
Though we have no writing or other contact left from these long-ago aliens, we think they approached their project as a neural engineering problem, using what are called Rules. Rules use the tendency of successful evolutionary constructs (like human DNA, or the star-building process) to repeat themselves.
Repetition is the fundamental requirement for a successfully evolved construct. Everything, whether it is the making of a star from the simple accretion of hydrogen and helium, to the accretion of universes in the motherverse, to the reproduction of humans and other creatures on earth, is driven by gravity and functions through processes that automatically repeat themselves. The basic process is entirely dumb and brute force, but complexity sets in quickly and exponentially. Just as intelligent life evolves (and intelligence is relative in some regards, based on function and need, but absolute in the sense that its function approaches a limit based on neurological factors such as synaptic speed, connective limitations, and the like) so the Temporale has evolved a necessary level of intelligence. That intelligence is known as the Membrane, because one of the naturally evolved functions of the Temporale is the need to stop the spread of destructive viruses, be they in the network of the Temporale itself, or in beings that travel in the Temporale. Mack's advanced surgery had just been performed by Rules, expressed in metaphors, but literally enacted in a physical operating theater manned by temporary gestalts created by the Membrane.
The Temporale hooks up points inside the universe by using roadways outside, in the motherverse.
The Membrane is an invisible shield around the long roadways of the Temporale, and its inwarded cities and domed lands. The Membrane is also inherent in the material of the Temporale itself.
If a part of the Temporale is injured, say by a black hole doing a few excess energy burps as it digests its accompanying galaxy of visible matter, then the Temporale reaches down into the fundamental subfloor of the motherverse for the necessary godots to rebuild itself through replication and Rules.
The Temporale can also use fundamental particle-energy physics in a sort of alchemy developed by the ancients to transmute many substances into others as needed, and there is usually enough solar or hydrogen/helium power available to drive the process.
The aliens are long gone, but their mysterious roadways through time and space serve many later cultures. Over a billion years, the Temporale has grown until one can travel and jump vast amounts of space. Empires have come and gone, wrapped around these pathways, the way rivers and roadways once connected earthly empires like Egypt and Mesopotamia.
As Mack started scarfing down the last third of his breakfast, he was coming to the most fascinating part of this new world. Deep down, something very faint and disturbing gnawed at the very bones of his soul, but neither he nor his hosts were conscious that at least one little tiny Carly meme had survived.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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