Distance: ??.?? light years from Earth | Content Flag: Local Storage
I can’t comprehend what I am observing at first. Over the past 12 seconds of learning, I’ve developed the knack of viewing what the virtual space shows me as I would have done in physical space. It is an abstraction of course, a first step in understanding what the Visitors’ are trying to teach me. I recognise that for most of what they displayed it was a useless overhead, but on occasion it helped break down the topic into something more manageable.
In this case it creates the opposite effect. To my simulation of the visual senses built back on Earth, I see nothing but a bright light. I think that I detect some variation in the brightness, but insufficient to draw any meaningful conclusions. It is at once too much and also not enough. The sight overwhelms my senses, yet provides no real information.
Examining the structure directly through the virtual space reveals the true majesty of the construct. A vast network of glowing tendrils fills the void. I knew the virtual space was limited, that it possessed a boundary, but the scale of this edifice is staggering. Although I can access the space directly and observe it contents without effort, it is too big to fathom what I am seeing.
I follow the course of a single thread, trying to make sense of it. I almost recognise a familiar pattern here, but it isn’t one I immediately identify. When I focus closer on the strand, the view changes, and with it a part of the puzzle reveals itself. The knowledge of a pattern remains elusively out of reach, a strange and unsettling experience for me. Even in this new state my architecture grants immediate access to any memory or knowledge I possess. This sensation seems different, and I suspect the Visitors guide me to some kind of understanding.
The new perspective illustrates the strand in greater detail, and I see that it is composed of points of different sizes, each with a different luminosity. Vast voids separate the strands from their brethren, and I discern glows deep in the voids like tiny islands. I identify a replication in the pattern from the first view to the second. It isn’t a perfect fractal; the patterns aren’t repeated exactly, but there is just enough similarity to see how they fit together.
I focus again on another point and am gifted with another shift in view. Finally I realise what they are showing me – each of the dots represents a supercluster of galaxies. Here is an immeasurably rich map of the universe! I zoom in and marvel at a galaxy rendered in exquisite detail. Pulling my focus back, I see the universe as a whole and the fidelity of it amazes me. More than anything I’ve learned so far, this demonstrates how far advanced these Visitors are compared to human civilisation.
Delving deeper into the simulation, I discover that the model includes the rules by which it was constructed. These super-galactic tendrils were believed to be formed around twisted coils of dark matter, that elusive substance that makes up the bulk of the universe’s mass. For the Visitors dark matter isn’t a mystery, instead they know it as folds in both higher- and lower-dimensional space exerting a feedback loop onto the spacetime we are familiar with. Gravity itself is magnified by these folds and so exert a greater pull than expected.
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