5.8 trillion miles. In a single year light travels a distance of 5.8 trillion miles. The distance between stars is measured in light years, not single years but multiple years. And there are several hundred billion stars in our galaxy, all of them many light years apart. How many galaxies are in our universe? Don't ask me, every time I think about it my mind goes to that hubble photograph. They pointed the hubble at a piece of the sky that was empty to ground based optics. The photo is full of galaxies, not just three or four, dozens. This universe is a big place.
Any universe is a big place, even the small ones are huge. All we know is our own universe, and precious little about it. In the ages to come we will seek out the knowledge which is contained here. It is a long journey, and no step can be missed, as disaster may ensue. So we will not be discussing this universe, instead we will tell you about another.
When they were finished, they called it MECHINA. As far as size is concerned
the universe in question is on the small side of medium. If there were an easy
manner in which to search the skies for universes other than this one, this
MECHINA, would be the hardest to find. It resides at the edge of existence far
removed from all others. This means it's old,
far older than we and ours. The story of this universe is not unlike that of
any other, it just happened first, it wrote the script, you could say.
Around a star at the edge of a galaxy which was at the edge of the MECHINA universe was born a people. We shall call them THOSE WHO WERE FIRST , for they were. The history of THOSE WHO WERE FIRST is like so many other peoples who would be born in the ages to come. They were the first to ever travel to another star, they were the first to colonize their galaxy, and they were the first to ever bridge the great void and cross to a galaxy which was not their own.
In the fullness of time they came to the understanding of their universe, and they knew it's every secret. They understood too, the inescapable problem that threatened their future. Their universe was expanding, it was beyond the point of no return, there was no way to keep the galaxies close together, there was no way for their space to continue to give birth to the new. No natural way.
THOSE WHO WERE FIRST
undertook a project that took ages unnumbered, many lives and many lifetimes
to complete. They rebuilt their universe, so it would forever give birth to
the new. They harnessed the mysteries of the black hole, and built a star.
The star they built is unlike any other in any universe. We could not measure
the size of this star by SUNS, we would have to measure it by galaxies. Around
this great star
was built a ring, the diameter of which must be measured in thousands of light
millenniums. The ring is actually a tube, large enough to hold an entire giant
galaxy. It is estimated that the ring could hold many millions of galaxies
along it's interior. Into this ring and star went most all of the matter of
the MECHINA universe, save for a paltry few million galaxies which were
shepherded into an orbit between the star and the ring. Their universe was
contained, to always give birth to the new.
Many galaxies, and groups of stars and single star systems are housed within
this great ring. In some areas of the ring exist gargantuan cities which span
the width of the tube to the other, in yet other portions the ring lies quiet
and empty, save for the extra thick walls of dense matter awaiting it's
reconstruction. The ring will never be fully completed, as anything alive can
not be, until it is dead. Life abounds with great variety within the ring, and
that life is the reason
THOSE WHO WERE FIRST
built it. They watch and nurture that life from their home on the great star.
These stories are not those of the FIRST , but rather those of the rings inhabitants. The stories of life and it's abounding variety.
"And when they had the ring and the star and the galaxies all in place, they called the name of it MECHINA ."
