The Pandora Gates

Transhumanity has so far discovered five pandora gates within the Solar System and thousands in extrasolar systems. Though they are now used with regular frequency, our understanding of the control system is nebulous, fragmented, and experimental. Use of the gates always comes with a not-insignificant amount of risk.

Most gates are located on the surfaces of astronomical bodies. Some have been found floating in space, in the upper atmospheres of gas giants, deep undersea, underground, and even atop floating ocean biomasses. Attempts to physically relocate gates have so far failed — sometimes dramatically.

So far as transhumanity can tell, all gates discovered so far are within the local Orion’s Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It is not clear if this is due to some constraint on the wormholes’ range, due to the immense distances of space, or some other factor.

Appearance

Though their operation is standardized, gate size and shape is as variable as the worlds they lead to. The gate structure itself is an irregular half-sphere/dome cage of interlocking, angled, metallic black arms. These are built from some programmable exotic matter with an atomic structure scientists are still working to unravel. They are ageless and polished, but appear fuzzy and are disturbingly difficult to focus upon due to some quality of their composition, as if they vibrate at a high-frequency on the edge of your vision. Due to this phenomenon, most gate sites keep the actual gate structures covered.

When a new wormhole location is programmed into the gate, the arms of the cage physically change shape, move, and reflow. The openings between arms are sometimes only large enough for a transhuman to enter, sometimes gaping enough to allow a freight train of supplies to pass through. Large vehicles or equipment must often be dismantled, carried through, and reassembled on the other side. Gate operators expect to one day be able to control the size of the openings.

An abnormal but organic growth covers the exterior surface of some arms, patterned in entrancing twists and whorls that adhere to perfect mathematical formulas. This growth is in fact a cellular automaton biological computer that acts as the gate’s control system. A “blue box” device developed to interface with this system allows gate controllers to manipulate gate functions.

The Wormhole

When a gate is activated, a black sphere of pure nothingness appears within the cage. This dark orb pulses with charged energy, and ripples of green arc lightning cascade across it. Anything that enters the sphere comes out the other side of the wormhole, through a similar gate, seemingly instantaneously. Discernible tension at the sphere’s surface seems designed to prevent the atmospheres from the two connected gates from interacting. An unknown safety mechanism provides a small, continuous tug, like a current of water, so that anything left across the threshold is eventually pulled to one side or the other.

Exactly how the wormhole is created remains outside of transhumanity’s comprehension. The accepted theory is that each gate acts as an anchor, allowing the fabric of space-time to be folded. Two remote places are brought together through this trick curvature, and a hole ripped between them. This creates a bridge through which a person can simply step through.

Entering a gate is like walking through a door, though it’s impossible to see anything beyond the gate’s surface. One moment you’re entering the black sphere at your starting location and instantaneously you’re exiting the sphere at your destination location. Every gatecrasher seems to describe a different textual experience to the transition, though some have detailed strange, haunting occurrences. Asyncs in particular seem to sometimes be attuned to or repelled by what they describe as the gate’s “emanations.”

Operations

The Argonauts’ breakthrough in decoding the gate control systems and developing a control interface was only possible due to secret help from the Prometheans. Regardless of their help, however, the gate controls have proven difficult, complex, and dangerous to use. Through trial and error — and numerous horrible accidents — the procedures for gate operation have become standardized, though unexpected complications are par for the course.

Each gate can be open to numerous extrasolar locations. These destinations are dialed in from a pre-programmed “library” of destinations. Old gate connections are closed when a new one is dialed up. Extrasolar gate locations have ranged from habitable planets and moons to deep space to truly deadly environments such as the crushing gravities and poisonous atmospheres of gas giants and the coronas of stars. No one knows what to expect until a probe or sensor is pushed through.

The gate’s library listings are dense with untranslatable information. Researchers suspect this data includes details about each remote location, but so far transhumanity has only been able to decipher rough and misleading patterns. Complicating matters, the library entries often inexplicably change. More than once, operators have been unable to recall the address codes for previously accessed destinations, leaving gatecrashers or even entire colonies cut off from transhumanity. The library entries for specific destinations vary between gates; to date, researchers have been largely unsuccessful in opening a wormhole to a location using an address copied from another gate.

It is possible to instruct a gate not to accept connections from specific or all remote locations. If a remote gate is already in use, it will send a “busy signal” and put the connecting gate into a queue. Operators have had limited success overriding these blocks and busy signals, though new techniques have been derived to circumvent these cheats. Connections can also be set to open or close based on pre-set times.

First-in Procedures

Due to the inherent risks involved, first-in procedures are heavily emphasized and repeatedly drilled in the gatecrashing community, much like firearm safety is among responsible gun owners and armed professionals. These rules are strictly followed with most gate operation centers, and anyone who has received any sort of gatecrashing training will be familiar with the routine.

  • Before establishing a connection, create a defensive perimeter around the gate in case anything hostile comes through.
  • Create only a small wormhole on a first link — you never know what might come through.
  • Always probe the environment on the other side with tethered sensors first.
  • Always send a tethered recon bot through second.
  • Don’t bring blue boxes on first-in missions or where encountering sapient life is a possibility. Transhumanity doesn’t want to accidentally give another species the means to control the gates.
  • Don’t bring anything that could give away the location of the Solar System in the galaxy to an alien species.
  • Map everything. Mapping missiles are your friend.
  • Record everything.
  • Never take your vacsuit off until you are sure the environment is safe — breathable, non-toxic, etc.
  • Don’t touch anything unless you’re sure it won’t kill you.
  • If you encounter sapient life, keep contact minimal, be polite and non-threatening, back out quickly, and call in first-contact specialists.
  • Don’t forget to mark and register your claim.
  • Never miss your gate check-in time.
  • Always decontaminate when you come back.
  • Don’t bring back anything potentially dangerous or infectious without permission and safeguards in place first.

Gate Rules

The following rules apply when interacting with a pandora gate:

Detecting Gates

Gates are sometimes hidden from view. Gate structures are invisible to most electromagnetic frequencies (radar, microwave, terahertz, x-ray, and gamma-ray). They can be seen in the visual spectrum and are always cool, so are easier to spot in warmer climates using infrared (+10 Perceive). They also glow in ultraviolet (+20). They also hum in infra- and ultrasonic frequencies, and can be detected with enhanced hearing up to a kilometer away (+10 to +30).

Viewing a gate in operation can be an unsettling affair; make a Stress Test against SV 1d6 − 2.

Operating Gates

To operate a gate, you need a blue box that is physically connected to the gate’s control system. Gates within the Solar System and at larger colonies have well-protected stationary gate control systems, often hooked up to secure and air-gapped wired networks. Smaller outposts rely on blue boxes, though these may be locked away or protected by sentry bots to prevent mis-use.

Use Interface skill to control a gate’s operation, such as establishing a wormhole link, locking out remote connections, or setting an operation for a pre-set time. If opposed by a remote operator, this is an opposed test. Use Program to decode, analyze, or correlate entries in the gate’s library of extrasolar locations, though the opaqueness of the interface often makes this difficult (−30).

Opening a wormhole is a task action with a timeframe of up to 10 minutes; closing a connection takes up to 1d6 action turns. Superior successes may reduce this time. Any superior failure on a gate operation roll may result in a wormhole spontaneously shutting down (GM discretion).

Gate Transitions

Physical objects that move into a gate’s sphere when open will transition to the other side. This includes things like bullets, rockets, and other kinetic attacks, though targets on the opposite side cannot be seen (Blind Attacks).

Electromagnetic radiation and other types of waves, gases, and energies will not pass through; this includes sight, sensors, sound, radio, beam weapons, poison gas, fire, and explosion blast effects (but shrapnel will pass; halve the DV). To interface with a remote mesh, a wired link must be passed through the wormhole.

Psi sleight effects do not pass across a gate’s threshold. However, an async could reach through and touch a target on the other side or stick their head/brain alone entirely through.

Anything left stationary on the threshold will be pulled to one side or the other in 1d10 action turns. Anything caught in transition when a wormhole closes is severed; allow a REF Check or apply DV 6d10 (armor does not apply) — or simply call it a fatality.

Pandora Gate Rumors

GMs determine which if any of the following are true:

  • The TITANs (or some other entity) make copies of anyone that passes through a wormhole for their own purposes — the next step in the TITANs’ bid to collect/upload all egos.
  • Some wormholes lead to pocket or mirror universes.
  • Wormhole transitions are not “real” — everything perceived is part of a vast virtual-reality sim run on a galactic network.
  • There is a gate on Earth — perhaps hidden under the Antarctic.
  • The Factors have a gate on the fringe of the Solar System — though they may be too afraid to use it.
  • Project Ozma secretly built the gates, based on communication with the TITANs or some other unknown entity.
  • The ETI has direct control over the gate network; it suits its purpose to have transhumanity occupy a small but limited galactic area.
  • The gate network is simply the next layer in the ETI’s mousetrap efforts. The more transhumanity uses the gates, the stronger the likelihood we will attract its attention.
  • At least one alien civilization has survived the ETI’s efforts to drive them extinct, either by nomadically passing through the gates or somehow living virtually within the gate network itself.
  • A network of larger gates exists specifically for spaceship travel that transhumanity has not yet discovered.
  • The TITANs (and perhaps others) have the ability to create wormhole connections without a gate already existing at the other end.