Built to listen

The ear

Gravitational waves are the only signal that has travelled freely since the beginning, because light was trapped for the universe's first 380,000 years. To hear the beginning, you build something that rings when one passes.

• A world is close to an ideal detector. A ringing detector hears in proportion to its mass times the square of its speed of sound. A world's frame is the stiffest matter possible, where sound moves at nearly the speed of light, so by our estimate one world hears about 10²¹ times better than the metal bars of the 1960s.
• It rings where the sky is silent. A world this size rings at about 0.77 MHz, where nothing known in the sky makes gravitational waves. The very early universe could have, when its false vacuums decayed, and the worlds are made of the same physics. The builders held false vacuum inside them to hear the first ones decay.
• The shape sets the tuning. A sphere hears every direction equally, and a lens or a waist rings at different tones for different directions, so changing shape points the ear and tunes it.
• One world is one pixel. Thousands of worlds on an orbit two AU wide make a single ear, each tuned a little differently.

The physics is real, and only the scale is made up.

The builders

Each world cost the builders about 3.5% of a year of their sun's light and took five centuries to charge, in a yard of radiators glowing orange-white. A partial swarm of collectors was enough. That puts the worlds with cathedrals and moon landings, things built because they mean something.

Their creed was Wheeler's. He drew the universe as a U, with observers at one end looking back at the beginning at the other, and argued that their looking helps make the beginning real. In his phrase "it from bit", everything comes in the end from answers to yes-or-no questions. An ear tuned to the beginning was the eye of that U, built for real, which is why they spent a star's light on it. The game only needs them to have believed it.

Then the ear heard something, and the story never says what. The builders followed it through the Long Gate. Gates never carry anyone faster than light, so the trip takes years, and nobody has come back.

The Keeper

The builders couldn't take the worlds with them or safely leave them alone. A charged world that fails releases its energy as a flash about a million times brighter than the Sun for one second, enough to scorch planets within an AU, and taking one apart takes as long as building it. So they left the worlds charged, with a keeper.

The Keeper holds the false vacuum in place, repairs any patch that slips, and folds and unfolds the ground. If it stopped, the world would collapse.

It also kept the league, because the creed says observing matters. So every match is watched, from the stands, on the Lantern and across the swarm. The worlds were built to listen to the beginning, and now they listen to the players.

The league

• Ranked by light. At Earth's distance from its sun, a world gets a third of noon daylight inside, and full daylight needs an orbit of about 0.58 AU. So lower leagues play in dim outer orbits and the finals in bright inner ones, and the bright meadow we draw is a top-tier world.
• A reward that travels at light speed. Champions are sent through the Long Gate after the builders, so nobody knows whether the reward is real.
• Nobody has to die. The guns and the skins are projections the Keeper runs, so a match can end without a death.
• Players are raised to compete.

How players find out

Players learn the story from the world itself, without cutscenes, in this order:

1. The sweeps. Field events are the ear's recordings played about ten million times slower, so a 0.77 MHz ring becomes a wave that takes ten seconds to cross the world. Players ride echoes of the early universe before they know it.
2. The hull. Under the meadow, the panels that fold and unfold the ground turn out to be the ear's tuning.
3. Outside. From the outer skin, the swarm is in view: thousands of black worlds, all turned the same way, listening.
4. The Long Gate faces the source.
5. A yard still glowing. One yard is still building a world nobody ordered.

Decided and open

• decidedThe world under the story: hollow, still and held up by a false vacuum, with holographic guns and skins, and gates no faster than light.
• proposedThe ear as the worlds' purpose, Wheeler's creed as the reason for the league, leagues ranked by light, and champions sent through the Long Gate.
• openWhether losing a match means real death or a loss of rank.
• openWho the players are: the builders' descendants, people the Keeper raised, or both.
• openWhether the reward is real, empty or unknown, and what the ear heard.
• openWhether a failing world's flash is visible. If it is dark, leaving the worlds is safer and the Keeper needs another reason to stay.
• openThe names: the Keeper, the Loom, the Lantern, the Long Gate.