2.08 - Gates of Phet

[Transcript]Tritium barnacles don’t come off vitro-plastic steel easy but the commission from the Escathai was too good to pass up. Ship is docked on the dorsal side of their Reef Leviathan for the time bein’. They needed navigation help gettin’ around the Lorn Supercluster. Something I just so happen to be uniquely qualified for.We take a wide arch around the it but that has the unfortunate consequence of steering us close to the Gates of Phet. Doorway to the Dominium Vitae of the Herlochti. Been there as long as I can recall and ain’t never met anyone or anything can remember a time the Gates didn’t stand looming over the Drawt Nebula at their feet.Escathai use Odo Lenses exclusively so we jump as close as I dare to the Gates before taking the next few cycles to double check my sightings before jumping us out. Hamark had never seen ‘em before but they ain’t much to look at. A three by three by five grid of perfect cubes each of them exactly one light-year in each dimension. No one’s sure if there are any Herlochti left. The few celestorians and Segathi Trance Seekers have recorded seem drawn uncontrollably to the Gates of Phet. One of the few thousand or so known entities the viral vector of human cognizance can’t attach itself to. They move by fractal, the passage of time flowing through their bodies is what lets them reposition themselves. They can be made of just about anything, the pattern bein’ what really gives ‘em life.Phet is a kind of afterlife, from what I hear. A realm constructed of pure psyche like the Mythosphere is for humanoids. Except time doesn’t seem to exist there. Our only external account comes from the Wrot Kelemandias who tried to force their way through the Gates of Phet about two and a half billion years ago. It’s no mean thing to kill a Wrot, but that did. The commune was tapped into their psychic stream the moment Kelemandias breached the Dominium Vitae barrier. What lays beyond is immutable, permanent, fixed for all eternity extending into the past and present. In Phet time doesn’t exist. Rest, I’d guess, from the never ending stream the rest of us must endure.