r/worldbuilding • u/OuterPlanets I love making planets • 25d ago
Visual When reality stops being real.
(For Th’zoitrk, a semi-sci-fi worldbuilding project.)
(Images made with editing, not by AI.)
Under the ‘block model’ of physics, reality is, at the most fundamental level, comprised of Humes. A 0-dimensional ‘point’ which is the only constituent of reality. All existence across the universe, and multiverse, is at its most basic form just regions of Humes or no Humes.
Reality is made of ‘blocks’, each roughly one 4D hypercubic Planck length in size. Each of these blocks contains a certain number of Humes, and every block tries to have the same amount of Humes, as they don’t like being different.
Within each block, the rotations of these Humes decide what form that block will take. Matter, photons, inverse matter, or tekons.
Every Hume has what can only be described as its ‘essence’, a semi-metaphysical yet unquestionably real part of the Hume which decides how the Hume itself behaves, Humes like to mimic each other and have the same essence, I.E. the same ‘vibe.’
Because Humes are the constituent of reality, lower Hume density directly equates to making reality less ‘real’ in a given space.
Likewise, different Hume essences directly equate to different Hume behaviors, and thus different behavior of physics on all but a fundamental level.
The average Hume density on Th’zoitrk itself is 22 Humes.
(Actually ~22,000, but Hume density counts are always rounded to the nearest thousand.)
A Hume calibrator is a device capable of altering the essence of a Hume. It can write an entirely new ‘essence’ and then imprint it into a Hume.
A Hume calibrator can ‘redesign’ local physics.
A Hume engine is a device which can move Humes. They can decrease or increase Hume density in a location, and change the rotation of Humes within a block.
A Hume engine can make an area less ‘real’ than it was before. A Hume engine can convert matter into light, and vice versa.
An HEHC (Hume Engine, Hume Calibrator) is simply a device which combines both a Hume engine and a Hume calibrator into a single unit, controlled by a single computer.
The very first HEHC was created by the nation of Ikshi, unintentionally. A tempo-particular engine (portal generator) had suffered a malfunction and began behaving like an HEHC, a device which until then was BELIEVED to be impossible to construct. Except it was still attempting to execute code that would allow it to generate a portal, unaware it was now behaving as a mini ‘god.’
In an instant, local reality had diminished with dropping Hume density to the point of the device being completely incapable of even reading its own code, but it was incapable of stopping itself.
An entire building, alongside all those inside, had not ceased to exist. They continued to exist, they just stopped being ‘real.’
Until the tempo-particular engine acting as the first HEHC had broken reality to the point of no longer being able to function, and the surrounding Humes flooded back into the area, returning it to normal Hume density.
Little remained of the vicinity the device affected, not as in it was damaged or destroyed, but as in it was gone.
A bubble of space where it was as if nothing had ever been, created by a machine that accidentally made itself as though it never were.
The Ikshish government began attempts to design an intentional HEHC three days later.
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u/Witty_Mycologist_995 25d ago
Wait, is this SCP Foundation
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u/OuterPlanets I love making planets 25d ago
I originally copied the term ‘Humes’ from the SCP foundation as the name for the fundamental bits of reality when translating things into English because the in-universe name is ‘Besksu’, mhm!
But aside from name and the fact they describe reality, they don’t really follow the same system at all. ^^
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u/InsectSad4421 24d ago
Did you/are you making this Worldbuilding in another language that is not English? If so, what language is that (out of curiosity)
Oh and also this Worldbuilding is very well thought out and made. Just amazing overall I really have to say
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u/OuterPlanets I love making planets 24d ago
Well no, but most things in the setting have names that originate exclusively from the in-universe languages.
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u/jonesmz 25d ago edited 25d ago
What does being less real do, practically?
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u/OuterPlanets I love making planets 25d ago
Hume density can be thought of like how ‘strict’ the laws of physics are since Humes are constantly changing their essence a little bit. Since they like to copy each other, more Hume density (and thus more Humes nearby) means they don’t tweak their own essence too much as they try to keep mostly similar to the Humes around themselves.
Leading to how strictly physics are followed based on how closely all the separate Humes’ own essences match.But as the Hume density and thus how ‘real’ a spot is decreases Humes can let their essences get a bit too different from each other, changing how each Hume decides it wants to behave.
Meaning that the laws of physics became more fuzzy as they become less and less of actual laws and more of advice.Lower Hume density allows things that would otherwise be completely impossible to be possible.
The lower the density gets, the more different spots and objects can begin trying to follow their own completely unique laws of physics.7
u/jonesmz 25d ago
That's a really interesting take, thanks!
Are humes fixed in place? E.g. is a photon traveling through space a collection of humes with "Photon" essence moving around? or is it a wave of humes changing essence based on the "photon"-ness moving around?
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u/OuterPlanets I love making planets 25d ago
Humes themselves don’t like to move between block-zones in the ‘grid’ that makes up the universe much, but the blocks they make up do move. Blocks constantly swap places with one another, carrying over the rotational essence of their Humes as they swap with the Humes of another block that was in the spot they just took.
The speed limit as to how fast a block can swap places with another block is the speed of light, resulting in the speed of light limitation on physics remaining consistent in-universe with irl physics.
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u/wet_boi_gayest 23d ago
If the block "move" at the speed of light then how can there be areas less real when humes from elsewhere can come in and replace them
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u/AnkhAnanku 24d ago
The edited photos you made give this post an astounding uncanny vibe. Very classic analog horror I feel like I haven’t seen on the internet in like 15 years.
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u/EvelynSky88 24d ago
All these pics look and feel like when I astral project and everything is dark and sluggish and I try to gain control of the projection. They truly capture that feeling.
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u/cosmicomical23 3h ago
That's not what the block model is lol
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u/OuterPlanets I love making planets 2h ago
…It’s a fictional physics model.
From within the setting.1
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u/Gingerosity244 25d ago
"Wait, it's all just Minecraft?"
"Always was."