A parasite universe (a play on parallel universe and parasite) is a universe cut off from the past and future; like a pond that grows stagnant because water cannot flow into or out of it. A creature from such a world experiences the flow of time as a sensation akin to constantly falling forward, which soon drives it mad. Like the fairylands of legend, time doesn't pass in any meaningful sense in a parasite universe; after what may feel like only a few months, one could return to one's home world to find generations have come and gone. A parasite universe will latch onto another universe to syphon off time for itself. If this occurs while the borders between universes are weak which is known as "circle time" (when crop circles appear around the Discworld) then lifeforms may travel between these universes. Gateways to parasite universes, such as stone circles, often demonstrate delays in time; the sun will take longer to fade from inside a circle than outside it, for instance.
The Disc's principal Parasite Universe, known as Fairyland, is the domain of the Queen of the Elves and her sociopathic brethren. The crossing over of the elves into the Discworld is featured in the novels Lords and Ladies and The Wee Free Men. Fairyland is described similarly in both novels, though the details are different. It is a land of eternal winter, where the sun does not shine, nor night ever fall. It was, at one point, a far more pleasant place, with summers and flowers, but was frozen over when the Queen, furious at the departure of the King, ceased to be happy. The sky of Fairyland is described in Lords and Ladies as having all the colours of the aurora, though in The Wee Free Men it is described as having little definition at all, as if the featureless white ground and the featureless horizon were one and the same. Objects like trees don't become clearer the closer one gets to them; rather they sketch themselves into existence as if added by a hasty artist.
It is home not only to Elves but also to various other fairytale creatures such as grimhounds, unicorns and Jenny Greenteeth, though the Nac Mac Feegle, themselves former residents of the place, claim that nothing in Fairyland is actually native to it, unless it was made by the Queen herself. Creatures from such places are very weak to iron. One race captured by the Queen and pressed into her service are the dromes; huge, vaguely humanoid beings with grey, doughy flesh, toothless mouths and tiny eyes. They can project dreams and make them real, using them to ensnare their prey until it starves to death.
The Queen uses dromes to herd dreams, in much the same way that a shepherd herds sheep, and indeed dreams are her main mode of enslavement for those she captures. Someone trapped in a web of dreams within dreams within dreams soon loses any sense of what is real. (See also the film Inception)
Read more about this topic: Other Dimensions Of The Discworld
Famous quotes containing the words parasite and/or universe:
“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.”
—Henry Fielding (1707–1754)