The Ring
Arguably the ultimate expression of the Xeelee's technological prowess, the object known as Bolder's Ring or simply the Ring was long a source of wonder and mystery.
When Jim Bolder flew to the Great Attractor in the Qax's captured nightfighter, what he found was astonishing. All matter in the universe was falling towards the object's massive gravity well. Even more astounding, this object and indeed the entire motion of the galaxies themselves appeared to be the work of the Xeelee, who were using the mass to create a ring of cosmic strings several million light years in diameter.
The purpose of the device was a mystery, but it was assumed the Xeelee's intent was hostile and that they were effectively destroying the universe for their own ends. Indeed, it was this assumption in part that led to Man's species imperative to wage a million-year war to defeat the Xeelee at all costs.
It was only after Humanity's ultimate defeat that the sad remnants of the species would discover the truth. The Ring was not a battleship, or a fortress, or a weapon. The Ring was an escape hatch, with the naked singularity at its center providing access to other universes. The Xeelee had been waging an eons-long war against an opponent that even they could not beat, not even with the ability to engineer time itself. Their last resort had been to build the Ring to escape before the ultimate death of the universe.
Only three groups of humans were known to have escaped through the Ring. The humans of the generational GUTship Great Northern, escaped into a new young universe after being displaced five million years into the future, and the last human refugees of the hypersphere prison that held Man after their defeat by the Xeelee. The Xeelee proved themselves to have at least some compassion towards their baryonic kindred in the latter case, by leaving a partially sentient starship to carry the humans away. During the war one ship crashed through the ring arriving in a universe with ultra high gravity. The crew survived and the novel Raft recounts some of their history.
The Ring itself was ultimately destroyed by the Photino Birds. They had set in motion a radio-frequency amplification effect, a bomb of sorts that would disrupt the Ring after reaching critical levels in several million years. However this gradual destruction was vastly accelerated due to the Photino Birds being tricked into thinking the Xeelee had returned, and the retaliatory star-strike conducted by the Qax in an attempt to halt them. The cosmic strings that composed the ring would cut if they self-intersected, creating a chain reaction that would ultimately destroy the entire Ring.
Read more about this topic: Xeelee Technology
Famous quotes containing the word ring:
“There is no magic decoding ring that will help us read our young adolescent’s feelings. Rather, what we need to do is hold out our antennae in the hope that we’ll pick up the right signals.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, III, ch.4 (1985)
“The Mormons make the marriage ring, like the ring of Saturn, fluid, not solid, and keep it in its place by numerous satellites.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)