The Tunneling System

Story so far

Explained by Mordecai while decoding the floor. The modern tunneling system is a The Plenty invention, only a few hundred seasons old, providing near-universal real-time communication. It is proprietary and nobody understands how it works.

Before it, everything went through the wormholes. Mordecai's own season drew as many viewers as this one, but most of the universe received the crawl on delay — an hour, a year, depending on distance. Only the centre system watched live. Following and favouriting crawlers in real time from the outer systems is a recent thing, and the breakthrough changed everything about the show. It also rendered the communications relays Borant Corporation held a stake in obsolete, which is the buried grievance underneath the whole floor's propaganda. Mordecai notes the irony that Borant uses the very technology it hates to spew its hate everywhere.

Role

The galaxy's real-time communications network, and the economic wound behind the fourth floor's politics.

Relationships