Eversky

The Eversky (pronounced /ˈɛvɚskaɪ/) is a virtual world of the Multivirt, owned by the Sociate. The Eversky has no large surface of solid ground; all the solid land in the world consists of floating islands, the largest only a kilometer or so in diameter. In fact, the world actually wraps around from top to bottom, and technically it would be possible to fly up or down long enough to end up back where one started, although the world is vast enough that this would take a very long time (and anything falling would be almost certain to hit an island somewhere before returning to its starting point).

Shape

Technically, the way it is stored and run internally on the simulators, the Eversky is a perfect rectihedron, thousands of kilometers on a side. However, because opposite sides are connected, its cuboid shape is not obvious to its inhabitants; it seems like a continuous, borderless expanse of indefinite extent. For all practical purposes, the Eversky is ungular in form.

The density of islands remains about the same regardless of altitude; because of this and the world's wraparound nature, there is no easy way for an inhabitant to tell when he is near the top or bottom of the world—for all practical purposes, the world has no top and bottom, and the only reason it makes sense at all to refer to the top and bottom is because of the way the virtual world is represented internally. The other borders, however, are more easily recognizable, because at each border (except for the top and bottom) there is an empty area several kilometers wide, called the Buffer. It's still possible to wrap around the world in those directions and return to one's starting point, but one has to pass through the Buffer to do so. The reason for the Buffer's existence is to allow for easy expansion of the Eversky without awkwardly forcing apart islands formerly close together. Indeed, since the creation of the Eversky, the world has expanded horizontally several times; it started as a perfect cube, but is now significantly larger in the horizontal directions than in the vertical.

Physics

The most immediately noticeable difference between the physics of the Eversky and that of Mater is that Eversky gravity has a built-in terminal velocity not due to air resistance, and much lower than the usual terminal velocity on Earth. The reason for this is not difficult to guess; with all the open space in the Eversky, the owners don't want objects falling off an island to plummet into another at high velocities and damage structures (or people) below. The terminal velocity of Eversky gravity is therefore set to approximately 15.7 meters per second, a speed at which a long fall may be painful but is unlikely to lead to serious damage or injury.

Islands

The Eversky contains approximately one trillion islands of various sizes—the Sociate claims there are exactly 903,212,699,022, but no one has checked the count, and given the existence of some groups of connected islands that may or may not be considered single islands, any such exact count is questionable at best. Technically, the islands of the Eversky are shees, but this word is not actually used there (or much of anywhere else in the Multivirt); its inhabitants almost invariably refer to them as simply "islands". Since there are no conventional liquid-surrounded islands in the Eversky anyway, outside of a very few cases on some of the largest shees, this terminology seldom leads to any ambiguity or confusion.

Most of the islands of the Eversky are made of metal—most of them of metals that exist only virtually such as alumium and orichalcum, but some of "real" metals such as steel and bronze. A fair number of the islands are instead made up of earth; these park islands tend to be planted with grass and other vegetation, and a few of them even have some animal life. A small minority of islands (a little under two percent) are made of other materials, such as wood or stone. A slim majority of the islands are at least roughly circular, ellipsoidal, or rectangular, but there are also many of more abstract and unusual shapes, from crescents and pentagons to irregular blobs.

Many of the larger or otherwise noteworthy islands have their own names, either assigned by the Sociate when they are created or formalized by the populace later. Other islands remain nameless, though they may very well have local nicknames used by some nearby residents but which have not spread to the wider population. Many groups of neighboring islands have collective names, even if some of the individual islands within the group remain anonymous.

Inhabitants

Most of the inhabitants of the Eversky are human, but there is a large representation of some other species as well, including treves, epheces, and bucols.

One notable thing nearly all inhabitants of the Eversky have in common, however, is the ability to fly. This is regardless of whether or not the creatures' species would normally be able to fly; races elsewhere earthbound (humans included) in the Eversky have flying abilities. Some of them have wings; others can simply move about in three dimensions as they will. There is actually some measure of mutual contempt between these two types, though it seldom breaks out into open conflict; the "flappers" (those with wings) see the "floaters" (those without) as missing out on the physical sensations associated with winged flying, while the floaters see the flappers as being unnecessarily limited in their maneuverability. There is also a small minority of inhabitants with more exotic means of flying, such as rockets or propellors; both the floaters and the flappers tend to think them a bit odd.

The Eversky has little alogous life, apart from the pets some of its denizens may have. Some of the park islands do have life on them, but it's generally limited to ornamental plants and small animals. Hackers, however, have introduced a few invasive creatures that the Sociate and its agents have not been able to eradicate, among the most pervasive of which are the clusworm and the spider rat.

Social Structure

Like many virtual worlds, the Eversky is nominally under the control of its owning company, but in practice is more or less an anarchy. The Sociate usually staffs it with only about eight supervisors per cubic kilometer, which is far from sufficient to enforce their law. There are pockets of order ruled by local leaders, but few that extend farther than a cubic kilometer or so at the most. Nevertheless, for the most part, with the exception of some bad neighborhoods, the Eversky remains fairly pacific and orderly despite the lack of centralized authorities.

All hacks are illegal in the Eversky, but, given the inadequacy of the Sociate's law enforcement there, this ban has little effect, and for the most part people are able to use hacks with impunity. In fact, one neighborhood of the Eversky, called Corley, is known as one of the best places in the Multivirt to get hacks, and there are many hacks that can be acquired there and nowhere else, or at least nowhere else as cheaply. However, Corley is also known as a rather dangerous place to visit, full of varmints and unscrupulous individuals who love to try out their hacks on new victims.

Like all worlds of the Multivirt, the Eversky contains portals to many other worlds. The traffic between it and other worlds, however, is relatively slight; most Everskyers are more or less content with their residence, and feel little need to spend much time elsewhere, and conversely few outsiders have much reason to visit the Eversky. The Eversky has developed a bit of a rivalry with Életfa, however, a portal to which exists on the island of Dapanzi, and many people do pass through that portal to watch the frequent contests held between the two virtual worlds.