Swiss Cheese and Bug Theory

This is a total niche nerd post. I’m putting up Prizm maps. These are wormhole maps. In the book its not called Wormhole but Swiss Cheese and a Bug Theory.

So we start with some terminology. A brane is a physics term to mean an object that can have multi-dimensional space. It’s short for membrane. One theory is that our universe is a 3 dimensional brane that we are stuck to preventing us from perceiving other dimensions.

Since a wormhole goes through space it’s 4 dimensional so in order to talk about it linearly or 2 dimensionally I made up little grid sections which I am calling branes. Its just a way to break down parts of a multiverse onto a map or grid. Imagine this chart extending out and then wrapping in a sphere and then expanding as big as the universe.

In this first grid you have branes broken down by letter and the names of port towns or places written in there. Some port names are the names of the planets and others are not. It just depends on the port.

This was my grid for tracking characters in the Prizm. I got lost when I wrote the book so had to come up with a map. The Prizm is a series of interconnected spacetime routes. The hub of the multiverse is a confederation known as New Sulan. That’s where discovery of the Prizm was made and from where the original Trade Routes began. So, since this a transparency, the next thing we do is add in the Trade Routes of New Sulan.

So, the routes only go one way signified by the direction of the arrows drawn on the lines. You can only go between connecting ports in one direction, so you will have to go around the universe with a few short cuts in the middle. New Sulan is in Brane C with a sub hub of the confederacy in Brane J.

Earth, our Earth, is not directly on these trade routes. Once the Trade Routes were established most money minded traders were not too interested in expanding them, mainly because finding new wormholes or portals often leads to death. So, these routes became the main trade byways of the Prizm with a strange and multiworldly culture growing up at the various ports.

So, these are the Earth Routes, the wormholes that tie into the New Sulan Trade Routes. Earth’s Prizm coordinates are AA0-1203.

These are the routes that main characters Bea, Jen, Ella and Sissy take during the story.

And here we have everything overlaid so you can see it all. Gets messy at this point, but you can see the main characters utilizing a combination of Trade Routes and secret routes to maneuver around the Prizm. That’s the main purpose of these maps anyway. In the novel this becomes important because Bea (Beasil) tries to steer clear of the Trade Routes being that they are taxed and policed and he is, of course, a spy.