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Timeless Space, also known as The Oceans Unmoving, is a region where there is no native time. It can only be accessed (usually unintentionally) by magical or technological means, essentially by dropping outside time.

Environment[]

Items (including creatures) brought in Timeless Space carry an "aura" of time with them, which will eventually run out. While an object has time left, it will appear normal and act normally; when it runs out, the object will lose its temporal properties (freeze in time), graying out and becoming immobile. This state is referred to as the "Long Gray" and is a fate feared by everyone in Timeless Space. "Reactivating" a frozen object is possible by touching it with another that has time left, which will then lose some of its own time. However, several objects in close proximity have a stronger aura than single ones and last longer, though not so much as to compensate for the loss of time for one object in activating another. Inanimate objects carry very little time with them; living plants more; animals even more; and intelligent creatures most of all. Different objects also require correspondingly more time to activate. Why this is so is not known, though Dr. Viennason speculates it's proof of the existence of souls. The strength of an object's aura is visible by sight, and a large enough concentration of time will create a spherical time bubble as opposed to the usual aura. It is possible for a large enough community of people to maintain a steady time bubble.

The terrain Timeless Space mostly consists of floating islands of land of varying sizes, possibly held aloft by being never un-frozen in time. Some of these have communities built on them, some of the largest mentioned being Calix's village and a port called the Madagascar. Some of them also have forests planted by Teknokon explorers. The floating ships of the Teknokons are also the main manner of transport through Timeless Space.

It is not made clear if there is solid land down below in some parts of Timeless Space, but in some areas, there is a sea, also called The Oceans Unmoving. It's as frozen as everything else, and ships going to near may find themselves snapping their lower powersails and going under.

Inhabitants[]

Timeless Space is inhabited by a mixture of intelligent creatures, mostly humans but also at least Caribs and a handful of gray aliens, who have dropped out of time one way or another and struggle to survive. Many are pirates, electing to sail in a Teknokon ship and keep prisoners in their hold in order to maintain a sufficient time aura while avoiding actual social contact. This may be because, as Bun-bun described them, they're basically all socially unskilled nerds who dropped out of time in failed time-travel experiments. The other, less common way to end up in Timeless Space is by magic. In either case, everyone ends up in roughly the same "time" in Timeless Space, no matter when they come from.

Myths, concepts and theories[]

Timeless Space has a large collection of legends and myths on the one hand, and unique concepts on the other. Everyone knows of the robotic Teknokon explorers who came and left before the time most people dropped into Timeless Space, leaving their ships behind. A hermit carib called Crazy Carver is also the subject of many and constantly new legends, even though he maintains his secrecy and few people seem to meet him. The Holy Grail of Timeless Space is Teknokon One, a ship that is rumored to be able to actually leave it and return into the normal world. Other concepts (all detailed in a series of annoying DVDs by Dr. Viennason) include the following.

Entrance/Exit[]

Most likely the first people to enter Timeless Space were Kada's employers seeking to use Timeless Space as a method to quick intergalactic travel, but their self-replicating robots and attempts to create stable time fields failed and they left.

The people who are trapped in Timeless Space are there because they have been thrown out of time for whatever reason, be they scientific, magical or supernatural like when Bun-bun was dropped out of the Halls of Time.

Aside from the legend of Teknokon One there is another method to simply jump into the Oceans Unmoving below. When one falls into the ocean and lose all of their time to the ocean and are left for dead, never to be seen again. But what actually happens is that some undetermined amount of time the all powerful Uncle Time will appear and return them to the time that is "ballpark to the point where (they) left."

The irony is that almost everyone in Timeless Space is trying to get back to the normal world. And at the same time they avoid the Oceans Unmoving as they consider it a fate similar to death. But the Oceans Unmoving have proven an easy way to escape at least once.

It's later revealed in 4U City Red that the Timeless space isn't the true temporal void of the Sluggy multiverse, but rather, that's a "safe net" of the boundaries of a dimension that kept it's residents from go to oblivion by accidental time travel and all the dimensions has it's own Timeless space. However, excessive time-space travels between dimensions may destroy the timeless space between such dimensions and doom the said dimension.[1]

References[]

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