Physically, in a way, my entire Voidpunk universe revolves around the concept of “ether.” To refresh your memory, it’s a fictional fifth fundamental interaction of nature (together with the gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear force), inspired by Kaluza-Klein geometries in general and the Randall-Sundrum model in particular.

For the Voidpunk universe, the existence of ether has five major implications:

1. As etherspace, it enables interstellar travel between Population I stars or between Population 2 stars.
2. As etherstrands, it offers etherspace pathways based on fractal Mandelbulb sets for interstellar travel, where all kinds of interesting things can happen.
3. As etherpoint locations and etherpoint ellipsoids, it provides a choke point for star system entry and exit and all kinds of interstellar conflicts.
4. As thaumaturgy, it enables four flavors of exchanging and transforming energy over distances: thaumatec, individual thaumaturgy by so-called capables, exo-cult thaumaturgy, and the powers of the exoentities, or Mythos gods, themselves. (But the latter, most likely, have sources of power beyond ether.)
5. As etherfield, it allows for interplanetary travel by means of ethercoils.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting! But when you compare it to what the other four fundamental forces of nature do or make possible in the universe we actually live in, it’s well within the range of plausibility.

Now, ethercoils. Leaking out from the etherpoint, the etherfield permeates a star system’s heliosphere up to the heliopause where interplanetary space ends and interstellar space begins. (In our Solar System, that would be somewhere between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud.) Within the heliosphere, spaceships can travel at a fixed acceleration rate of 1.0006g, the so-called universal ether constant (UEC). An H3 reactor provides the ethercoils with energy at a fixed rate, and the ethercoils in turn convert ether energy to gravitational energy for UEC acceleration. (While UEC is fixed, it can still be decreased by “diverting” part or all of it in different directions and balancing everything out.) Conveniently, this acceleration rate also provides a 1g environment for the crew; but in most cases, that’s not terribly important, because spaceships don’t have bridges in the Voidpunk universe.

This arrangement has two collateral benefits. On the one hand, spaceships can’t travel interstellar distances with their ethercoils because the etherfield doesn’t extend beyond the heliosphere. Then, this kind of interplanetary travel is dirt-cheap; the H3 reactor can easily supply your ship’s ethercoils and life support and flight shields even if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck. Only if you have to engage your ship’s regular propulsion system because you’re in a hurry or in combat and need a lot more than a paltry 1.0006g for maneuvering, and when you have to supply your combat shield and weapon systems, then your H3 consumption raises to vertiginous heights in a blink, and that will cost you. (But that’s a topic for another post.)