Appendix 12B — How to Not Travel Faster Than Light
The Soul Dam Transit Office's comprehensive guide to failed faster-than-light methods, featuring catastrophic engineering, retroactive illegality, and why the penguins won by not making the universe flinch.
Pinned to the inside cover is the Soul Dam Transit Office's only rule, handwritten by someone who has seen too much:
ONE RULE
If your method forces the Dam to deploy the Claw for bulk retrieval, it becomes illegal retroactively.
(Retroactively means: it was illegal before you thought of it. This keeps the universe's paperwork tidy.)
1) The Planetary Push Off Catapult
Code 5576 — "No Kicking of Astronomical Bodies."
Incident: Gint / Horkle's Moon
Yes—on paper, "push off a moon" does not get you faster than light. You can't just kick your way past c unless you also kick your crew into historical past tense.
So the Gintish did what all early innovators do: they added a loophole.
They built a mechanical arm on Horkle's Moon and hit it so hard the local soul matter gradient snapped—like a rubber band across a filing cabinet—triggering an automatic Soul Dam "reconciliation." The Dam's accounting doesn't like sudden unbalanced momentum; it corrects by reassigning the ship's position to where the ledger makes sense again.
To outside observers: the ship "skipped" ahead in a blink.
To the crew: the ship became a brief philosophical argument about viscosity.
Then Horkle's Moon—obeying the part of physics that always shows up for work—altered orbit and introduced itself to Gint at lethal enthusiasm.
Outcome:
- Ship arrives "fast."
- Crew arrives "flat."
- Moon arrives "inside."
The crater is now a Soul Dam annex, because nothing says "archival stability" like a hole made by optimism.
2) The Naked Singularity Nudge
Code 12044 B — "Singularities Must Be Contained, Clothed, or Otherwise Made Decent."
Incident: Tureen System / Presspass → Ton 618
The Tureen Hegemony—largest empire ever recorded, spanning multiple galaxies—did not conquer by fleets, diplomacy, or culture.
They conquered by not having to travel the long way.
Their ships carried micro singularity nudges: tiny, controlled spacetime distorters to "fall" forward. It was elegant, fast, and catastrophically scaleable.
Their propaganda called it The Gentle Pull.
Everyone else called it Cheating.
And it worked—until, during a ceremonial millionth jump demonstration above Presspass (moon of Ladle IX, famous for press guilds and extremely brave cafés), the singularity did the rarest thing a mistake can do:
It succeeded too well.
One micro singularity didn't evaporate. It stabilized. It fed. It grew into Ton 618, which is now officially ranked:
- Largest black hole in the known universe,
- Most expensive clerical error,
- Only gravitational object with a standing appointment at the Soul Dam complaint desk.
The Hegemony didn't fall.
It got inhaled—whole fleets, core worlds, cultural archives, the imperial throne, and, according to one rumor nobody can verify (because event horizons are famously uncooperative), the entire Ministry of Taxation still inside, still stamping forms in the dark.
Outcome: the biggest empire in history becomes the biggest warning label in history.
3) Metaspace Drilling
Code 88.2 — "No Unauthorized Holes Into Adjacent Reality."
Incident: Mazar 13
Drill into metaspace, skim across, drill out. Fast. Modern. Investor friendly.
Mazar 13 left the aperture open during lunch.
Metaspace inhaled like it had been waiting politely for centuries for someone to stop watching.
It took satellites. Then infrastructure. Then a decorative orbital hotel shaped like a flower (tragically on theme). Then a portion of the ocean, which is how Mazar 13 discovered the concept of "tides with opinions."
The Soul Dam sealed the breach with a regulation cone.
It is still there.
Nobody laughs in front of it.
4) Full Conversion Lightpacking
Code 6001 — "No Converting Entire Vessels Into Radiation Without a Return Address."
Incident: Baffle / Pale Trevor
Baffle turned a ship into light because "light goes fast," and then they were shocked to learn that turning into light also turns you into something that does not conveniently reassemble into a person at the destination.
The beam left. The crew experienced no time. The universe experienced plenty of time. The ship never recomposed, and Baffle's moon Pale Trevor was bleached permanently by the departure flash.
Pale Trevor is now used as a navigational marker and a romantic landmark for species attracted to irreversible decisions.
5) Magnetic Overdrive Ladders
Code 7719 — "No System Scale Magnetization Without a Permit and Medical Waiver."
Incident: Clink Belt / Ferrum Lullaby — "Maximum North"
A ladder of superconducting rings accelerates ships in pulses until relativity starts sweating.
It also accelerates everything else containing metal.
Tools. Coins. Bolts. Cutlery. Personal implants. A very unfortunate commemorative statue. All attempted to join the voyage at once, creating a glittering storm of "technically not a fleet" moving in the same direction.
During Maximum North, the ship went fast, the sector went feral, and Ferrum Lullaby's iron core shifted like it was trying to leave early.
Navigation in the region remains… interpretive.
Closing Note
(handwritten, again)
The penguins didn't win by force. They won by compatibility.
Everyone else tried to win by making the universe flinch.
The universe does not flinch. It invoices.