Fold Caves - kh3dron.net

FOLD CAVES

ENTRY LAST UPDATED: 2161

Fold Caves (or “Trap Caves”) are members of the proposed domain of life Manifoldia, characterized by non-Euclidean connectivity and temporally displaced bodily components. They present as angular stone caverns whose surrounding geology is ordinary, while the interior space exhibits directed adjacency: formally, traversals can be locally reversible but globally non-returning. Fold Caves are theorized to function as carnivorous organisms that “fold” space and time around prey, confining open space into closed regions from which exit paths do not exist. Digestion is inferred to occur in the future.

RETROCHRONOLOGICAL GROWTH

The earliest observer-time discovery of a Fold Cave was discovered in 2099 outside of Duluth, Minnesota. Several more caves have been found near the Great Lakes. It is possible that these are separate regions of the same organism; these caves may connect further in the future. The centralization around the great lakes also indicates that access to fresh water may be important to the phenomenon, be this requirement biological or otherwise.

In 2103, investigators identified a previously undiscovered earlier reference to the same cavity in a 2093 university field archive, originally filed as an anomalous survey artifact. In 2110, additional evidence emerged indicating multiple cave-diver disappearances in the region throughout the early 2080s, implying the site had been accessible and active well before its 2099 documentation.

As the Observer (“Observers” referring to those of us outside the Fold Cave) moves forward through time, evidence of the first occurrence of the Fold Caves appears further in the past. It is anticipated, therefore, that the cave is an organism which is growing, and in doing so expanding further backwards through time, leading to subsequent "earlier" discovery dates. Whether the 2099 discovery (commonly called the "Observer's First” discovery for simplicity) denotes some unique milestone in the lifecycle of the Fold Cave (equivalent to maturity, a form of costly signaling, mating display, or death) is unknown.

The rate of new discoveries is slowing; given their past trends, it is predicted that the final “first” discovery of the Fold Cave will be found to have been in the late 1800s, and that this “Observer’s Last” discovery will be detected in the early 2300s. Like the date of Observer's First discovery, the significance of these dates with regard to the organism’s life cycle are unknown.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

Fold Caves present as stone caverns whose geology is externally unremarkable. The surrounding rock matches the local strata and shows no abnormal wear or tear. Internally, however, the surfaces are planar and neat at a level incompatible with natural cave formation. Wall faces meet at near-perfect right angles and remain flat across lengths that should expose bedding, grain, or faulting. No water is found inside the caves, moving or still.

The cave’s internal structure is described as being full of “rooms”; cubic areas connected by inset square tunnels at random. Traversing Fold Caves through room and tunnel paths is trivial; moving up or down to different levels requires flying or rappelling equipment to access. Caves can be disorienting to traverse, due to each room looking nearly identical beyond the specific random tunnel connections on the six faces of each room. At the same time, the regularity of the structure can make path descriptions easier, as many paths are expressible in simple “two forward, one left, one up, two right” syntax.

The most widely accepted explanation for this cubic shape is that the stone has been duplicated around the border of higher dimensional embedding. In this interpretation, a Fold Cave is not a “cave” carved from rock; it is instead a single rock face being duplicated and wrapped around an interior fractal maze.

BIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

The most commonly accepted explanation for the Fold Cave phenomenon is the “pitcher plant” theory. Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants which grow long, bowl-like leaves, which lure prey inwards with sweet smelling nectar. Prey intending to drink this nectar becomes trapped in the bowl, which also functions as the plant’s stomach. Small bugs drown and are later digested. In topological terms, this hunting strategy can be described as presenting a two-dimensional surface deformed into a three-dimensional basin. Prey moves across an apparently ordinary leaf surface, then finds themselves first unable to escape, and finally pulled actively towards death.

Extending this mechanic to higher dimensions, Fold Caves are understood to deform three-dimensional space into a higher dimensional point of no return, called a “Trap Cycle”. When prey is near the mouth of the cave, pathfinding is typical for three dimensional space; explorers can move freely between any two points at will. At a deeper point, however, explorers can fall into “Trap Cycles”; areas of cave-space which spontaneously form closed loops from which escape is impossible. Once inside a Trap Cycle, victims are disconnected from normal euclidean spacetime and are unreachable by external observers.

The rock surface of the caves is not believed to be “flesh”; it exhibits no visible movement, energy signatures, or organic properties. The cavern is not believed to be the organism itself, but the stabilized rim, akin to the empty space inside a pitcher plant. The metabolically active “flesh” of the organism is presumed to exist in the future or to reside permanently in a higher-dimensional space.

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

There are many alternative theories explaining the Fold Cave phenomenon. Most non-organic theories share two premises: (1) that the Fold Cave is an extension of some process occurring primarily in the future, and (2) that its apparent “spread” further into the past reflects the continuation or growth of this process.

The Spacecraft theory sees Fold Caves as infrastructure: a component of an advanced transit or propulsion system, constructed by humans or non-humans, which moves passengers through controlled wormhole-like topologies. Proponents cite the caves’ geometric regularity and the absence of natural excavation signatures as evidence of the entire system being manufactured, as well as the obvious usefulness of the ability to create Fold Caves connecting arbitrary points. The system (or a part of it) may have been damaged in the future, which has sent a section of it back through time to us. Capture in a Trap Cycle may be akin to being hit by a train in a subway tunnel erroneously presumed empty, or touching an unexpectedly live wire.

The Runoff theory frames Fold Cave effects as byproducts of high-energy systems - most commonly antimatter production or containment - leaking into observer space as distortions in local spacetime. Supporters note that Fold Caves are often dimly illuminated without an apparent source; in this model, the light is interpreted as radiation from an ongoing process spreading through a higher dimension. The main effect producing the temporal leak is assumed to have failed or defected somehow, overlapping with the last theory.

The final theory is the “Strange Bomb” theory; proposing that Fold Caves are a weapon deployed in the future, with its effective front propagating backward through time. In this view, the cavernous form is incidental (perhaps the weapon was detonated underground), and the distorted space may not permanently be limited to caves. Proponents of this interpretation fear that folding regions will continue spreading, and larger areas may eventually be drawn into Trap Cycles and become separated from euclidean space. Proponents of this theory are often active in extreme anti-science and anti-weapons groups, and have caused several major incidents to equipment and researchers near cave sites.

TOPOLOGICAL PROPERTIES

Besides Trap Cycles, the other space warping behavior of Fold Caves is called a “False Return”: an unpredictable phenomenon in which a subject departs a location L1, traverses to location L2, and then returns to location L1 by a different path. All local measurements - range scans, inertial data, and internal frame of reference - indicate the traveller has returned to the original position. However, any objects physically left behind at L1 (such as dropped equipment or chalk lines) are absent on return. The prevailing interpretation is that the cave turns linear traversals into non-repeatable cycles; emitting multiple globally distinct points that are locally indistinguishable. In these cases, a traversal can return the explorer to an identical copy of L1, which occupies the same space in three dimensions, but separate coordinates in higher dimensions.

For a lower dimensional analogy, consider a circular path. Creating a false return would be to lift that circle, cut it, and duplicate it through a higher dimension (the third) into an infinitely repeating spiral. For an observer expecting to be traveling along a circle, all points should be re-visitable within one rotation. However, if the observer had been imperceptibly lifted from a circle into a spiral topology, they would be able to revisit multiple distinct copies of their starting point while occupying the same coordinates in their expected 2D space. In operational graph models, the false return constitutes a cycle in measured state but not in identity, implying a non-injective projection from the cave’s underlying manifold to observer-space coordinates.

False Returns, while disorienting, are not disastrous. Observers can return to their original starting locations by retracing their steps exactly. However, False Returns are commonly found at the same depths as Trap Cycles, making them a strong indicator of spatially unstable areas. Because Trap Cycles are space-compressing, and False Returns are space-expanding, these two phenomena may be akin to a flowery edge or petal structure of a plant when viewed from the appropriate dimension.

MAPPING AND MEASUREMENT

Exploration by humans is discouraged by treaty and practical hazard. Current mapping and survey are conducted exclusively by drones and tethered instrumentation. Despite this, first-hand human accounts continue to enter the record due to the phenomenon’s retrochronological spread: as real observer-time advances, earlier observers with earlier technology are found to have “discovered” and entered the same sites, each believing themselves to be the first to do so. These accounts, though inconsistent in detail, are unanimous on several features: (1) an interior geometry described as “cubic” and “repeating”, and (2) an apparent lack of natural cave-formation properties. Rooms and tunnels never shrink, at any distance into the system.

Wireless transmissions of all kinds are consistently poor beyond the first line-of-sight junction. Signal loss exceeds that expected from ordinary interference, and does not improve with increased transmitter power. Optical conditions are similarly anomalous. Interiors are typically dimly illuminated without an identifiable source, yet light and laser beams dissipate rapidly and fail to produce glares or reflections. The leading hypothesis is that electromagnetic radiation is somehow permitted to spread into the higher degrees of freedom within the cavity.

This dissipation effect can be measured and compared against the inverse square law to calculate the dimensionality of regions of the interior system. Results are inconsistent across different rooms and at different times, but spatial dimensionality has been measured to be as high as 8.1. For areas with greater than three spatial dimensions, there may be additional tunnels connecting adjacent cubic rooms in higher dimensions: they may be up to sixteen paths plainly traversable for more advanced explorers, as accessible to them as the lowest six sides of each cube are to us.

ANOMALOUS EGRESS AND TEMPORAL SHEAR

In Fold Cave explorations, a small number of expeditions have reported “anomalous egress”: an observer enters a region previously modeled as a Trap Cycle and later reappears at or near a known entrance without traversing any mapped return path. These incidents are rare, poorly instrumented, and often confounded by concurrent environmental disturbances.

The first and best documented case (see 2121 CRAWLER Event) began as a routine drone survey of the Duluth site. A disposable drone observer nicknamed CRAWLER-3 entered the Fold Cave aided by radio link and progressed into a known Trap Cycle, with intention of conducting an experiment attempting to use laser light reflection across the Trap Cycle boundary. Approximately 19 minutes after loss of line-of-sight, the supervising team recorded a regional seismic event (Magnitude 4.2) and experienced a rapid strengthening of signal transmissions inside the cave, consistent with extreme dimensionality contraction. The CRAWLER-3 reappeared unaided at the mouth 43 minutes after initial entry, physically undamaged but exhibiting profound age advancement: the on-board nuclear battery indicated 8 to 12 years of elapsed time.

The prevailing interpretation does not require that the drone “traveled into the future” in the ordinary sense. Instead, the event is modeled as temporal shear between components: while the main body of the cave remains in sync with the external observer-time, time in Trap Cycle subgraphs accelerate, in which large intervals of proper time accumulate along the isolated worldline. In this model, the observer experienced a long confinement in a region disconnected from the mouth of the cave, until this region suddenly re-connected to the main body when the cave’s geometry was disrupted. The analogy in the Pitcher Plant model is of a victim sliding down into the digestive bowl who is suddenly yanked back out; they may have been experiencing rapid movement downwards in a third dimension, while appearing to move normally or not at all from a lower dimensional perspective.

The drone observed no temporal discontinuity. Intended to be disposable, the drone only had storage space to record a few months of data, which appeared unremarkable except for the change in cave geometry. An earlier tunnel the drone had passed through, the known boundary of the Trap Cycle, appeared sealed from inside the closed area, trapping the drone in this closed subset of available space. The few other accounts of Trap Cycle escapes confirm this change of internal geometry: once-open sequences of corridors and corners that become closed and False Return cycles forming inside the area. This is consistent with confinement in a subgraph whose local geometry is highly self-similar and whose return maps are state-recurring but not identity-preserving.

INDUCED EGRESS EXPERIMENTS

Following the CRAWLER Event, multiple groups attempted to reproduce anomalous egress under controlled conditions. These efforts pursued two coupled hypotheses: (1) that egress requires a broad disruption to space around a cave entrance, and (2) that entities recovered from Trap Cycles will have experienced a much accelerated passage of time. Experimental strategies fell into two categories:

Whole-system disruption theories posit that the complete hyperdimensional shadow of the cave must be affected by the disturbance to alter internal geometry. Teams deployed ground shakers, controlled microblasts in surrounding bedrock, and timed demolition charges at enormous distances around Fold Caves to mimic natural earthquakes. While such interventions occasionally altered dimensionality for brief moments, these periods have never been long enough to record maps or conduct any real experiments, in addition to being disruptive and impractical to repeat often.

Local disruption theories focus on altering the entrance boundary itself; modifying humidity, temperature, and light near the mouth of the caves. These experiments have thus far been unsuccessful. They are also controversial, due to concerns over damaging or injuring the systems as a whole.

As a result of these failures, modern practice treats terminal egress as non-engineerable and assumes that entry into a Trap Cycle is a one-way path. The use of live human observers as explorers in any such experiments is absolutely prohibited.

Following the CRAWLER incident, many drones have been designed with the intention of chasing “Trap Cycle Escapes”. They are armed with extra storage space for recording many decades of observations and given experiments to conduct while inside the closed manifold. Several have gone missing, which implies their journeys towards the basin have successfully begun, but none have yet escaped.

EXPLOITATION

Numerous efforts have attempted to leverage the Fold Caves for spatial and temporal travel. Results have been, generally, not useful. In particular, no traversal beginning at a known entrance has produced a verified emergence from a different Fold Cave site, and repeated “cross-cave” experiments have failed. This absence of cross-site egress has weakened (but not eliminated) the hypothesis that geographically separated mouths are limbs of a larger connected organism.

Physical bypass has likewise proven ineffective. Digging or blasting from within the cave consistently leads to nothing but extended runs of ordinary stone, hundreds of meters in some cases, even when external surveys indicate that blasting should lead to another known room or exterior space. Attempts to drill into the caves have never breached the internal space; the same area appears solid stone when approached from any direction but the mouth.

Speculative applications involving causality remain formally untested. All trap cycle escapees have been recovered having travelled forwards in time; since the temporal attractor lies in the future, it can not permit causal paradoxes. The attractor point is assumed to be the date of Observer’s Last horizon, in 2300. Consensus notes that if the Fold Cave’s temporal effects continue to move prey towards the same point after the Observer’s Last horizon (pulling them into the past), causal loops may become physically accessible; after Observer’s Last passes, it may be possible to enter a Trap Cycle and escape it having traveled backwards through time. Thousands of experiments have been designed to take advantage of this possibility, though their feasibility depends on the yet unproven discovery of reproducible egress from Trap Cycles, as well as the assumed reversal of temporal sink in the distant future.

CONTAINMENT CONCERNS

A sizable body of researchers and policy bodies argue that experiments designed to examine behavior post Observer’s Last should not be conducted, on the grounds that causal paradox could lead to unknowable physical consequences. This position is sometimes referred to as the “Causal Hygiene” doctrine. Proponents note that any deliberate attempt to force or stabilize a causal reversal would constitute an intervention in the conditions that define the observer’s own historical record. Whatever the consequences of causal tampering may be, they are likely already awaiting us at this future date, having traveled backwards from the future to collide with us at Observer’s Last. Policy is hotly contested, and no consensus exists as of 2160.