MAD-01-002 - The Cube

The Cube is a perfect 100km x 100km x 100km ancient stellar megastructure orbiting the star Polly-332. The Cube is made of an unknown metamaterial which has resisted all attempts to damage it. The cube is symmetrical down to the atomic level. Extensive seismic and sensor readings suggest that the outer hull may only be 10 meters thick, however the interior is much larger than expected. A 1km by 1km square entrance opens up at a specific point every 450 days and closes after 33 minutes, which is the only way in or out of The Cube.

The Cube generates 0.8g of artificial gravity pointing downwards relative to whichever face an object is closest to. This gravity is constant and extends out to 100km before suddenly terminating.

The interior is much larger than 100x100km and could possibly even be infinite. The interior structure has a 1x1km open area directly below the entry point but otherwise is completely enclosed in winding tunnels and rooms. Expeditions have reached a maximum depth of 250km and a maximum horizontal distance of 1,650km.

Navigation within The Cube is complicated by the fact that the tunnels and rooms seem to have non-euclidean properties. Doors and passageways that should lead to the same room often times do not. Navigation is thus stored as a list left, right, straight, up, and down orders as opposed to a comprehensive map. The interior occasionally shifts, rendering pre-explored instructions obsolete. To combat this, an array of self correcting of beacons have been deployed throughout most of the safe zone.

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New Tranquility is the initial landing point for the first M.A.D. expedition and has since expanded into a fully fledged self sustainable city in and on The Cube. The top half of the city is built around the entrance on the surface of The Cube and is both the headquarters for M.A.D. and the staging area for expeditions. The bottom half acts as a containment zone for artifacts found within The Cube as well as a base camp for expedition teams. The day to day operations of the city is managed by O3 intellect Rodney.

The top half of the city includes several high speed transit rails which extend when the opening appears and retract before it closes. These high speed rails are essential for delivering and extracting people and materials to and from the interior of The Cube. Thousands of support structures, offices, living areas, and defensive structures dot the surface of The Cube, along with the massive M.A.D. Complex, a super-structure which contains most of the command staff, illustrious scientists, and the main computer cluster.

The half of the city inside The Cube acts as a high security laboratory. Volatile, unpredictable, and hostile anomalies are contained in a sprawling complex. The laboratory itself has been annihilated, vaporized, unmade from reality, or null-collapsed over 12 times. Due to the perceived indestructibility of The Cube's walls, the lab is the perfect testing ground for high risk technologies.

The Safe Zone extends from the surface down to approximately 7km. This area is marked by passive entities, breathable atmosphere, and little to no shifting of the internal structure. Much of the internal space of the safe zone has been repurposed into laboratories, armories, and support structures for M.A.D.