Spacetime Tunnel

Biodata

Power Progression

Origin

The Spacetime Tunnel appeared after the hard drive Zhang Tianyuan brought with him during transmigration fused with his main base. Its first two discovered destinations, 2012 and I Am Legend, were both movies stored on that drive. The module gave him an alternative to developing his isolated island territory by allowing him to seek resources and allies in other worlds 2.

Zhang Tianyuan later suspected that the mutated module might have an origin separate from the Lord Game. He increasingly regarded the tunnels, the Society’s ideals, and its members’ efforts—not the game itself—as the foundations of interspacetime cooperation. This remained his suspicion rather than a confirmed explanation of the module’s origin 290.

Appearance

• Completely black: The tunnel reflects no light. Cameras pointed directly at a large opening record only blackness 99.
• Variable outline: Openings appear as door-sized gates, broad black walls, narrow ribbons across railway routes, or enormous curtains suspended overhead 99 117 251 436.
• No visible thickness: Viewed directly from the side, the tunnel disappears from sight, including on camera 445.
• Abrupt manifestation: It can appear silently in an empty room and contract out of existence in less than a second 2 244.
• Unobstructed surroundings: Researchers examining one opening detected stable surrounding spacetime, no abnormal radiation, and no abnormal molecules, despite being unable to explain the tunnel itself 438.

Abilities & Skills

Interspacetime Travel

The tunnel connects discovered parallel worlds through a traversable opening 2.

• Immediate passage: Travelers describe crossing as simply taking a few steps, without nausea, dizziness, or other unusual physical sensations 148 442.
• Bidirectional transport: A single opening carries returning personnel in one direction and engineering vehicles in the other 99 100.
• Mass transfer: Zhang Tianyuan transports a 9,956-person expedition and its convoy in a single operation 35.
• Partial passage: People and machines can remain partly on either side while the tunnel stays open. Crimson Typhoon’s systems continue functioning normally during its emergence over Los Angeles 117 154.
• Remote opening: Zhang Tianyuan opens passages for teams without accompanying them, including investigation teams and personnel evacuating distant locations 332 518.

Destination Targeting and Anchors

The module can retain coordinates associated with locations, residents, and mobile equipment 112 298 373.

• Resident targeting: Targeted Opening places a tunnel beside an individual Mutual Aid Society resident 112.
• Mobile reference points: A tunnel can connect to the interior of a moving spacecraft rather than to the surrounding vacuum 298.
• Recorded coordinates: Satellites fitted with recorded spacetime coordinates can be accessed later to retrieve data or service equipment 373 518.
• Reference-frame changes: When a drone containing a tunnel is dismantled, the opening shifts from being fixed relative to the drone to remaining fixed relative to Earth 435.
• Exploration limit: Discovering a movie world does not guarantee arrival at the beginning of its plot. Zhang Tianyuan anticipates potentially entering Wandering Spacetime anywhere within roughly a century of its history 107.

Communication

Open tunnels allow physical communication infrastructure and signals to cross between spacetimes 200 436.

• Wired networks: Communication cables connect parallel worlds through maintained openings 200 325.
• Remote observation and control: Cameras transmit live footage through a tunnel, while cables allow operators to control a drone from another spacetime 434 436.
• System communication: The level-five module upgrade adds direct two-way communication with individual residents, initially offering ten slots 112.
• Network limitations: Cable connections become intermittent and congested when their tunnel is not permanently maintained. Routing signals through the No. 2 Spacetime hub can also introduce noticeable delay 200 280.

Motion and Potential-Energy Cancellation

Zhang Tianyuan can cancel an object’s motion and potential energy as it passes through a tunnel 105.

• He considers using this property to place a descending space capsule directly at rest on the ground 105.
• Automatic machinery remains a concern: the capsule’s retrorockets could still activate after placement and blast it away 105.
• The proposed rescue cannot be performed while the capsule’s occupants are not registered residents eligible to pass through 105.

Spacetime Cutting

Opening a tunnel through an object, or closing it while the object is only partly through, severs the intersected material 109.

• Combat: Zhang Tianyuan removes parts of enemies’ bodies and transfers them to an altitude of 700 kilometers above Legend World 109.
• Demonstration: He closes a tunnel around a fountain pen, leaving a smooth cut through the portion remaining in his hand 235.
• Material resistance: Instructor Yin states that the Society has not encountered any material capable of resisting Spacetime Cutting 434.
• Swarm interception: Zhang Tianyuan severs part of the Swarm and sends the separated mass to the Precursors’ planet, where it resumes attacking 502.

Engineering and Energy Transfer

The tunnel can move bulk material, enormous structures, and high-temperature plasma 383 485 492 518.

• Excavation: Lunar soil can be transported away to create foundations for Planetary Engines 485.
• Structure relocation: Carefully controlled tunnel movement transfers lunar Planetary Engines, including support bases approximately 100 kilometers in diameter 485 492.
• Atmospheric heating: Plasma from Wandering Spacetime’s steering engines is redirected into Snowpiercer Spacetime’s cold air masses, producing scalding rain that melts snow and ice 383.
• Strategic bombardment: Tunnels deliver nuclear weapons to the Precursors’ planet through an established spacetime anchor 246.
• Solar-plasma transfer: In the finale, solar matter is routed into No. 0 Spacetime to overload the system maintaining its world 518.

Energy Consumption and Scale

• Membership supports operation: Registered residents provide base energy, allowing the usable opening time to grow as the Society expands 2 49 86.
• Scheduling conserves energy: During Snowpiercer relief, Zhang Tianyuan synchronizes tunnel openings with engine bursts rather than maintaining every plasma-transfer passage continuously 384 441.
• Scale remains finite: He explicitly states that he cannot open a tunnel large enough to transfer an entire sun, instead proposing continuous transfer from its corona 518.

Time Synchronization

Newly Discovered Worlds

• Before synchronization, time in a newly reached movie world flows ten times faster than in the main spacetime 3 113.
• Once its tunnel has been open for a cumulative ten seconds, the world synchronizes with the main world’s time 3.
• An unsynchronized world must initially be accessed from the main spacetime. Attempting to open its tunnel from another movie world produces a system refusal 113.
• Zhang Tianyuan deliberately completes this ten-second synchronization before organizing operations in Finch and Snowpiercer spacetimes 165 373.

Gravitational Time Dilation

• Tunnel No. 24 automatically closes when Spacecraft No. 1 enters the time-dilated region around Planet No. 1 351 353.
• Reopening remains possible, but requires the enormous additional energy expenditure needed to balance the time ratio 353 354.
• Experiments using clocks on both sides confirm that time advances at the same rate while the reopened tunnel remains active 355.

Access Restrictions and Safety

Registration

• Membership requirement: Zhang Tianyuan states that Mutual Aid Society membership is a prerequisite for using the tunnel 9.
• Visitor agreements: Delegations can be admitted after signing the appropriate visitor agreements 441.
• Biometric enforcement: Attached fingernails and hair from an unauthorized test subject are instantly destroyed on contact. Once detached from the body, the same materials pass through normally 437.
• False-name danger: Zhang Tianyuan recalls an incident involving a migrant who signed under a false name as a warning to check agreements carefully 441.

Passage Hazards

• Closure is lethal: Anything intersecting the opening when it closes can be severed 109 235.
• Destination conditions still matter: Vaccination, protective suits, reconnaissance cameras, and decontamination facilities are used where disease or environmental hazards make arrival dangerous 100 107 165 290.
• Controlled crossings: Permanent communication tunnels are not automatically public routes; some prohibit passage entirely, while others require identity checks and multiple approvals 280 325.

Operational History

Governance and Allocation

• Final authority: Zhang Tianyuan controls tunnel access and requires its use to follow the Society’s principle of mutual aid 86.
• Migration allocation: His initial global plan reserves two tunnels for domestic land and sea evacuation and no more than six for other regions. The latter are to be reassigned dynamically rather than permanently fixed to continents 86.
• National participation: Thomas describes joining the Society, establishing a branch, and agreeing to carry out the Great Migration Plan as conditions for his allies’ participation 89.
• Civilian protection: Zhang Tianyuan requires complete evacuation under outside supervision after anticipating that powerful interests might encourage civilians to refuse migration, freeing tunnel time for private freight 228.
• Transit security: The central hub uses destination signs, guarded entrances, identity verification, and protected cable routes to keep travel from disrupting interspacetime communications 325.