Fiction:Getting out of Girdo

&emsp;We have something you'll want to see.

&emsp;The telepathic message burst into the principal investigator's head as he was eating his lunch of fish salad. The sighed, placed a half-eaten head onto his plate and opened up the video calling app on the screen in front of him. A few seconds later the image of another researcher, a, appeared. The Zuckhs had another screen on a shaft next to her and turned it around so that the Pirakkei could see it. She said nothing, and just watched and waited for his response to the images and data that he could now see. After taking a deep breath, he spoke.

&emsp;'That explains why we've not been able to get a lock with our wormholes.'

&emsp;'That's what we thought. We wondered if you had any other ideas.'

&emsp;'The hyperwaves are reflecting perfectly when they reach a sphere about four kiloparsecs from the core. Unless there's a giant bubble of monopolium there, the only thing that's going to have that reflectivity is if hyperspace simply doesn't exist outside Girdo.'

&emsp;'It would also explain why we've never received any contact or visitors from other galaxies. Even from Plazith.'

&emsp;The Zuckhs swiveled on her chair and looked out of the window. It was night here, but there were no nearby stars to be seen, as this was at the very edge of the Girdo Galaxy's rim and facing outwards. Instead, the view was dominated by the disc of the Plazith Rim, the much larger spiral galaxy around which Girdo orbited, seen from its side. The bulge at its centre was just visible over the horizon.

&emsp;'Maybe this is the only place in the universe where faster-than-light travel is possible. Just think of all those civilisations over there, with nothing more than relativistic cruisers and generation ships. No hyperwaves, only radio.'

&emsp;'Maybe. But you're forgetting two things. One, we're not too far away. They could still get here if they wanted to.'

&emsp;'Why would they want to?' the Zuckhs laughed, turning back to face her screen. 'Three point two million stars! The Plazith Rim has a hundred thousand times as many as that, and is fifty times as wide. We're nothing! Most of the telescopes in that galaxy can't even see us.'

&emsp;'Secondly, how did hyperspace appear here if it doesn't exist elsewhere? If it's natural, why is our part of the universe special? If it's artificial, how was it made? You can't just magic new degrees of freedom from nowhere.'

&emsp;'You're the theorist,' she smiled, 'I'll leave that to you. Oh! Perhaps hyperspace exists in bubbles around galaxies, like in that paper you wrote back in... 93?'

&emsp;'That model was ruled out in 95. Besides, we're well within Plazith's dark matter halo. Our bubble would be the same as theirs.'

&emsp;The Zuckhs stared out of the window again.

&emsp;'We'll figure it out. It'd be the most depressing thing I could think of if all our hyperdrives didn't work any more than two kiloparsecs away.'