What is the I.T.A.?
The I.T.A.
The Worlds of I.T.A.
Politics of the ITA
The Gridney Dimensional Conduit
What is
the I.T.A.?Well besides standing for "Interdimensional Transit Authority", the I.T.A. is group of people with a love of alternate worlds and dimensions. So far, the only project we've collaborated has been the Alternate History Travel Guides, which we are still seeking more submissions for, but other projects may present themselves in the future.
You can join the ITA, by simply by subscribing to our discussion list: AHTG. There are no dues to pay, just a willingness to expand your mind. IRCs, local get-togethers, etc. will be announced as they become available.
The ITA is also a fictional organization, a group of people from different alternates, banded together to help protect their worlds, yet at the same time encourage travel between these self-same worlds. The ITA also encourages exploration, and expeditions to new worlds discovered by use of the Gridney Dimensional Conduit, (GDC, AKA "Gridneys"). It also operates the Trans-Dimensional Rail Service, linking worlds together by steam.
The ITA is governed by the Board of Governors. Each member is selected by their world to represent their interests in the ITA. How the governor is chosen is left up to each world, but most do so through a popular election or by a appointment. From these delegates, the Prime Governor of the ITA is chosen. Currently the Prime Governor of the ITA is Omar Yazdi of Caliphate Earth. The Board is the primary governing body of the ITA and they make the laws, regulations, and rules that all ITA worlds, Affiliate and Full Member, must abide by.
The ITA is not a meta-government, but a coalation of worlds that have decided to work together in a fashion to ensure that all worlds are treated the equanimity and fair handedness. The ITA has made a few edicts: Slavery is frown upon, People have the right to worship in the manner that their homeworld religion dictates, and Nuclear/Fusion/Antimatter weapons are forbidden from trade or transport. It is the Board of Governors that offers a world Affiliate or Full Membership status.
Recently, Prime Governor Yazdi proposed into being new articles to the Charter of the ITA, and subdivided the orginal three Ministries into 8 Ministries, along with the Attonery General of the ITA.
MINISTRY OF FORIEGN AFFAIRS: With the introduction of independant Alternate Earths, starting first with Rattus Prime, there was a need for a Foriegn Affairs office in the ITA. Now with the discovery of the Union and the Consortium, two independant Interworld Empires, the need for a Foriegn Minister is greater than ever. The Minister of the MFA is Jan de Mist, of Rhodes Earth, who is also serving as the Governor for the same world.
MINISTRY OF EXPLORATION: Exploration manages not only the discovery of new Alternate Earths, but it manages the catalog of discovered worlds, scouting out promising cultures, and deciding if a world is ready for admission to the ITA. The Minister of ME is Cynthia Duncan of Marketplace.
MINISTRY OF INTERDIMENSIONAL SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICES: Oversees reconnaisance and covert operations that are conducted by various agencies of the ITA. It also has its own set of Scouts, who work in tandem with or independently of the Exploration Scouts. The Minister of ISIS is Marcus Flacus Congrio of Roman Republic Earth I.
MINISTRY OF COLONIAL SERVICES: The ITA has always had colonies, some 50 plus. Most are simple outposts set up to exploit some natural resource, while others, such as Refuge, New Isreal, or Dunroman, are either full fledge colonies looking to become independant sometime in the future, or like Dunroman, are retirement colonies, where ITA citizens settle down on to spend their golden years and gripe about the new person in charge of colonial administration: the Minister of MCS, Princess Melisande of Estates General Earth. She has turned the old Colonial Office subministry of the TDRS from a way to give away metric tonnes of money and giveaways to less than deserving millionares, and start running the MCS as a business, whipping the colonies into line.
MINISTRY OF INTERDIMENSIONAL SECURITY SERVICES: The mailed fist in the velvet glove, the ISS is military and police force of the ITA. Its ranks are drawn from the armies and police forces of all member worlds of the ITA. The TDRS Police, or "Alter Cops", are the most visible of the ISS, but the most feared by Transdimensional miscreants are the ITA Enforcers. They are charged with protecting the ITA TDRS from any and all sources. This includes other Transdimensional Organizations such as Pax Mundus Remuno, and by more parochial threats, such as home built Gridneys. The Enforcers can draw on the military expertise from 50 different worlds, so they are a formidable force to face.
Synonomous with the ISS is its Minister: Enrst Starvos of Weimar Earth. Minister Starvos has held this position now for 12 years, but has been part of the ISS since he joined up when he was 16 years of age. He worked as an Trade Enforcer, and was the section chief for Hanseatic Earth when he was appointed to the position of Minister. He has served with honor in that role.
MINISTRY OF AFFILIATE EARTHS: This Ministry is concerned not only with the welfare of the ITA Affiliate Earths, but with their progress towards Full Membership with the ITA. Fulfilling that role is Minister Eteinne Gehrer, former ambassador of Communauté globale Earth to the ITA.
MINISTRY OF TRANS-DIMENSIONAL RAIL SERVICES: TDRS, the largest of all the ministries, the TDRS is the backbone of the ITA, providing most of the interdimensional access to all the worlds affiliated with the ITA. The TDRS also is in charge of constructing new railheads and Gridney Dimensional Conduits. It is headed by 4 Rings Rabbit of Mayan Earth.
MINISTRY OF INTERDIMENSIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES: IRDS is responsible for development of new technology for use with the GDC, and exploration of new worlds brought closer by the GDC. Until recently, Quentin Andrew Shrewsbury, affectionately know as "Q", headed the IRDS for 32 years till he was killed in an auto accident recently. The Prime Governor is currently seeking a replacement of the same caliber of scientist that Q was.
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE ITA:This position is nominated by the Board of Governors and approved by the Interdimensional Court Judicial Board.
Currently the AG is David Pascoe of Marketplace Earth. He served in the position of Executive Assistant Attorney General for two years before being nominated to the position thanks to Helen Xenotrakalos becoming the Governor for the people of Byzantine Earth. On his homeworld, he was a associate in a thriving private practice dealing with interworld trade law before he appointed EAAG to Xenotrakalos.
The ITA consists of 60 different worlds, that have been brought together over the past 100 years. This was facilitated by the accidental discovery of the Gridney Dimensional Conduit, by Theodore T. Gridney, Esq. Unfortunately, Mr. Gridney was never able to reap the rewards of his work, as his most famous experiment was also the one that took him away from his world, to some place else. Luckily, all of his field notes, but not his most recent, were left behind in the remains of his lab, and other, more knowledgeable minds, where able to finish his work. The following is a short biography of Theodore Gridney:
The Lives and Times of
Theodore Thomas Gridney, Esq.By Simon Greene, 1967
Theodore T. Gridney was born in 1840, near East Dereham, East Anglica, England. Here he grew up amongst the ancient buildings, reading the poetry of Cowper, the town's poet, and growing up in what was Britain's Information Age. The Babbage Analytical Engine was introduced five years after his birth and now it was making an impact. *
During this growth of computational ingenuity, Theodore marveled at what man could do, but found that he didn't see any artistry in the design. This may have been due to his devotion to the works of Cowper and other poets of the age. He took to industrial design with a passion, and designed many a device to be both functional and clean, yet pleasing to look at. His designs, after his disappearance, started the Art Naturale movement which still exists today.
He studied in Berlin at the Königlich Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin from 1860 to 1870. He majored in Entwurf und technisches Zeichnen (Design and technical Drawing) He then came back to East Dereham and setup his own industrial design studio in 1872. He also indulged his artistic sense, by building small machines of intricate design. One of these consisted of gyros, gears, small windup motors and other wheel based designs. He built it so that it could not work, with every wheel, gyro, and tiny flywheel in the device were at right angles to each other, it should have seized up when he first ran it. Instead, it vanished, and put a hemisphere of dirt onto and into his worktable. Since he kept meticulous drawings of all his projects, he was able to reproduce the first Gridney. This was in 1875.
Over the next five years he built and tested many such devices, before he learned how to scale them up to a larger size, large enough for a man. On May 3rd, 1880, he became the first man to travel to another alternate Earth and return. The world happen to be Remu. He returned to Remu several times, for there he had found his true love, lady Titula Minucia Maxima. He shared with her his vision and plans for the Gridney. Some theorized that his disappearance was linked to his lady love, as she introduced Remu's version of the Gridney, the Orbis Alternus Canalis. Titula soon disappeared from her world, soon after reaping the rewards of interdimensional travel. Some wags have her and Theodore traveling the endless alternate Earths, seeking their Eden.
The popular press from time to time reports sightings of the pair, though they would be over a hundred years old by this time...
The ITA is a organization that at the same time is subservient to, and is a higher in authority than local governments and worlds. This dual role is due to the fact that on the one hand, the ITA must cater to the whims of each member world, but at the same time, oversee interworld communications and keep each of the member worlds from dominating the others in trade and commerce, while maintaining a free flow of goods between each of the worlds. This constant juggling act makes the ITA a political entity, a role that the ITA governing board wishes it could divest itself from, but, for now, there is no other choice.
Worlds are listed as either as Full Members of the ITA, of which there are 40 Full Member worlds, or as Affiliate Worlds, which number 11 as of now. The main difference between and Full Member world and an Affiliate World, is that Full Members are through lines for the TDRS, and can reap the benefits of trade that such through lines present. Affiliates are just endpoints for the TDRS, and thus are not much more than Tourist Traps and sightseeing worlds.
The Politics of the ITA worlds are as divergent as the worlds themselves. I will not try to cover all the various political movements just the main ones.
The Traditionalists: These worlds value social and economic stability,not necessairily control as much as stability itself. Conservative, moralistic, and somewhat isolationistic, the Traditionalists favor slow and steady as the method used by the ITA in its dealings with other worlds.
Traditionalist Member Worlds: ITA Prime,Estates General Earth, Niew Amsterdam Earth Caliphate Earth.
The Social Democrat: These worlds supposedly seek to help their fellow worlds. This is driven by their socialistic political theories. These worlds tend to be welfare states and or social democratic governments.
Social Democrat Worlds: The Communauté Globale
The Free Market worlds: These
worlds agressively uphold the freemarket ideal in their economics
and polictics. Because of this, they sometimes clash with the
methods of ITA security.
Free Market Worlds: Market Place Earth, Niew Amsterdam Earth, Cherokee Earth, Hanseatic Earth, Venice Earth.
(NiewAmsterdam Earth is a bit of a oddball as it also qualify as a Traditionalist world too. The governments of this world are very Traditionalistic, except when it comes to business.
Then it's gloves off, full blown, laissez faire economics. There are some civil recourses for consumers who feel that they've been cheated or defrauded, the main one being the Civil Business League. It is the equivalent to the Better Business Bureau, except that they can levy fines against, even shut down businesses, that do not operate in a fair and equitable manner.)
Rustic Worlds: These worlds, while being enthuastic in their aspirations at becoming members of the ITA, have a long way to go before we engage them with them as even affliate members. Some Rustic worlds don't realize what the ITA represents or they lack the necessary population size to get involved with the ITA economically.
Rustic worlds: Roman Republic Earth II
(On that whole world we may have 5 gridneys. There's not much
infrastructure and a low population. Marketplace megacorps decided
to donate the development rights for this world in exchange for
50 Private gridney portals on other worlds that were later auctioned
off.
From what I understand, the ITA, plus some marketplace Megacorps and the some of the locals, are going to use this world as some sort of Resort/academic enrichment world. The idea of a low tech vacation is rather relaxing to people that need to get away from it all. Of course the idea of a 100 club med type villas at $50-250 a night was also attractive to the Marketplace money people.
The tech level in this world is about circa 1450 CE, too low for the Marketplacer Megacorps to bring up to a more comfortable level.)
The Gridney is a strange mechanical device, one that shouldn't work. But it does, much in defiance of what science and physics say it should do. In the words of the famous Swiss Physicist, Alfred Einstein, "What [the Gridney] does is an impossibility according to the known laws of physics and nature. However, since it does work in defiance of these principles, it means that we really don't know everything about everything. The fact this device contradicts many cherished beliefs about matter and energy, such as my own, it indicates that not only is the universe is stranger than we imagine, it's damned contrary to common sense too!"
The Gridney is entirely mechanical, it uses steam turbines to operate the many gyroscopes that make up the bulk of its complexity. A full description of how it works would take many pages, and at least a doctorate in Dimensional Physics to understand, but in layman's terms the Gridney uses gyroscopic precession to rotate the Gridney and a specified volume of space-time, through the four dimensions, much like normal gyroscopes rotate through three dimensions. It will not move you into the future or past, but sideways in time and space, to another, alternate world. The interesting thing about the Gridney, is if you stop forcing it to precess, it returns back to its original axis of rotation and original home dimension. So you can never get lost, unless you somehow damage your Gridney.
Travel isn't one to one, that is, if you start from the south end of London with your Gridney, you don't end up in the same location on the alternate world. You may find yourself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or high above the Serengeti. Now your Gridney won't fall to the ground, as it's locked to your homeworld's structure and coordinates, but if you were somehow able to shutdown the Gridney, then it would fall to earth. When a Gridney "precesses" through to another world, matter is exchanged between the worlds. So the plot of land the Gridney started on is replaced by whatever is in the target location on the other world. Portions of houses and other buildings have come through, as well as 5 meters of an ocean. The exchange consists of 45% of the Gridney, 45% of the other world, and 10% of something else. It is speculated that the something else is a strange mixture of gridneys, worlds, and space time, but nobody has been able to prove it.
However a single Gridney is unstable, and has a tendency to wander and lose it's original axis settings. With a small unit, a 10 meter globe, you'll have about 30 minutes to look around before you have to return and not have your Gridney lose it's coordinates. Larger Gridneys can stay longer on another world before one would have to worry losing one's homeworld. A good rule of thumb to learn is for every doubling of volume encompassed by a Gridney, your time on a world is doubled. So a 12.6 meter globe would give you 60 minutes on another world before forcing your return back home. It would have twice the mass, and more complexity. The largest operating Gridneys, outside of the TDRS Gateways, are around 20 meters in diameter, with 4 hours duration on another world. 10 meters is as small as you'd want to build a Gridney. Any smaller and heat becomes a problem, causing it to seize up and melt. A 5 meter Gridney would melt in seconds. A one meter Gridney would seize immediately, its core components vaporized.
Also, you cannot stay inside one for very long, as the fields that are generated by a Gridney, hyper-accellerate electric currents and amplify them. Powered eletronics will short out violently, digital watches will fry, burning the wearer. It is matter of course that all eletronics are "stowed" for the duration of the trip onboard a TDRS passenger train. For humans, this hyper-accelleration, feels like a static charge building up on one's person, a distinct electric tingling. Even though your brain can still function, standing inside of a Gridney can cause you to pass out after 5 hours or so, and can kill you if you stay longer than 15 hours inside an operating one. Because of this, railway workers can only work for 2 hours at a time inside a Gridney Dimensional Conduit.
Gridney's also become unstable if another Gridney gets within 3 seconds of arc of its position on the planet. On the Earth this is approximately 338 kilometers, (210 miles). The two Gridneys try to synchronize with each other, but because they are not in the same physical location, they flail about and causing them both to fail disastrously. However, if both Gridneys were in the same physical location, they would synchronize, and form a "gateway". This is how TDRS gateways or Gridney Dimensional Conduits are formed.
On two different alternate worlds, large Gridneys, 50 meters to 100 meters in size, are placed in the "same location", determined by having one precess through and appear on the other world, its arrival spot marked on the ground and with height above ground also indicated. The other Gridney is put into position, and started at a pre-arranged time. The first Gridney is started, and precessed back to the other world, and at that point it starts to synchronize with the other Gridney. During this stage, one Gridney is on a movable platform, and the synching procedure will move it into exact position with the other Gridney. The two then merge into the odd quasi- merged Gridney Dimensional Conduit (GDC). This is a stable connection, the two Gridney's reinforce each other. They then form a "gateway" that allows one to travel through to another world simply by walking.
The TDRS uses these "gateways" to run rail lines through to the otherside. Even through distance inside seems to be short, tracks have to be laid in both directions to complete the connection. Currently the TDRS is upgrading several GDCs to the new 200 meter size, as well updating the Gridney engines to the newer Ingram/Gridney design, which has proven to be stabler and allows for longer trips in a solo Gridney, up to 6 hours long.
