The Unbinding

When it happened, no one was ready for it. Families en route to Teegarden B for their annual vacation; soldiers and sailors caught in the Crushing of Vaelor Prime; Imperial Representatives debating on the Intersystem Congressional Station, all caught completely by surprise.

It happened all at once, though no one knew it. And still to this day, no one does. Through some unexplainable phenomenon; it happened across the entire galaxy. Forever lost to history, forever lost to memory and knowledge, and it happened all at once.

The Unbinding was the moment reality ceased to be certain of itself.

The mechanical operations of nature didn’t stop, but the underlying physical laws that drove them were no longer a constant and dependable framework. The laws of matter, energy and causality ebbed and flowed like tidal shifts of an ocean depending on when and where they were measured. Lightning struck ground and ignited fires, rivers swelled and flowed, biology oscillated and perpetuated life; hands could sculpt clay, rock, wood and metal. But the underlying stepwise interactions of these happenings could no longer be reproduced in the intricate chains of complex technology. The higher the complexity, the more impossible it became to reproduce. The great engines of civilizations failed. All at once and everywhere.

Death and ending was ubiquitous. Though no one could know the scale. Families in a dead ship plummeting towards Teegarden B; pilots peering out the canopy of their disabled space fighters at the unlit cemeteries of the Capital class ships floating off into the blackness of space, Imperial representatives suffocating slowly in the pitch darkness of their metal tomb, finally agreeing on something.

Those few unlucky enough to survive the first impacts were likely doomed to perish in a world that would not respond in the way they were accustomed.

And ever fewer, those able to adapt with primitive skills, were left not to pick up the pieces, but to start over. Completely over.

The cradle of technology had been cast aside and all were prey to the natural and chaotic workings of reality. The burning of stars once again became a mystery, and the doors of knowledge that were once open, entirely disappeared.