Marc Cassidy fumed yet again - but this time at himself. How could he have missed this for so long? Sure, most of it was simply operational security - he had tried to keep anyone from opening Gates beyond the one he had ordered them to open for exploration or experimentation. But this!!!
It turned out that additional Gates opened by the same person did NOT lead to random new regions, but instead to the same general region as their first Gate! It was somewhat excusable that no one had noticed, because they didn't open very close to one another. In fact, it appeared the distance was a fairly consistent 11.2 miles. No one was likely to recognize many landmarks or features over that distance.
Sadly, Marc quickly recognized that he was behind the curve - there was no way that others hadn't caught on to this obvious pattern. He was surprised it wasn't common knowledge on the internet yet, or at least on the dark web.
Still, there was nothing to do for it but to get his best agents working fast to create more Gates and send in ranging equipment ASAP to see what the limits and parameters were for each Gate-making individual.
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Unlike the rest of the world, everything in Japan was calm and orderly. After the initial flurry, Gate locations were allocated to individuals and industry fairly freely by government agencies. Essentially, every extended family had at least one Gateway estate, as did every business. Large corporations were assigned development locations. Locater beacons were expected of all responsible Gate operators. Medical checks and isolation areas were easy to access and widely used.
Also in Japan, industry took the forefront. Not having to worry about damaging local environments, large-scale robotic industrialization projects were begun and vast solar generation fields were deployed, along with wind and water where the potential was high.
On the opposite end, India was simply a mess. Over half the population was gone, and there were Gates all over the place - many with warning signs. Everything not firmly secured was being stolen and taken through nearby Gates, including large sections of the power lines and transformers, taking down 80% of the nation's power grid.
In Russia, a huge project was underway in Siberia to create a massive interconnected series of road and rail links between a pre-planed network of Gates. Unknown to My Cassidy, they had already discovered the same-creator effect and were incorporating it into their network planning, providing the region with a much higher than normal average Gate destination quality, and many Gateworld-side routes for future commerce. Oil, gas, and electrical grid projects were already underway to connect up this future economic superpower. Their only serious bottleneck was manpower, and generous recruitment bonuses were being given to workers and settlers, including immigrants from surrounding nations.
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At about this point, news hit the internet that Gates "expired" and vanished if not used for some period of time, and that trying to re-open such a Gate didn't work - the normal "exclusion zone" seemed to still apply to closed Gates. The time period seemed to be just over a week, but some reported longer periods of disuse in which the Gate still hadn't vanished.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
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In the University of Iowa Gate Experimental Station, the Philosophy Department had been conducting experiments with Gate Creation for quite some time, with almost no notable results - just lots of Gates. Then one very Emo grad student reported she was unable to create Gates any longer. Taking a close look at the Gates she HAD made showed that most of them were near large bodies of salt water - oceans, probably. Possibly the SAME ocean?
With radio equipment, they were soon able to verify exactly that, and to show that there was a fairly low amount of dry land in that region for Gates to appear in. They quickly confirmed what others had found and published the results - so, about a week after Marc's realization of the phenomenon, it was reported in academic journals worldwide that an Individual's own Gates were always near one another in Gateworld. They also confirmed that large bodies of water appeared to inhibit Gate formation.
What was NOT reported, several days later, was that Rachel, the Emo grad student, was missing.
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Shane was conflicted. The area he found himself in was simply rough beyond all his expectations. The watercourse itself wasn't too bad, as it had naturally merged with existing drainage after a couple miles. But those first 2 miles were killer, and Shane didn't see how he could possibly move his encampment to where he wanted it.
On the other hand, it was only about 6 miles, according to his rough rangefinder estimates and a bit of trigonometry, to a mid-size lake that was now rapidly becoming salt water, and the lake shore had a few excellent places to set up camp - including a small fresh water stream coming in from another rocky valley. Sadly, it was rough enough that wheels would be of little help.
On the bright side, his expectations proved correct about "beachcombing" for fish - though few were species he recognized. Still, quite a lot of random sea life was being swept into his humble domain, and a fair bit of driftwood as well, he was happy to see. Near the lake shore, he was actually able to make a small driftwood campfire and cook a meal of fresh fish. He further decided to camp near the lake that night and not try to make the difficult climb back to base until the next day.
Having free time, he spent a couple hours doing the best he could to plant the seeds and seedlings in his "terraforming packet", and find a good placement for a few patches of salt-marsh mud that he had included. He also put out samples of various mosses and lichen - though he was depending on the seawater life to do most of the work.
Shane studied and revised his Plan on his Fire tablet as darkness claimed the Salt Lake region. Why must living out life alone in a tropical paradise be so much work?
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WSU field researchers kept adding more impossibilities to the list of Gateworld features. This time it was air pressure - it hardly changed at all with altitude. The REAL puzzle came when they found a similar effect with water pressure and depth. The first few feet seemed to act normally, and pump systems seemed to have normal pressures, but beyond that, deeper waters didn't seem to generate great pressure. A diver had gone to 300' depth with a normal scuba rig and the pressure registered had only been 14'.
Engineering people were slowly going insane over the implications, and quickly proposing all kinds of projects to explore and take advantage of the crazy new rules. Meanwhile, growth rates and yields of their experimental crops were off the charts - averaging 5 times the growth rate and double the net yield across all plantings.
A local balloonist, on hearing the news, prepared a big livestream event to test just how high he could get before parachuting back down.