Portals and Blinking
Portals have been in general use for over 2,800 years. Even with many species having lifespans substantially longer than that, they have been around long enough that almost everyone takes them for granted. They're just "there," in the same way as digital assistants, satellite communications, and the metanet.
Today we will discuss the nature of portals and, by extension, what differentiates them from blinking.
Quiet! One thing I have never understood is why students, when presented with a new concept, always turn to each other to ask what it is. Frankly it is extremely insulting to your professors. Not to mention that it makes me think that all of you are significantly lacking in intelligence. If you had any, you'd either wait for me to tell you, or, if you're a species that made a name for itself by being unbelievably impatient, you'd ask me instead of a seatmate.
Now, settle down, be silent, and stop fidgeting. If you don't, I may eat one of you for lunch instead of whatever vaguely edible food the cafeteria has today. Am I understood?
Very well. Now, to proceed. First - portals vs. blinking.
Portals are means of transporting oneself, others, and things from one place to another. On average, for most species, one being out of 10,000 is capable of porting. Of those, even now, about 1/3 never realize that they have the potential.
Blinking is a means of transporting oneself, and whatever one is wearing or carrying, from one place to another. The one exception is when the being blinking is careless, in which case some few cubic meters of the atmosphere surrounding them at the time they blink may be transported with them.
Portals may be kept "open" for as long as the being who creates them desires - the only constraint being how much energy they are able to put into the effort.
When one blinks, one leaves "here" and arrives "there," instantaneously.
One reason why most of you are unfamiliar with blinking is that it is inherent in only two species, those known as "dragons" and "wyverns." No other species contacted thus far in any of the five Milky Way galaxies in our 'verse cluster has that particular ability.
The other, and primary, reason is that no scientist has a clue as to how those beings manage to blink in the first place. There is no measurable time that passes during the procedure. By "measurable" I mean instruments calibrated to the nearest femtosecond. Anyone wanting to study blinking has been unable to devise a means of so doing, so all but sporadic efforts ceased over a millennium ago.
Portals, fortunately, proved to be relatively easy to study. The average being creating a portal can leave it open for at least several minutes without significant stress. Even so, it took over 80 years for scientists to discover what it was that they needed to measure. After that it took approximately 50 more years to build equipment that could perform said measurements accurately and repeatedly. Once that was done, it took another 283 years to build the first, short-range device that could safely replicate a portal. Portals as we know them today, required several hundred additional years of research, building, and testing.
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Fortunately, unlike similar devices dreamed up by science fiction writers in the past, portals are not linked to each other, and a mechanical failure of one only affects the portal in question. Some worlds have only one active portal. Still, should it fail, it could cause significant effects upon that world and whichever other worlds the portal connects to.
As a precaution, there are two complete sets of spare parts kept several kilometers away from every permanent portal. In addition, it is required that a technician capable of building a portal from said parts be on each world 24/7.
Given that Murphy likes to bite one on one's backside now and then, once a new portal is built, at least five beings who can create portals visit the site and memorize it. That way, even in a disaster, access to that portal location is not lost.
Speaking of disasters, whenever possible all planetary disaster teams have several beings capable of creating portals. On the surface, these beings would seem to spend 90% of their time on "vacation." The reality is that they travel constantly, seeking out and memorizing sites where portals may be safely set up should a disaster happen. Once that is done, they contact their peers, open a portal, and all of them who are free step through and memorize the new site.
The work is physically and mentally exhausting. Once the new site is recorded and tested, they need several days of rest before moving on to the next. Thus they appear to be vacationing. A good disaster "portist" is a rare commodity. No employer nowadays would even think of overworking one.
(Some did in the past, but, given their talents, the portist in question always ported elsewhere and found a more congenial job. Loss of the portist usually resulted in their previous boss losing their jobs. Now, if only due to self-interest, portists are treated exceedingly well by their employers.)
Now we'll move on to blinking. As I'm sure you have already imagined, there are times when disasters occur where no portist has ever visited. The answer to that is blinking. As I stated before, beings who can blink can also transport whatever they can carry with them, up to a point. The absolute maximum mass they move cannot be more than 1/3 of their body mass, and 1/10 or less is preferred. Beyond that they either fail when they try to blink, or they become exhausted and are unable to move, much less blink again, for as much as a week.
Said carrying capacity is relevant as those beings can, given accurate coordinates, see what is at their destinations before they blink.
There are two other pertinent facts.
One: Temporary mechanical portals have been made that can be carried on one's person. They have only enough power to last a few minutes, their range is limited to 6,900 kilometers, and they can only transport only one being at a time.
Two: Dragons and wyverns can fly.
Once they blink to their destination, they can take to the air and find the best nearby location at which to establish a portal. Once they do, they set up the temporary portal that they are carrying, a being who can self-generate portals steps through, and they create their own portal. Then the staff and equipment to construct a semi-permanent portal pass through. While they're building it, as many of the disaster response team as possible use the two existing portals and get down to business.
There are a very few, approximately one in 100,000, dragons and wyverns who can both blink and create portals. Needless to say, the fees they charge are extraordinarily high. They are also worth every penny.
That's all for now. It's lunch time, and I'm hungry. Since you have, mostly, behaved since my warning, I'll partake of lunch at the cafeteria, at least today. Good day to you.