I tried to ask Minerva why things were so much more dangerous in New York and she just kind of shrugged me off. I didn’t get a straight answer until I asked Phil .

“You know anything about cosmology?” he asked. “Did you take any courses about metaverse astrophysics or magic theory?”

“I am not a tower kid, remember? I’m an engineering dropout who hasn’t even had my powers for a year. You gotta make this real simple for me.”

“Okay,” Phil waved his hand and filled his workshop with a giant hologram that looked like an insanely crowded solar system. “This is just a metaphor, okay? The literal explanation involves five-dimensional math, but this is how we explain it to normal people.”

Did you notice the way he said “we” there? That was a really important “we” that I totally missed at the time.

“Think of the multiverse like a solar system,” Phil explained. “Think of it like a star with planets orbiting around it, but instead of a star, we call that the source. That source generates KMP the way the sun generates sunlight. KMP is the radiation that makes powers work. Wizards and savants can manipulate KMP with conscious or unconscious thoughts and turn it into spells or powers according to their genetic potential.

“Each ‘planet’ circling around the source is a universe, each operating by slightly different rules. The amount of magic or weird shit in any given universe is determined by two things – how close that universe is to the source, and how thick its dimensional membrane is.

“Think of a dimensional membrane like the atmosphere around a planet or the shell around an egg. A universe with a thick membrane might be really close to the source, but it’s so well protected, no magic can get in, so the people living there probably won’t believe in magic at all.

“Magical events would be incredibly rare, but incredibly powerful when they happen, like strong sunlight leaking through a crack in the ceiling.

“Other universes could have weak membranes but be really far away from the source. People in those universes won’t believe in magic, either, but might still see some shit they can’t explain now and then.

“And then we have our universe. Really close to the source, with a really weak membrane. Do you know why the sky is blue?”

“Something about light refraction?”

“Right. Sunlight coming from our star is white, because it contains all colors at the same time, but the atmosphere of the Earth bends that white light, so it only lets blue light in. Same with magic. The kind of magic that works in your universe is determined by what ‘wavelength’ of magic your membrane lets in.

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“So, in some universes, only rune magic works, and you don’t get savants with genetic powers at all. In some universes only mental or psionic abilities work, so you get a ruling class full of people like Paul.”

Phil wrinkled his nose at this like he had actually seen it, and did not have fond memories of the place where Pauls ran the world.

“You might even get worlds where all magic has to be channeled through devices, so all magic looks like the product of advanced technology, and the natives might not believe in magic at all.

“But in our universe, our membrane is so weak, we get everything, the raw white light of the source, streaming through to make anything possible. And since our membrane is so weak, it’s very easy for other universes to make connections with us, and very easy for us to travel to other places, either unconsciously like I do, or through physical portals.

“That’s why we can maintain stable portals to all these different places. Our membrane is weak, so it’s easy to cut holes in it and hold them open. But that also makes us incredibly vulnerable to attack. There have been half a dozen serious attempts to invade our universe in the past two centuries, and we expect that problem to get worse, as the orbit of our universe spirals in closer and closer to the source.

“That’s why we’ve had so many savants on Earth since the 20th century. That’s when our orbit started to decay, and our level of background magic started to rise exponentially.

“We expect it to keep rising, rising to dangerous levels, until our universe slips into the corona of the source and gets eaten, just like a planet slowly sliding into a star.”

“Wait!” I stopped him. “You’re telling me our whole universe is about to crash into the sun and die? How long do we have?”

“Great question.”

Pro tip: If somebody as smart as Phil starts their answer with “great question,” you are not going to like the answer.

“We’re not sure,” Phil said. “Maybe a thousand years, maybe a million. It’s hard to say how long it will take because our rate of decay is not constant. Different forces push and pull and twist us around like we’re being influenced by a bunch of different things at once. Like how certain planets can be trapped between the pull of Jupiter and the sun.”

“So, if our entire universe is sliding into the sun, is somebody doing something about this?”

Phil said “Yes,” but refused to elaborate.

“Anyway, you asked about New York,” he continued. “A bunch of different gods got together and invaded New York in the 1990s. Our universe crossed some kind of threshold and suddenly all these new places were able to connect with us. The level of background magic on our Earth reached some kind of tipping point, and suddenly we had enough juice to support gods and heroes and mythological creatures, even if they didn’t have a tether back home.

“A council of gods got together and decided to use Earth as a kind of penal colony. We had enough magic to maintain the prisoners, but not enough to make them cosmic threats, so gods from all these different pantheons started sending their troublemakers here.

“The gods opened a giant hole in the sky and started dropping their convicts in right over New York. Boston is still marginally better for mages because of our rift, but New York has the highest level of background magic on Earth, and Bluestar 2 fights a constant battle against pissed off demigods, as gods from all these different pantheons dump their bratty kids here.

“We’ve had a few godlings try to turn hero off and on, but most of them are too lazy or too selfish to stick with it for long. Minerva’s the only one who really worked out.”