Is there an Intelligent Design to the Multiverse?

I find it odd that both Arcana and Sharona seem to only have a single portal each, whereas just about every other connected universe seems to have two or more.

How did the multiverse 'know' that these two inhabited 'verses only needed one portal, and that they were to be the 'starting point' for civilized exploration?

And how is it that the portals, with 13.8 BILLION years to pick from to come into existence, seemed to wait until the last few hundred years to trigger the start of what is clearly an ongoing process?

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Methinks that the authors have a tremendous backstory to reveal

We were not told that A & S were the only single-Portal
Universes.
I have a vague recollection of being told the contrary,
that there were many single-Gate universes, including
some reached by both A & S.

But of course, the only ones Weber Evans & Presby need
to mention are the ones with "roads" through them!
InOWords, the multi-Gate ones.

But Intelligent Design, yes,
all three authors are Intelligent, and they Designed it.


And *Of Course* there are tremendous backstories.

HTM

tinfoil wrote:I find it odd that both Arcana and Sharona seem to only have a single portal each, whereas just about every other connected universe seems to have two or more.

How did the multiverse 'know' that these two inhabited 'verses only needed one portal, and that they were to be the 'starting point' for civilized exploration?

And how is it that the portals, with 13.8 BILLION years to pick from to come into existence, seemed to wait until the last few hundred years to trigger the start of what is clearly an ongoing process?

.
.
.

Methinks that the authors have a tremendous backstory to reveal

MWW gave a long interview that I think is on YouTube. There's a link somewhere in this forum (I wish I could find it again), and a few minutes of the interview were devoted to the multiverse. In it, he said that there's a sentient race opening these portals, and he wants to write about them in the second multiverse series, should he live long enough to write it.

IIRC, both sides talked about what happened when the portal appeared, so at least at first there was only one. I don't believe anything has been said indicating that either has had a second, though I doubt textev could rule it out either. Most of the exploration conversation seems to indicate that teams expect to find an outbound portal on every new world they find, so it's probably the rule, but there could be exceptions.

We've seen that some portals opened in universes at very different times (at least one of the portals in the Karys chain is hundreds of years old, while others are only a handful of years, so at least one world had a serious time difference), so it's entirely possible that some or most universes start with one portal and have a second one open up later. So more portals may yet appear on one of their home worlds.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:We were not told that A & S were the only single-Portal
Universes.
I have a vague recollection of being told the contrary,
that there were many single-Gate universes, including
some reached by both A & S.

But of course, the only ones Weber Evans & Presby need
to mention are the ones with "roads" through them!
InOWords, the multi-Gate ones.

But Intelligent Design, yes,
all three authors are Intelligent, and they Designed it.


And *Of Course* there are tremendous backstories.

HTM

tinfoil wrote:I find it odd that both Arcana and Sharona seem to only have a single portal each, whereas just about every other connected universe seems to have two or more.

How did the multiverse 'know' that these two inhabited 'verses only needed one portal, and that they were to be the 'starting point' for civilized exploration?

And how is it that the portals, with 13.8 BILLION years to pick from to come into existence, seemed to wait until the last few hundred years to trigger the start of what is clearly an ongoing process?

.
.
.

Methinks that the authors have a tremendous backstory to reveal

Speculation time:

I find it a bit strange that so many portals have opened up near natural resources, or where we consider good places to put cities. Also there are no known ocean portals. This repeated occurrence may hint that portals aren't completely random.

If there is another race opening portals, then maybe there is an unattended (or they just don't care) side effect of sympathetic portal creation. When unknown race opens a portal, there is a chance that a similarly located portal opens between two different universes. There could also be things that throw of portal locations when they form, so we see the occasional one like the Traisum-Karys portal.

If this is the case, then it would only be a matter of time until the until the unknown race accidentally opens a portal connecting either human populations to themselves.

Other Speculation: the unknowns are playing with the races involved, making them meet at places, and watching the outcome like it is some giant game; maybe even placing bets on outcomes. In this case they now have a war to watch. If this is the case, I wouldn't expect any of their toys to ever find them (outside of creating their own portals), expect maybe due to an accidental portal creation.

If one race is creating portals can they close them too?