The Haven

The Haven itself does not include Divisus--rather, it orbits several hundred meters above the surface of Kaltrix. The portion actually known as 'The Haven' is akin to an apartment building. It consists of an unknown number of floors--likely 30 or so, but as more people join the collective, the number of rooms increases. The first floor is the lounge; it contains a small living area with a couch and some armchairs, a coffee table, and a television. Directly behind the living area is the fronting room. On the left side of the couch is a staircase that leads to the other floors, an elevator that can take one down to the Forest, and two hallways. One hallway contains ten rooms and leads to the rec room, the kitchen, the laundry room, and the Library. Down the other hallway are more rooms, a door leading to the enclosed yard, and on the other end is a door leading to the edge of the 'ground' portion of the Haven. Each successive floor has ten rooms with a smaller lounge at the end.

floating below the Haven is the Forest, which is slightly larger and contains a forest of trees with white bark and glowing blue leaves. It also contains a small settlement of four houses, the Treehouse, the Pagoda, and the Throne Room.

To understand the Haven, it's important to understand Conceptual Space versus real space. The Haven is made of Conceptual space, and so the physical dimensions of the rooms within it are malleable and some are directly controlled by thought. The space inside the Haven is also conceptual, and because of this physically impossible things become possible. For example, the Vocaloids, despite not having a physical body are able to exist physically in the Haven; Isra and Pandora, who technically share a body, are able to operate independently. In Real Space, like Divisus, the Vocaloids or any other computer program would need to be loaded onto physical hardware in order to interact; Pandora would be confined to Isra's body, etc. Anyone without a physical form would not be able to exist without some kind of physical workaround. In Conceptual space, the ruling force is thought rather than physics. Residents in the Haven do not technically have to eat, sleep, or perform any normal bodily functions in order to survive. However, many people like to eat socially or go through the routines of normal life, and sleeping can help alleviate fatigue.

Each resident's 'room' is a blank slate until they enter it. Usually, the first appearance of their room is something in their subconscious, their idea of a bedroom. But it can be customized merely by thinking about it. The rooms themselves have no set dimensions, and can be physically bigger on the inside than the floorplan allows. Some have entire apartments or houses inside, while others merely have a single bedroom.

The rec room is similar to the individual resident rooms. Its default form is a gym court, but can be anything the resident or residents need it to be--a pool, martial arts studio, sparring arena, or even a stage. The kitchen is able to change size and will provide whatever cooking utensils and ingredients are needed. Conceptual food can be made through physical means, but there's a difference between Conceptual Food and food grown on Divisus. Real ingredients can be brought from Divisus and stored in the kitchen.

The Library is full of books of the body's history as well as whatever media the body has witnessed. Damage in memory can physically affect the books within the library; there is an entire section that has been burned and cannot be retrieved.

The Haven initially started out as our headspace, first accessible in late 2011 or early 2012. At the time, we only had access to one layer of what we currently know as 'headspace', which was the Forest. At the time, the Collective was small enough that everyone could live in a 3-story Treehouse. This was our first hub. It was very bare bones--only the actual structure of the Treehouse. Most people slept on mats, if they slept at all. At the time most people used it to visualize meetings.

Exploration in the first year or two was understood to be dangerous. Shee, one of our members, went missing and turned up later halfway in a coma; from that point on exploration was done in pairs or with more people. The Pagoda and Throne Room were discovered; the Pagoda itself was a sprawling, maze-like structure that led to the Throne Room, which allowed the person sitting on the Throne to immediately take front. There was also a large hole in the throne room that seemingly led to the void. instinctually, we knew that falling into the void meant obliteration, so most of us avoided it.

Sometime in 2012 we noticed a hole in the forest floor that looked down on a city. This city would later turn out to be Maharra, but at that time it was completely inaccessible, and we could only ponder the meaning of it.

Once our member count moved past a certain threshhold, the Collective was moved to the current apartment-like setup above the forest. At the time, we didn't realize that the Forest was still there, just below, but headspace was more of a closed box than something any of us could move freely in and out of. There were no doors to the outside except to the courtyard, but that was surrounded by walls. There were no real discoveries made for several years after moving to what we referred to as the Dorm.

At some point in 2021, we discovered that a door had appeared at the end of a hallway in the Lounge. Opening it, it showed what was basically TV static, but eventually the lock was released, and we were able to access the Forest again for the first time, as well as Divisus (although we had to physically fly there).

We made contact with Raven and tried to create a line of communication through physical wires and infrastructure. At the time, we did not have an easy time communicating with the surface. Alfred designed and helped build an elevator between the Dorm and the Forest around this time.

Since then, Divisus has been integrated into the Collective's lives. Many of us have started living there full or part time, and the governments of the Kaltixan continent and of Remedia are aware of the Haven as its own distinct group of people.

Note: Memory embargo

For a while, Collective members returned to us after absences, but they didn't know where they had been or what they had been doing. We got a critical clue when Clint (now living on Divisus full time and no longer a listed member of the Collective) returned after being absent with memories of being found by a woman named Raven (former Liaison and current member of the Collective). the Memory embargo, as we called it, caused anyone who was on what we now know as Divisus to forget the Haven, and anyone in the Haven to forget what they experienced on Divisus before the Haven opened and the memory embargo was lifted. Currently, recall can be difficult, but it's no more difficult than remembering things that happened in the Haven and doesn't take much special effort.