Optional background information about the Maloran Republic and its political situation. Also note that it's not like Area 51 where the conspiracy is aliens, it's in a galactic scale superpower civilization so there are definitely aliens.

Full disclosure: I'm not a Maloran Citizen and so not under the jurisdiction of everyone's favourite "fully automated luxury gay space communist" civilization, and this is a call to fellow conspiracy theorists and investigators across the galaxies: help me get to the bottom of the Miki-Nikta facility.

Literally translated, it's officially called Miki-Nikta Quantum Observatory and Research Centre (Romanized Keevian: "Miki-Nikta Zaie Vita kai Nina Zilva") and often shortened to Miki-Nikta or the Miki-Nikta facility, it is located among the sparse shrubbery and sun-blasted sand in a remote part of the planet Keierus, the Southern Desert, nestled in the intersection of Miki Valley and Nikta valley. The valleys curve gently down below average ground level, giving the appearance of being surrounded by four rolling hills of golden sand when within the facility.

Miki-Nikta is controlled by the Maloran Scientific Service (also called the Maloran Science Institute when the context is academic), the organization responsible for all Maloran governmental scientific endeavors, as well as the parent organization for the science faculties at nearly all Maloran universities. Despite being quite transparent with most of its other research centres, the MScS has publicly provided very little information about the the Miki-Nikta facility, citing "safety and security concerns."

The confirmed information include the following:

• The facility is protected by a class-10 deflection barrier, an extremely strong stationary force field typically used on military installations, that forms a sphere around it. This type of barrier protects against most types of munitions, as well as long-range scanners, transporters, and diffracts light so only limited visual information can be gathered from outside.

• Due to the deflection barrier, one cannot use the ubiquitous transporter (teleporter) technology to enter or exit the facility, not even transporters authorized by the Maloran government.

• It is connected to Keierus's restricted-access hovertrain network, commonly referred to as Line Zero-Zero (civilian hoverrail lines are identified by the Transport Service by two numbers with a hyphen in between), which links military installations, important government buildings, and other mission critical facilities together. The line going into Miki-Nikta is above ground and therefore publicly visible, but it too is heavily shielded.

• It has a pipeline running to it that carries cyanointium, the standard fuel of the Maloran Republic for both energy production, transport, and matter synthesis. It also has its own cyanointium storage facility and power reactor. The pipeline is buried under the desert, with its exact location unknown.

• Doctors Zara and Nixie Av Ivaan'nak, a Keevia and Inako respectively, and MScS physicists who are credited with not the invention of Quantum Interface technology as is a common misconception, but the first and only to develop what could be proven to be an Enhanced Quantum Interface, the most powerful kind theorized by current understandings of physics, worked together at Miki-Nikta for many years before receiving science officer positions on the MSF Veza starship. Whether that is where they worked on EQI technology is unknown.

Understandably, the consensus among non-MScS officials seems to be that Miki-Nikta is the primary facility for the study and development of Quantum Interfaces. These are computer-controlled devices that can interact with spacetime and (in the case of the most powerful ones) the very fabric of the dimensions itself in theoretically any way, though the majority of its capabilities are still being researched and have not been demonstrated. Because of this power, any type of Quantum Interface is kept under tight lock and key by the Maloran Republic, with only government officials having access to them. However, if a situation requires the use of a Quantum Interface, for example, a solar flare about to hit an inhabited planet, the Maloran Republic will send their QI equipped ships to help, even in many places outside of their borders if requested, so they're obviously not shy about using it.

Evidence for this are mainly the following:

• The two people who developed the EQI worked there.

• The MSF Veza starship, the Maloran Space Fleet's current flagship and the only one with an experimental onboard Enhanced Quantum Interface array, was photographed landing at Miki-Nikta on the same day construction was completed, it was then allegedly spotted landing again on two occasions days later. Many say the first landing was for the purpose of either installing the EQI array, and subsequent ones because something had gone wrong with it. Other ships with lesser General Purpose Quantum Interface arrays have also been seen landing at Miki-Nikta.

• Quantum Interface Crystals, the active elements in all Quantum Interfaces, are extremely intium-intensive in their production, and also require large amounts of specialized intium plasma to work, and Miki-Nikta does use an unusually large amount cyanointium fuel.

The Sphere Incident

The Sphere Incident is one of the most infamous and bizarre events associated with Miki-Nikta. On Maloran Standard Date Format +208:37:17.4, the deflection barrier of the facility was partially deactivated for the first time since it was built, and the launching of a large, perfectly spherical object was documented, glowing so brightly cyan that it appeared piercing white to residents of the towns looking directly at it, despite the nearest towns being quite far from the facility, as it shot vertically into the sky. Ships in orbit around Keierus detected the craft as one with an alarmingly intense energy signature, but had no biosigns onboard, indicating no lifeforms, as it made several sharp turns, entering a restricted military region of Keierus's asteroid ring, before disappearing into a previously undocumented spatial conduit just minutes after it initially launched. Where it emerged is not known, but the official public report stated that it was the result of a high-energy quantum experiment that entered a runaway chain reaction, and that it was immediately transported into a nearby black hole to be destroyed. The majority of Maloran citizens thought this a reasonable explanation, but the question of what the sphere actually was still remains.

The Flash Tests

Occasionally, a cyan flash would emanate from Miki-Nikta, bright enough to be clearly seen from the tops of tall buildings in nearby towns. The cause or purpose of these flashes are unknown.

MScS Responses

The Maloran Scientific Service and the Maloran government as a whole, despite staying unusually silent on the matter of Miki-Nikta, has tended to allow discussion of theories surrounding it on the government-run social media platforms, but these discussions are generally not visible to users of these platforms outside of the Maloran Republic, and no Maloran officials have ever participated in them. When asked about the reason for the secrecy, the current MScS chairperson responded that too much revealed information, particularly about the internal structure and procedures of operations, could make the facility vulnerable to "threats from beyond our borders". This statement was theorized as referring to the Kataran Order, the other major superpower, and one that has shown considerable interest in Quantum Interface technology, but, as far as anyone knows, has never been able to develop the more powerful versions themselves.

What I need from you:

• Any information about this facility.

• If you don't have any information, please weigh in on what we do know.

• Zara and Nixie have been on trips to a lot of other civilizations as part of the Maloran Republic's knowledge sharing initiative. From what I heard, they're both really sweet and I assume willing to chat it up with the locals of wherever they're visiting. Has anyone worked with them?

There's incredible things being built at Miki-Nikta. The Malorans claim to be for the benefit of "the people, within our borders and without", but they won't let me have whatever they're doing. Am I not a person?! If I, an up and coming science businessman, get access to what they have, it will be worth an unimaginable amount of money in every currency of the galaxies, unlike now, where it's being held captive in a society that thinks money is meaningless. I'll share the profits with whoever helps me.

IRL Example: " Betio Island, in the Tarawa Atoll. According to it's defenders, This, the Southernmost Japanese Stronghold can withstand a hundred year siege by a million men. . . "

Summary: the Proclaimed ultimate stronghold in your Universe that is basically impregnable.

Or the most meaningful?

What physical feature never fails to mess up any disguises you try to wear?

Halloween’s right around the corner, so let’s bring out some ideas!

What things make your day all that little bit more difficult? It doesn’t matter if they’re just first world problems or third world struggles, if they make your day annoying they count!

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Rachel Sung: Tired, mostly. She's a nurse and our main source of income so she's not around much, but she'll leave little notes for me or the younger kids to find.