Lock (Saga of the Skolian empire)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Lock is one of three powerful sentient machines in the Saga of the Skolian Empire books by Catherine Asaro.
There are three known remaining Locks since the fall of the original Ruby Dynasty:
- one on the Orbiter space habitat
- one on the planet Raylicon
- one on the Onyx platform
The ancient technology of the Ruby empire which created the Locks has been lost, but people of the Skolian empire have deduced some of its functioning. A Lock is a disruption in normal spacetime, which manifests as a great column of light called a "Kyle singularity". The Locks' allow access to a universe of "thought", so called Kyle space that exists separately from our conventional concepts of time and space, allowing thoughts with it to exist in all places simultaneously. Rhon psions are the only genetically suited humans capable of interfacing with the Locks, and are responsible for creating and maintaining the psiberweb.
The Locks' construction apparently is the result of advanced mathematics, neuroscience and mysticism that has been lost in the current setting of the novels.
