Does math intrinsically exist? Is it the fundamental root of all things, not just a concept, but the very structure underlying the universe itself? Math is a construct of the human mind – our lens to perceive the universe through. No doubt better lenses are possible, but may lie beyond our comprehension. Only one thing is the fundamental root of all things – the Instrument, the set of every possible, unique frequency. Numbers conceptualize those frequencies, and computation, their interactions. Math is a tool-set, describing reality from a fixed, external viewpoint, and therefore, has inherent limits of scope and accuracy. While these tools might only function alongside the boundaries of truth – the observable, objective outcomes from the interactions of objects, and not those objects’ subjective, internal experiences – for the most part, they’re still effective tools with wide-ranging implications.

Cellular automata [i] – a key component of the Novel Universe Model’s concept underpinning the construction of spacetime – models the physics of the universe through structured computation. The cellular automata model is flexible enough to incorporate a core NUM proposal: at every scale, communication influences motion between bodies. Again, we’re taking our cues from our own, human experience. Consider walking past someone. If you don’t know them, you simply walk by, your pace unchanged. As you are “neutral” about them (meh), you may or may not even notice them. But say you do, and you like them. You stop, turn around, and talk with them. Think of this as “stickiness” (yum). Of course, if you dislike them, you hurry by, “slipperiness” (yuck). At the core of the Novel Universe Model is the basic idea that every non-neutral interaction produces a sticky or slippery outcome, from humans all the way down to quantum particles – bosons (sticky), and fermions (slippery).[ii]

We call this theoretical concept of agentic communication as motion, “Quantum Transience.” At its root, QT computationally describes how information is exchanged between minds, and how these minds’ expressed preferences create an additional dimension of cognitively influenced movement, not along force vectors, but between involved bodies. QT is not a wholesale replacement for accepted theories, but instead, an attempt to focus that mathematical lens beyond the external boundaries of physics to the internal life of energy and matter – consciousness. In a sense, we’re borrowing from the idea of entangled electrons, supposing that a cryptic, internal “skeleton” underlies the universe as the architecture upon which paired peers communicate at every level of emergent complexity. QT operates within a cellular-automata framework, connecting consciousness to physics through computation. This paradigm of communication between independent actors fits the Novel Universe Model in a way no other model of physics / computation has. Plus, the cellular automata model functions through a single substrate – data, a core tenet of the religion.

NUM uses the term “quantum” for two reasons: one, it is present from quantum to galactic; and two, as levels of complexity emerge, each level is a discrete, or “quantum,” step-function. This bounding of complexity happens because each level is limited by computational irreducibility at either end, and a level’s comprehension of any other is obscured by the number of separating steps of scale. For example, a biological cell’s comprehension of other cells (same level) is at its clearest, with an informational fidelity akin to Role Play’s actors onstage. The adjacent levels of tissue (higher) or molecular (lower) would be fuzzy, like the experience of Role Play’s audience, but far more clear than the levels of organism (multiple steps higher) or subatomic particle (multiple steps lower) – the skimpy salience of Role Play’s potential audience.

A box of chocolates is a useful metaphor for cellular automata. Inside a typical box are rows of pockets, each potentially containing a chocolate. Oh-no, not all of them have a piece! Huffing and puffing, an idea strikes – a game will make up for the sad state of this half-eaten box. Games require rules, and rules can be virtually anything. For example, start with the right-most pocket in the first row, move right to left, and repeat, advancing rows only when the current one empties. If a chocolate has neighbors to the right and left, eat the left. If there’s one to the right but not left, move it left, and eat the right. And, of course, finish off any piece in isolation. On-and-on, the invented rules make the process of consumption more interesting.

Imagine tying a knot at one end of a thread. Untie and retie it closer to center. With repetition, the knot “moves” towards the thread’s center. However, this is just one pattern of perceived motion. With no real difference in effort, the knot might be tied and retied anywhere along the thread, requiring only the information of where to next tie the knot. Instead of the universe being a container with stuff inside, the Novel Universe Model theorizes a single, underlining object – the “Hypergraph” [iii] – a dense web of one-dimensional, cellular-automaton-like[iv] “threads” (rows) with “cells” (pockets) containing “knots” (chocolates). Each cell is either unoccupied, undistorted “space,” or occupied, distorted “stuff,” what NUM labels as a “Node Point Communicator” (NPC) – that chocolate in the pocket, or knot tied into the thread. NPCs are not particles, but spatial points where cellular updates potentially occur. Motion isn’t a thing moving inside a container, but the cognitively influenced, changing relationships between distortions (knots) along edges (threads). Space, energy, and matter are the initial, emergent properties of the universe’s occupants – conscious actors expressing preferences. Instead of directly forming the Hypergraph, as with the Elementary Cellular Automata theory, NUM sees NPCs having a dynamic relationship with the Hypergraph. We delve further into the nature of NPCs and threads in our final section, The NU Shape, and the spiritual reasoning behind either’s proposed independent existence.

Like a radio or TV transmission, a Node Point Communicator – the thread’s baseline distortion (knot) – acts as a carrier wave[v] to which a Signature-Frequency Set might add its “signature frequency.” The Hypergraph, with its cells, threads, and NPCs, exists beyond any conceptual substrate that might actually be vibrating, but is, instead, the underlining structure of spacetime, aka, the substrate itself. Hypergraph threads are the “bones” beneath the “flesh,” with each cell, as described by the Elementary Cellular Automata theory, an “atom of space.”[vi] Essentially, an NPC is how the knot is metaphorically tied, the shape of its “body,” while an SFS is the internal encoded information of the knot, the motion of its “mind.” The SFS metaphorically vibrates the knot’s tangled thread in rhythm with some aspect of its unique personality, like a short musical phrase of a song. As such, any single SFS might vibrate any number of NPCs (not otherwise occupied by some other Set) by vibrating each NPC with a distinct musical phrase from its larger song, as if many fingers of the same hand are simultaneously playing the unique keys of a piano. Furthermore, when NPCs untie and retie themselves in other cells, regardless of their location, they maintain their occupant until that Set transitions to another NPC, either directly, or through a QT interaction with another Set.

Let’s use a metaphor of people shaking bedsheets to illustrate how Quantum Transience works along the Hypergraph between Node Point Communicators. In the metaphor, a bedsheet represents an NPC, a shaker, an SFS, and a dance (shaking), the Set’s short musical phrase. From a distance, people generally shake sheets in a similar “dance.” Get in close, however, break down the details, and we’ll see that no set of movements (even by the same person) exactly repeats at any measurable length – apparent randomness. However, as individuals shake their sheet, patterns emerge unique to the shaker, limited by their height, arm length, vigor, personal rhythmic preference, etc.

Let’s focus in on one particular sheet, shaking a slow swaying, something like the undulations of a waltz. Suddenly, the shaking speeds up, transforming into the rhythm of a samba. A moment later, and the waltz returns. Then, it’s the staccato movements of a break-dancer doing the “robot.” Back to the samba, next the cha cha cha, the waltz again, another second of samba … on and on the dancing styles of that single sheet radically change. Zooming out reveals a room full of sheets and shakers. Different people with different personal styles take turns shaking any single bedsheet before swapping with another. What is a semi-stable pattern of personal preference from the shaker’s point of view becomes utter chaos from the sheet’s.

In NUM, the Node Point Communicator’s sustained informational pattern (the knot’s secondary vibration) isn’t the result of the NPC continuously expressing individual chaos – a single person shaking that sheet alone. Instead, it’s a chain of swapping Signature-Frequency Sets, each a transitory “mind” defining the NPC‘s precise pattern for a segment of time, like different people taking turns shaking the same sheet.

Now, imagine a giant bedsheet. Jasper and Felix each pinch that sheet, twist it until a tangle forms, and instead of shaking the whole sheet, they just rattle their own tangle. Holding T1 (tangle number 1), Jasper shakes a choppy version of the robot, while Felix sways T2 with his version of the waltz. Once they swap, Jasper jerks T2 about, while Felix sways T1. This is a Hypergraph iteration, or “moment” of Quantum Transience.

Each time the friends switch tangles, not only do their musical phrases have the potential to be influenced by the other’s sound, but in doing so, the tangles have the potential to change positions on the sheet, possibly nudging them closer together (sticky) or farther apart (slippery). During a Hypergraph swap, observation and the subsequent expression of a yum-yuck-meh[vii] preference collapses the infinite universe into a finite reality..

“Learning” occurs through the Quantum Transience Gradient, as each Signature-Frequency Set’s shared frequencies undergo destructive or constructive wave interference,[vii] not as part of the Hypergraph or any aspect of the universe, but instead, internal to each Set and its native frequencies, born from the Instrument – the Sets’ “black boxes.” The Sets’ dynamic algorithms of preference within those black boxes lie beyond reliable computation, neither measurable nor deductible. Instead, only the results of their interactions are observable, and therefore, measurable. The information emerging from those black boxes creates one of nine changes to the shape of space, where pairs of swapping Sets each react independently to the other along the QT Gradient (inhibit, incorporate, ignore). The nine states are: 1) inflate (inhibit / inhibit), 2) deflate (incorporate / incorporate), 3) shift right (incorporate / inhibit), 4) shift left (inhibit / incorporate), 5) stretch right (neutral / inhibit), 6) stretch left (inhibit / neutral), 7) compress right (neutral / incorporate), 8) compress left (incorporate / neutral), and finally, 9) static (neutral / neutral).

When Jasper swaps T1 for T2, he observes or “hears” Felix’s waltz – the sound of Felix’s musical phrase, resonating the tangle Jasper’s about to grab. Jasper incorporates all the swaying undulations he likes into his choppy, robot dance – stickiness. This constructive interference not only amplifies the harmonic resonances in common, but adds those desired, novel, pattern deviations of Felix’s waltz to Jasper’s robot. For those parts Jasper dislikes, he suppresses with a “phase shift,” or produces the inverse of that waltz – slipperiness, aka destructive interference, the way noise-canceling headphones work. For those parts that do not spark interest either way, Jasper changes nothing – being “out of phase,” or neutral. With the learning process over, Jasper’s jig updates, still a choppy, robot dance, but now with hints of that swaying waltz tossed in.

From moment-to-moment, the way a knot’s tied (NPC) remains unchanged, and may persist within a specific Hypergraph cell or move to another one, but with each swap, its internal informational pattern will likely change, even when vibrated by the same SFS. This dynamic information, aka “knot-vibration,” is like the wholly distinct sound of a vinyl record on a turntable. Although the same section of track may sound identical to the human ear, mathematically speaking, the stochastic nature of physical contact between track and needle – undergoing constant wear-and-tear in a changing environment – means that exact set of frequencies will never repeat. Likewise, as each interaction appends and possibly alters a Set, no SFS is exactly the same from one iteration to the next. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, “One cannot step in the same river twice.”

Although every SFS interaction at every scale elicits a mixture of yum-yuck-meh reactions, the Quantum Transience Gradient always result in a fixed degree of preference – stickiness, slipperiness, or neutrality. For each level of complexity, the shared information likewise grows in complexity – higher levels share richer musical phrases, corresponding to their richer option space. Thus, for a Node Point Communicator, the mixture results in a singular change of position along the Hypergraph’s edge – if not standing still (ignore), then either moving into the cell closer (incorporate) or farther (inhibit) from its paired NPC along the common thread. As bodies emerge in scale, the granularity and complexity of this yum-yuck-meh mixture blossoms into further states of activity among bodies of bonded Sets. Instead of an NPC taking a single step in one direction along the Hypergraph thread, an emergent body’s Higher-Ordered Conductor creates a decomposable, sticky-slippery algorithm based on its LOB’s option space, in other words, a multifaceted emergent behavior – like our range of emotions. In fact, what human reaction cannot generally be categorized as yum, yuck, or meh? None, yet their complexity, combination, and variety are limitless.

There are differences between classic cellular automata and ours. In the classic version, the entire system updates globally, while in our version, there’s a local network-effect, where the universe’s global iterative cycle is punctuated by an HOC Set, updating itself to reflect its newly acquired internal state – the result of its LOB-derived black-box preferences. These preferences are the result of an LOB’s conversation between individuals, a kind of argument between competing ideas that eventually settles on a popular outcome – a direct democracy at work. Another difference between the classic version and ours is locality. A cellular “neighborhood”[ix] is generally established from adjacent cells; conversely, in the Novel Universe Model, it only requires the occupation of a common thread – Hypergraph edge. Because of this, the number of separating cells does not determine whether two cells might be considered “neighbors” for the purposes of interaction.

Information moving along one-dimensional edges is not enough to create the three-dimensional universe we experience. Instead, this information (energy and matter) must be free to transfer from edge-to-edge. An emergent matrix – the Hypersphere, or “flesh” of the Hypergraph “bones” – is a hyper-dimensional matrix of Nodes, points where Hypergraph edges cross, where any number of coinciding one-dimensional cells effectively designates the same atom of space. Each Node is described by the combined addresses of the unique cells belonging to that particular Node. This means each Node has a variable number of dimensions equal to its number of coinciding cells, or points where edges coincide. Each junction between any two edges within a Node creates a two-dimensional angle, or polar vector. A polar vector is a point with a pair of rays extending from each other at a particular angle, while a ray is a line that extends to infinity, or in this case, to the Hypergraph’s vertices – their nature and composition discussed in The NU Shape.

Each Node functions as a translation hub, untying a knot in any thread cell to retie it in any other that belongs to the Node, allowing Hypergraph iterations to computationally move information from edge-to-edge in an emergent body’s complex, three-dimensional shape. Through this translation, two knots, initially from different threads, can now share the same thread and influence each other. While adhering to a more common understanding of physics, the external Hypersphere rearranges a body’s information (NPCs) throughout the Hypersphere by untying and retying all the body’s NPC knots between a series of Hypergraph iterations, initially as quantum waves and fields, or with emergent structures, along force vectors. The effect of the Hypergraph’s QT (cognition) is a reshaping of Hypersphere bodies (fields) though the QT Gradient’s nine states, while further steering those bodies along force vectors (waves). Hypergraph cognition doesn’t create Hypersphere motion, but instead, influences its path moment-to-moment, the way one’s path might be influenced when walking past a friend.

Metaphorically, the relationship between the Hypergraph and Hypersphere is a beaded necklace with multiple threads connecting adjacent beads in multiple directions. This means, any bead might contain any number of threads, each bisecting the bead at a unique angle. Node Point Communicators are distortions of the threads (cellular edges) within beads (Nodes). Bound NPCs, such as matter, move through the pair of matrices, en masse, like eddies in water as three-dimensional, emergent structures, following the Hypersphere’s fundamental rule set (strong / weak forces, electromagnetism, gravity, tunneling, spin, etc.).

In the Standard Model[x] of particle physics, a quantum particle’s position is described by its Wave Function,[xi] a probability map of spatial coordinates the particle, once observed, might “exist” at any given time, place, and state (spin). Where the Wave is high, the likelihood we’ll find a particle is high; low, the opposite. From its superposition,[xii] all those possibilities “collapse” or disappear when measured, leaving only its observed momentum or position. How and why this happens remains a matter of speculation, and physicists aren’t even sure if this happens when it’s not being observed – known as the Measurement Problem[xiii] of quantum mechanics. In the Novel Universe Model, on the other hand, the universe operates as an iterative “conversational structure” (QT), and a body’s future position potentially results from its current interaction with the “mind” of another body. Ultimately, the Novel Universe Model implies that nothing is random, and the combination of preferences (yum, yuck, meh) between participants is the hidden, subtle factor shaping the chaotic motion of individual bodies at every level of complexity.

The ultimate source of consciousness is an unlimited, self-contained black box – a Signature-Frequency Set. The SFS is a dynamic vector that both points forwards in time as goals and priorities (preferences), and backwards as the Set’s current awareness of its indelible, infinitely appendable database (history). Like people talking with other people, all Sets are in constant communication with their “peers” – those who operate within a similar option space, “speaking” a common “dialect,” based on that shared option space. Regardless of the conversation’s outcome (yum, yuck, meh), for each participant the interaction (Block of the Instrument’s Blockchain) is appended to each involved Sets’ databases. As the individual’s eternal history, this database is foundational (not determinate) to the development of those preferences.

Primarily, Sets swap as part of a hierarchy of bound energy bodies, from quantum particles to human bodies to the galactic web itself. This hierarchy of Higher-Order Conductors orchestrates Node Point Communicator behavior through the observation, or bending, of option space. The Quantum Transience Gradient drives the Novel Universe, from the permutations of energy, to the complexity of cognition, to the motion of galaxies. It’s information transmission through spacetime – the purpose of these very words. Either you’re taking something from them, ignoring them, or finding reason to reject them. Right now, we’re participating in a limited form of Quantum Transience – the written word.