Verse:Qu: Difference between revisions

[[File:Qu_Tube_Matrix.png|500px|thumb|right|Fig. 3. External lateral view of the ''vuqu'' matrix; artist's impression.]]When heading straight ahead to a consecutive tube, the path is generally short, only a few hundred metres long and fairly easy to navigate owing to the tell-tale breeze and thick layers of bioluminescent fungus on the walls giving off a dim blue-green glow. Travelling to a parallel tube is much more difficult. To get there, one must find the 'node' half way between the consecutive tubes. Six additional ''xuoho'' radiate away from a node. The closest parallel hubs are around seven kilometres away. In these long ''xuoho'', there is less wind, less fungus and thus less light. Knowing which path to take to get to a particular tube is also challenging, as the rotation of the tubes shifts the apparent orientation of the six tunnels radiating away from the node, making it very difficult to know which ''xuoho'' leads where. Furthermore, after many kilometres of awkward weightless travel, a tunnel may turn out to blocked and be a dead end.

[[File:Qu_tube_access.png|500px|thumb|right|Fig. 4. Access to ''vuqu'' to the west of nodes in the ''xuoho'' network, a hypothetical map designed by an artist.]]Figure 4. shows a hypothetical map of access points to 'vuqu' to the west of the ''xuoho'' network within a particular interstice. Black lines represent known ''xuoho''. Yellow dots represent nodes with access to their western ''vuqu''. Red represents nodes with no access a ''vuqu'' to their west. While it is logically possible that there may be gaps in the matrix of ''vuqu'', there is no way that the absence of a ''vuqu'' could be proven and many instances where a gap was presumed have later been found to contain a ''vuqu'' to which no one knew the way before. Many ''vuqu'' are inaccessible from one end but accessible from another. For example, the 'vuqu' behind a red node on the map in figure 4. may be accessible from the other end and a similar map drawn for the interstice at its other end could have an entirely different layout. Some ''vuqu'' may have an unscalable wall (''makio'') at one end. In others, climbing the ''makio'' is possible, but there is no apparent opening into the network of ''xuoho''. The ''xuoho'' themselves are blocked in many places. In some cases, the only way to travel from one tube to one of its immediate parallel neighbours may be to travel through several consecutive ''vuqu'' before shifting to a parallel ''vuqu'' and travelling all the way back through consecutive 'vuqu'. The Goqu summarise parallel ''vuqu'' of this nature as ''ei mie kuaqa'', 'close yet far' and new routes and new 'vuqu' are occasionally discovered, making it clear to all within Qu that their world is much larger than what they know of it.