When the Director (Die-Hardman) left the UCA, he didn't just take secrets. He took the blueprints I worked on in the basement of Lake Knot City.
He calls it the DHV Magellan.
Publicly, it's a "Deep-Tar Hunting Vessel."
Privately, it is the first vehicle designed to traverse the L1 Substrate directly.
I consulted on the drive core logic before Charlie went dark. He asked me: "If the Beach is a place without time, can we build a vehicle that moves through it?"
I told him: "No. But we can build a vehicle that moves *under* it."
To understand the Magellan, you must understand the Tar.
It is not oil. It is Semantic Plasma.
"Tar is memory without shape — a physical form of grief suspended in the L1 substrate."
It is the raw, uncollapsed material of the Chiral world—data that has not yet formed into matter.
The Magellan doesn't float. It dissolves its hull partially into the Chiral dimension. The hull enters a fractional-dimensional phase, reducing effective viscosity in the L1 flow. It becomes a "Schrödinger's Ship"—half real, half data.
The biggest limitation of the Magellan is that it cannot sail off the grid. It can only surface where the Chiral Network is active.
Why?
MAP Analysis:
The Chiral Network doesn't just provide Wi-Fi; it instantiates geometry.
Outside the network, the L1 Substrate is chaotic noise ($g_{ij}$ is undefined). There is no "here" or "there."
Inside the network, the Q-pids have stabilized the curvature, creating Geodesic Lines (Tracks).
The Magellan isn't a boat steering freely. It is a Maglev Train locking onto the invisible geometric rails laid down by Sam Bridges.
I warned Charlie. I told him the Phase-Shift Armor wasn't rated for high-frequency chiral surges.
The Problem:
We are trying to keep a bubble of ordered 3D space (the crew quarters) intact while submerged in infinite entropy.
According to my calculations, if the Geometric Jerk exceeds 4.0, the hull's metric tensor destabilizes.
The Result:
I saw the logs. The Tar didn't just leak in; the hull forgot how to be solid.
The black fluid permeated the bulkheads because the ship momentarily lost its definition in the manifold.
They patched it, but the scar remains. The Magellan is bleeding entropy.
This is why they need Tarman.
The computer can calculate the route, but it cannot feel the hull dissolving.
Tarman acts as a biological Damper. He senses the curvature spikes in the Tar flow and adjusts the ship's phase to keep it on the "Soft Slope" (Adaptive Mode).
The Risk is Absolute:
He is manually holding the ship's existence together. If he misreads the flow even once, the entire vessel desynchronizes and collapses into the substrate—an instant Voidout.
Good luck, Sam. You're laying the tracks. They are riding a bomb.