Manifold Series

Background Information:

Also known as the Manifold Trilogy (although somewhat inappropriately, since there are 4 books in it), the Manifold series is a science fiction universe created by Stephen Baxter (the writer of Xeelee Sequence).

The series consists of the following books:

Manifold: Time
Manifold: Space
Manifold: Origin
Phase Space

Standing in the Battledome:

The Manifold series is notable in the OBD for its absolutely obscene power, to quote a few posts by Endless Mike describing the capabilities of the "Downstreamers", one of the most important and the most powerful race in the Manifold universe:

The Downstreamers are a posthuman civilization, the descendents of humanity who live some 10^117 years in the future. Their abilities and feats include:

*Time travel - They can travel to any point in the past and move between timelines at will, or alter timelines

*Universe/dimensional travel - They can travel to other universes along the Manifold (sort of like a multiverse)

*Omniscience - Their neutrino computer at the end of time contains all of the information, down to the quantum level, completely describing the history of the entire universe from the Big Bang to the end of time, but not only that, they have complete knowledge of all possible timelines. So they know everything that is happening, ever happened, ever will happen, ever could have happened, and ever might have happened.
 
They do not have physical bodies (non-corporeal beings). They can transmit influence back through time and make subtle alterations to the DNA of organisms like human beings, and also give them their knowledge.

They can built time portals made out of molded timespace itself (sort of similar to Xeelee construction material). Said portals are completely indestructible to brute force, and can transport anything that goes through them to any point in time or space, or even to other universes along the Manifold. The time portal still existed, completely undamaged or altered, 10^117 years in the future, when all the matter in the universe had decayed to nothingness and the heat death had used up all energy. The portals can project a field around them that can alter the laws of physics- it's powerful enough to shield a normal human in a spacesuit (made with earth technology from the mid - 21st century, not very advanced) from thousands of Big Bangs and Big Crunches per second.

They managed to send back information and genetically reprogram human children (none of them more than 8 years old) to increase their intelligence enough to build a space/time ship that was bigger on the inside than the outside (like a TARDIS), also immune to brute force weaponry (it took a nuke undamaged, then flew to the moon, and normal humans on earth attempted to destroy it for over 200 years with more advanced weapons but they did nothing). Time flows faster inside than outside the ship, so 200 years outside was only a few minutes inside. It could also send objects back through time to specific coordinates in time and space. In the end the Downstreamers sent back instructions for the children to build a quark strangelet - powered device that induced a vacuum decay, creating an expanding sphere of altered physics that spread across the universe at the speed of light, destroying and remaking the entire Manifold of universes so new life could arise.

Apparently the Downstreamers survived the recreation of the multiverse, and actually transformed it from a finite multiverse with a limited number of universes, to an infinite multiverse with an unlimited number of universes. In this infinite multiverse, every possible universe that could exist does. Seeing that those universes where extraterrestrial life existed usually ended up with humans being killed early or never evolving due to alien interference, the Downstreamers isolated a sheaf of universes (a sub multiverse) where humans were the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe. They then built the Red Moon, a moon with a powerful "World Engine" inside of it that would wander this multiversal sheaf, teleporting from universe to universe, each time appearing in orbit around that universe's Earth (displacing that earth's original moon if it had one).

It would then open a portal that would teleport various hominids between earth and the Red Moon, and return again millions of years later to teleport them back. That is why different species of hominids evolved on different planets in the multiversal sheaf (this was done to help human evolution).

The Manifold series is currently competing with Doctor Who for the title of the most powerful sci-fi universe.

Civilization Profiles:

- Downstreamers