User:Jaster

My favorite Star Trek story arc is the saga of the Mirror Universe:

The Mirror Universe is the informal name for a parallel universe first visited by James T. Kirk and several officers from the USS Enterprise in 2267. The universe is so named because many people and places seemed to be the exact opposites of their "normal" selves in the Federation Universe. This mirror universe is tied to the Federation universe, to the point that almost everyone from the Federation universe has a counterpart in the mirror universe, despite the wildly divergent histories of the two universes.

Everything in a particular timeline has a unique energy "signature" that can be measured on the quantum level, and cannot be changed by any means known to Federation science. The quantum resonance signature is sort of a blueprint, a script, of its entire universe; the movements of each and every one of its particles in every moment of its time. This quantum signature is normally of little interest, since it is common to everything in the universe. However, objects from outside the universe have a different quantum signature. This includes people and objects from a parallel dimension.

The Mirror Universe is unusual, even for a parallel dimension. Most parallel dimensions known to Federation science are what might be termed alternate histories. They diverge from known Federation history at a particular place in space-time, known as the divergence point. From that moment on, they follow their own history, but before the divergence point, they are identical to the Federation Universe, save for a difference in quantum signature. Although Mirror Universe history is quite different from Federation Universe history, going back centuries at the very least, many aspects of the Mirror Universe are remarkably similar to the Federation Universe, including the presence of certain individuals in both universes.

This is because the Mirror Universe has a distorted, vaguely mirrored, duplicate of the same quantum signature as the Federation Universe. So everything is not opposite, its just different because of the twisted quantum signature, yet the same. The quantum signature is normally different in every alternate universe, but the Mirror Universe has the exact same signature as the Federation Universe, only with 'mistakes', sort of self-compensating factors, self-repairing loops, that don't affect the timeline on the long term.

This creates a universe that duplicates the Federation universe on a macroscopic scale, while altering events and personalities on a smaller scale. Take the example of looking at your reflection in a mirror. The image looking back at you appears nearly identical to you, but if you were to hold up a book or a sign, the writing in the mirror appears backwards. So it is with the Mirror Universe. The large-scale things are nearly the same: planets, people, and even starships and space stations, but many of the details, the "writing" of the universe, are the opposite of what they are in the Federation Universe.

One result of this is what scientists call "quantum mirroring." This essentially describes the fact that events and individuals often appear duplicated in both universes despite the larger-scale differences between them. Quantum mirroring somehow "synchronizes" certain events between the two universes. Thus the same people are created under significantly different circumstances, under which the same groups of people often meet in the same place and time as in our universe, and the exact same genetic material is combined to form the exact same next generation. Of course that the personalities of the people are often very different than in ours because they grew up in different conditions. The lives of individuals from both universes are often extremely similar, even down to the smallest details, despite larger difference in personality and attitude.