The Bridge

The Bridge of the fictional version of the Sunspot corresponds with and mimics our conscious mind space.

Other systems call it "the front room" or "the cockpit" or other similar terms, depending on their inworld conceptions.

How it works

The best we can gather, what we call the Bridge is constructed of all of the thoughts, emotions, and senses that we are collectively consciously aware of. This includes internal visualizations of anything, and also our perceptions of each other's presences and influences.

According to current psychological theories, it is built and controlled entirely by the subconscious mind, which chooses what to feed it after processing nervous stimuli and deciding what to do about it.

Because of our plurality and multiple perspectives, we find it to be a little bit more complicated than that.

We call it the Bridge because usually we perceive it as a space in our mind that closely resembles the bridge of the Starship Enterprize, and there's usually a number of us present in it.

We can usually look around inside it easiest when we close our eyes. Sometimes it's very strong and is just like dropping into a dream when we do that. Sometimes we can perceive it clearly when our eyes are open, not as an halucination but as a daydream that is just happening involuntarily.

However, as we move about in it and change who is fronting, we start to get a sense of how we create it as a cooperative group.

It does seem that each system member consists of a subconscious self and a conscious projection, just as if they are a singlet with full control over the brain. So, a lot of the mechanisms that everyone else experiences are taken care of in that manner. And we are often in conflict with each other over what we're perceiving and deciding to do in reaction to those perceptions.

But also, we somehow share enough working memory through the Bridge that it creates the fragile but persistent illusion that we have a single mind's eye. Fragile in that we can break it very easily and see clearly that we have multiple minds' eyes. And persistent in that it mends and is re-established quickly.

We have several hypotheses as to how and why it works this way for us, but we have more notes to take of pur experiences and more reading to do before we can begin to explain them.

The Fictional Bridge

In our comic System's Out, the Bridge of the Sunspot evolves over the course of the plot.

In the beginning, it is simply a virtual space where the ascended conscious minds of the Crew can congregate to manage the ship. It is typically featureless, with a projection on one wall to act as a view screen. And Crewmembers can call up visual representations of controls to manipulate if they like. It acts much like a holodeck from Star Trek in that it can be configured to look like anything. Though, typically each Crewmember can only dictate the appearance of their own workstation area, which grows and shrinks in proportion to the number of people on the Bridge.

After events convince the Crew that it is a good idea, they program the Bridge to automatically share emotions and thoughts between anyone present on the Bridge, to increase cooperation. This connection can be broken at will be anyone at any time, but it takes a conscious effort, and when everyone relaxes the connection re-establishes itself.

This later version of the Bridge mimics our own mind almost perfectly.