something that came to me (no fandom)
Ringworlds are hard to move. Solar discs don't go very far. Babylonfives are too short.
Picture a sheath of semi-shiny metal, a spagetti tube and a pipe of tubing. Every few years it extrudes a length of newness in the same shape as the rest of it, aiming in the same direction as ever. Everyone of the builders and their kind lived inside the pipe, building their civilization longer and further, moving towards the star they had begun it all looking at.
The tube gets longer and longer, approaching and then surpassing the length of a galaxy. And still it gets longer.
Sometimes construction slowed as everyone inside began to wonder if they would ever reach their destination. Then some voices would pipe up that it looked like it was closer than it used to be. And work would begin anew.
Nobody outside had the heart to tell them that their star wasn't a star...
....it was a spot of paint on the wall of the universe.
Picture a sheath of semi-shiny metal, a spagetti tube and a pipe of tubing. Every few years it extrudes a length of newness in the same shape as the rest of it, aiming in the same direction as ever. Everyone of the builders and their kind lived inside the pipe, building their civilization longer and further, moving towards the star they had begun it all looking at.
The tube gets longer and longer, approaching and then surpassing the length of a galaxy. And still it gets longer.
Sometimes construction slowed as everyone inside began to wonder if they would ever reach their destination. Then some voices would pipe up that it looked like it was closer than it used to be. And work would begin anew.
Nobody outside had the heart to tell them that their star wasn't a star...
....it was a spot of paint on the wall of the universe.