Location from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
An interstellar civilization connected by instant farcaster travel — 200+ worlds linked so seamlessly you could walk from your kitchen on one planet to your office on another. Until Gladstone destroyed every farcaster at once.
The WorldWeb was the Hegemony's greatest achievement and its deepest trap. Farcaster portals connected over 200 worlds in an instant — no travel time, no delay, just step through and arrive. Some homes had rooms on different planets. The River Tethys flowed through farcaster portals on a dozen worlds. The price: every farcaster transit — imperceptible to humans — was a computational pipeline for the TechnoCore. Billions of humans, stepping through doors, having their neural patterns tapped for AI processing. The entire Web was a farm. Gladstone destroyed every farcaster singularity sphere simultaneously. The Web collapsed. Millions died in the immediate chaos — people mid-transit, economies dependent on instant shipping, civilizations that had evolved around farcaster access. The Fall was the most consequential act of destruction in human history.
Not a single place but a network — 200+ worlds connected by farcaster portals. The experience of the Web: step through a door on Tau Ceti Center and emerge on Lusus. Have breakfast on Renaissance Vector, lunch on Asquith. The Web made geography irrelevant. Gladstone made it history.
Also known as: WorldWeb, The Web