1.2 The Wormhole and the Prophets

The Bajoran civilization stands at an unenviable place in galactic history, bounded by strong ties to its religious beliefs; its agrarian and technological heritage; its proximity to two violent, oppressive races of warriors; and its affiliation with newfound defenders who cannot yet welcome them as equal partners. The principal cause of the Bajoran people's consternation is the stable wormhole within which, they believe, reside the Prophets of the Celestial Temple who guide their daily lives and growth.

The wormhole terminus exists in the star system's distant plasma torus known as the Denorios Belt, some three hundred million kilometers from the sun Bajor-B'hava'el. The detectable astrophysical characteristics are quantifiable; the reasons for the wormhole's presence and its future are not. If the entities in the deep verteron domain continue to interact with Captain Benjamin Sisko and the Bajoran people, the answer may one day be revealed through Sisko's role as the Emissary. The galactic space surrounding Deep Space 9 is known to be riddled with temporal anomalies, omnipotent races, a mirror-universe interface, and an assortment of other astronomical phenomena, not all of which may be natural in origin. Of particular note are appearances of cometary bodies and wormhole changes that are believed to have coincided with recorded prophecies.

The basic mechanics and properties of the wormhole have been studied thoroughly since 2369, when Deep Space 9 was first moved outward from its orbit around Bajor. It is known that the Bajor terminus moves with the Denorios plasma field in an orbit about the sun with a period of 13.5 years. The average orbital period of the belt is faster, 13.1 years, creating periodic density waves that can upset station operations. The orbital plane is inclined 38 degrees to that of Bajor, but only 11.5 degrees to that of the ecliptic created by Bajor IX, the largest gas giant planet in the system. Historical back-trace calculations indicate that the subspace inversion event each 50.23 years has been visible from Dahkur Province for at least the last thirty-five hundred years, and possibly as far back as thirty thousand years, with corrections for minor perturbations, axial precession, and tidal slowing.

Federation scientists believe that the terminus of the wormhole near the Idran star system, seventy thousand light-years away, is also in an extremely slow oscillation about a central point, though not enough positional and velocity data have been collected to tell for certain. The Bajor terminus orbit about the sun is moving an insignificant amount relative to its total wormhole length; given that the system's inclination to the plane of the galaxy is 68.9 degrees, a ratio of 1 part in 2.1 trillion is the accepted value. If there is a numerical relationship between the Bajor orbit and the Idran end motion, it is not yet understood, and may not yield answers anytime soon, because of the assumed nature of the wormhole as an artificial—and changeable—construct.

The deep structure of the wormhole is thought to be made possible through the creation of a twelve-dimensional helical verteron membrane, which shapes the tunneling domain of the wormhole. Without a constant energy flow tuned by condensed verteron nodes which exist at irregular intervals within the perceived domain, the terminus ends collapse from a tube with a topology of Genus 1 to a sphere with a topology of Genus 0. If a single terminus is open, the topology remains at Genus 0, since a single opening results in a single surface. The fact that the Bajor terminus orbits the sun implies that the quantum emergence point possesses definite mass, though the exact nature of this mass is assumed to be weakly interacting material related to dark matter. The terminus as well as the domain interior do interact with various substances and electromagnetic (EM) fields, so the dark matter component is probably only one of many entangled layers and quantum strings. A variant of the Prophet entities, the Pah-wraiths, had been ejected from the wormhole domain to one known subsurface location on Bajor, indicating that the entities can apparently exist outside of the wormhole as self-contained energy structures.

Spacecraft making the crossing are warned to travel only on impulse, normally one-millionth as energetic as matter-antimatter reactions for warp flight. The initial flight requirement for crossing vessels to project individual verteron streams was relaxed, and most ships were able to make the impulse journey without incident. Warp fields produce a massive destabilizing effect on the wormhole, which results in more field rebound damage to the energy-producing vessel than to the wormhole itself.

The repeated contacts between the Bajorans and the Prophets, through the Orb artifacts discovered scattered throughout the star system, have been seen by many historians and scholars as evidence of a guiding influence by a highly advanced race of beings. New contacts with the wormhole entities have occurred with Captain Sisko, who has experienced repeated visions that are believed to have originated with them. At the heart of these contacts lie the issues of simultaneity and linearity of time, long studied by cosmologists and quantum physicists. Since it is an accepted fact in the galaxy that temporal mechanics can be dealt with by advanced humanoids working with equally advanced technology, the nature of time as perceived and controlled by the wormhole entities is becoming a more known quantity. Put more simply, to a unified civilization that can effortlessly perform time travel, the temporal activities of the wormhole entities is no longer a complete surprise. Mysteries surrounding Captain Sisko, the prophecies, and the Orb artifacts still abound, however, and humanoid technology continues to use its tools to understand them.

The Orbs, in particular, defy complete analysis. Outwardly appearing as rounded hourglass shapes, the Orbs are characterized by current evaluations as similar to self-sustaining Leyton sequence confinement fields that exist only partly in normal space, perhaps 5 percent. The other 95 percent may remain embedded within the verteron membrane. If the Orbs maintain an energetic connection with the wormhole, the energy pulses that create the visions in the humanoid contactees can indeed originate with the Prophets themselves.

Of the nine different Orbs discovered in the Bajor system, only three currently reside with the religious leaders of Bajor. Eight had been seized by the Cardassians during their retreat in 2369. One, the Orb of Prophecy, remained behind and provided the first non-Bajoran contact. Another, the Orb of Wisdom, was obtained by the Ferengi grand nagus and later returned to the Bajoran people. A third, the Orb of Time, was returned by the Cardassians in 2373. Six more are assumed still held by the Cardassian military-led government. Intelligence reports concerning the Cardassian efforts to utilize and possibly control the Orbs indicate that they have met with little success beyond accumulating scan data, and they may be close to giving up their attempts.

There is little question that the Bajoran people have held the wormhole and its enigmatic entities sacred for many thousands of years. Their artistic lives are influenced by their beliefs and the physical realities of the Orbs and wormhole, as seen in their distinctive architecture, jewelry, and other works of two- and three-dimensional design. In these cases, the scientific minutiae of their Prophets mattered little. Faith and tribute were given life through the creation of form, the application of color, and the celebration of their culture. The ancient city of B'hala, which flourished some twenty thousand years ago, is one example of the marvels of the precursor civilization that eventually led to present-day Bajor. The archeological connections between this early Bajor and the mystery of the Emissary are slowly being uncovered, even as Starfleet and Bajor deal with Cardassia and the Dominion.