Singularity
A Singularity (특이점, teugijeom) is the unique, fantastical technology a Wing possesses which seemingly defies all known laws of physics. The corporation exploits its singularity in order to conduct business.
Overview
Prided as the precious Egg (알, al) to be protected by the Wing's Nest and 'Feathers', the Singularities possess absurd capabilities and often appear to break conventional laws of physics to consumers, such as providing trains capable of teleportation and time travel to produce time loops.
Every Wing personally owns at least one Singularity, as patenting such technology through approval from the Head is absolutely necessary for becoming a Wing in the first place. Wings rarely use only one Singularity, often possessing multiple patents in conjunction to their main Singularity — which for one reason or another may be kept confidential to obscure how it works to secure the Singularity from being stolen by outside influences. For example, while W Corp advertises its teleportation technology to provide convenient transportation, the tech was a Singularity bought from a fallen Wing which now acts as the coverup for W Corp’s real Singularity — its body restoration technology. As a result, some individuals attempt to investigate a Wing's singularity, and the information found is often sold to another Wing. This, however, is a crime.
When a Wing is destroyed for whatever reason, the patent to their Singularity becomes public domain and is free to be bought up by any other party, that is assuming the Singularity in question is even able to be reacquired and replicable in the first place.
Patent Wars
Patent wars are spats fought between Wings and other mega-corporations where they sue one another for patent infringement or accuse one another for stealing their patent.
Fixer Offices often arbitrate for the competing corporations involved, either through settling legal disputes as Notary Offices specialize in, or via corporate espionage to sabotage the competition and gain valuable intel. Third parties that are not the corps involved are usually the sole beneficiaries of the conflicts, as the intense resource drain caused by the patent war are often so disadvantageous that even Wings who win such disputes can be irreparably crippled by the legal endeavors.
According to Nemo, there are unspoken rules that important for parties involved in a patent war:
- A corporation must patent their technology separately for areas outside of the Nest or any other domain under their jurisdiction.
- Avoid admitting to copyright infringement before carefully reviewing the lawsuit.
- The rights to a technology cannot be protected if its details were publicized through advertisements or such before the patent was registered.
Ethics
Every Singularity relies on human suffering to at least some degree — from subjecting a Wing’s workers to inhumane working conditions, to literally utilizing human life as a resource for the technology. Human experimentation for the purposes of testing a Singularity is very common among corporations, either for the purposes of improvement at the cost of human lives or developing a technology to become a Singularity in the first place. Abducted test subjects are often dumped into the Outskirts once their purposes have been fulfilled, many developing irreversible changes not only from the inflicted psychological trauma but also from the physical ramifications of the experiments.
By the very nature of most of the technologies, there is no ethical way to utilize nor consume them, as it is an undeniable truth that at some level a Singularity requires the squandering of a human life to make it function.
Known Singularities
| Wing | Description |
|---|---|
| F Corp. | Its Singularity revolves around manufacturing Fairies, which have the ability to 'open' anything, whether it be in a literal or conceptual sense. |
| G Corp. | The new G Corp. possess spheres that can control gravity. The former G Corp, as revealed by Limbus Company, had a process to augment soldiers with insectoid limbs, though it is not known whether that is their Singularity. |
| J Corp. | Its Singularity revolves around producing Locks, which keep anything 'locked', whether it be in a literal or conceptual sense. J Corp. is a casino corporation, and its Nest is known as a gambling haven; the Wing uses its Singularity to keep its assets secure. |
| K Corp. | Their Singularity revolves around healing wounds and injuries (both physical and mental) quickly. Limbus Company reveals that K Corp's singularity is actually a creature from the Outskirts, known as the Tearful Thing. The Tearful Thing's tears return things to their "original state", and were originally harvested by reading them heartwrenching stories.
K Corp's healing product is a carefully adjusted distillate of these tears, which otherwise return people to the "origin of humanity" rather than healing them. To produce as many tears as K Corp wants, the Tearful One's eye is held open constantly and they are forced to watch footage of torture and violence. |
| M Corp. | MDM Enterprises' Singularity is their moonlight stone, a material emitting a golden glow which mitigates psychological affliction induced from mental attacks, pressure, and interference. Its abilities are effective regardless of perception, protecting the wearer from mental harm perceived through sight, hearing, physical sensation, or even direct assaults to the mind. While exactly how the moonstone works is confidential, it appears to amplify a single purpose or thought, causing the wearer to forget the mental pain received from outside interference in order to fortify the mind.
Due to its beneficial properties on preventing panic when facing overwhelming foes, the moonlight stone can be used to gild clothes or be made into wearable ornaments and accessories. It's mandatory for Fixers placed in higher Sections of the Liu Association to wear clothing adorned with the moonlight stone. However, the Liu don’t have the exclusive right to use the moonlight stone, as the material is used for the uniforms of other Fixers and Syndicate members as well. |
| N Corp. | Their actual Singularity is unknown, but they are responsible for manufacturing "Canned Experience", which grants anyone who consumes them experience of certain things, even if they have no experience of such a thing prior. One such canned experience allows its consumer to experience suicide without actually going through it and is available in a vending machine.
They also have an unknown technology that developed Yi Sang's mirror and the glass window. |
| P Corp. | Its Singularity is unknown but appears to be related to food and preservation; it also produces large-sized tubs of ice cream. |
| R Corp. | R Corp’s Singularity is their Clone Hatcheries. Through the cloning process, thousands of clones of one individual are created from 'Hatcheries'. These clones fight for survival in a TT2-accelerated environment, in which the last clone standing becomes a soldier for R Corp. |
| T Corp. | TimeTrack’s Singularity revolves around controlling time, mainly by locally speeding up or slowing down time, and was developed largely thanks to cooperation with L Corp. TimeTrack "repackages" time collected from W Corp. for its Singularity. |
| U Corp. | U Corp’s Singularity is the Resonance Tuning Fork, a device that uses the ego-dissolving properties of Whale oil to fuse objects together.
Through an unknown process, this also allows the creation of the stasis preservation box. |
| W Corp. | Advertises its Singularity as WARP, or near-instantaneous teleportation for transportation purposes, no matter the distance. W Corp's actual Singularity is a "save point" which can restore anything back to its original condition as of the time of the save point, which they use together with teleportation technology. |
Singularities of fallen Wings
| Wing | Description |
|---|---|
| L Corp. | Lobotomy Corporation’s Singularity was Cogito, a substance with the power to manifest the human subconscious in physical form, allowing for the creation of Abnormalities, from which their energy, Enkephalin, was extracted. |
| Teleportation Wing | WARP Corp's teleportation tech, which allows for the creation of spatial rifts between dimensions, comes from this obscure fallen Wing, which collapsed because it was unable to find a commercial application for its Singularity. |
| Tattoo Wing | This Wing created and patented augmentation tattoos. It eventually collapsed, and its patent expired. Afterwards, augmentation tattoos became some of the most common body augment procedures in the City. |
| Human Silk Wing | This Wing created technology which could turn humans into high-quality silk for use in making fabric. After it collapsed, the technology patent expired. Currently, The Carnival uses this technology to operate as Tailors. |
Trivia
- Singularities are based on the concept of a technological singularity — a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change.
External Links
Project Moon Universe
- Singularity - Limbus Company wiki
