Throughout the home universe era, we built game playing universes in which people could complete with each other. But there was always a desire for rougher, tougher games. And there was always the sticky problem of keeping people from sneakily overriding the rules and cheating. Since beating others at the various games had considerable status attached to it, this became an area of considerable interest and importance.
And so eventually we tried to build a powerful and constraining game. And to achieve this, we build the Games universe and for a playing field, we built the original Earth. And it is not a matter of chance that we are living on a copy of that world. It is a commonly used planetary design because of its history. And because it was involved in the fall of home universe, it is known to be a disturbing and restimulative place. So any time a prison or dumping ground for undesirables is needed in this galaxy, they go looking around for a copy of the original Earth. There are probably thousands of them among the millions of planets circling the stars of the Milky Way and any decent sized space empire would have at least one somewhere within its borders.
But the original Earth itself was a nice and interesting mockup. After all, it was built as the ultimate game rather than as a prison or a nasty place.
We played this game endlessly. It was a subtle and complex version of the child's game where the rock can break the scissors and the scissors can cut the paper but the paper can cover the rock. Except that it was played with a huge variety of "identities" and endless complex interrelations between them. These identities were things like the "Ruler" and the "Scientist" and the "Artist" etc. But identity is not a good term for this since many different individuals would put on these packages of characteristics. So we will use the Scientology term "Valence" (a package of personality characteristics) to describe these.
And this "Valence Game" was quite subtle despite the simplicity of the rules. Each of the valences had a strict series of privileges, duties, and constraints in relationship to each of the other valences. But a character playing one valence might pretend to be another. For example, an assassin might pretend to be a concubine and assassinate the ruler.
It was quite popular and eventually championship games even had crowds of spectators and commentators peering down from the top level of the home universe matrix.
The real liability of this game was the use of high powered conditioning to implant the form and constraints of the identities or "valences" that were used to play the game on the original earth. This was intended to make the game more interesting and prevent cheating. But it lead to the building up of "mass" on these valences and eventually it lead to our downfall.
Unlike other universes, the Games universe had a complex series of rigid laws enforced by hitting the participants with "valence masses" on the original Earth on their way into the game. And we set up a sort of transparent copy of the original earth in the top level of the home universe matrix itself. As a result, we wound up with a complex planetary mockup being used for a transfer point rather than a simple golden sphere.
There was a great deal of status and havingness attached to placing mockups at the top level of home universe. To persist there, they had to be mutually agreed upon. It seems as if one of the prizes for winning in the games universe was to put something up at the top level. Various objects and body mockups etc. wound up there as a result. Eventually we even built some flat-Earth mockups at the top level to give us a place to keep all of this stuff. Just guessing now, there might have even been "embodyment clubs" meeting in these places. If you hadn't won the right to place a mockup at the top level, you could only hang around there in an embarrassing disembodied state. Of course you could just mock something up at the top level illegally, but that was liable to get you tossed into a penalty universe.
We experienced aberration when entering the games universe but once there we could leave easily and were only held by our interest in the game. All of us tried every valence many many times. There were different win and loss conditions for each valance. Afterwards, we'd go back up to the home universe matrix and analyze the play.
Eventually, people began putting manifestations of their favorite valences up in the top level matrix. I.E.., they'd win as the singer or as the scientist or whatever and they'd put an appropriate body type up at the top level as their prize. Some people might have even started trying to collect the entire set of valance manifestations up at the top. One thing that happened from this is that people would expect you to follow games universe rules when dealing with a games universe valence manifestation. Often they got compliance with this because we'd hit the rules so often, but somebody would always disagree and there were fights and upsets. Another problem with this was that it gradually created more and more commonalty of agreement between the top level matrix and the games universe.
Another thing that happened was the introduction of penalty universe mockups onto the original Earth. Many beings flinched a bit at these and so they could be used as barriers. It seems like people were beginning to cheat and sidestep some of the implanted conditioning on the way into the game and therefore something was needed to keep them to the proper path.
Also, some of the hardier souls asked for penalty universe mockups as game prizes and placed these up on the flat worlds in the top level as well.
All of these factors caused an ever growing level of agreement and connection between the penalty universes, the games universe, and the top level of the matrix. The Original Earth and the flat worlds orbiting around it acted as the central point of concentration.
And then an idea began circulating around that too great a commonalty of agreed upon objects or anchorpoints bridging two universes could cause those universes to collapse together. There might have even been some popular story universes about this sort of thing happening. And gradually people began to worry about the danger of having that original earth tied in so tightly to the top of the home universe matrix. And some people wanted to get rid of it, but others, real game playing fans, were deeply attached to it and there was considerable fighting and tension. And the tension kept building.
I'm not certain exactly what triggered the collapse. It seems to be something to do with the penalty universes. Possibly they simply put one too many penalty universe mockups on the original Earth when the tension was at its peak. Or maybe they actually tried to connect or merge the penalty universes with the original Earth either to beef up the penalty universes or to enforce the rules of the game on earth more strictly. Or maybe some group decided to "cure" the more anti-social beings by dragging them into agreement. Regardless of the exact cause, what happened is that the entire matrix began to collapse together.
Possibly you had the top level display on when the stars began to fall. Or maybe you felt something strange and invoked the top level display. The stars collapse into the Original Earth. All the universes collide there. The mass builds and the whole planet explodes. This is probably basic on the big bang the astronomers get excited about.
Each of our universes fell into the Earth mass and flew outward in the explosion. But you at least held part of your universe stably around you during this. It was really just the outlying mockups and envelope that shattered. Even so, you saw your universe (or universes) scattered throughout the cosmos. There is tremendous loss and grief on this.
When the piece you held together settled down, you probably moved from grief up to anger. You'd already picked up the tone scale dramatization from the penalty universes and this was enough impact to bring about solid downtone emotions.
Somewhere in this incident, space seems to be filled with lightning and energy. Your mockups begin decaying, getting corroded and crumbling to dust. This is mainly due to the influence of the penalty universes. Your universe is no longer separate and therefore is affected by an agreed upon set of laws. But the only commonly agreed upon laws were those of the penalty universes and the games universe which had become part of the universe you were in. So these agreements take precedence. And the biggest common agreement between all the penalty universes is the downward slide into decay.
You then tried to restore your mockups but you failed because others invalidate them and downscale agreements were spreading around and affecting you. So you started using the games valences against others. You worked to destroy their mockups and impose your own.
Eventually this settles down into a big game to make your mockups persist and others fail. In other words, have for self and can't have for others.