Cessation Zone

Cessation zones, also known as CZs, stereomorphic fields or Jürgen fields, are regions of spacetime with different vacuum energy values relative to space around them. The laws of physics progressively break down inside them, causing significant harm to organisms within their boundaries.

Those who travel regularly into cessation zones are known as divers.

Overview
Regions of unstable spacetime are common across Earth. These regions are collectively known as cessation zones, so named for the tendency of physical laws to cease within their boundaries. While it is difficult to record what goes on inside these zones, human observers have consistently reported bizarre and surreal occurrences, the most common of which involve objects defying gravity and the apparent reversal of time.

Cessation zones provide significant challenges for humans in communication and traveling. The zones scramble radio signals that pass through them and inflict physical and mental injuries on humans who enter them for long periods of time. Electronics also tend to be damaged due to erratic quantum tunneling.

Internal properties
The degree to which physics break down for an observer inside a cessation zone depends on the observer's location. Within a cessation zone's outermost regions, the effects are mild. Direction, gravity and other fundamental aspects of reality are fairly stable. Observers may note "paranormal" occurrences such as apparitions, disembodied voices, strange noises, feelings of dread, hallucinations or the spontaneous movement of objects. As the observer travels deeper into a cessation zone, reality becomes more and more affected. Gravity is suspended, quickly followed by direction. Eventually, time and space both become nonlinear and the observer is unable to coherently perceive anything due to the suspension of fundamental properties of reality.

What lies in the deepest regions of cessation zones is unknown as the concept of information becomes uncertain. It may be possible that there is no "center" inside a cessation zone because the concepts of length and direction are lost.

External properties
Cessation zones of all sizes emit a unique kind of black-body radiation known as Jürgen radiation. Jürgen radiation is difficult to measure, but implies that cessation zones may be capable of "evaporating" much like a black hole.

Mature cessation zones are easily identified by their characteristic "mist", though at a distance they can be misconstrued as blankets of fog or storm clouds.

History
Cessation zones were first hypothesized under the Occupation by physicist Luisa Jürgen, who led the first major research effort into stereomorphic fields shortly after the Liberation.

Public concern over cessation zones was insignificant for a time. They were few and far between, posing little threat to human life and existing only as bizarre anomalies rather than a common phenomenon. Cessation zones only became widely known after Arne Magnusson's death at the hands of stereomorphic exposure in '4. Concern rose in the public sphere and only increased with the encroachment of cessation zones over large swathes of land.

Effects
Organisms that enter cessation zones for extended periods of time are at risk of developing severe cancer, deformities and other ailments.

Wasting
Magnusson syndrome, colloquially Wasting, is the most common effect of CZ exposure next to cancer. Wasting patients first experience a loss of muscle tissue followed by the onset of fatigue and tremors. After a few weeks, patients develop some variety of progressive psychosis, usually schizophrenia. As symptoms worsen, patients require greater levels of care and treatment. After a period of one to three months, patients experience catastrophic cell death in the brain which results in the patient dying or entering a comatose state.

There is no cure for Wasting. The exact mechanism by which Wasting manifests isn't closely known.

BONE
Bounded ontological noneminence, or BONE, is another condition that CZ exposure may cause. Unlike Wasting, BONE is not a disease, but a state of existence in which the subject's fundamental properties becomes incongruent to those of the environment around them. BONE is exceedingly rare, only manifesting in objects or individuals that penetrate the innermost regions of a cessation zone.

It is difficult to describe the exact nature of BONE because it entails by definition a lack of exactness. People or things in a state of BONE are unable to be precisely described because their physical characteristics become "fluid" and appear nonsensical or surreal.

Origin
It is not known what caused cessation zones to appear. Since any measurements of a zone are bound to be inaccurate due to its unstable dimensions, research is difficult to perform.

One theory presented by physicist and XRS advocate Palti Jotham states that the cessation zones are the "aftershock" of the Resonance Cascade and all subsequent portal storms.