Dark Energy:  A Future Historical Perspective

Amyellen, © 2007

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; show him how to create that fish and you make him a God."

Preface

I bring you a story of the world as I know it.  The measurements and calculations that will be brought up were done in the late 1990's and the conclusions drawn from them by the scientific community are indeed what we are finding to be so; the people who are named are real and their work can be researched on the Web; the Joe Cell also can be researched; we do call it Dark Energy.  The calculations of the tech curve mentioned are real, too.  There is speculation here, but only in where the facts and imagination will lead us.

1.

Yes, there was the world, held in the all-too-Star-Wars-Empire's thrall.  Though most people didn't realize it, the world was more and more in the control of fewer and fewer men, and it was because this was so that the ideals of freedom and individual rights were being quashed by an elite.  And mostly men it was, too.  Women were few in the upper ranks of economic and ideologic control.  Out of the far-too-many people on the world, only a small few pulled most of the ropes to the sails as we moved through the course of events.

The reason there were far-too-many people had little to do with the number – the Universe is awesomely large, after all – and everything to do with where energy was coming from to keep the organism of society alive.

With the Main Media controlled by a handful of moguls, who also were or mingled with the energy moguls, it was a sweet deal.  The people could be instructed to believe most anything, and all they needed to maintain their hold was a majority.

There were efforts, scarily successful, to control the ballots.  The people were railroaded into accepting voting machines (vote-counting robots) with the workings of the program hidden from their view.  The Media failed to loudly and imperatively point out that if the code is opaque, if the voting public could not see the code, the people who write the code can give a majority to whatever candidate or initiative they want.

Two things, however, that the moguls and their flunkies, the Emperors and their Darth Vaders, were up against were the Internet and free energy.  The Internet because it provided the freedom to exchange ideas and information, loosening the hold of the Media moguls, and free energy for reasons that weren't clear even to the few that entertained the idea that free energy was possible, let alone those multitudes who thought it was rubbish.

As for the Internet, there were powerful moves to structure the Net and its usability so that "undesirable" information was difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve.  Only the "official" information would be widely and easily available.  It actually all smacked of a hybrid of Star Wars and 1984.

And as for free energy, the people were instructed to scoff at the idea.  Actually, they were led to think about free energy as little as possible, and if they did think about free energy, the way to look at it was with derision.  Energy could only be squeezed from the matter we see, after all.  And if we do not see it, through our eyes and our measurements, it cannot exist, right?

Well, hey, I'll give them that.  It turned out that measurements we, as a scientific race, thought to finally make, were pointing to both matter – quite a large an amount, in fact – and an enormously much more energy than the matter…that we cannot see.

In the efforts to determine whether the Universe was going to keep growing bigger forever, or whether it would reach an equilibrium state, or whether it would collapse back in on itself to another Big Bang, the scientists thought to add up the matter they saw in the Universe and calculate how it would hold together.  Not nearly enough matter could be accounted for to explain the observed behavior of all the stars and stuff around us.  When they measured other things, they also found out that the Universe not only is expanding, but increasing in the rate at which it is getting bigger.  Which means a whole lot of energy is flowing into every point in the Universe.

(This energy was originally labeled Zero Point Energy, because when a given space was emptied of all matter and dropped to zero degrees Kelvin (the Zero Point), energy could still be detected in that space.)

So they had to know, What is this energy that is flowing into our Universe?  They calculated more and the answer was clear.  The matter we can see makes up a very small part of the Universe.  There was, as science labeled them, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which actually made up almost all of the Universe.

A minorly distressing scientific fact had been that, though they came very, very close, Einstein's theories of Relativity didn't quite explain the movement of things that the scientists observed.  The scientists, as a rule, developed work-arounds and science went on.  The Dark Matter and Dark Energy addressed the movements head on.

Being that we, as a society, had become used to using great amounts of energy beyond the basics of supporting life, most of it coming from non-renewable petro-products, we asked the question, "Can we tap this energy?"  The answer was, "Yes."

Oh, in this world, shortsighted men (and some handsome few women) saw free energy as a threat to the world of high living and intrigue that they knew.  They were the Emperors, along with their Darth Vaders and Elite Guards, the ones that lived well at the behest of the moguls, the Emperors.

Little did any of them see that, taking into account what had been shown could be done if energy was no object, if free energy flowed, not only would their standard of living remain (with their intrigues shifted in different directions), but every human's standard of living would be elevated to theirs.

♦ • ♦

There had been signs, long before the measurements, that energy we couldn't see did exist; there had been evidence that there was, indeed, more than meets the eye.  In the early twentieth century, men like Nikola Tesla, Viktor Schauberger and Wilhelm Reich were observing interesting effects that could not be explained by conventional perspectives.  Even that early in the development of the energy structure, the threat to the economic elite was identified by those moguls of the day.

The "mad scientist" image was put forth to discredit experimenters who brought forth energy, and the information about them was as close to being eliminated as one could get.  Books were actually burned!  And for a while, the whole question was avoided.

Of course, when the measurements made it clear that there was enough energy for everyone, there was panic.  The moguls knew that if anyone asked, Can we tap this energy?, the likelihood that the answer would be yes was virtually assured, and that it followed that anyone could do the tapping, since the energy was everywhere.

The Main Media, of course, completely avoided discussing the implications of finding Energy to exist.  In fact, Energy was hardly mentioned.

In one documentary the reason given that we did not turn more lead into gold – which we had done in the 1970's – was because the building and maintenance of the facilities were too costly, when in fact the reason was because, after the one-time cost of building, and after the costs per minute of operation were calculated against the return, in the form of gold, it looked plausibly profitable but for the fact that the cost of the energy was astronomically high.  The only thing that held it back was that, when the cost of the energy was thrown into the mix, the gold cost millions an ounce.  (They did not make a whole ounce, of course, but a very small fraction of one.)  With gold at somewhere in between $200 and $800 an ounce, this venture was just to prove that we could do it, not do it economically.

The reason they explained the failure to pursue lead-to-gold efforts in terms of building and operations, rather than energy, was clearly a way of acknowledging the fact that we could do it – the records are out there – but letting us know in a way that led us to think about energy not at all, let alone to think of free energy.

Meanwhile, the energy moguls held meetings, thinking that the best plan, now that the Energy showed up in the calculations of the Universe, was to hype hydrogen and biomass, while moving their investments into hydrogen stations as opposed to gas stations, into wind farms, and other visible-matter energy extraction modes.

But you can bet your freedom, they were investigating the free energy.

"Maybe we can package the free energy in the guise of some visible-matter-based delivery system," one sharp executive had suggested at one corporate meeting.  "Sell the free energy to the peons at 100% profit!"

"That way, we can keep things as they are and we will not lose our power," another had added ironically.

But the secret was out.  Being the scientific race we are, we had many individuals off and running.  Because there were so many of us who heard the news that the Energy was there to try and tap, along with a yet free Internet which supplied some detail which did not get purged, many successes in drawing the energy forth began to crop up.

There were attempts to quash the burgeoning number of discoveries, of course.  The moguls had control of Darth Vader, after all, and it was dangerous to tinker with the new-found fount.  Still, because the methods for bringing the energy forth were so minimal, requiring no enormous facility to build or house, a very many successes went unnoticed and they hit the tipping point.

Useful gadgets were built, manufacturers were lured, and the market began to see Permanent Generators™, EverDrills™, EternaLights™, snow gear with heating elements that kept warm for as long as you needed warmth, and, lo, a car that needed no visible matter to operate.  Blow dryers, electric knives, ovens, ranges, heaters, air conditioners, computers, and more and then more.  None of these things needed visible energy sources, either because the generators provided their electricity or because they ran directly off a free energy interface.

The manufacturers of these products went in to these ventures with the knowledge that cost of energy had been removed from the bottom line across the board, making the final products enormously cheaper to produce.  And it was a given that they would sell.

Needless to say, the revolution was on.

2.

The Energy was a ticklish thing:  like electricity, if not properly worked with, less than optimal results were gotten.  It manifested in a number of ways, from orgone to implosion energy, and both configuration and materials used seemed to be key.  Materials were assembled according to previously discovered set-ups or tested in new arrangements, some drawing good results and others not so good.  Weird, a lot of the results were, in comparison to what we knew of how visible-matter energy behaved.

Some configurations, when acted on by energy and/or Energy, were downright life-threatening.  So, much of the challenge in learning how to tame it fell into the hands of those who already had been aware of the Energy, despite all the efforts to distract us from it completely.  (These were the Rebels, I suppose, if you continued the reference.)

It proved that Dark Energy could be driven to manifest Dark Matter.  The key to moving the Energy to manifest the Matter lay in the concentric construction of varying and/or alternating materials.  Because Energy is attractive to itself, and flows spirally (in a dimensional sense) through/around matter/energy, setups could be constructed to concentrate Energy which, as it aggregates, manifests the Dark Matter in a stream.

Because Dark Matter, which is a "densification" of probabilities, could interact with and be directed by containing matter, and metals especially, it could be collected in a chamber.  It was discovered that the introduction of a spark of electricity collapses all the contained probabilities into an empty state.  This state is substantially rarified, as one might guess, and an effective vacuum is created.

The process could not be "observed" in any traditional sense beyond seeing that it worked.  The act itself of observing the Dark Matter collapses it, removing the accumulation in a probability state, and returns it to or keeps it in a more rarified state.

Since Dark Matter, being the sea of probabilities that it is, could be manifest in a way that it fills a space that is confined in metal and upon the introduction of an electric spark, be disbursed into a vacuum, within a piston chamber, the Dark Matter could create an implosion which sucked the piston upward, and thus it could be used to drive, say, a generator.

From this fact, it was clear (to those of us who had eyes to see) that we could transform our whole energy structure into one in which energy is free, coming from Energy.

The whole Dark Energy/Dark Matter affair smacked of ancient alchemy, what with seemingly arcane constructions drawing Power into the mundane universe, and would have never hit the point it did, given the disdain for the idea of anything alchemical nurtured in our society at large, but for the fact that people saw that the devices which used Energy worked.

Orgone was discovered by Wilhelm Reich and is the life-force, which it was proving was an aspect of Energy.  It could be used to cure disease in correct amounts in correct configurations with correct materials.  Reich was one who had his books and papers burned in the early days, and he himself died in prison in 1957.  Many moguls were from the pharmaceutical industry, or were also invested in pharmaceuticals, and so anything that kept people well was either quashed, as with Reich, or confiscated, as happened with Royal Rife, another inventor of curative mechanisms.

With the Energy defined in equations, a renewed interest surged in the works of these pioneers.

The Joe Cell was another device that began to garner interest.  A simple configuration powered a standard gasoline engine (with a gross adjustment to timing) without fuel, and was first developed on a large scale in Australia.  It caused an implosion in the cylinder rather than an explosion, and ran cool, rather than hot.  (All the implosion-energy run devices ran cool, actually.)

It also delivered a much larger amount of energy than petro-fuel, and the first cars equipped with Joe Cells were a bit squirrelly to operate.  More responsive controls were developed and the JC (for "Joe Car") hit the market.

And from these simple clues the study and use of the Energy began.

One discovery was that gravity was tied into the Energy, and with experiment and development, "anti-gravity" came to be.  Really, it was gravity control.  Astronauts in 2009 were the first to have the comfort of gravity (as well as other things) as they explored space.  And null-G establishments sprang up for health and recreation in the air and on the ground.

♦ • ♦

Of course there were squads of nay-sayers sent out to promote the idea that the use of the Energy was polluting, affected our reproduction, and other horror stories.  They released some of the more gruesome early military trials of some tinkerings they had done, but all it served to do was to inform the experimenters of things NOT to do and filled in pieces of the Energy picture for those who were perceptive.  It turned out, therefore, that proper use of the Energy proved to have only beneficial results.

3.

It was an interesting fact, from the standpoint of those living in the very early 21st century, that if one plotted the rate of increase in technological advances from the beginning of the recorded history of our world, there was a pretty clear and exponential curve upward which, it was calculated, in the year 2012, would go infinite.

Just what that meant for us was unclear, but if the actuality kept pace with the projected curve, as it had clearly done to that point, then at the very least one could expect awesome understandings in all branches of science:  cybernetics, agriculture, robotics, nanotech, particle physics (matter physics), anti-gravity (gravity control), medicine.

That free energy emerged in the late days before the infinite on the line is of note.  Some saw that as a sign, in fact.  Taking into account that both the Mayan calendar and the I Ching ended in 2012, some believed something very different was about to occur.  What it was exactly that was expected to happen differed in a wide spectrum.

Since lead had already been turned to gold – at enormous cost of energy, which no longer was an issue – people began to make gold – and every other thing they could think of.  (Eventually, cities were gilded in gold, but that was later.)  Robotic Arts began to appear as people made names for themselves in designing functional things with thoughtful touches.  And the Arts then advanced, with reliability increasing because the free energy kept the robots themselves running.

The cost to produce things dropped as energy was taken from the bottom-line equation.  Personal comfort tech became ubiquitous.  (And how!   It sells.)

Yes, there were those who struggled against the changes, because of a lack of eyes to see, I suppose, or endured because they were caught in the web of those who were struggling.  Mainly those who were caught were those who believed, without research, what they read from official sources.  (It was a sad state of affairs back then, that so many just had faith in the democratic process and did not take on the responsibilities – the eternal vigilance – required to ensure that the system was not manipulated.)

Be that as it may, things did fall apart a bit.  When the energy industry collapsed, as people got off the grid and away from the fueling stations in greater and greater numbers, the ripple was felt throughout the world.  And when the pharmaceutical companies went, there were many whose biggest problems actually turned out to be finding something to do with themselves.  They weren't, as a rule, in any way cash-poor – at least not in such a way that would impact their ability to feed, clothe or house themselves.

By the time the pharmaceutical companies went, the tech advances were such that already there was a vast reduction in scarcity in the world.  And with the ability to keep warm in the cold, and in cool in the heat, combined with a novel product or two introduced about that time, people discovered that surviving was actually quite comfortable.

One such product was the Robotic Garden™.  The RG, or Garden, was impressive.  It was available both as a kit and fully assembled, and provided fresh produce on a rotating basis:  clean, bug-free, pesticide-free, freshly and organically grown food, grown by robots, offered up when ripe and ready.  It seemed to be service-free, for the energy it used came from its internal free energy interface, and it was well and thoughtfully built.  (The designer spent a number of years building them for people who wanted them, long after the robots routinely built them.  Those who asked him to do so had bragging rights…)

The Garden initially had that Dean Kamen device that purifies water, running on free energy, to clean the water collected for it – and a robot to maintain it.  This set-up also could be used to provide water for any other purpose, as its capacity was well beyond the needs of the Garden itself.  Later versions, designed by others, had transmutation devices that could make matter into whatever form was needed.  But that was later on.

Built, in its structure and content both, substantially out of the new metallic foam construction methods (that could be applied on both micro and macro levels!), the Garden was durable, lightweight, cheap to produce (while money was still in use), could be made in huge quantities in short time, and it flooded the world.  It was initially produced as a geodesic dome and housed tubs for fruit trees and rows of boxes for vegetables.  Above these was a robot crew capable of tilling, planting, growing and harvesting.  These robots floated above on their gravity-controlled sleds, prodding and digging as needed.

The climate inside the dome was kept optimal for the crops, the air conditioners, heaters, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, and rain creators being run from the free energy interface as well.

Each dome offered enough food daily for a family of eight, and excess food was the norm.  Farmers found a business selling their enriched soil for a while, until the transmutation tech was far enough along that the Gardens were self-sufficient.  And so, very soon, people had enough to eat (not to mention an awesome amount of oxygen).

Sharing was quite common, and people got by.  Initially, "Farmers Markets" sprang up where those not yet fortunate enough to have a garden could pick up the excess fresh produce left by those who had a Garden, but soon a great deal of compost was being created for the planet.  There were those who enjoyed working compost who delved into the challenge.  (When transmutation was fully developed, the waste issue was not an issue, but that too was later.)

A companion to the Garden was the food processor.  A number of them hit the market (when it was a market economy) that would take the harvest of the Garden and prepare the fruits and vegetables in any fashion one might want for creating whatever dish one might want to fix.  Unlike processors before these, the owner did not need to handle the vegetables; the robot did all the prep work.  And if one didn't want to cook, the menu could be prepared by the robotic chef.

And eventually, with transmutation tech combining with bio-analysis, the replicator was born.

♦ • ♦

Another addition to the average home was a Healing Chamber™, based in large part on the work of Wilhelm Reich, which seemed to maintain an optimal energy flow through the human organism.  Cancer was pretty much history for those who meditated in these chambers, and for those who chose to read, nap, or think about a problem they have, the probability of healing and maintenance was very high.

In fact, disease in general, was driven away.  This was what undercut the pharmaceutical empire, of course.

And so, with the advances in robotics (stemming in large part from helpful effects of the Energy), the art of robotics flourished.  People who loved to build, develop and program robots worked hard to create the perfect one for whatever task they were tackling.  Fame came to those who created especially well-produced robots, and love went into the making of most of them.

Robots could handle every menial task, from processing refuse to filing, and people were out of work.  They could handle farming, driving, maid work, sentry duty, packing, assembly work, data collection and analysis, and on and on.  We humans were more and more freed to pursue our interests – and we could pursue them along side the robots, if our interests were so inclined.

Transmutation was perfected and matter was transmuted, as the lead to gold, to become the materials needed by those who wanted to build something.  The ease with which MFTC, for Metal Foam Technologies Construction, dovetailed with free energy, computer aided design capabilities, robotics, and matter transmutation made building on awesome scales a simple task.

And so, buildings began to appear.  Grand buildings for every conceivable purpose, floating in air or spanning terrain in startling new ways.  With the Gardens, houses were built that took advantage of the anti-gravity tech, and many floated off to breathtaking landscape, being self sufficient.  Cities on the ground diminished.  People who could build began building for the joy of it.

With the people taking to the air, in essence adding a third dimension to where they could live with needs met, the over-population issue became a non-issue.

With needs always cared for, desires were pursued intensely.  People who wanted to cure diseases had access to research, and diseases were cured, though not at all in "traditional" ways most times.  As things progressed, scientists were no longer leashed to the corporate interest structure and were let loose to actually solve health and life problems.  Lives extended, and a new social structure emerged.

People who wanted to be artists were artists.  People who wanted to be musicians were musicians.  People who wanted to write stories, be actors, travel the world, teach children, and on and on did what they wanted to do.  Groups with common interests congregated.  And the needs to oppress, force and coerce began slipping away.

One community that sprang up in the sky was the Amusement Park Electorate (APE) who built, ran and enjoyed awesome slides, coasters and shakers, along with all other amusement park rides one could think of.  Gravity control added a new dimension to the rides.  People spent time on these rides until they had their fill (which in some cases was decades…) while the robots watched for maintenance issues.  Others came visiting to spend some of their time on the awesome rides.

Religious groups moved together in the sky.  Gamers, craftsmen, entertainment professionals, etc., and of course seedier choices made a show in the sky as well.

4.

Another development in the art of drawing forth the energy from, well, the vacuum (plenum) was the impervious shield.  The shield was a marvelous thing, really.  With the advancements in brain/computer interface, it was able to respond to certain directed or urgent thoughts and could be built to accommodate various spaces, both stationary and mobile.  It could expand and contract to varying degrees, depending on how it was set up, and entering a shield required the permission of the shield controller.

But nothing could prevent anyone or anything from leaving one.  Thus the innermost trumped all outer ones.  And so, The Personal Shield™ became the rage.  The Shield could be contracted to microns from the body and then expanded to a distance of roughly two feet in very short order, pushing all targets in mind away.  A simple set of thoughts protected your personal space – completely.

The Shield could absorb any amount of energy that hit it, above any level set by the user, as well.  People fell from cliffs hundreds of feet down, tumbling and banging against outcrops, to find themselves deposited gently and unharmed at the bottom (which opened doors in the minds of thrill-seekers worldwide!).  Bullets and other high-velocity objects were stopped cold.

Air and water could be fully and completely filtered of pollutants as the Shield allowed, transmuted or rejected molecules it encountered.  This also made a nuclear attack moot.  Vast shields were created for large areas, but soon were dismantled as it dawned on people globally just how personally impervious they were and how little point there was in attacking others.

Even in the absence of an atmosphere, the Shield could create and keep one inside itself.  Because it could drop Energy and Matter down in vibration to energy and matter (and vice versa), it could create the appropriate molecules to push inwards.  Though the molecules could easily escape, the net effect was one Atmosphere around the body.

For a while there was an unsuccessful attempt to ban the Shields because, "The criminals will have them and cannot be punished!"  But the absurdity of the idea of any criminal being able to harm another – with a shield themselves – finally penetrated the memescape and the punishment for any antisocial behavior just worked out to be pariah-hood.

It became, therefore, more important to get along with others.  Because fighting and force became moot – now we could neutralize even the worst of both radiation and impact through transmutation tech and shielding – people had a choice: get along or withdraw.  Without people who like you, you had only the lavish robotic matter around to attend the every intellectual whim.  In truth, there were many who withdrew, but they seemed to cause no one a problem, and the rest moved on.

And no one walked in fear.

The Internet proliferated in its open forum state, having missed the corporate takeover by a mere hair, and information flowed freely.  People in communication with each other congregated further in gatherings of houses in the sky.  More and more, the people in physical contact with each other believed similarly.  Enclaves sprang up of every imaginable craft, interest and passion.  Young people were drawn to apprenticeships; children were encouraged to find their bliss, be it scholarly, explorative, competitive, spiritual, or in prowess.

Borders once drawn on the world lost their meaning.  The people who cared about curating the planet were left to the earth while the others took to the skies.

Money lost meaning, and attention to the condition of the planet expanded.  Forests of plants that were particularly good at reducing carbon dioxide and raising oxygen were grown.  Interestingly, hemp (marijuana) was a favored crop, because it was very good at replenishing oxygen, while also providing natural treatment for a great range of common ailments.

About marijuana, it is interesting to note that in those early days the moguls were trying hard to keep the Weed illegal, not because they could find any hazard to either the user or to society at large, but because so much money was being made because it was illegal.

Many businesses were threatened by the Weed:  Petro-oil, because hemp oil, which is high in excellent hydrocarbons, could be used to run cars, make plastics, and all other petro-oil applications; Pharmaceuticals, because marijuana treated so very many ills ranging from depression and pain to glaucoma and cancer; Textiles because hemp made such excellent cloth, rope, and such; Paper-forest investments, because hemp made such exquisite paper; Pesticide companies because growing hemp required little or no pesticide; even Health Supplement companies, because hemp seed provided the optimal balance of omega oils, proteins, phytochemicals, and other nutrients.  The Prison-Industrial complexes thrived on the laws, and so the owners surely did not want to see the Weed legalized.  And the CIA, FBI and other national agencies around the globe used the laws to provide an untraceable source of funds for their Black Ops by selling marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs for undocumented cash.  They also used the laws as a sanctioned excuse for invading privacy, and a way to seize property on suspicion only.

Without real research data supporting their position, they resorted to disinformation, misleading facts and repetition of debunked theories to keep the population believing that there was nothing useful about the plant, that it was Demon.  In fact, research was showing that smoking it did not damage lungs and, lo, the active ingredient (THC) seemed to fight cancer (the Pharmaceutical and Medical empires were not thrilled with this, needless to say).  It helped greatly in pain management, it lifted the spirits of the depressed, it relaxed those who were stressed out, it helped Alzheimer's patients, it helped Multiple Sclerosis patients; it helped prevent glaucoma.

Most interestingly, it promoted neuro-generation – it helped the brain grow more neurons.  It made one smarter.  This fact was never, ever mentioned in the Main Media.

If the public learned that there was no good reason for the laws against marijuana, if they were told in all honesty that they were imprisoning their citizens (to the point that the country spearheading the move to demonize the Weed (because they had the most invested) had imprisoned one quarter of the entire world's imprisoned people – with only one twentieth of the world's population) – if the public learned that they were imprisoning their citizens so that some amongst them could make money, they would have seen just how vilely immoral this was.  But it was just another example of how astonishingly good the disinformation apparatus was that for decade upon decade some people actually felt righteous when they watched Cops and saw a family home, relatively peaceful, raided for the Weed.

It began to grow in the memescape that responsible use of any drug, alcohol or otherwise, was never an issue in society and that irresponsible behavior, regardless of whether a drug was involved was what was unacceptable.  With home shields, the laws against marijuana could not be enforced anyway, and the laws fell into disuse, along with many others.  And in fact, marijuana became a favored inclusion in Gardens.

♦ • ♦

The world was cleaned of the poisons and radiation of the bygone days; halcyon days abounded.

The children who were born were cherished by someone…

Our bodies became vehicles of choice; with the advancement of bio-sciences merging with equal advances in cybernetics, the options were endless.  And lives extended much further.  Places were explored, up close and personal, that were only accessible by machinery, telepresence and robotics before.

"Wormholing," traveling across great distances in little to no time, was discovered and developed, making travel to the stars an easy choice.  Initially the successes were remote.  Space was used for experiment and development of the tech, and though space was made vastly easier to access with the energy to motivate things off the planet no longer an issue, it was not a place many wanted to make the trek to.  The tech was developed further, and "W-Ports™" came into being.  These allowed one to travel from any point A on the planet (or in space) to any point B (outside those within Shields that were set to keeping one out) instantly.

And so, many of us headed for the stars; many stayed home.

I don't know where this story goes from here, but I think of all the possible societies that might be sprouting among the stars, and I wonder.  Even with the widespread use of electronic/etheric (faster-than-light) communication, many will be out there doing their own thing.  So who knows what stories will develop in the future.