Two Streams Facility

The Two Streams Kindness Facility (Two Streams) was a hospital on Apalapucia designed to care for Apalapucians who had contracted Chen-7, a plague that would ordinarily kill any two-hearted being in a day.

Functions
The Two Streams Facility was designed to fulfil two goals: quarantine of the infected to stem the spread of the plague and palliative care for infected Apalapucians.

Two Streams achieved both with temporal technology. The infected were sent to live in separate time streams "compressed" from the main one. They were held in place by "temporal engines", hence the name of the facility. The compressed time streams were collectively known as "Red Waterfall" and the single normal one was known as "Green Anchor". There were emblems for each.

Whilst the separate time streams prevented infected Apalapucians spreading their disease to the healthy, they also served another function. Because Red Waterfall time was compressed, Green Anchor time would seem dilated to those in Red Waterfall. This meant that for any given period of absolute time that passed, Red Waterfall occupants would "experience" it for longer than Green Anchor occupants. Seconds in Green Anchor could equal a whole week from the point of view of the Red Waterfall occupants. Likewise, a day in Green Anchor could encompass a whole lifetime. Since Chen-7 killed in a day of absolute time, this curious effect of Red Waterfall's compressed nature gave Chen-7 sufferers a chance to live their full lives.

Patients were physically isolated from the uninfected, other temporal manipulation allowed safe visits. A time glass, which looked like an oversized magnifying glass, synchronised the streams. Visitors could speak with the patients through the glass, though they could not travel through it. Patients were diverted by entertainment zones in the Red Waterfall parts of the facility, accessed through an area known as "the Gate".

The Gate contained a console that controlled access to Two Streams' entertainment zones, of which six are known: mountain zone, roller-coaster zone, cinema, aquarium, gallery and garden. The last was a perfect replica of a Shill governor's mansion on Shallanna.

The facility was largely maintained by two parties: the Interface and the Handbots. The Interface was — as the name suggested — the main method of communication between residents and the computer system that ran Two Streams. It answered the residents' questions to it as best it could.

Side effects
Another strange effect of Red Waterfall's compressed time stream was that it eliminated the need for food. It did not, however, affect ageing. (TV: The Girl Who Waited)