The phenomenon has been nick-named "lag" after the sensation 21st century computer users experienced when a disconnect between the server and user's computer occured. Fortunately, in this age of ultra-high speed data transmission rates, we no longer experience such a thing.

The question still remains, however, what is lag? what causes it? Will it ever go away? For the answer to these questions, I talked to quantum physicist HuuberJerik.

"We really don't know. I've heard conjecture about all sorts of forces affecting our perception of the flow of time, but nothing I have ever seen explains this.", said Jerik.

I then went on a data gathering mission of our own, talking to some of the pilots that routinely fly the spaceways. They noted something interesting, lag more often occured when many other pilots were present. My curiosity piqued, I then set off to visit an old friend.

Yume, who has but one name, is a Jenquai I've known for a long time. Lacking in any formal schooling in the area of quantum mechanics, she still posseses an incredible amount of wisdom, and we were able to brainstorm ideas.

"I wonder... could it be related to the reactors? Maybe they're affecting the dark matter somehow and that's warping the universe.", pondered Yume.

A different theory she proposed involved the differences between our physical dimension and a possible metapysical dimension, and, at times of lag, more of our mass was moved from dimension to dimension. Finally, in the end, we settled back on her first theory.

"Wait, no, I think you had it the first time," I said. She nodded for me to continue. "Well, um, let's see... it has to do with... well, if we try and visualize space it might be easier to explain. Let's assume, for a moment, that space can be laid out in a 3-d matrix..." I faltered. "Maybe time and space aren't so different," Yume suggested.

"Of course! I remember reading about that theory in school! Now where was I? Oh yes, the grid. Now, if we entertwine space with time, we can notice an interesting effect. Placing a black hole in the middle of our grid, we can see that the intense gravitational forces at the singularity fold space almost in upon itself."

The basic theory goes thus: Reactors are built to harness the power of black holes, but in a substansially weakened form. Thus, pulling together too many reactors in a small space (such as a sector or docking port of a starbase), while it might not reach the extreme a singularity accomplishes, would, in fact, warp the spacetime continuum. This has the effect of slowing down our preception of time, producing lag.

Kudos to Yume for coming up with this idea.