Hammerspace: Infinity in Your Pocket
Brief disclaimer before I begin this article: If you go to wikipedia.org, you’ll find a nice, informative article on Hammerspace. What I say here will stray from “the facts” just a little. But that’s because I’ll be tackling areas that the wiki leaves untouched, due to a lack of actual information.
Hammerspace is also commonly called a pocket dimension, as suit, jacket, or pants pockets are common locations for Hammerspace portals. I’ve also heard it called The Hole, a Magic Pouch/Satchel, and hypercube. But no matter where you are or what name you use, you’re all talking about the same dimension.
Hammerspace is indeed a dimension, but not a typical one. It is supported and accessible from almost every Universe in the Multiverse, and multiple portals to it exist in each Universe. Video games, especially RPGs, along with cartoons, typically anime, and fantasy/sci-fi, all make ready use of Hammerspace. RPGs are a fine example. How else do you explain how they can carry 99 each of Hi-potions, Ethers, Phoenix Down, and millions of gil, plus have a party of four or more only take up the spatial area of the leader? Answer: Magic Pouch. Known in Dungeons and Dragons as the Bag of Holding, you can stuff several times your own weight in items, and people, into it and not have it increase in weight by one ounce. As you enter battle, the leader opens the sack and pulls out his battle partners, then puts them away once the battle’s over. And they’d have plenty of room to stretch out inside the pouch, even with all the money and items around them.
Hammerspace is astronomically large. Some would say infinite, but that would make it equal in size to the entire Multiverse. Personally, I think Hammerspace is always twenty cubic megameters smaller than the total volume of the rest of the Multiverse put together. Now, you may ask, if the pocket dimension is so large, why can I only fit 99 X-potions in there, and yet still have room for the final key to the dungeon? And Wwhy don’t my items get mixed up with someone else’s? Answer: The entirety of Hammerspace is divided amongst everyone who uses it. Each person who uses Hammerspace has a unit of the space that only they can access. It’s kinda like those self-storage places, with optional features. These units can either be static in size, able to grow and shrink to accommodate changing inventory sizes, or both. For example, Final Fantasy units are infinite in regards to “shelves” for unique items, but each “shelf” only has enough area to fit 99 of each unique item. In Metroid, Samus uses Hammerspace to store her extra missiles, power bombs, and energy tanks. Readying the missiles or bombs opens the portal to the next available missile or bomb. The extra energy is always on tap through a permanent Hole somewhere in the power suit.
Characters like Bomberman, FPS heroes with infinite pistol ammo, and anime girls who smack perverts with hammers from nowhere (The phenomena that gave Hammerspace its name) need a special feature in their units: an infinite supply of a certain item, whether it be bombs, bullets, or mallets. I’m still not quite sure how that’s accomplished, but I do have a theory. Since it would be impossible to load an infinite number of anything into Hammerspace, which would also fill it up completely, those who can call up infinite items have a special item in their unit: a molecular replicator, like those devices from Star Trek that can create anything you want from thin air. Bomberman, for example, puts one bomb into his Hammerspace storage unit. The replicator scans the bomb and begins producing working copies of the bomb, up until the unit is full to capacity (99 bombs perhaps?). When Bomberman takes a bomb or two, or four, out, the replicator starts up again, guaranteeing a never-ending supply of explosives.
There’s one last convenient, and somewhat mind-boggling, feature to Hammerspace: What you want to pull out is always right at the portal, no matter when you put it in, or how much you put in afterwards. Of course, there’s no problem for those people (Bomberman) who only have one kind of thing in their unit, but for those like Link, who seems to keep his portal on the backside of his shield, it’s a conundrum. He can pull out his bow, put it away, then reach into the Hole just as far and come out with a bomb. On a side note, Link doesn’t really need a “bomb bag” to carry the explosives. The thing merely represents how much shelf space he’s got for bombs in Hammerspace. I think the best explanation for the “needed item on top” phenomena is given by Piers Anthony in a Xanth novel. The book is called Cube Route, and it tells the tale of this homely girl looking for beauty. The Good (but grumpy) Magician Humphrey supplies her with one of his socks, magicked into being a Magic Satchel, and tells her she needs to get traveling partners, but must seem to travel alone. Essentially, an RPG party. To extract the person or item she wants from the sock, she reaches her hand in and thinks of who or what she wants to pull out, and her hand comes into contact with whatever it was. Magic, yes, but simple magic anyone can use.
Hammerspace is useful, but not to be toyed with. Being able to access it is a privilege, and it can be taken away if abused. Though I’m not sure how…