I once had a dream about the day planet Earth would be annihilated. It was a dream involving entities and subjects that made it seem impossible to happen. For example, immediately before the destruction, all humans were evacuated by means of instantaneous transportation to another world. Surely this is an absurdity in our world since no motion can exceed that of light. I also know, however, that we are extremely extremely tiny compared to the rest of the universe. According to the rate of expansion of the universe from the Big Bang theory, our universe is incredibly enormous. Most of the physics we learn here (to this day, on Earth) all boil down to fundamental laws that were developed based on our common experiences. The validity of these laws rests on experimental evidence. However, it is highly possible, given the size of the universe, that there exists other worlds where the laws of physics are entirely different. In other words, it may be true that on Earth, 300 million meters per second is the fastest speed anything can travel at, but a higher speed limit may exist elsewhere. Another possibility is that there are places within the universe where their laws of physics are exactly identical to ours. It is also possible that the universe consists of a combination of worlds that have the same laws of physics and worlds that have different governing laws of physics. A final possibility is that we may be the only world in the universe.
In any case, I have chosen my environment to be a place consisting of different dimensions, where dimensions mean worlds that are governed by the same laws of physics and consist of the same people that exist at the same moment, but possibly the events governing their lives are different. These dimensions/worlds, in my imagination, exist in various spots within the universe and are separated by distances so great that it might even take several hundreds of years for light to travel. A self-replicating habitat, then, is simply a civilization within one of these dimensions. The purpose of this environment is to allow humans to travel from one dimension to another. This is a problem, however, since our motion is limited to the speed of light. There might be a possibility, however, that Einstein was missing something and that the speed of light may not be a limiting speed to objects we have not yet discovered.