A bit of a strange concept that's been floating around in my mind. We all know how grid-based movement works. Moving in a straight line along any direction of X, Y, and Z requires only one step/instance of movement to move one space from start while moving diagonally or along two axes requires more energy or more time/steps to achieve the same result of moving a space from start.
Grid for visual explanation, numbers representing how many steps or expenditures of energy is necessary to reach whichever point in space from point 0:
Reaching anything diagonally requires the same amount of energy/steps to move only one space away from point 0 than it does to move two spaces away from point 0 if you were to move in a straight line along purely one axis. This got me to thinking... what if the universe itself follows the same rules? Things occupy spaces, and such spaces must have a point in which they reside, and such points must be next to each other in such a way that it allows things to be next to each other or on top or below, etc, and if the universe itself has such a grid due to things needing to occupy spaces then surely it would be in anything's best interest to try and move as universally purely axially as possible in order to be as efficient as possible in its energy expenditure and time spent in movement.
Now, there's a very big problem that stops things from being able to move along the axes of the universe, much less even be able to detect it. Gravity and orbits. Things are ALWAYS spinning and moving in circles and orbiting and doing every single thing possible that would prevent things from moving in a completely straight line, always moving along more than one axis, making moving along a single axis of the universe a fever dream at best.
Light is also subject to gravity and diagonal movement, and so I began to wonder that, if a civilization managed to invent a technology that allows them to only move along one axis of the universe if the grid-based movement rules applied, would they be able to move faster than the light that is currently wasting energy and time moving along two axes and achieve something like FTL travel?