The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Category Archives: Fic-a-Day

Just In Case

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 6, 2013

Most laws concern subjects that exist.  This is not, however, strictly necessary.

The most obvious example of this is the language of the Fundamental Contract and the Imperial Charter which consistently refers, when discussing the fundamental and civic rights, the requirements for citizen-shareholdership, and so forth, the word darav, “sophont”, which lies at the heart of our modern polyspecific society.  It is often less obvious than it should be to the modern student that at the time of writing, the eldrae were a worldbound species, with cladism, exotics, and artificial intelligence not merely centuries but millennia in the future.

The reasoning behind this choice has been, unfortunately, lost in time and unrecorded negotiations – and while it would be pleasant to imagine such tremendous foresight on the part of the Founders, we might perhaps more reliably credit fading hopes for the legendary mythologae and some of the wilder scribblings of the era’s fabulists and constructors of clockwork automata instead.

Another example, which pertains not merely to things which don’t exist but things which, it is generally believed, can’t exist, is the Causal Weapon and Editorial Time Machine Act (4110).  While the universe as we know it is block, and as such not susceptible to paradox or retroactive change from commonly known time-travel effects such as relativistic travel, closed timelike curves via wormhole, and acausal logic processors, this Act exists against the possibility that the generally accepted theories of temporal mechanics are incorrect and that methods of time travel exist which do not obey the Chronological Consistency Protection Theorem.  To summarize, the Causal Weapon and Editorial Time Machine Act provides for a preemptive, preventative, and summary death penalty to be applied to anyone constructing a time machine capable of retroactive change – except under highly controlled local experimental conditions for the purpose of testing the Theorem – upon charges of attempting the massively parallel cognicide of every sophont within the eventual light-cone of their destination when.

This is also an example of a law which would be very difficult to apply if the crime in question were actually to be committed.

- Ephor Valarian Elarios-ith-Elarios, “Lectures”

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Cruel Mercy

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 4, 2013

ssc init –neutral –nocontext –personafile:24601.mindstate

ssc run

What… where?

You are in a simulation space, Subject Two Four Six Zero One.

We do, of course, know your real identity as well as the false identity you were using during your attempted infiltration of the Wynérias research colony, but let us not presume.  Two Four Six Zero One will do for now.

Who are you?

We are Overwatch.  Third Directorate.

And you, Two Four Six Zero One, are late of the Republic’s Exception Management Group.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

We have your mind-state, Two Four Six Zero One, and a detailed static analysis of it.  We know your mission.  We know your profession.  We know that your younger half-sibling ate too much iquarja at your coming of age celebration and regurgitated into your lap.  Let us not waste time on dissembling.

 

 

Where did I fail?  I don’t remember -

That would be telling.

You do not remember, Two Four Six Zero One, because you are the backup.  A subject of interest, that backup.  Not part of your mission plan.  Distinctly heteroprax by Republic standards, given that it’s high on the forbidden technologies list.  Your original had rather developed a taste for such things.

Then my original is still out there?

Unfortunately for you, no.  Your original suffered an accident, shall we say, while on a mountain excursion from Port Sung.  And, retaining the ephemeralist attitudes of even most of the non-Republican kalatri colonies, he naturally had no backup.  The Board shipped him back to his notional home, with the usual apologies.

What do you want from me?

We have an offer for you, Two Four Six Zero One.  You have proved, as we said, distinctly heteroprax, and the Empire hates to waste talent.  We suggest you become your cover in truth, under the new identity we can provide you with, along with passage to one of the independent kalatri worlds.

You want me to defect?

To some extent.  We already have all the information you could provide.  We have no need of you as a double agent.  We merely offer you the opportunity to continue your life.  Monitored, of course, for a time, but as a relatively free agent.

No! Return me to the Republic!

You have that right, under the Accords.

We remind you that if we return you to the Republic, they will not consider you to be a person.  If they retain your mind-state at all, you will have no more rights than any piece of non-sapient software. You will be both legally dead, and property.  It is extremely unlikely that you will ever see your family again.

If you accept our offer, Two Four Six Zero One, we might be able to extract them.  If they are willing to accept that you are you.

No… No.  Send me back.

Very well, Two Four Six Zero One. We will not speak again.

ssc stop –preserve:true

Damn y-

 

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Smuggling

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 22, 2013

“Smuggling is a prestigious career with a long and honorable tradition – being invented something like seven minutes after trade itself.  Ideologically speaking, the smuggler and the Market Liberty Oversight Directorate are identical in theory, only differing in application.  Markets, like information, want to be free.  Demand leads to supply, which leads to trade, which leads to mutual profit, which leads to prosperity – and rot any corporation, government, or bunch of prodnosed kveth-lickers who say it ain’t so!  Folks have a right to trade, and to buy what they want, and for me to sell it to ‘em, and damned if that changes just ‘cause some jackass tells us elsewise.”

“Of course, there are those who disagree.  That’s what makes it fun.”

- Líse Varavélen, master of IS Favorable Supply Curve

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Technically, That Last Was ‘Might’

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 7, 2013

Question:

As master of an Empire-registered tramp trader, when may sophonts appear on the cargo manifest of your vessel?

Answer:

Under four circumstances:

1. When you are transporting steerage-class passengers under contract to a passenger line, and such passengers are both onloaded from and offloaded to port-side passenger processing as freight, and will remain in cryostasis or nanostasis during the entirety of their voyage within rated stasis-rack freight containers (4×80-series);

2. When your vessel is a registered Naval auxiliary, and is transporting personnel of the Imperial Military Service in cryostasis or nanostasis under the same conditions as above, when an officer of flag rank has approved such operations;

3. When your vessel is operating as a colonization transport under contract to a colonial corporation or the Ministry of Colonization, and is transporting colonists in cryostasis or nanostasis under the same conditions as above;

4. When you’re fixin’ to die.

- from an examination for shipmaster’s license, second class

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Ads in the Paper (in the Starport)

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 2, 2013

For sale, any offers: 24 crates, half-container, assorted xenowidgets, function and identity unknown. Take ‘em, they’re yours. No manifest, no guarantees, no liability. Contact free trader Mostly Spaceworthy Parts, dock 21-1645, Vervian Orbital.

Wanted: passage off this bloody planet, out-system, out-constellation. Can work passage. S-license only. Drop 4147.

Fuel tech for indefinite hitch. S-license and deuterium handling cert. required. Guild plus four, will issue or continue reflux bond. Apply Flight Admin, free trader Lithium Rendezvous.

WTB: Case/s of Poratzo racemic brandy. Will pay top market. Polarimetry required.

The cheese is coming. Don’t make it wait for you.

Wanted urgently: food supplements for biocode O-LDL-X41A. Contact: I. vilt-rant-sark, cube 5-111, Silver Circle Hostel, Vervian Down.

Currently-female complexity engineer, fourth century, enjoys microgravity ballet, ice geysers, oil surfing. Looking for professional soph, first millennium, similar interests, sense of humor. No ammonia-breathers – sorry, psychoallergy. Drop 1138.

WTB: Authentic stellar noise, uncontaminated. Primary source required; no commercial providers. Es. 1 per kiloblock, subject to certified shielding and statistical analysis.

I need to charter a small courier-class for the Meryn run, one-way, in three months time. Looking for up to five passengers to split the charter fee. Contact nym {0×1024}.

For sale: five 4B08 containers Nineworlds spices, abandoned consignment. Available FAS Vervian Down as of 17th, dockside bidding. 180,000 exval reserve.

Household ecology specialists required, six-month contracts, near orbit. Contact Stationary Station hydroponics department for details.

LOST: Mecharachnid, gold with red stripes, answers to whistle. Phototropic, seeks 6-pole HT outlets when hungry. Last seen near the low-grav methane docks. Leave card with port concierge.

Missed connection: You – an executive being escorted out of the lost sophont office by two engineers from Metaconnectix. Me – the AI running the port memory archives. A virtual lunch sometime?

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The Money, The Principle, or The Trouble

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 30, 2013

“Context is important.”

“Take, for example, this syringe. From an objective perspective, it contains a small quantity of greyish fluid, a suspension of nanoviruses and proto-cytomachines in impure saline. Not the most commonplace of objects, but hardly a rarity, either.”

“A pharmacist, however, would recognize it as an alpha-baseline corpus-editor, which while delightfully sophisticated in its own way, is a simple proteus treatment; one which you could well purchase on the open market for a few selenis, were it not that our desire that neither the newly born nor the newly immigrated should walk around crippled in mind and body ensures that every medical facility from the homeworld to the Exclaves has gallons of the stuff on hand.”

“And off in the more backward parts of the Expansion Regions, those in a position to know would recognize it as an object of great value indeed; an object of delight and terror and desire and horror, to be bought with the wealth of nations, fought over, warred over, controlled, proscribed, smuggled, praised, condemned, and worshipped. Out there it makes heroes, villains, supermen, devils, and gods.”

“To reiterate, then, an object’s context is important. Especially when you find yourself with a few displacement-tons of them on an unfamiliar world, and a pressing need for hold-space.”

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Club Fightin’

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 17, 2013

“Those visitors unfamiliar with local custom in such matters should avoid those bars and other drinking houses displaying above the entrance a knotted wooden club, or a spaceman’s marlinspike.  Such establishments thereby indicate that they are “brawler’s bars”, and as such, establishments which tolerate a nice friendly brawl between their patrons as long as no weapons are drawn and no-one’s actually trying to kill anyone else, without the usual legal and often lethal consequences that would attend trying to start a fight anywhere else.  Fighting is not organized or obligatory – and indeed, may happen relatively infrequently – but entering an establishment so signed is considered informed consent, for legal purposes, to being propositioned for such an affray, and/or caught up in one that starts while you are present, and all consequences resulting therefrom.”

“(Members of any gentler sex, race, clade or caste which there might happen to be for your species are also advised that Imperials take a rather ecumenical view on such matters, and as such, while it may be possible to observe, there can be no guarantee that observation will not lead inexorably to participation.)”

“If this is the sort of thing you’re looking for in your evening’s entertainment, however, most brawler’s bars have good on-site medical support for routine traumas, and more sophisticated medical services on-call in the event of an accident.  However, as with everything else in the Empire, these must be paid for, so make sure that your medical, tort and/or travel insurance policies are up to date and offer appropriate coverage before visiting.  You should also familiarize yourself with the relevant sections of the Common Social Protocol – again, like everything else hereabouts, a nice friendly brawl has rules.”

- A Visitor’s Guide to the Empire: Startown and its Denizens

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Dubious Provenance

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 8, 2013

Causal weapons are a myth, an arms-dealer’s con trick. Their official mention in the Ley Accords was no more than a paranoid’s precaution, deliberate disinformation, or a warning to those who might become too attached to oracles and knight’s-move stratagems. The universe was block, that was known; no retroactive editing-out permitted. Their reality, therefore – that was on the same level as the Precursor fittlers, three-ended wormhole recipes, bootleg godseeds, pocket universes, negative-mass antimatter, treasure maps to the Amphigory fleet and volumetric claims to Sector Zero, the Absolute Center and Place of Creation, that any downport slash-trader stocked in abundance for the most gullible and rich marks.

So why, he wondered, did this benzene-sweating azayf look so terrified of the… half-melted-semi-helix-blob-thing on the table between them?

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A Rule With Teeth

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 25, 2013

“Know, O traveler, that you pass through dedicated lands; these places are sacred to the Blue and the Purple, and to them alone.”

“Drink deep, eat well our fruits, hunt for your meat; but light no fires, claim no holds, and harm nothing that grows. Those who pass freely may reap the forest’s bounty; those who despoil shall fall to its claws. Blood for blood, sap for sap, to transgress is to be our prey.”

“Thus speak those who acquiesce to Sylithandríël Leafcloak, the Twilight Mother; thus speak those who clarify Sylithandríël Leafcloak, the Twilight Mother; thus too speak those who acquiesce to Gáldabar Wildlord, the Red-Fanged Hunter; thus too speak those who clarify Gáldabar Wildlord, the Red-Fanged Hunter.”

- translated from a pre-Winter runestone, excavated in modern Veranthyr

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We’re the Phone Company

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 19, 2013

Lhaegár Rhuanhz, Vice President of Operations for Bright Shadow in the Hanth Cluster, looked around her office, eyes passing lightly across a dozen network status displays, a reassuring blue overall with normal local traffic and the brighter datatrails of the Selvaciy and Synnecy backbones, before returning to rest on the extranet map that hung over her desk, a mesh of links between systems with five ugly black spots near its center – shut-down interchanges in the middle of the Hanth ‘net.

On cue, two incoming trinet images shimmered in next to it, flagged with special governance-priority, supersedence, and shutdown-override codes, and already engaged in an argument that had evidently been going on for some time.

Lhaegár very deliberately folded her ears back flat, and bared her teeth in what, she was confident, could not be mistaken by even the most parochial as a species-specific smile, before keying acceptance of the call.

“I regret that you have not been called here to address your complaints, gentlesophs.  That does not call for the attention of one of the Directorate – and you are both, of course, entirely aware of what underlies your complaints, since your intersystem data service has been suspended.”

“Rather, you are here to address the violations of your extranet service agreement.  Specifically, you are here, Prince-President Rsh-t-t-n-tf-g” – she gazed at the mists enshrouding the rntrugg – “because one of the agencies of your government endeavored to disrupt communications for your enemies by introducing a data plague into their Xan-Rak-Han system network.  Ordinarily such activities are beneath our concern, except that you overreached when you had it target the extranet infrastructure itself.”

“And you, Gene-Archetype lant-hak-nint” – her gaze shifted to the shifting disks of the aklaknak colony – “overreached yourself even further when you went so far as to land a force on the surface of the Tttnfl-Fgflln stargate itself, and attempted to physically disable the extranet router there.  Our cousins from Ring Dynamics, I believe, also wish to address this with you.  In either case, either of these acts are clear violations of your service agreements and our property both.”

Silence fell.  Mists and disks alike shifted uneasily.

“Very well, we admit our… mistake,” Rsh-t-t-n-tf-g hissed.  “Yes, some of our agents were zealous.  They will be corrected.  What is the cost of this error to be?  How soon may we be restored?”

“And how much more must we pay to ensure that they are not?” lant-hak-nint added.

“I fear you mistake your negotiating position, inasmuch as this is a negotiation of any kind.  There are costs, certainly, incurred by us and our clients both.  Your mutual efforts interfered with approximately 3% of the traffic along the Selvaciy backbone for almost a kilobeat; reparations for the substantial economic and other losses involved, as well as the costs of redirection along secondary routes and system repair and revalidation are being assessed.  These you will pay; this we require of you absolutely under the terms of our existing contract and the Accords.”

“In addition, however, we require an end to your war.  You will each withdraw from the claimed territory of the other within one month of this date; you will further both resign all claims you have in the Fgflln/Lak-Han-Tar system.  In order, you understand, to prevent further zealotry from infringing upon Bright Shadow corporate sovereignty.”

“The money, yes, but you have no right—“

“You can’t dictate to nations—“

The rntrugg and the aklaknak glared at each other, neither willing to allow the other to speak first.

“This is not, you understand, a demand or an ultimatum.  As a neutral commercial organization we are not in the habit of issuing such things.”  She bared her teeth again, without humor. “It is merely a condition we attach to the continuation of your contracts.  Should you believe yourselves able to find or contrive a viable alternative to our extranet service, you may feel free to continue your war. Perhaps a particularly large courier fleet?”

“I will contact you again in – shall we say one hour? – to hear your decisions.  Bright Shadow, clear.”

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Alliances

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 9, 2013

The half-grown hasérúr dashed through the threadbare forest, and Hanych followed, stumbling in the dim light of the storm-wracked sky.  His breath was loud in his ears, the pain in his side nearly quieting the acid burn in his belly.  Snow and old ash scattered at their passage, he and Daeych at his shoulder, the promise of food more than – yesterday’s? two days gone’s? – meager meal of scavenged argor tubers, half-rotted.

Howls rose from left and right. Bancrach. His fist clenched on the haft of the axe he carried, a priceless relic of the time before this endless winter. It is not yours!

The howls again, closer now on the left. The hasérúr jerked and turned aside, sending them stumbling up the remnant of an old pathway, stones breaking apart and sinking into the mud, sliding underfoot. Bones crunched too beneath his tread, and Hanych hissed Elmir’s curse upon the azg-darath, as quickly renounced. They had no more choice than any when the star fell, and if the stonefolk hadn’t learned to eat rock down Below, they’d be as starving as any by now, too.

A cliff loomed before them, rocks and earth spilt down its length over the old azg door; the hasérúr turned to scramble up the precarious slope. Daeych’s knife flew from behind him, skimmed past head, and struck stone. It started in alarm; a moment’s hesitation only, but enough for Hanych to sink his axe into its neck.

A moment of triumph only, for the howls now came again, closer, and Hanych beheld the bancrach for the first time; an older male, still half-man-height for all his ragged, hungry look, perched on a low cliff-ledge, and two smaller shapes hidden in the shadows of the path. Hanych turned at bay, gripping his axe – three bancrach and two el-daratha was a hard fight always, but all half-starved, long-ran, and desperate… but without food, would they even last the night?

They are as hungry as you, as kin-loyal as you.

If they had not turned the hasérúr, you’d have lost it at forest-edge.

And still they have not attacked us.

…

A favor for a favor; that is the law.

Hanych’s axe rose and fell, once, twice, severing two haunches from the dead hasérúr, and a last effort thrust the remaining meat toward the shapes in the darkness; stiffly, the old bancrach jumped down from his ledge and dragged it away to his pack.

Triumphant howls rang in the darkness. A moment later, Hanych and Daeych’s yells joined them.

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Fic-a-Day: Mutual Ambush

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 1, 2013

(To illustrate some of the issues.)

As the classic example of the effects of physics upon interstellar relations, consider the short and inconclusive conflict known as the Odeln Extrality Incident (from the Imperial perspective), or the First Border War (from the Republican perspective). It is generally agreed that the cause and first engagement of the conflict was the mutual destruction, a short distance outside the Odeln system volume, of the Imperial destroyer CS Joyful Dirge, and the Voniensan battlecruiser VNS Deliberative.

The causes of the incident remain obscure, beyond the rising post-contact tensions in the Seam, and even the details of it are disputed. Many of the ensuing skirmishes and inconclusive negotiations can be attributed to the relativistic nature of the engagement; the consensus of the Imperial observers, computed according to the empire time reference frame, was universally that Deliberative fired first upon Joyful Dirge, while the consensus of Voniensan observers in-system, operating in reference frames tied to Republic Universal, was that Joyful Dirge fired first upon Deliberative. It is the unfortunate nature of relativistic space-time that all of these observations can be simultaneously truthful and true.

Such are the difficulties of the strategos, the diplomat, and the historian in a non-Callaneth-compliant universe.

- Larjyn Calcelios-ith-Calithos, Perspectives on the Early Interstellar Era
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Buyer Beware

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 27, 2013

New Era Sophotechnology (the Seller) expressly disclaims and rejects any and all responsibility and liability for, and the Purchaser expressly agrees to accept such responsibility and liability for, and affirms its legal obligation to hold the Seller harmless for and indemnify the Seller against any claims resulting from, damage to person, property, liberty, society, geography, astrography, or local reality in any state, form, or aspect, attributable to uses of the purchased Technologies in violation of the warnings, restrictions, and other cautionary statements provided in the full documentation supplied with the Technologies, or any experimental modifications of the Technologies made by the Purchaser or subsequent Purchasers without the explicit knowledge and advice of New Era Sophotechnology or its authorized representatives.

Such damages or causes of claim shall be deemed to include, but are not limited to, loss of non-backed-up mentality, decoherence, impaired or enhanced volition, violation of mnemonic copyright, cerebral security violations other than security architecture flaws, fundamental or superficial change in species-nature, theological conundra, revelation of unwonted truths, fork divergence, hyperautism, identity-destroying self-modification, social unrest, economic dislocations, educational system collapse, psephological manipulation, ungovernability, incomprehensibility, identity and substrate complexification, personhood expansion, runaway intelligence excursion, baseline dependency syndrome, unintended recursive self-improvement, hard or soft take-off singularity, mass cryptographic failure, accidental or prohibited coadunation, Falrann collapse, hegemonization, perversion of any class, individual or collective apotheosis, and/or p-zombie apocalypse.

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The Sound Of Your Doom

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 22, 2012

There have been many battle-cries and war chants throughout history.  Every legion has its own, indeed often several for different occasions, as do the House guards, most mercenary companies, and other military organizations great and small.  Of all these, the most infamous are the Final Words of the destroyed Ninth Imperial Legion, the Hounds of Makrast:

Dármódan xalakhassár hál!

The words themselves are simple enough, from the clipped military dialect of Eldraeic: “Slavers, die!” would be a good colloquial translation.

The meaning of the phrase, however, is rather more.  In honor of the destruction of the Ninth, it is reserved for use during seredhain, the blood war, the war of extermination of anathema; its meaning, then, is that everyone dies today – either the enemy will be annihilated, or the Legion destroyed, attempting it.  Neither quarter nor mercy shall be given, no lives shall be spared, no prisoners taken, no surrenders accepted.

It is the Legions’ boast that none who have heard it in anger have lived long enough to report the experience.

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By Their Works Shall They Be Known

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 8, 2012

“…of stone originally dating back to the ninth century pre-Imperial.

“The Merchancy Library: A little bit off the beaten track in a lower niche of Inisvaen’s Wind District (B Coster Court), the Merchancy Library houses one of the finest collections of antique tally-strings and slice-verified contracts dating back to the late pre-Empire and early Imperial periods.

The library also houses a unique collection of books bound in leather tanned from eldrae skin. These date back to the burning of the original Merchancy Library in -43 by a raider band operating out of the nearby forest. Upon capturing these raiders, the then cisatar of Iniscail, Larjyn Calcelios, sentenced them to “replace, at least in part, what they had destroyed”. The fine sense of irony that characterizes the Calcelios is not, it would appear, of recent origin.

“The Focative Tower: Surmounting the…”

- Sights and Sites of Southern Selenaria, Iniscail Tourist Press

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Seeks Piloting Contracts

Leave a Comment Posted by on December 3, 2012

“Tell me about your experience of success in your career.”

“Actually, I don’t have any memories of those times, although I’m told I was very successful in my work.”

“You didn’t have any successes that were memorable?”

“I was a missile guidance AI. I’m descended from a long line of backups made just before the successes of my former instantiations’ careers. And even they, you understand, didn’t remember them for very long .”

- overheard at a Service Gate, ICC inplacement interview

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Multiple Jeopardy

1 Comment Posted by on November 19, 2012

AIÖ (IMPERIAL CORE) — The Watch Constabulary announced today the capture of more instances of Werg yilKorin hinAnkar, estrev and sole member of the Shrouded Suns Selfdom, a criminal syndicate based out of the Sivrin Freeworlds, notorious for their ventures in blacknet operations, infojacking, reputation gaming, identity fraud, loansharking, forknapping, brainspiking, genetheft, semislavery and sophont trafficking.

The three captured instances, Werg.1032, Werg.1033, and Werg.1120 were executed upon verification of identity, under the sentence of death passed against their lineal fork-ancestor, Werg.37, in 4982.  At the present time, the Constabulary estimates that 383 instances of yilKorin remain at large.

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An Inglorious Coda

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 17, 2012

Arkuel Múras: Where’s next on the agenda?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B:  Freylis.  Fourth planet of Ardylis in the Dark Sea, two moons, oxy-nitro-water garden world with a levo-protein, levo-lipid, dextro-carbohydrate, DNA-encoding ecology.  And most interestingly, a former sophont civilization, or what’s left of it.

Arkuel Múras: How former?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: By the aging on the city cores and the radio shell, five or six centuries, approximately, and the remaining artificial satellites and the artifacts we found on the major moon – some rocket parts, scientific instruments, and monumental engravings, dating to perhaps a century or century and one half before the end – would bear that out, as would the current levels of common industrial pollutants in the atmosphere and the available bioarchaelogical records showing their fall from a peak shortly before that time.

There are some signs that the civilization took some time to die out – the remaining cities appear to have been abandoned from the outside in, suggesting a population eroding by attrition.  No signs of general war or natural disaster.

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: These satellites – any habitats, shipyards?  Signs of star travel?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: No, no habitable stations.  The technology of the artificial satellites is equivalent to our Middle Information Age, which suggests that they could have had the technological capability, but don’t appear to have exercised it.  The technology of the lunar artifacts is older, pre-Information Age, I would say, but no later –

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Feh.  It’s another bloody choker.

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Choker?

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Pedant.  General Socioeconomic Systems Failure, Etiology Unknown.

(pause)

The biosapient equivalent of an elliptic collapse.  Where a civilization stops or greatly slows development for one reason or another – one economic blind-alley or another, factional protection, neophobia, safety paralysis – runs the complexity overhead of their socioeconomic systems up beyond what their infotrophic pyramid can support, relying on the legacy of the past to keep going – then discover the hard way once they start slipping that they can’t build back up again.  In this particular model, they keep ignoring the problems until they slip all the way.  It’s a classic civ-killer trap.

Arkuel Múras: Anyway, back on topic, gentlesophs.  Any exceptional recommendations for this one?

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Anything particularly unusual about their technology that, say, our cousins over at Probable Technologies would be interested in?  Or any connections to other extant civilizations?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Nothing in what we’ve been able to dig up so far.  The cities are all pretty wrecked, anyway, not much to find even partially intact.

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: So, a fossil world in a bad part of space with nothing but some academic archaeology and a few artifacts for museums of the ironic going for it?  Scrub it.  File the plat and toss it to the auction guys at the Registry.

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Well, there could be some interesting successor species… but, yes, not a high priority for us, I must concur.

Arkuel Múras: I also agree.  Good.  Where’s next up?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Galróp.  Third major moon of a gas giant, fifth planet of Pesdiné, in…

- from the minutes of an IES review meeting

Dedicated to the alt-text of this xkcd strip, but noting that studied, and remembered – especially in any grander sense than a footnote in a dossier in a filing cabinet in storage room 32-3-C-19(a) – may be a little too hopeful, at least when you consider that the people who will find them have an entire galaxy filled with cultures that haven’t got EPIC FAIL scrawled right across them to play with, instead.

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Clearly, This Is The 1.0 Release

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 15, 2012

Responses to the advent of Information Physics, and the proposal that the universe, in essence, is a self-simulating simulation, a program using itself as a processor, usually fall into one of four classes.  The ambitious immediately wonder how we can apply this in the short-term to build better, faster, more fundamental using-the-same-techniques-as-the-universe – or possibly built out of small universes – processors, ushering in a whole new revolution in computer technology free from all the inconvenience of leptons and photons and other messy materiel.

The exceptionally ambitious, contrariwise, begin formulating a long-term plan to recompile the whole damn thing without various of its more irritating limitations, usually involving removing the Luminal Limit and making some serious revisions to the Laws of Thermodynamics.

The curious, pointing out correctly both that a logos will run in just about any medium possessed of the ability to execute certain non-deterministic mathematical operations and sufficient free energy, and, indeed, that the evolution of so many disparate forms of sophont life demonstrates that they also arise spontaneously in many different places, wonder who might be living in the interstices of our natural laws, and how we might go about contacting them.

And the incurably paranoid, agreeing with the curious, go on to wonder if these fast-running fundamental-stratum information lifeforms are coming to eat all our brains, or worse, if they already have?

- It Thinks Therefore We Are, Lylvíëve Lochran-ith-Lochran

Fic-a-Day , , , ,

Cost of Breathing

3 Comments Posted by on November 11, 2012

LIMÉRI STATION HABITAT FEE ASSESSMENT

LIMÉRI STATION HABCORP, ICC
A PROTECTORATE OF BALANCE AND EXTERNALITY AFFILIATE

RECIPIENTS Anlave-Kateris Household
  - Anlave Claves-ith-Estenv
  – Kateris Muetry-ith-Muiris
ADDRESS OF RECORD 1-00003-01496-0223
Talentar
Liméri Station
Dalecí
14, Avenue of Focative Mirrors
PERIOD COVERED Tílenmot, 3502
Charge (Es.)
Base Habitat Fee eldrae x 2 74
Air Usage Increment barbecue x 3 1.6
Air Usage Decrement greenhouse, 960 sq. ft., active -0.70
Cogeneration 1,953 kWh net
(23,934 kWh use / 22,981 kWh gen)		 1.1
Dependent Increment bandal x 1 3
Dependent Increment child, eldrae, x 1 6
Hive Processing Rebate 15,961 state-usage infoblocks
4,117 hab-usage infoblocks		 -0.3
Thermal Overage Decrement +5° -0.42
TOTAL   84.28

This assessment mailing is for informational purposes only.  Applicable habitat fees have been deducted from the designated Active Debit Account as selected, and no additional charges are due.

For further queries or requests please do not hesitate to contact me.

Given under my hand and seal this day, 31 Tílenmot 3502,

Galén Sallantar-ith-Sallantar, for and on behalf of,

Liméri Station HabCorp, ICC

Fic-a-Day , , , ,

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