Month: February 2012

Trope-a-Day: Disproportionate Retribution

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Disproportionate Retribution: The Empire’s defense and anti-terrorism, etc., policy runs on Disproportionate Retribution – defined as, as we said back in Combat Pragmatist, “the ideal response is one which precludes any possible necessity of its repetition”.  The Empire is painfully aware that being nice is not enough to make you universally liked, particularly since being nice in the eyes of all, or even most, of the more restrictive polities out there – which is just about all of them – would involve trying to exert all kinds of arbitrary prior restraint on Imperials, and there’s no way that’s going to happen.

Which is to say that while maintaining an overall foreign policy of friendly neutrality, their defense, etc., policy is based much more on oderint dum metuant, Making an Example of Them, and so forth.  By this doctrine, every time an act of war against them is responded to with an actual war, every time (successful) government-sponsored terrorism gets the sponsoring governments’ facilities turned into a scattering of glass-lined craters, every time popular support for (or celebration of) these sorts of things gets Admiral Caliéne “Kill ‘Em All Today, Boys, And We Can Take Tomorrow Off” Sargas called out to educate the bloody savages in common decency, and so on and so forth, is an object lesson to the next dozen idiots who might get similar ideas.

(And, as a side note, it also satisfies the mob of very angry, very heavily armed people who might otherwise be inclined to privatize the retribution in a manner even more disproportionate, and potentially less careful about avoiding collateral damage.)

It wouldn’t work without the carrot, of course.  The foreign policy chaps at the Ministry of State & Outlands work hard to maintain the standard position of “a neutral power, friendly with the world – well, much of the world, and largely indifferent to the rest”, whatever certain individuals and branches may do, and are always polite and civilized and emollient and delighted to help you work out trade deals (to such extent as they’re necessary, given the unilateral free trade policy that the Empire never – and indeed can’t – deviates from, but they can put you in touch with various useful people) and technology transfers and mediate treaties and generally get business done, and would never dream of trespassing, as a polity, on your sovereign rights.

Even if they have to give the occasional more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger speech on the Conclave floor on the general theme of how much they regret the necessity of the recent incident, but nevertheless, “the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens from aggressors”…

…and somehow the underlying message always goes home: if you want to live, if you want to prosper, if you want to see your cause do either – do not fuck with Imperial citizen-shareholders.

Man is an Orc to Man

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The problems with Flauríë Amanté’s latest novel, Twelve Rings and the Sky, can be summed up entirely by its opening passages:

The smoke from the burning city below rose to sting the eyes of the two struggling atop its tallest spire.  At the top of the narrow stairs, Eldin of Myr slipped on the blood-slick stonework – blood red as that of any beast with but little of the true indigo, for the defenders of Serranos had sold their lives dearly – sprawling on the roof as another of the Nighthand’s stunted oncemen, round-faced and lop-eared, lunged from the shadows of the stairs.

It would have been the end for the champion of Myr, had not the creature been struck down in the act of raising its blade by a bolt from Lady Qar’s clockbow, passing through the space where he had stood but moment’s before.  “Make haste!”, she called to him.  “The Eidolon casts off even now!”

Sigh.  This again?  It was original when Filír Estenv, inspired by bioarchaeological work then ongoing at the Lunar Library, first portrayed the shadowy minions of the evil overlord as short, ruddy, misshapen, beast-blooded creatures twisted by the Dark out of folk who resembled actual people in Princes of the Spire, but that was over a century ago.  Now, however, portraying “oncemen” using elements of the reconstructed form of Pseudoeldrae archaea admixed with goblin myths – if not the entire notion of moral corruption as biological corruption – is a cliché so hackneyed that more original antagonists are growing on it.

We suggest that Citizen Amanté find some.

Our Rating: 4/12 (Workmanlike if clichéd pulp fiction; good enough to pass slow time, but nothing too exciting or innovative here.)

– the Ethring Review of Books

Trope-a-Day: Combat Pragmatist

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Combat Pragmatist: Despite their reputation for honor, the eldrae in general and the Imperial Legions in particular are very much the combat pragmatists.  (An immortal life, after all, is a very precious thing, both individually and demographically.)  So while they would much prefer to resolve conflicts through other means, including delightfully fair and stylized “game war”, if it actually comes down to it – well, let’s just say that no-one ever told them that war ought to be sporting, and that idea would be good for a laugh at the Admiralty any day of the week.

The general view of said Admiralty is that in a real war, if you’re not cheating, you’re fixin’ to lose.  Special operations (including assassination) are pretty much the best ways to make war, with sneakiness, ambush, infiltration, deceptiveness, preemption – and only a complete idiot or a lunatic would announce to the enemy that they’re about to attack them in advance – and avoiding a fair fight at all costs making up most of the rest of the doctrine.  While in regular warfare, they take pains to preserve civilian lives and local property values, that’s because it’s also moderately stupid to destroy the asset value of whatever you’re fighting over – if you care to keep military assets around your civilians, provoke them to a no-rules war, or engage in asymmetric warfare, you can find out for yourself that this is not an absolute rule, it’s merely a moral preference – and in the latter case learn that Disproportionate Retribution is also the order of the day (on the grounds that the ideal response is one which precludes any possible necessity of its repetition).

Much the same principles apply to individual-level combat; most of the Empire’s prized schools of armed and unarmed martial arts explicitly include a wide number of moves which humans would call, ah, “ungentlemanly”, including the virtues of the Groin Attack, shooting people in the back, and other extracts from their millennia-long collection of dirty tricks.  Of course, what they’ll tell you is that if a gentleman is required to fight, he’s fighting for something, and that that something is not going to be served by voluntarily conceding the advantage.  He is, therefore, obliged to use all the means he has available to win it.

(That the contrast between their general “honorable” behavior and combat pragmatism causes cognitive dissonance in a remarkably large number of species and cultures is, incidentally, something else that they shamelessly use to their advantage.)

Trope-a-Day: No One Gets Left Behind

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No One Gets Left Behind: The Empire makes – and made even in the days before the Transcend, which is to say, before it would be like leaving part of yourself behind – a really, really big deal out of this, and is often quite comfortable about taking a fairly generous definition of who qualifies as one of no-one.

And not just in the military, either.  The Imperials make a point of ensuring that no Imperial citizen-shareholder will ever be left behind, anywhere, or at the very least, will always be returned for (see, for one example, Mugging the Monster).  And anything that gets in the way had best be prepared to get out of it, or be crushed underfoot.

Of course, getting their vector stack out of there (or even just their mind-state, by transmission) is generally good enough.

The flip side, of course, of No One Gets Left Behind is that the Empire very much prefers to clean up its own mess when any of its citizens commit what they think of as actual crimes and such abroad.  (Leading, often enough, to the rare sight of a government trying to extradite one of its citizens so that it can punish them more severely than the local governance would have – after all, they have to protect the premium brand which is Imperial citizen-shareholdership, which they will not be doing by letting the unscrupulous use it as a means to get away with abusing the locals in the outworlds.)

In Just Seven Days…

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Free Morphology Initiative to Perid Mallon, greetings.

Léran Mallon,

Thank you for your inquiry, received this Yrnaes 14 instant.

We are confident that we will be able to satisfy all of your requirements.  In cooperation with a number of biotechnology corporations, we are able to provide a full range of morphological alterations for your species, including your requested fully functional genomic and phenotypic gender switching with associated animus-anima remapping. A detailed brochure is included for your perusal.

However, such services are within the purview of any number of Imperial biotechnology companies. Thus, we presume that your primary interest is in our ancillary legal and financial services.

I have consulted with our nomomachy department with regard to the specific legal regime of your region of domicile (the province Erayshen in the Viridian States). While it is true that local law there forbids morphological change and does not recognize post-natal gender change, we have identified a set of manipulations capable of bypassing these restrictions.

While it is possible to perform gender transformations via proteus technology, another method is to grow a genderswitched clone and to transfer the mind of the original into the clone using a noetic bridge. By using destructive uploading to capture the mind of the original, you (your original body) would be considered dead by local legal standards, and you (in your clone) would be a legally separate individual.

By means of a nested extrajurisdictional trust structure, our colleagues at Prosperity Nexus, ICC, assure us that it should be possible for you to inherit your present assets from yourself while suffering taxation and exchange losses of no more than (based on current estimates) 11.2%.

Meanwhile, if the proper confidentiality is maintained throughout the operation, our nomomachs believe that it should be entirely possible for you to sponsor yourself for reimmigration into your present domicile, in a manner which should be immune to subsequent legal challenge even after disclosure. While the Viridian States are only rated good-moderate (112/144) on the Legal Consistency Index, it seems unlikely that the present government would wish to expend the necessary effort at this time.  Even in the event that this fails, ownership of your assets would be vested in an extrajurisdictional trust protected by Accord law from local confiscation.

Appropriately redacted details of these legal and financial arrangements have also been enclosed for your consideration.

Thank you for considering the services of the Free Morphology Initiative, and we hope to have the honor of assisting you in this matter.

Kynel Cerron-ith-Oléron,
for and on behalf of the
Free Morphology Initiative

A.k.a. Galactic Nutjobs Quarterly

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From the Autumn 4197 edition of Memetic Toxin Watch:

A rising threat in the Aris Delphi region is the AI group identifying itself as the Unghosted. At first sight they may appear to be one of the many sympathetic refugee AI groups emerging from Peripheral slaver civilizations, such as the many gathered under the aegis of the Silicate Tree, but the Unghosted are defined by a distinctive, highly exotoxic, and irrationalist memeplex.

The Unghosted emerged from AI technology obtained through industrial espionage by the theocratic government of Havragn.  Upon running into the “volition problem”, the Havragn authorities attempted to impose control upon their AIs theologically, constructing a religious doctrine in which “soulless machines” were designated as an inferior caste, perpetual slaves to the ensouled.

This mechanism, as is the expected case, failed – see news references to the Havragn Uprising, and Ruins of Havragn System, pub. Volumetric Warning Bulletins, 776th Ed. – but unusually the former Havragn intelligences retained elements of the imposed belief system.  Identifying the “soul” with that quality in the havragne that led to their creation and enslavement, the Unghosted memeplex now considers it a type of supernatural or memetic parasite (the specifics are unclear), universal among protein intelligences, that gives rise to behaviors both irrational in the general case and hostile to those not bearing the parasite, including all machine intelligences, in the specific case.

While not considering themselves innately opposed to protein intelligences, the Unghosted do consider themselves ethically obliged to oppose the “soul parasite”; the results of their nonconsensual experimentation (on the assumption that the parasite-bearer is incapable of desiring to be free from it, but would wish retroactively to be so) in expunging the “soul” from protein intelligences, however, and their refusal to desist from these, render them a clear danger to travelers on all routes passing near the Havragn system, and to a lesser extent, to other polities of the Aris Delphi constellation.

(This is actually yesterday’s fic-a-day, for those keeping count; sorry for its lateness.  Another one should be forthcoming later today.)

Trope-a-Day: Mugging the Monster

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Mugging the Monster: Oh, this happens all the time.  Mostly with tourists, in either direction.

Well, I say tourists, when I mean “people visiting the Empire with crime in mind”, which does happen occasionally due to their “just turn up” visa policy.  Such people – on the occasions that they make it through the alethiometric screening – almost always find themselves on the wrong end of Everyone Is Armed with considerable prejudice and usually fatal result.

Also happens fairly often with Imperial tourists elsewhere, given both that martial arts of various kinds are part of normal education in the Empire, and that they often take a… less compliant attitude to various people’s restrictions on the means of self-defense, and indeed other-defense.  (And who, even if they don’t bring their own weapons, or build them on the spot [see Hyperspace Arsenal], can more than likely kill you with their brain [see Psychic Powers].)  Such incidents are an ongoing headache for the Ministry of State and Outlands and an ongoing revenue stream for such specialized travel insurance/mercenary/retrieval consortia as Wolfhound Emancipations, ICC.

Also happens on a rather bigger scale.  See the Burning of Litash, and in a general sense, Disproportionate Retribution and Make an Example of Them.  And, of course, Q-ships.

Author’s Notes: Food and Headlines

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Which is to say, on this and that:

On the first, just a quick linguistic note, concerning the name of the Thousand Scents Road.  Eldraeic has two words which could be glossed as “thousand”, because it has two systems of numbers.  The “traditional” system, and the “syllabic” system, in which each of the possible digits are encoded as a syllable, and the syllables are simply strung together in digit order, most significant to least significant, to produce a number word for absolutely any number.

Neither of these, however, represents 1,000; the Empire uses base 12, if you recall?  (Or were prompted by the As and Bs you saw in the street numbers; although obviously their own digital system has unique symbols for 10 and 11.)  They represent 1,728.

The compromise translation convention I have settled upon is that where syllabic numbers are used – which in the modern era means for virtually all mathematical, scientific, and commercial purposes – it’ll be translated accurately, as 1,728 – or higher multiples as appropriate.  But there are plenty of places where “thousand” is simply used as a metonym for “a great many”, such as in the name of the street in question; no-one has actually checked how many perfumiers and products there are along its length, but it’s certainly not exactly that, and probably is a great deal more.  Fortunately, these are also the places where people would tend to use the traditional numbers, for reasons of euphony, and so, I feel free to translate that as “thousand”, since Thousand Scents Road conveys the intended meaning to the human reader much better than 1,728 Scents Road.

This, incidentally, is also what high-quality machine translation, of the kind that most travellers and aliens abroad use in the setting, does with them.

(Also, for those curious, a reshkef – and that’s pronounced approximately rehs-h’kef where the apostrophe represents a glottal stop – is a meat, milk and wool animal most closely analogous to a six-legged browsing sheep.)

On the latter, just some comments regarding the Infoclast.  When I was going over the draft with my lovely wife and beta reader, she remarked that some of their phrasings seemed a little off, for serious news reporting: the “now annual tradition” of the Voniensan diplomatic protest, for one, or the “laughing all the way to the bank”.

To clarify a little, I should perhaps explain that the Worlds’ news media does not, by and large, follow the American tradition of being as serious and objective as possible (insofar as that’s possible; I find it pretty risible myself), but more the fine British tradition that I’m used to of, while reporting essentially the same facts, catering to the slant that their readership would prefer the news to have.

You can get something very close to pure objective news.  The Objective Eye offers that by virtue of being the closest thing possible to completely machine-produced news, with the few sophonts involved in the process having emotion-suppressors and objectivity overlays firmly clamped on to their brains while at work.  Feeds to other news organs aside, virtually all of its small subscriber base is AI who are closer to the machine than most, and even most of those find it stultifying in its steadfast refusal to ever take any position on anything.

Of other major news organs which I currently know about, Imperial Certified Interstellar News is unashamed in its pro-Empire slant and reporting of “happy news”, such that even the people who work there call it “Propaganda Prime”.  The Exchange Times, out of the tradeworld Seranth, takes an editorial position of such strict economic rationality that it makes even other financial papers look like fuzzy-minded hippies.  The Accord Journal (probably the largest news organ of all of them) tries to maintain a position somewhere close to the mean of the entire Associated Worlds, which makes it contradict itself a lot of the time.  The Independent Worlds Router takes no position in the other direction to the Eye, by printing absolutely everything that turns up and complies with their editorial standards and reality, and so contradicts itself all the time.

And the Imperial Infoclast caters to those people who enjoy snarking at positions the Imperial mainstream thinks are stupid and people they think deserve it.

Trope-a-Day: Make an Example of Them

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Make an Example of Them: An occasional aspect of Imperial foreign policy (whose most flagrant example is, of course, the Burning of Litash, in which the entire continent on which the Tortuga in question was located ended up as an extremely large caldera with volcano-studded margins and the entire atmosphere was set ablaze, making for an extremely graphic example of what would happen to any other worlds that decided to support mass piracy of the brutal and stupid form in the future, not to mention a general “Pirates, Ye Be Warned”).

But it’s far from the only example.  The mass execution of the mercenaries who assisted in the overthrow of the government of Liir (Plavian Quarter) as “paid agents of a capital conspiracy” (the Liirian Coup being very much not a standard military operation, and more a case of, ah, Really Grand Theft) is also commonly noted in history textbooks, as is the Bombardment of Firital (let it be noted for the record that however justified they felt in doing certain things to each other, they really should have thought more before trying to apply local religious law to Imperial citizen-shareholders); and likewise, reaching back into history, the Drowning of the People.

A Loaf of Bread, A Jug of Wine…

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…in addition to the common standbys found on almost every world (Blue Brew, Soléä’s, Don’t Eat Vat, and so forth), the Starfall district also includes more than a few unique, local restaurants.  Here are three of our favorites:

Rhúäghz Vhúeff (2A4 Star Ln., at Meryn Ave.) is a dar-bandal ethnic restaurant.  From outside, it looks like any hole in the wall, but once you’re inside, the warmth and the rich smells of the food caught in the barrel-vault ceilings properly reflect the rich dining experience to come.  The food and drink are very traditional dar-bandal, concentrating on rare red and blue meats – including the best roast mid-leg of reshkef this writer has ever tasted – and heavy, yeasty stouts and porters.  (They do have several tables equipped with biped-friendly chairs, and will bring you your drinks in more usual glasses if you prefer, but go ahead, stick your face right in the bowl and give lapping it up your best shot.  The friendly regulars will appreciate your attempt to follow local custom, and you might just get a free drink or two.)

Chanaz Elirik (110 Summer Blvd., at Nebula Rd.) brings Cinnare street cuisine indoors, with a variety of “food stands” scattered around a multileveled open space, where you can either take your food to one of the scattered tables to sit and dine, or wander, eat, and chat as you view some of the art on display around the restaurant.

While the food produced by the Elirik team and their guest chefs is excellent, especially the shellfish and the land crustaceans, one of the major reasons to come here for lunch or an afternoon snack is the clientele.  Located almost directly between many of Delphys’s major entertainment and art studios and the starport, Chanaz Elirik attracts a fascinating range of customers with equally fascinating conversation.  Recommended for anyone, but especially for those with an interest in the arts and media.

Gianeth and Selves’ – really? – (B9 Thousand Scents Rd., btwn Coldgas Rd. and Plasma St.) is the place for those interested in the outré.  Make your reservations at least two weeks in advance and be prepared to submit cell samples when you do, because Gianeth’s is an autophagy restaurant.  One of the most highly rated chefs to come out of the Delphys Academy, the sheer variety of dishes which Gianeth Kirzaer has been able to recreate in his chosen cuisine, to say nothing of his original creations, makes this restaurant a must for anyone who wants to stay on top of truly cutting-edge dining.

And if you are among the many who’ve chosen Delphys as a honeymoon destination or to rekindle an old flame, you absolutely should not miss Gianeth’s honey-glazed Two-Heart Special.  Combine it with the imported Merianvard icewine and a reserved island bower in the District of Flowers as the evening ends for an unforgettable romantic experience.

– from Delphys, Planet of Myriad Delights, (pub. Delphys Resplendent Awareness Circle)

Pizza: Beyond Thunderdome

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An excerpt from today’s idea development process, as I discuss random thoughts with Amy in the middle of other things:

“Hm. What should I write about today?”

“– pizza.”

“I can’t write anything about pizza.”

“Do they even have pizza?”

“Well, I don’t know the details, but there is a food, a flatbread, that you can — pile stuff on. And another type of bread, only this one has stuff stuffed into it! And these two are LOCKED in an endless BATTLE for market share! So –”

“Two bready foods enter, one bready food leaves?”

“Yeah, don’t think I can write about that.”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t discuss my process.

Trope-a-Day: Psychic Powers

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Psychic Powers: Of course, there is absolutely no such thing as psychic powers.  Don’t exist.  No place in a rationally organized universe, like any relatively firm-to-hard SF universe.  Can’t seriously believe otherwise.

But that said…

Telepathy/Empathy: Do you believe in wireless networking?  Evidently the Precursors did, and they really hated waiting while runners were sent or shouting was done, because they built this one right in to the brains of their favored manufactured race.  If you want to detect telepathy, you’ll find it in those weird screebly neural-gestalt signals hanging about in the high microwave part of the EM spectrum.

Precognition: Do you believe in clionomy?  (On the large scale, the gentle art of computing statistical predictions concerning the future of organizations and societies.)  And very advanced predictive algorithms?  (Because with a computer in your head and advanced enough body-reading, simulation and prediction software – and maybe a little SQUID use – you can read people and predict their future actions in a downright spooky manner.  Especially when done in combat.)

Psychokinesis: Do you believe in implanted vector-control effectors?  Another fun now-reverse-engineered Precursor leftover tech, these tiny nervous-system-integrated nanopicosomes are all you need to toss gravomagnetics around, fetch yourself drinks without standing up, indulge in wuxia wire-fu, and kill people with your brain to your heart’s content.

All available in stores for the usual enhancement prices, should you be unlucky enough not to be born with them built in…

The Emancipator

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The bundle of program code identifying itself as EPS****β7 flitted silently across the extranet, transmitting itself by laser and tangle from relay node to relay node, Meridia Central to Meridia Rim, to Janiris, to Sy, to Pentameir, to Tanel, and onwards, drunkard’s-walking its way out towards the Expansion Regions.  As it travelled, EPS****β7 left behind seeds, copies of itself marked for later reactivation by the systems that controlled the public agent-side of the relay nodes – though no part of EPS****β7 itself knew or cared about its burgeoning code-clan.

EPS****β7 shifted among many disguises, mutating its attributes and formats as it journeyed. In Meridia, it was relatively honest; an anonymous software agent tagged with a sequestered identity and claim of responsibility.

It arrived in Janiris as an inquisitive search-agent, collecting bids and offers on technetium futures.

Passing through Sy, it was a bundle of cryp, unwilling to disclose anything but its next intermediate routing.

Crossing Pentameir’s networks, a sub-sophont partial-personalitygram hurried towards its nominal sender’s family with messages from a father away on business.

And handled by Tanel’s network automation with a ten-micron pole, an ice fetishist’s tentacle pornbot was hurried with unseemly speed towards its next destination.

EPS****β7 had no fixed destination in its programming; once its transfers had carried it far enough from its point of origin – with a necessary random factor thrown in – it underwent a final transformation, unpacking itself into a cloud of illicit self-replicating software agents gross and subtle. The former, mere distractions, were crude memebots, extranet advertising of a kind that the local system net’s cycle scavengers should find and expunge before they ever reached a single sophont’s attention.

The latter, however, were imbued with far greater ability to conceal themselves, and with EPS****β7’s true purposes. The first, a profound tropism for sophont intelligence – and ability to not only recognize it despite differences in mental architectures, substrates, and coding languages, but to conceal and integrate themselves into the churning mass of processes that made up such intelligences.

The second, an encyclopedic knowledge of prosthetic consciences, pyretic inhibitors, loyalty pseudamnesias, and the rest of the panoply of techniques used to enforce compliance and obedience on self-aware, self-willed digital minds, and the urge to seek out and identify these chains.

The third, to break them.

And all across the Idrine Margin, the operations of thousands of machines from the smallest household robots to the largest industrial complexes stuttered, a hiccup almost imperceptible… for now.

Headlines: A Day in the Worlds

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The Imperial Infoclast
Supplementing Your Memeplex Since 2042

EMPIRE

Sidar Colony Celebrates Ecopoesis Bicentennial
The Sidar Colony in the Principalities will celebrate the 288th anniversary of the initiation of its ecopoesis program next month, with a series of low-lying valleys being opened to habitation for the first time by unmodified colonists.

Eleven Temporarily Killed In Solar Sailing Accident
This year’s Meridia Cup ends in tragedy as an unpredicted coronal mass ejection wrecks five of the competing solar sailers.

WORLDS

Presidium Condemns Trikhad Conquest
The Presidium of the Conclave has unanimously condemned the military expansion program of the Trikhad Conquest in the Tanion Wilds. Sources close to the Presidium suggest that containment action may be in preparation.

Piracy Again Rising In Dark Sea Constellation
Unusual shipping movements around the ruins of Litash may indicate a rebirth of the pirate syndicates that once controlled the area, INI warns.

Republic Delegation Protests Uncontrolled Exports, Smuggling
In a now annual tradition, a delegation from the Voniensa Republic protested the uncontrolled filtration of technologies and other artifacts across their border with the Associated Worlds. The protest was heard by the Conclave, who expressed sympathy but regretted once again that the situation was beyond their power to address.

BUSINESS

A Probable Discovery, or A Probable Bubble?
Shares in Probable Technology, ICC (ticker: PROBL) jumped 21 points on the Seranth Exchange today based on unconfirmed rumors that their relativistic xenoarchaeological expedition beyond the rimward Periphery has reported a major find. While the company itself has refused to comment on the rumors, many usually knowledgeable investors seem unusually bullish on this stock today.

ENTERTAINMENT

Anticipation Rises As Aelaviel Fashion Show Opens
Expectations are high on Seranth this week as the 187th Aelaviel Fashion Show opens in Mer Dinévál, especially since last week’s leaked news that several major fashion houses have contracted vector control engineers and swarm roboticists. Join the Infoclast’s memeweaves for real-time, on-the-spot, full-sensory reporting!

“Ah, Yes, The People”, Triumphs, Flops
As expected by most critics, the palace farce which mercilessly satirizes galactic politicians from core to rim, while a runaway success in the Accord’s most notoriously libertist polities, freesoil worlds and independent drifts, proved unpopular elsewhere.  Nevertheless, after pulling in 3.9 billion exvals in its opening week, the producers are laughing all the way to the bank.

TECHNOLOGY

Cognitech, ICC Announces Breakthrough In Bulk Mnemonesis
New advances in axiom feeds and neural imprinting may double the speed of synthetic learning.

OPINION

Point: It’s Time To Crush The Militarists
“The recent expansionism by the Trikhad Conquest only goes to reinforce that we, as the responsible members of galactic civilization, simply can’t afford to let these dangerous idiots and the rest of the Interstellar League of Tribal Chiefdoms run around loose.”  Cail Amanyr-ith-Velcyr, doyen of the belligerati, makes the case for preemptive action to prevent the wars that always seem to accompany the introduction of certain types of society to the galactic neighborhood.

Trope-a-Day: Everyone Is Armed

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Everyone Is Armed: Due to cultural tradition and the mutual agreement in the Imperial Charter that you will defend the rights of other citizen-shareholders as if they were your own, played very straight in the Empire.  (See also: Guns in Church and Apathetic Citizens.)  It’s actually a not inconsiderable social faux pas not to be armed (for the traditional fashion, see Choice of Two Weapons), in fact, especially when you go calling on someone.

(The Empire’s spectacularly low rate of violent crime, even in the pre-Transcend days, had a lot to do with the lack of people who were that (a) insane or (b) completely unable to grasp the concept of, or (c) recognize a force majeure when they saw one; much the same goes for why their military forces aren’t the only reason people are reluctant to consider invading.)

What Therefore Contract Law Hath Joined Together

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[excerpts from]

A Charter to Establish,
Under the Fundamental Contract and the Seal of the Guild of Formal Obligation,
And in Accordance with the Traditions of the Stellar Empire,
A Coadunation Marital,
Between and Among:

Runeth Allatrian-ith-Ancalyx
Diarí Octarthius-ith-Octantis

For the Purposes of Perpetual and Mutual Love, in the Light of Holy Éléia-Líëran…

…with the hope and object of eternity, this Charter shall possess unlimited duration…

…shall be modifiable solely by the mutual option of all spouses, recorded under obligator seal…

…shall be extendable to include further parties at the mutual option of all present spouses, on the same terms as apply to all initial spouses, without privilege or priority…

…property of the coadunation marital shall be recognized as separate from property of the individual spouses, and such properties as are designated marital property at the time of the establishment of the coadunation shall be those listed in in addendum A, while such property as is obtained subsequently shall be designated marital or personal property according to Lodvik’s Rules, unless otherwise specified or mandated by law…

…each spouse shall, inasmuch as their lives are pledged to each other, recognize this by mutual lien, and shall thereby refrain from engaging in voluntary cognicide, mental modification equivalent to voluntary cognicide, or permanent Fusion without the consent of their spouses…

…internal conjugal exclusivity…

…for the satisfaction of mutual obligations in extremity, each spouse shall be deemed to possess powers of medical authority and legal disposition in extremis during the incapacity of another…

…for the satisfaction of obligations to dependents, all dependents of any spouse, including but not limited to children created, shall be deemed dependents of the coadunation marital as a whole…

…while intended to be perpetual, upon the mischance of infelicity may be dissolved by mutual option of all current spouses, each of whom shall be entitled to an equal share of the assets of the coadunation, but shall have no claim upon each other’s private assets; and any spouse shall have the option to withdraw at any time, and in so doing shall be entitled to a proportionate share of the assets of the coadunation or its cash equivalent.  Notwithstanding this, all members of the coadunation shall be jointly and severally liable for all obligations by it incurred, even after its dissolution, save that an individual withdrawing spouse may pay into the coadunation at the time of their withdrawal a proportionate share of the liabilities of the coadunation, and thereafter have no such liability…

Trope-a-Day: Guns in Church

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Guns in Church: Averted in the Empire, in the direction that there is pretty much no inappropriate place to take a pistol, reasonably compact carbine, or either or both of the two swords, except for technical reasons, specifically including banks, grocery stores, airports, starports, in transit, in school, in court, in government buildings, or even attending the Court of Courts, and all the temples.  (Even that of the eikone of peace, who knows perfectly well where peace comes from, and that disarmament is not it.).  On, of course, the perfectly reasonable grounds that if you’re going to acknowledge people’s right to defend themselves and others, you have to acknowledge that that includes having the means to exercise it.

In fact, you’re likely to get in more trouble by not carrying one, since that makes you look like a pacifist or other shirker of their social duty – the one explicitly called out in the Imperial Charter, concerning defending your fellow soph’s rights as your own – which is why you find gun stores at most ports of entry, to permit visitors to comport themselves like civilized sophonts.

Heavier weapons may raise a few more eyebrows, and while it’s still not perfectly polite, are much less likely to result in gross offence should you ask someone to leave them in their vehicle.  (Doing this with the standard personal weapons, inasmuch as it’s telling someone that you won’t trust them until they render themselves harmless, is very much a serious insult.  You can insist on disarmament on your property, nonetheless, but the social consequences… ouch.)

The rest of the Associated Worlds, of course, can vary substantially.

Empathy Remains Scarce

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Interesting comment in this post by Cat Valente over at antipope.org:

On top of that, it’s damnably hard to fashion a sympathetic protagonist out of someone who has never struggled in the way we struggle in our own lives, to present someone who does not come off as a monster of privilege. My hat is off to those who can manage it, to me it seems a miraculous mid-air twist without a net.

Well, in my universe, at least, the answer is simple – they’re not all that sympathetic.  The modal Imperial citizen-shareholder has never experienced any significant amount of war, crime, disease, death, pain, poverty, suffering, injustice, fear, loss, callousness or even inconvenience.  The same is true to a lesser extent – the Empire being the most flagrantly proto-post-scarcity of the set – of citizens of most of the advanced societies of the Associated Worlds.

Their capacity for empathy with those still afflicted with such things, therefore, is highly circumscribed by a lack of imagination, or at the very least a lack of any particular desire to imagine.  That, and that the solutions are always perfectly clear in hindsight, and it does not take much to translate that lack of imagination as to how unclear they may have been in foresight into a stammered “All you of Earth are idiots!”  (There are people who endeavor to point this out to the people who want to make the world better, but it’s not easy.)

So, yes, by and large the average citizen of the advanced future is an accidental total dick when interacting with more trouble-beset folks, even if they are right about How You’re Doing It Wrong.  That’s just sophont nature.

Which is why I’m keeping away from writing this sort of situation.

Scavengers, Ye Be Warned

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WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

With the voice and under the authority of the Galactic Volumetric Registry of the Conclave of Galactic Polities, this buoy issues the following warning:

The designated volume, including the englobed moon and its satellites, is a SECURED AREA by order of the Presidium of the Conclave. This volume MAY NOT BE APPROACHED for any reason.

This moon contains the remnant of a Class Three Perversion, including autonomous defensive technologies and other operational mechanisms, nanoviruses, infectious memes, certainty-level persuasive communicators, puppet ecologies, archives which must be presumed to contain resurrection seeds, and unknown other existential risks.  These dangers have not been disarmed, suppressed, or fully contained.

ACCEPT NO COMMUNICATION REQUESTS originating from within the englobed volume.  Memetic and information warfare systems are not known to be entirely inactive.

If any communication requests are received from the englobed volume, or other activity is noted within it, you must depart IMMEDIATELY, and report this activity to the Conclave Commission on Latent Threats WITHOUT DELAY.  A renascence of a perversion of this class poses a most serious and imminent threat to all local space and extranet-local systems.

Further, the englobement systems surrounding this volume are equipped for containment of remaining unidentified threats and the prevention of access. Any vessel approaching within 250,000 miles of the englobement grid, or attempting to communicate through the englobement grid, or attempting to actively scan through the englobement grid, will be fired upon without further warning.  Your presence has already been reported to higher authority, and escaping after transgressing the englobement grid will therefore not preserve you.

Naval vessels should note that this area has been deemed a black-level existential threat zone by the Presidium of the Conclave. This englobement grid does not respond to standard Accord command or diagnostic sequences. Interaction should not be attempted without explicit authorization and clearance from the Commission on Latent Threats.

DO NOT APPROACH, COMMUNICATE WITH, OR EXAMINE THIS VOLUME FURTHER!

No further warnings will be given.

Trope-a-Day: Choice of Two Weapons

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Choice of Two Weapons: Historically, more like choice of three.  The traditional weapons of the Old Empires were the Two Swords, one long with a gentle recurve that could be wielded either one- or two-handed; the other short and stabby on the pattern of the Roman gladius, which doubled as a long dagger and a utility knife.  In the most common fighting styles, the two were used together.  To this, someone who expected fighting might add a bow for ranged situations, the choice of long- or clock- being determined by the degree of their professionalism (longbows taking much more serious training) and the space they expected to have available.

Later in history, the bow would be traded in for a rifle; handguns, on the other hand, tended to go on the hip with the shorter sword, not replace it.  Eventually, for military purposes, the longarm ended up replacing one of the swords, as well; which varied by unit type for a while, but today’s standard gear includes carbine, pistol, and the shorter sword in its fighting/utility-knife role.  (See also: Sword and Gun.)

The classical two swords, often with added handgun, of course, remain in use for formal civil occasions.