Domed Hometown: It could almost be most of them, inasmuch as the average Imperial garden world is a partially-terraformed Mars-type, both they and the non-garden worlds tend to have at least centrally domed towns, and then there’s the aerostat cities and underwater cities to consider, all of which have domes, and so forth.
But, of course, three-fifths of everyone live in space, and habitats don’t fit this design paradigm. But of the two-fifths who live planetside, it’s almost certainly true.
I think we’ve hit upon the subtitle for the published version of the picture dictionary, too, by the way.
(That was it.)
M is for Markets,
one thing for another.
When trading together,
each soph is your brother.
N is for Nanolathe,
your tools in your hand.
Making and fixing,
Each at your command.
O is for Obligator,
a binder of oath.
When each keeps a promise,
it benefits both.
Dolphins Dolphins Everywhere: There are, and they have been uplifted (the dar-ííche). However, contradicting the general pacifism and spiritual water-hippieness often implied in the dolphin tropes, frankly, they’re no better than anyone else.
Especially where those, ah, robust senses of humor are concerned.
Dogs Are Dumb: Averted – partly because it’s not universally true in non-fiction anyway, and partly because one thing that differentiates the Elieran bandal from the Earth dog is that, being in need of assistance in many areas due to the relatively small, relatively slowly growing population that tends to be the case among the very-long-lived, the Eldraeic breeding masters concentrated very hard on breeding for increased intelligence. (And, key point, by which they meant the kind of intelligence that includes understanding and creative problem-solving, not just the ability to follow orders. Basically, they wanted co-workers, not tools.) Essentially, even the non-uplifted examples are appallingly clever, probably on a par with Dragon Age‘s mabari.
Also, uploading/reinstantiation technology works exactly as well on dogs as it does on anyone else, and you can just imagine how a lot of people, immortal as they were, felt about regularly losing their beloved pets/junior family members, so… well, there are more than a few very old dogs out there. And they know all the tricks.
(And if you remember what we said back in Brain Uploading about the afterlife… all dogs around those parts really do go to Heaven.)
Like most ridiculously excessive weapons, the unique anti-materiel/area-denial weapon, “Sweet Kynthia”, was built to impress a lady, constructed by Sarai Iliastren-ith-Weváren during her pursuit of Kynthia Andracanth-ith-Andracanth, whose interests in heavy weapons – and indeed, whose own creations (see pps. 36, 42, 138, 196, 211, 335, 401, 545, 607-611, 720, 1196, and much of the rest of the book) in the field – have been proverbial.
Sweet Kynthia is an antimatter scattergun, firing two dozen individual coated one-gram antimatter pellets in a star-circle dispersal pattern – adjustable for wide or narrow scatter, each with an individual yield of 43 kilotons, the weapon’s total conversion yield being just over a megaton.
Given the multi-mile range of both the blast and thermal flash, and the mile-plus range of even the generally lethal prompt radiation pulse (rather less than the effective firing range), Sweet Kynthia has served primarily as a weapon of intimidation, given the essential impossibility of surviving firing the weapon – although it has been picked out of enough smoldering radioactive craters during its long and memorable career to lend the sight of it in a determined or desperate hand real weight.
– the Big Boys’ Book of Boom
Do Androids Dream: Souls Are Software Objects. Period. And are usually referred to as “mind-states”, unless we’re being poetic.
(There are civilizations that do not agree with this. They are all, in subcreational terms, objectively wrong. (And at least some of them suspect this, but it’s so much easier to be a bunch of slaving bastards when the slaves have no souls, isn’t it?)
Until it goes horribly wrong, anyway.)
“Yes, translocation should be easy. It doesn’t seem all that dissimilar from vector control, right? And this is exactly the sort of thing that ontotechnology does – gets intimate with the informational substructures of the physical universe. So why can’t we just poke new values into the spatial coordinates of these particles here, and blip, one tessera moment later, they’re all over there instead?”
“Well, we’re finding that out. But it may take a while, because the universe’s API tends to return errors in the form of terajoules of loose energy, expensive piles of wrecked equipment, and other such signs that the coder responsible didn’t understand the difference between exceptions and explosions.”
– Imogen Andracanth-ith-Andracanth, who is really tired of this question
Divine Ranks: The Transcend does have, as does any seed AI that expands to the point at which its individual thoughts are, effectively, independently sapient, an extensive taxonomy, ranking, and categorization of its assorted subroutines, processes, and threads. And since at least some of those wear mythological masks… we have eikones, divine ministers, exarchs, and so forth.
Amlia Larathyr-ith-Larathyr (net amalg. points: 22,384)
RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED
Very Reliable (+25 : Service Gate, ICC)
Complete 1,000 contracted jobs in sequence with highly positive recommendations from your counterparty.
Learn to Steer (x2) (-5 : Viëlle Skyway Association and Associated Rep-Nets)
10 people have given you a >1 drop while you were driving on manual.
Smokin’ Hot (+10 : Lechers of Iniscail and Associated Rep-Nets)
The Lechers of Iniscail appreciate you greatly.
Can’t Say Anything Nice (x4) (-10 : Metaconnectix, ICC, and DSP User-Rep Amalgam)
You’ve been banned from another memeweave?
Secret Achievement (+25)
You must be a member of this branch to view its private achievements.
It’s Cold Inside, Too (+10 : Stellar Express and Associated Rep-Nets)
50th interstellar voyage in cryostatic steerage class.
My Kind of World (+5 : Delphys Visitor’s Association)
Unlocked at: Delphys Interstellar Starport
First geosocial check-in on Delphys.
You Eat What You Are (+5 : Weird Freakin’ Achievements COG)
Unlocked at: Gianeth and Selves’
That’s five check-ins at an autophagy restaurant. Guess you just love how you taste?
Discount Lesbians: Averted. While the Worlds include monogendered species in which the monogender happens to be female (happens a lot, since, y’know, the functional definition of female is usually the same as that for reproducer), and also include trivial sex-switching, gender-rewriting, and sexuality-adjusting technology, there are also an arbitrarily large number of “regular” gay women. The existence of the former doesn’t delete the latter.
Dilating Door: Actually, most doors are regular doors, except for doors in space – because of the whole opening/closing against pressure issue – which tend to be cog-doors that roll into place. (In addition to the pressure advantage, they’re also relatively easy to open or close when the power is out, by disconnecting the actuator arm and cranking them manually, or rolling them physically.)
There are also doors which melt to let people through, except since they’re actually the power of Sufficiently Advanced Nanotech walls to reshape themselves any way they feel like, and the doors aren’t bound to appear in any particular position, well… (These are mostly the province of the absurdly wealthy who just hate messing up the nice sleek lines of their space yacht with overt door openings.)
And the people heavily into organic technology for houses and starship interiors (see that trope) and other such things generally have “doors” that are actually sphincters, or heart valves writ large. The effect is much the same.
“Pig Ion, all docks at Javerna Orbital are currently occupied. Please re-route to Javerna Down. Coordinates follow. Javerna Local, over.”
“Negative, Javerna Local, check our cargo manifest. We can hold or go to Orbital, but our cargo is not to enter planetary gravity wells. Pig Ion, over.”
“Pig Ion, what sort of ‘power plant components’ can’t go planetside? Javerna Local, over.”
“Holes. Pig Ion, over.”
“Pig Ion, what? Javerna Local, over.”
“Holes, Javerna Local. Holes, comma, quantum black, comma, encapsulated, Extropa Energy contraterragenesis core type three. Eight hundred thousand tons of hungry nothing that you shouldn’t introduce to a planet you might want later. Pig Ion, over.”
“Aaahh… wait thirty, Pig Ion, we’ll see what we can find for you. Javerna Local, clear.”
– overheard on local space-control channel, Javerna (Idrine Margin)
“A gentleman,” Olbria said firmly, “is always polite. Even to his zombies.”
Digital Piracy Is Evil: Well, on the one hand, it’s not called digital piracy (it’s called Unlawful Duplication & Conveyance, or Unlawful Derivation) and is a lesser crime than theft; and Imperial IP law is different and rather more generous, especially in re patents and discoverer’s licenses (but also in re creator’s moral rights); and DRM (and its cousins, Genetic Rights Management, Fabrication Rights Management, and Experience Rights Management) around here is different, belike.
On the other hand, IP crimes are prosecuted much more vigorously, even on the small scale, because it’s not the money, it’s the principle, belike. And at the far other end of the scale, any and all of the Galactic Trade Association, the Empire’s Market Liberty Oversight Directorate, Traders in Ideation, ICC, and the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association of the Empire have, well, mercenaries. Who are quite happy to make mass-pirated-good factories and pirated-data archives in non-sovereign space – and in sovereign space where the sovereignty in question does not feel like cooperating – explode, along with their owners, because those people do not respect their fellow sophont’s rights and they hate people like that.
“Disabling of road-grid transponders and/or the use of electronic countermeasures, sensory maskers, stealth coatings, chameleon paint, ambioptic invisibility, cloaking devices, or other detection-inhibition technologies on any flitter, ground-car, or other vehicle, in motion or stationary, on a public highway or skyway or other public-usage transportation volume is strictly prohibited as recklessly negligent operation.”
– Ministry of Transportation Ordinance #112-98
DRM: (and its cousins, Genetic Rights Management, Fabrication Rights Management, and Experience Rights Management) grew up in a very different environment in this universe; one in which the companies producing such things wanted the electronic market, knew that customers wanted flexibility and wouldn’t buy if they didn’t get it, and in which the customers were less likely to be thieving weasels given half a chance and a rationalization. Thus, Imperial DRM packages are helpful, friendly, minimally-intrusive non-malware attached to software, using pricing models which never geolock or play other such tricks, and would like to positively encourage you to keep backups, send copies to friends, transfer between multiple devices, lend media out, and make and publish licensed derivative works.
Digital Avatar/Myself My Avatar: Ubiquitous in the Empire and other noetic societies; as mentioned under Body Surf, people fairly regularly swap bodies for work, for visiting hostile environments, or just for the hell of it; or issue them to forked copies or fragments of themselves. Of course, that may well not count for the purposes of this trope, since it’s a body-swap rather than remote control, but equally, the same bodies can be and are teleoperated remotely by people – especially infomorphs – when the communications lag is not a problem. Also, of course, avatar instantiations are common in virtualities used for everything from work through commerce to entertainment, and in those cases, equally, one’s mind is not in the virtual body in any sort of meaningful way.
(It’s really quite hard to tell, in general, without checking the public identity tag for the long version of their name-identifier, even though it is a custom for teleoperators of physical bodies to refer to themselves through them as “this extension” rather than “me”.)
VIËLLE (Imperial Core) – The Landing District Court today returned an indictment against Five Pack Howl Memesplicing, ICC, advertising agency for the Mythic Stars virtuality game. The agency have been charged with negligent memetic engineering relating to their runaway “Rise Against the Fallen!” campaign for the game’s latest expansion, “Ghosts of the Dark Spiral“, to which has been attributed, both directly and through mutation, the rise of a number of roaming adventurer bands and at least one mercenary company.
Praerogate Rúëkz Kaghoun of the Bureau of Internal Memetic Defense stated that while the agency preferred to request indictments as charily as possible in such cases to avoid restricting the freedom of speech, the campaign clearly exceeded statutory permitted memetic virulence levels and voluntary persuasion thresholds.
Representatives of Five Pack Howl Memesplicing and of Nebula 12 ArGaming, ICC, publishers of Mythic Stars, could not be reached for comment. However, Lendé Risius-ith-Risarius, syndic for Nebula 12 ArGaming, issued a statement reassuring stakeholders and the game’s more than 11 trillion players that the launch of the expansion would not be affected by the controversy, and that the maximum punitive damages requested in the indictment represent less than two days’ profit for the company.
Differently Powered Individual: Given that this almost inevitably means people who have one set of technological enhancements or another, the generic term is transsophont for those who are still recognizable as variants of their baseline species, and postsophont for those who aren’t.
Of course, there are also plenty of derogatory terms around for those repulsive “übers”, “shinies”, and “cog people”, right?