Month: March 2015

More Questions, More Answers

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2

And more questions arrive:

Here is an interesting what if for you. If you could live in the Eldraeverse would you want to?

They had me at immortality.

Or at post-scarcity.

Or at vastening.

Or at forking.

Or at the Repository of All Knowledge.

Or at, y’know, space.

Or at a refreshing absence of self-appointed gibbering loons under the impression they’re entitled to tell everyone else what to do, or else…

So, um, yeah, pretty much.

What parts of Eldrae culture make you personally uncomfortable?

I may be a bad target for this question.

Partly because I’m an SF-reading, SF-writing, transhumanist anarchist. On the Yudkowsky table, my future shock level is somewhere between 3.5 and 4. And while, being human, I have the innate wisdom of squick, I’ve told it to shut up so much due to, well, items one through four above, that these days it barely twinges.

I’m sure there are some things, that I can’t think of off the top of my head – and, yes, that means I do find nothing wrong with that, and I have no problems with that either, have fun going through the index – going on in Imperial space that would make me uncomfortable, permissive society that it is, but for the most part the things that do so – many of which exist elsewhere in the Worlds as a whole – are those things that violate the principles of Consent and Obligation. Which are *there* frowned upon very strongly indeed.

What do you think the hardest cultural difference for you or humans in general to accept would be?

…all of it, in gestalt.

Well, take a look at Blue and Orange Morality and Values Dissonance; and then note that we probably suffer from it worse than most exotic species, because as fellow hominins, we’re close enough to fall into the Uncanny Valley rather than being alien enough to be expected to behave in an alien manner.

And an unfortunate number of instincts we have are just plain wrong by their standards: we don’t respect other people’s lives or their property and especially not their choices, are xenophobic, unempathic, incurious, emotionally labile to the point of hysteria, situationally ethical, obsessed with relative tribal status, and deeply in love with ugliness.

No-one likes to be seen as an inferior species. Especially if they’ve actually studied Earth culture at a shallow level, and come away with the notion that a large proportion of us are the kind of inferior species which, if invited to dinner, is likely to insult their host, take a shit on the table in the middle of the fish course, sexually assault someone over dessert, and steal the candlesticks on the way out, and not doing so is considered coming out ahead of the norm. (Side note: it really doesn’t help that our media does such an excellent job of portraying us as a Planet of Complete Assholes.)

All of which is to say, well, to get along *there* we’d have to completely repress and deny even the slightest, most sublimated trace of envy or enyious-sounding ideas and even a hint of the “there oughta be a law” instinct, cultivate self-control and rationality enough to suit the talcoríëf-esteeming locals (preferably while not losing the capacity for deep passion and childlike delight in things, losing which is also part of their hypothetical critique), find a way to desire neither to lead nor to follow nor to care what the Jones’ are doing, and develop adequately large sticks up our asses about politesse, respect for other people’s stuff, and the principle of the thing – while not showing any weakness on these points, because we will be judged constantly, and especially on what we are in the dark.

Being human and therefore possessed of unavoidably human mentality, it’s hard enough to get my mind into this framework properly enough to write them, never mind trying to live it 24/7. Fortunately, *there*, they have cures for that.

(Note: This may seem harsh, but a thing to remember is that we’re the ones who come with brains hard-coded to relative status hierarchies, and in this scenario. we’d be judging ourselves against people who’ve been engaging in a relentless program of no-holds-barred self-improvement for centuries.)

Do the Eldrae favor punishment, rehabilitation, or something else as a means of combating crime?

Imperial judicial penalties (as handled by the Office of Reconstruction and Execution by the Curial courts, once they’re done), draw from two paradigms: mélith – balance and obligation – and medicine.

So there’s no punishment, per se. By either philosophy, engaging in that is absolutely pointless.

What there is is restitution and cure. The former takes the form of fines: either directly restitutive where economic crimes are concerned, according to the Fivefold Rule (repaying the victim fivefold), or in the form of weregeld. Also, in either case, the criminal is responsible for paying all costs incurred due to his crime, including police costs, court costs, loss-of-income-and-time for the victim and any and all witnesses, etc., that lost time due to the case, and so forth. All debts must be paid, says Saravoné’s Code, and they mean every word of it. (And if you don’t have the assets, they’ll still get it out of you one way or another.)

The latter takes the form of memetic rehabilitation and reconditioning, for virtually all non-violent crimes and minor crimes of violence. Despite the name, this has little to do with rehabilitation in the Western penological sense when, to one extent or another, prisoners are supposed to rehabilitate themselves; meme rehab & recon means being handed over to the psychedesigners, the redactors, and if necessary the brain surgeons.

(On the grounds, you see, that people who cannot grasp and duly follow the principles of consent and obligation, or the Fundamental Contract, are self-evidently insane, and need their mental dysfunction repaired like the faulty component that it is. That being said, the Curia has a tremendous respect for the free will and self-integrity of the individual, and as such meme rehab & recon is not compulsory. If you genuinely prefer dying as yourself to living as your repaired self, you may opt for euthanasia at any time.)

More serious violent crimes (the ones which literally can’t make restitution for their crime because the bill is too high to pay with anything other than their entirety) and cases of incurable dysfunction with or without recidivism are handed directly over to the executioners or euthanatrists, respectively. The intent behind this death penalty, however, is neither punishment nor deterrence (after all, it’s not the severity but the certainty that counts); it’s surgery – cutting out society’s sick parts as surgeons once removed incurable tumors.

(Note: You can put that down under things humans would find culturally difficult to accept, too, inasmuch as the average human, citizens of Western democracies especially, is not likely to be comfortable with a legal system that has but two penalties, brainwashing or death. (But, hey, if you don’t like brainwashing, you can always choose death, right?))

Trope-a-Day: Muggle Power

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Muggle Power: In option one, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”, played straight.  Noötropics, synnoetics, and immortagens especially, but enhancement technologies of all kinds are very widely used for exactly this; and in places where they aren’t available on the open market (usually because this sort of thing is acutely corrosive to the present institutions), they tend to be among the top smuggled items.

In option two, “If you can’t join ’em, kill ’em!”, brutally subverted where the actual Powers and Potentialities are concerned, mostly because while it’s not theoretically and categorically impossible – the exception being that noted under Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? – there is a very definite limit on how far pluck and spirit can get you against superior intelligence, and when I say superior intelligence, here, I am not meaning any sort of intellectual superiority even measurable on the human scale of things.  You can’t beat something whose, for example, casual thoughts themselves are conscious entities of greater-than-human complexity – any more than one of your colonic bacteria can successfully plot and execute a coup against you.

Even going up against the merely postsophont is almost certainly a losing proposition, short of becoming one by grafting a couple of singularities’ worth of synnoetics, vasteners and cognitive accelerators onto yourself first, which may well lead to some epiphanies regarding the worthiness of your cause even if it doesn’t Go Against Everything You Are Fighting For, which latter tends to be the case among the more vocal factions offended by the notion that their species’ baseline model is not the bright, shining exemplar of creation their self-regard tells them it ought to be.

(Which, incidentally, is exactly why this sort of thing is acutely corrosive to institutions, and why they so often try to ban the synnoetics, vasteners, and cognitive accelerators mentioned.)

Dear Baselines: It’s not your universe any more.  Cope.  Really.

Trope-a-Day: Mr. Vice Guy

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Mr. Vice Guy: Subverted, inasmuch as while it may be true by Earth standards, moralities vary considerably all over the Galaxy, and people vary with them.  Vice-wise, in particular, the Empire is pro-pride, pro-greed, enjoys gluttony and lust when it can get them and within reasonable bounds, and sees nothing wrong with properly aimed and justified wrath.  (Although it’s much harsher than we are on sloth and especially envy – to such an extent as they can really grasp that last concept.)  Pick your own choice of Vice Guys from that list.

Trope-a-Day: The Mothership

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The Mothership: In the military sense, the hyperdreadnoughts, the directional Supremacy-class bases, and probably most of the other classes that qualify as The Battlestar, or just plain old carrier classes, and fleet carriers.  Also their obvious civilian counterparts, the fleet carrier equivalents that ferry freighters and other civilian vessels around relativistically that don’t themselves have relativistic capability.

In a pure-mass sense, a large number of wandering city-ships, both Imperial and those used by nomadic species such as the londian, and in a specifically Imperial sense, the Empire Ships – essentially, flying city-states-cum-endless-parties whose job is to travel endlessly looped courses with one end in the Imperial Core passing through the hundreds of ecumenical colonies and exclaves out in the far reaches of the stargate plexus to keep the culture thoroughly mixed and stirred, and not turning into anything weird out there in the fringes.

And, of course, the Embassy Ships and the All Good Things skymalls, which are similar, except act as cultural bombs ambassadors to foreign star nations, where they turn up for memetic warfare goodwill visits, spreading intimidation peace and good will, their decadent ways happiness, propaganda cultural interchange, ethically bankrupt perversions of science technological advancement, and the wonders of hypercapitalist exploitation free trade and disobedience, insolence, selfishness, libertinism, etc., etc. actual freedom to everyone.

Trope-a-Day: Morally Bankrupt Banker

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Morally Bankrupt Banker: Subverted; most Imperial bankers (especially those from Gilea & Co.) are very, very moral people.  By the eldrae’s rigidly propertarian standards, and with total dedication to the Principle of Money and the sacred trust that is his fiduciaries’ wealth, which isn’t necessarily the kind of fluffiness most people think of when they say “morality” in this context, but is also very distinct from not having any.

Handwavium: Clarifying Tangle/FTL Restrictions

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…since I’ve accumulated a couple of queries on this, it’s probably a good thing to clarify.

The restriction on taking tangle (and certain other members of its family of technologies) through a stargate arise from the details of the Minovsky Physics I have defined to fill in the handwavium gap between ontotechnology and our understanding of the universe. I’m not exactly ready to give a full primer on the details of those, heh, but here’s the relevant parts:

  • From a quantum-physics-interpretation perspective, the three competing current Theories of Everything are equivalent to a non-local-hidden-variables interpretation. (In short, I’m assuming that some version of NLHV is correct.)
  • All of these imply “privileged channels” – this is a metaphor – by which state information is “teleported” – this is an even worse metaphor – about the place.
  • I draw from various ideas I have seen in the scientific literature relating quantum entanglement to the quantum foam to thus associate these “privileged channels” with the foam-scale wormholes.
  • (Some of this may seem familiar to those who’ve paid attention to the revealed technical details of stargates. If you also notice some inspiration from Greg Bear’s conphysics in Moving Mars and Anvil of Stars, that’s probably fair to say.)

What does this mean for tangle? Well, it means that for those “privileged channels” to function, they require coherency. Ordinarily, this is a given – we, at the macroscale and even the particle nanoscale, all operate in a nice, consistent spacetime geometry, if one that’s interestingly distorted in places. But then there are stargates, which blow up a wormhole to macroscopic proportions, allow transit, and then collapse it, pinching it off. That breaks coherency because it changes the spacetime topology, not something that normally happens up here. The universe is a robust thing and can handle that/clean up after it, but the nitpicky privilege-dependent details like entanglement – be it the quantum kind or the more subtle kind tangle channels use – are wiped clean in the process.

And that’s why you can’t jump a tangle channel – meaning, specifically, one end of a tangle channel leaving the other end behind – through a stargate. Once you do, the entanglement is broken and both ends are now just boxes filled with random bits. (Incidentally, this is also why you can’t jump a stargate through a stargate; it scrambles the core’s connection to its counterpart.)

But you can, which has been the point that has led to some confusion, jump both halves of the same tangle channel together, because the topology change then happens around them; they stay inside a self-coherent “bubble” geometry, if you will.

So, for example, when I mention the use of tangle to communicate between IN starships and their AKVs, or tactical sensor platforms, they can get away with that because both ends of the tangle channel jump together; but if they jumped out-system and back in again leaving the platforms behind, they’d lose the communication channel. Likewise, they can’t use tangle comms with pre-placed sensor platforms unless they pick up the other half of the channel after jumping in.

And the chap who stole a colonial tangle-channel and ran off with it to do an NFT scam? He had no problems getting the stolen channel to his target world, because what he stole was both ends neatly packed together in their shipping container.

On the other hand, though, when looking at examples like the tangle channel the Stratarchy of Indirection and Subtlety were using on Vontok II, and so forth, those had to pre-positioned and taken aboard once they got in system. (There are a number of strategies for this, all of them annoyingly complicated and most of them involving some sort of masquerade or other, because they have to delivered STL and even a light-sail starwisp is not what you might call the stealthiest of craft.)

Likewise, when you see starships being ordered to report in over tangle channel, like, say, WHISPER NINE or SHUFFLE FOURTEEN, those tangle channels aren’t carried with the starship, if it’s not a lighthugger. Fleet Communications has carefully and subluminally placed communication relays at lots of different points in the Worlds with onboard channels – some of them in satellites that can receive radio signals, others, more covert, that you actually have to dig up and plug in – and you use them by going to their location, or sending a courier to their location, and then transmitting your message.

Hopefully that should clear everything up!

Trope-a-Day: Moral Guardians

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Moral Guardians: There are, of course, no official Moral Guardians in the Empire.  It covers that right there in the Imperial Charter:

“Access to information shall not be abridged by the Empire, or by any instrumentality thereof, save to the least extent required for the public safety; nor shall the freedom of research and inquiry; nor shall the freedom of speech, nor that of the press, save when such information or speech constitutes, in whole or in part, infectious or self-executing code;”

Unofficially, there are plenty of groups which, while powerless to censor, are more than happy to act this way in a hortatory sense.  And while they don’t generally care about sex (except for insufficiently aesthetically and hedonically pleasing sexual content [see: It’s Not Porn, It’s Art] – yes, this is the country in which the Moral Guardians will encourage people to boycott your pornography because it doesn’t look like the participants are having enough fun) and violence (although the market looks poorly on one-sided gorn, which hurts the sales of the horror genre), the more mainstream examples of the type have successfully purged reality television (and other media), gross-out humor, gratuitous ugliness and vulgarity (because orgies and slaughter are fine, but bad taste is just unforgivable – Values Dissonance, don’ch’know?), stupidity-themed comedy (stupidity being every bit as awful as bad taste), and other such approving cacopraxia from the Imperial media memespace.  It helped, of course, that there wasn’t all that much there to start with, most of the material in question bouncing right off the cultural blinders.

And So It Begins

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…a short quieter-than-normal season.

But.

That’s good news! Because it means that hundreds of pages of fiction are being pored over by myself and my lovely editor, so that we can bring you Tales of the Associated Worlds: Volume II! (In e-book and book forms, the former of which all Patreon patrons receive by virtue of their gracious patronage.)

But it will mean a brief slow-down in the rate of fic production here on the blog while we edit and format and say “argh, what about cover art? aaaargh!”, so please bear with me while that all gets done.

Trope-a-Day: Modest Royalty

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Modest Royalty: Subverted.  For a couple of reasons: first, the problem with leading people who aren’t impressed by claims of authority by right, or to put it another way, the problem with leading by virtue of your displayed arête, is that you have to display it.  Second, humility is not an Imperial virtue, and pride, however, is.  To be the part, it helps to look the part.

(This, of course, also applies to everyone who isn’t royalty, too.)

This is not, however, the Ermine Cape Effect, because Imperial runér from the Imperial Couple on down are the Royals Who Actually Do Something, and need to dress functionally sometimes.  It’s just the right kind of functional.  When doing the business of the Empire, for example, the Emperor may well be wearing something as relatively non-regalian as the US President’s suit, but it is undoubtedly hand-made (see Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap), constructed from the finest materials, and otherwise just as signifier-bearing.  In other words, they can do subtle; subtle is not a problem, because their people understand and know to look for subtle.  They just can’t do modest, because modest is just fundamentally wrong.

But compare: What’s Up, King Dude?

Epistolary Experiment (30/30): Epilogue

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FILISSIN, ÓDELN – The last ship of identified Republic sympathizers left Ódeln this morning on its way to Márch, under the supervision of local consular authorities from a number of polities, and at the same time, as tensions cool, the internment of the local kalatri has been terminated – although they have little to return to but now-destroyed homes and businesses. Many intend to seek transport off-world at the first opportunity.

The Temporary Tyrancy, the provisional governance of this freesoil world, has announced its intention to dissolve in one year, “subject to the resolution of the state of emergency now pertaining”. Many of Ódeln’s residents seem happy with this news, but a strong minority are unhappy with this qualification, expressing deep concern that the Tyrancy may intend to effect a transition into a permanent governance. A movement is growing among this minority to call upon Interstellar Interceders, FK, to oversee and, if necessary, enforce this dissolution.

The management of Interstellar Interceders were unavailable for comment.

– the Accord Journal

From: Sinith Arání, VP Public Relations
To: All Contractees
Subject: Thanks and Congratulations

Well done, people, well done!

Thanks to your work, the company’s come through this crisis with name unstained and flying colors. I could not be more proud of our achievement, or of all of you.

I’m also delighted to be able to tell you that the Directorate has approved a performance bonus of Es. 1,150,500,000 for our achievement, and in view of the excellent joint performance you’ve all turned in, I’ve elected to divide that equally among the department (i.e., just over a million for each of you receiving this message).

For both myself and Ring Dynamics, congratulations, and thank you again.

Sinith

– from the Ring Dynamics, ICC, internal e-mail archive

VENERI (Osis Deep) – The Iltine Union regrets to report that the former Minister of Pacification, Kadrish har-Lan Sarkdor, his wife, and two of his three children, were killed yesterday when their groundcar was struck by an express maglev when leaving the capital. Investigations continue, but while suspicion must fall, in the current climate of interstellar tension, upon offworlder terrorists and other factions opposed to the Blessed Union, it is believed that this was no more than a tragic accident.

[APPROVED FOR DISSEMINATION – Meer har-Tal Ankór, Office of Desirable Truths and Detestable Falsehoods]

From: Executor Major Garren Melithos, Uulder Shore Constellation Adhoc, Imperial Exploratory Service
To: Cmdr. Leda Estenv, Flight Administrator, CS Iron Dragon
Subject: Checking up

Your Mr. Sarathos is shaping up as well as can be expected here after his transfer. Per his request, we put him to work on the hush-hush clean-up of Ekritat’s atmosphere after his oops, and he’s doing a good job there so far. Chastened, but competent.

My colleagues have some similar projects lined up for him after this. If all goes well, we might just manage to salvage him and his career.

-gm

STATUS REPORT: FORMER PEOPLE’S STATE OF BANTRAL WORLDS: SUMMARY
SECOND DIRECTORATE INTERNAL
(SUITABLE FOR TRANSPARENCY RELEASE)

ALLIAC (CORDAI GAP): Alliac’s governing committee has elected union with the Equality Concord. Concord representatives have already arrived on-planet and have begun mass implantation. Agents withdrawn.

DINC (CORDAI GAP): New socionovist governance has achieved stable control of the planet, and lays claim to all the former territory of the People’s State of Bantral, a claim rejected by the other Bantine worlds. Governance has limited interstellar capability at present, but is attempting to increase its military production capacity.

GORBIS (CORDAI GAP): Gorbis is presently dominated by a coalition of revolutionary groups controlling leftover Republic basing infrastructure and is evolving towards a syndic-managed anarchy; the governing coalition provides free cornucopia access to all who agree to their syndicratic pact. Consensus recommends cautious support and advisory role, and potentially inclusion in the Accords as a freesoil world.

ONCBIS (CORDAI GAP): Oncbis remains unstable, the planet having been hit hard by unlawful vultures and salvagers. Economic productivity has been severely damaged by loss of capital technology. Local militias dominate.

RRENAC (CORDAI GAP): Rrenac has collapsed entirely into warwilds. Economic productivity is zero. Interstellar capability is marginal and dropping. Habitats in the system are dying or dead. General war continues unabated. Consensus recommends placing the system under interdict.

TURBIS (CORDAI GAP): Turbis remains divided between self-governing local militias and a governance leaning towards the Equality Concord. Concord missionaries are presently attempting to convert the militias peacefully but the situation remains in balance. Consensus recommends intervention.

Sarq Iqador, the Voniensa Republic’s last governor of Vontok II, watched from the window of his office as the last of the Empire’s transports pointed its nose skyward and departed his planet.

“Finally! Now we can start putting things back in order.”

“In order?”

“We may no longer be part of the Republic, Tiesh, but we will not abandon its principles. We will start by re-indexing and securing our networks, closing the starport to smugglers, and getting all the technological leftovers of the occupation rounded up and placed under proper –“

“You may not have noticed, Governor, but the agreement we signed guarantees that we will permit the free flow of information and free trade.”

“The Republic signed that when it threw us away. We didn’t. I don’t consider it binding.”

“The Republic had the authority to sign it at the time. And are you seriously suggesting that we break our agreement with the people who just handed our entire polity its ass? Because they probably consider it binding.”

“We must clean up our own house. We are kalatri, and we will maintain –“

“You may also not have noticed, Governor, but there is enough ‘prohibited technology’ out there to keep us cleaning up for years, and at least half, maybe two-thirds, of the people on the planet are using it even if they don’t agree with it. And the ideas behind it are out there, saved in ‘qar only knows how many personal databases, and with that treaty, we can’t keep them out even if we wanted to. Might I also suggest that a much more productive line of thinking, from your perspective, would be your own legitimacy?”

“I am the appointed governor of this planet!”

“Appointed by the Republic, you mean? Which, as you pointed out, no longer owns the sovereignty of this planet. It’s a new age, Governor, and you’ll need to get used to that. Meanwhile, here’s the resignation from your administration I came to give you. I’ll see you in the election.”

“Election! What election!?”

From: Sarine min Gethill, Imperial Starport Authority
To: Phoebe Dracotarthius, Sheriff, Nightside Rock
Cc: Galin Tarquelios, Port Director, Nightside Rock
Subject: Facility Reactivation

Per standard protocol, in light of the addition of twenty-six worlds to the Accord to spinward of your facility, and in anticipation of the consequent increase in passenger and trade volumes to this region, the ISA Volume Advisory Adhoc has concluded that your star station facilities should be reactivated to Class II, pending Class III, status. As such, equipment and staffing to suit these levels (details enclosed) have been dispatched to you to enable this.

Please advise on readiness to receive and any special requirements soonest.

– SmG

(encs.)

VERBAL ANNOTATION BY RECIPIENT:

Oh, starshit, plague, and corruption.

Council of the Republic
Vonis Prime

PRESIDENT: Where is the Propulsion Group representative?

SECRETARY: We haven’t been able to find him, sir.

DEFENSIVE MINISTER: The entire Propulsion Group is missing from their offices. We haven’t been able to contact, or track, any of them. I’m having their stations searched by Fleet Security.

PRESIDENT: Damn it! Put the Exception Management Group on this. I want them tracked down and made to answer for this debacle!

[pause]

Well, we’ll have to handle the situation as best we can. What is the status of the Fleet?

DEFENSIVE MINISTER: We’ve lost approximately half of our trailing forces, including their logistics train, at a very unfavorable exchange ratio. We’ll get some of the crews back in prisoner transfers, but space battles don’t leave many survivors. We are, let me emphasize, very lucky that the Worlds weren’t interested in pursuing the war any further. As it stands, the Fleet can’t defend our trailing border. We need an immediate rebuilding program, and a drastic one.

PRESIDENT: Chancellor?

FINANCE MINISTER: Out of the question. Out of the question. Between the reparations we now have to pay in goods or out of our external currency reserves, and ongoing internal expenses, there’s no room to fit even a modest rebuilding program in the budget – unless we hike the tithes on the Shell Colonies again, if they wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to break away. And that’s assuming that our present economy is sustainable.

DEFENSIVE MINISTER: Without it —

PRESIDENT: What do you mean, ‘assuming our present economy is sustainable’?

FINANCE MINISTER: The Propulsion Group operated all the stargates in the Republic. They seem to have disappeared. No stargates, no interstellar travel, which means no interstellar economy – and no Republic.

TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: He’s right, Mr. President. The stargates are operating for now, but we have no way of knowing how long that will continue without—Well, unless something useful is found when Fleet Security searches their stations, we may lose our stargate plexus at any time.

PRESIDENT: What?

TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: At the foundation of the Republic, we agreed to let the Group handle the necessity of stargate technology at arms-length, for what seemed like good reasons at the time. But that means we don’t have an understanding of it now.

FINANCE MINISTER: So what do you propose to do about it?

TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: I don’t think we have any choice but to accept the Ring Dynamics proposal to take over construction and maintenance of our stargates, effective immediately.

DEFENSIVE MINISTER: Unacceptable! The security risks alone –

FINANCE MINISTER: Do you have any idea what that would cost –

TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: Compared to not having a polity or its economy, it’s risk-free and cheap.

[pause]

We may also want to consider accepting the Probable Technologies offer to examine the Group’s “relics”, especially if they are what they say they are.

PRESIDENT: No. That is unacceptable. It will be bad enough if we have to use an outside corporation to provide us with interstellar transportation – which decision we will defer until Fleet Security has had a chance to report and the Science Division have examined one of our existing stargates – but I cannot, and will not, go down in history as conceding our one possible advantage to our adversaries.

[pause]

Is the Fleet capable of keeping order in the Shell?

FROM: BORDERLINE DEFENSE MATRIX (107 – CHARACH)
RECEIVED AT: BORDERLINE DEFENSE MATRIX COMMAND

*** ROUTINE
*** FLEET CONFIDENTIAL E256
*** SITREP

SITUATION NOMINAL. NO ANOMALIES DETECTED.

AUTHENTICATION HATRACK RATCATCHER GALLANT FLARE BISCUIT LINELAYER / 0xCEEE8273B231AA04

ENDS.

Trope-a-Day: What’s Up, King Dude?

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3

What’s Up, King Dude?: Played straightish.

In its straightest form, even the Imperial Couple expect to be able to walk the streets, visit the shops, have lunch or a coffee, etc., outside the Imperial Palace without requiring the closing of streets and the emptying of stores and vast security perimeters, etc., etc. Sure, they do have a discreet member of the Sovereign Protectors on hand and probably some well-disguised Imperial Guards here and there, but even if they had the authority to close down public property and kick people out of private property in the first place, which they don’t, it is generally considered that needing to go to those sorts of lengths to avoid assassination is a pretty sure sign that you’re Doing Things Wrong, which tells you everything you need to know about the sort of people who believe they need to go to those sorts of lengths to avoid assassination…

(And, for that matter, the sheer sense of authoritarian entitlement that lets you repurpose other people’s bits of the world as your own personal mobile bunker. Hell, even the grounds of the Imperial Palace complex are open to the public if they feel like strolling on in.)

In another, it is definitely not considered a good thing for the people running things to be generally out of touch with the citizen-shareholder on the street, and as such part of the job of the Imperial Household’s Office of the Citizenry is to ensure that random selections of citizen-shareholders are invited to dinner at the usual intervals, to hold the equivalent of Big Block of Cheese Day, and so forth.

(The protocol is obvs. not quite as informal as the trope name implies, and people who have specific requests know perfectly well that if it can be dealt with through the proper process, it should be, you will be told to not waste the Imperial time, and it will actually get you quicker results, but the bubble is far, far thinner that we would imagine it to be.)

Trope-a-Day: Royals Who Actually Do Something

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Royals Who Actually Do Something: Played straight with the Imperial Couple, who are indeed heads of government as well of heads of state, personally oversee the executive branch, chair the Council of the Star (the senior of the two Cabinet-equivalents; analogous if you will to the board of directors vis-a-vis the executive committee), and this being One Nation Under Copyright, chairman-and-CEO it up in all other necessary ways.

(Of course, being what we might call a constitutional monarchy, or dyarchy rather – had that term not been hijacked to mean “figurehead monarchy” these days, and their crowns are assuredly no figurehats – the Imperial Charter does rather circumscribe their power, and despite presiding over hundreds of worlds and a sphere of influence thousands of light-years across, Her Divine Majesty Linariel IV Andracanth Falranna, by Right of Coronargyr and Chartered Mandate Empress of the Eldrae, Chief Executive Officer of the Imperium Incorporate, First of the Free, Defender of the Star’s Flame, Heart of the Realm, Sovereign Lady of the Heights and Depths, Dyarch of the Infinite, etc., etc., have arguably and qualitatively rather less in the way of formal powers than, say, the American President or British Prime Minister, and must rely on their personal influence and respect to get their will done outside that.)

Epistolary Experiment (29/30)

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“EILAN (CRIMSON EXPANSE) – The Third Border War, or the Core War, is finally over. In amendments to the Republic-Worlds Demarcation Convention, signed today by Minister Plenipotentiary Elyse Phylarius for the Empire and the Worlds, and Admiral Irjen Tarvil for the Voniensa Republic, the belligerents agreed to a cease-fire in place, followed in the coming weeks by a staged withdrawal to the military status quo ante bellum.”

“In the settlement, the Republic has agreed to concede the twenty-six worlds forming the trailing half of the Vonis 31 sector to the Associated Worlds, as a new constellation as yet undesignated. The primary Republic colonies at Vontok II, Vilin IV, and Tinesh III are to be granted their independence and offered conditional membership in the Accord; another five colony worlds, not self-supporting, will be assigned freesoil status. By agreement, the four Republic Protectorate worlds in the region will be assigned the status of protected planets under the Accord; in exchange for this concession, the Republic will grant all Worlds-registered vessels free port access in Uinul System, at the coreward-spinward edge of the concession area.”

“Of other viable planets in the region, the Empire, Quave Republic, and Múrast Symbiosis have claimed one each, and others will be made available according to normal Accord procedures. Former Republic governance assets including the repair yards at Manar, the fuel depot at Dantry, and the deep-space logistics station at Barresh are currently in Accord trust and will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

“The Republic has also agreed to pay reparations of hard goods and resources, with a value estimated at 11.3 trillion exvals, The largest part of this is intended for the Qiraf Assembly, whose territorial volumes were hardest hit by the war, but sums have also been designated for affected freesoil worlds and single-system polities, for affected corporate entities, for the war expenses of the combatants, and for loss of revenues caused by disruptions in trade and communications.”

– from the Objective Eye newsfeed

“Admiral? Admiral Tarvil?”

“Yes?” The kalatri Admiral turned, then clamped down on the double-clench of his stomach, first at the prospect of another discussion today with an eldrae, then again on observing the platinum hair and slate-gray complexion of their four-armed spacer clade.

She floated up to him, proffering a scroll-case. “Sinith Arání, VP Public Relations, Ring Dynamics. Our Directorate has a proposal for you, concerning the maintenance and expansion of your stargate network.”

“What? Ah – we’ve just come out of a war. Why are you making us this offer now?”

“Why not?” She shrugged with all her arms. “You have a need, and we can satisfy it. Trade makes peace, and peace makes plenty. It’s just good business.”

Sinith looked at him assessingly. “Also, if I may speak frankly, among the things this war should have demonstrated to you is our commitment to the freedom of transit for all our customers. We live or die by our contracts. If there’s anything behind the rumors surrounding your Propulsion Group, I should think that alone would be worth something to you.”

– from the Ring Dynamics due-diligence chaperone-log archive

From: Kenth min Gogille, Director of Research & Prospecting, Probable Technologies
To: Adm. Irjen Tarvil
Subject: Opportunities

Admiral,

I represent Probable Technologies, ICC.

You’ve heard of us, I’m sure. We’re the ruthless apotheosians’ ruthless apotheosians. We’re vultures. We pick through the ruins of dead civilizations and eschatological events for any technology or knowledge we can recover, then turn what we can into licensable intellectual property (and publish the rest). And, if you listen to most of our critics, we’re a disgrace to the good name of archaeology, albeit a very successful and academically respected disgrace.

And I’m contacting you because, according to their transparency releases, our intelligence community believes that your government is sitting on the ruins of a dead Power, and deriving your stargate technology from it. In which case, you need us.

You may not like us. Hell’s spores, it’s a damn certainty you don’t. But we are the acknowledged experts in this area, and in particular those parts of this area covering “making relics into sustainable technology” and “not getting your civilization eaten by the resurrection seeds of ancient, demonic AI gods while doing it”.

I won’t tell you that we won’t demand a share of the rights, because we will. I won’t tell you that we won’t share information with the Imperial intelligence community, either, because you wouldn’t believe it anyway, and we probably will. But I will tell you that that’s a small price to pay for the benefit that comes with understanding your technologies, and not making the sort of absolute wretched hash that your Propulsion Group, or whoever, made of the relic currently floating around Karmál System in several pieces, and all of its potential.

-KmG

Consolidated Mutual Mitigation & Surety today announced a staged normalization of shipping and property insurance rates across all affected areas of the Worlds at pre-war levels, in response to the news of the peace agreement concluded on Eilan (Crimson Expanses) earlier this week.

In other responses, Gilea & Co. and Prosperity Nexus announced an advance-loan program for corporations and governances expecting to receive reparations from the Republic, prompting similar action to be taken by several consortia of commercial banks. Meanwhile, Probable Technologies, ICC, has authorized a number of freelance prospecting expeditions into the region opened up by the border adjustments, and a number of colonial outfitters and prefab manufacturers have also reported favorable prospects.

The market as a whole responded favorably to this news, if in a subdued manner, closing up 113 basis points on its primary index.

– the Seranth Times, financial section

Trope-a-Day: One Nation Under Copyright

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One Nation Under Copyright: There are various forms of corporate-style governments found in the Associated Worlds – at least three distinct ones in the Empire alone.

The first of these is the governing corporation – a government which organizes itself along corporate lines. (A distinct feature of this type of corporate government is that the corporation exists solely to be a government, rather than being a corporation focused on something else that happens to govern.) The Empire contains quite a few of these, and indeed, is itself the largest – albeit an impure, the joint-stock corporation itself being in its infancy when it was founded – example of the type, hence the term citizen-shareholder, and the presence in the Imperial Couple’s style of Chief Executive Officers of the Imperium Incorporate.  Another unusual constituent-nation example is the First Distributed Exclavine Republic, a confederation of Imperial exclaves run by a central Board.

(For the libertarians in the audience, one reason for this is that many of these, the Old Empires included, evolved out of PPLs or mutual-PPLs, themselves founded after the fall of the korásan and the Drowning of the People.)

The second of these is the corporate conlegial model, which exists to cover the large number of company-owned (or other privately-owned) but still Imperially-sovereign habitats or other enclaves, in which the responsibility to provide law/contract enforcement and other sovereign services on the Charter model is formally devolved upon the owning corporation’s Infrastructure and Security departments, thus saving a great deal of trouble  where all the thousands of habitat-based office parks and research parks are concerned.   The largest examples, of course, are the jointly-held corporate research planet Wynérias, the privately owned storage depository system Argyran, and the interlocking-collectives-of-Mad-Scientists-owned system Resplendent Exponential Vector.

The third is the corporate colonial model, in which those Imperially-chartered ecopoesis, colonization and development corporations that own entire planets under development are responsible for providing said sovereign services under Charter law on those planets until such time as they’re turned over to their actual final owners.

Variations on these three – essentially benign – models also exist elsewhere in the Worlds, as do some other less benign examples; in the Magen Corporate, for example, non-shareholding citizens are considered corporate assets in the literal sense, and the Chelzan Syndicracy is always fighting corruption in its mutual-conlegial model, but on average, corporate government tends to produce results no worse than any of the other kinds people try and use.