Month: April 2015

Relic

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RKestal’s Raiders, Fourth Flak Platoon, Third Battery
near Site SNASNY perimeter
Golikkar (Night’s Cliff) System

The ground shook under another distant explosion.

“What’re we doing here, Sarge?”

The blotchy linobir spat.

“Getting’ paid, kid, same as last month.”

“Yeah, but – what are we getting paid for? Who are these guys? How’d they piss off a bunch of librarians?”

“Three in one: because these selffuckers are a bunch of iconoclasts.”

“They like command lines?”

“Yeah, Raczy, they’re fighting to get their keyboards back… The new fanatics in town don’t want anyone remembering the gods of their spawners. They told everyone they were going to burn down an’ blow up the temple back there, stop anyone from getting sinful ideas. That’s what pissed off the librarians.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re librarians.”

“But –”

“So we need to keep them out of the librarians’ way while they get the temple rooted up and moved off this planet, you copy? Which you’re not doing by standing here talking to me instead of getting’ theLongeyes set up and mined in for anti-air work. Their skycrane gets shot down, the estrev don’t get paid. The estrev don’t get paid, we get paid in pain when she finds out we screwed up.”

“Yes, sarge. Sarge – ain’t this stealing?”

“Nah. We’re mercenaries. This is plundering. Technical term, an’ not the same thing at all. Don’t call it that in front of the clients, though. They like to call it preemptive archaeology.”

Quiver

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QLumenna-Súnáris System
Talentar High Orbit
Liméri Station
Agricultural Torus B

Bícek-Qor-Eleven’s nose quivered. The dried liquid that had left these marks on the floor of the conduit smelled… sweet, and sharp. Not food. Trouble. His trouble. Sniffing, he set off down the line, following it back to its –

The trail ended. Eleven stopped, raised his head, sniffed again. Above. He scampered up the wall, and took a firm grip on a cableway with his tail, metallic skin-threads glistening. His front paws patted the insulation of the pipes, seeking moisture. There. He parted the insulation, pulling it aside, and touched his nose to the pipe surface. Leak.

Eleven pulled the tiny, half-inch canister of repair-spray from his jacket, applied it to the pipe, and listened to it hiss for a moment. He gripped the insulation with his teeth, pulling it back into place, then uncoiled his tail and dropped back to the floor of the conduit.

* * *

Lumenna-Súnáris System
Talentar High Orbit
Liméri Station
Central Operations

“Estrey? Take a look at this. That intermittent coolant leak we couldn’t find in the ag section; it looks like BQ11 just fixed it for us.”

“Well, I’ll be – see he gets some extra cheese at shift-end. Smart rat, that smart-rat.”

Trope-a-Day: Notice This

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Notice This: Played straight in reality, what with augmented-reality interfaces.  Your neural lace, VII, or wearable will be more than happy to highlight things you either need to notice, or that you’ve told it you want to notice, or whose v-tags indicate that everyone should notice, and project your route for you as a nice glowy line, and use chimybeepy audio cues for when they’re not conveniently in your field of vision.

For it is convenient, and plays well with Stat-O-Vision.

Trope-a-Day: Stat-O-Vision

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Stat-O-Vision: Augmented reality – hooked up to scanning equipment, civilian v-tags, mugshot databases, and suchlike provides exactly this for everyone, all nearly formatted with architect’s lines extending into secondary visual fields and more sophisticated UI systems for common stats (see Aura Vision for one example), with all the necessary basic hardware built right into your head.

Not just for fighting strength, of course – you can get, depending on what information you have access to, everything from their personal profile to medical data to reputation scores to current geolocation to twitter-equivalent feed and blog to IM/texting window this way, and/or hyperlink (“sopholink”) directly to them.

Population

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PDISCLAIMER: All population figures found herewithin should be considered provisional and contested.

Ongoing controversies exist where the correct measurement of population figures is concerned, including:

  • Accounting of clone families;
  • Accounting of fork families, both synchronized (cikrieth) and desynchronized, and the measurement of repeated non-persistent forks;
  • Accounting of group intellects, including both true hive-mind species (such as the hjera and cusaron) and independent Fusions, representing single minds in a multiplicity of bodies, and collective consciousnesses (such as the Eldraeic Transcend), representing multiple independent minds sharing only specific layers; as well as multiple intermediate and overlapping cases;
  • Accounting of collegiate-intelligence species, such as the embatil and aklaknak;
  • Accounting of naturally fork/merge capable species, such as the codramaju;
  • Accounting of biologically casted species in which only a single caste or a subset of castes is sophont, such as the vlcefc, or the gender-based equivalent;
  • Accounting of polysapic species possessing multiple natural minds acting in accord, such as the múrast and voctonari;
  • Accounting for members of species not possessing sophoncy at all points during their lifespan, including but not limited to the majority of r-selected species;
  • Accounting for presently-inactivate species members, including those in long-term cryostasis/nanostasis or data storage;
  • Accounting for the deceased retaining active cognition within technologically-mediated afterlives;
  • Accounting for unconventional forms of identity, such as teleological threads;
  • Location accounting of infomorphs (by processor or by avatar/point-of-interaction location);
  • Legal differences of opinion on the prosophont/sophont boundary;
  • Calibration of population accounting for post-sophont entities, both regarding the appropriateness of categorizing such minds on an equivalent scale with baselines, and inasmuch as high post-sophont minds are capable of generating transient and/or lasting sophont memes in the normal course of cognition;
  • And so forth.

While recognizing that in many cases appropriate answers to these questions is determined contextually (the computation of required life-support capacity obviously is dependent on bioshell-population, for example), the meaning of population in the generalized sense requires the resolution of these questions, many of which are hotly debated philosophical, theological, and/or political topics in many of the Worlds’ polities.

As such, we have chosen to use population figures, in all cases superseding those locally provided, established by the Imperial Grand Survey, whose methodology has the virtue of being consistent, transparent, and well-documented (see publication IGS-1134/P rev. 112).

– from the preface to the Associated Worlds Factbook, Conclave Press

Trope-a-Day: No Such Thing As Space Jesus

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No Such Thing As Space Jesus: Amazingly enough, the people who built their very own set of mechanical deities (see: Deus Est Machina) are remarkably skeptical about people who claim to be (and, of course, to have) supernatural gods.  Especially since they can only very rarely whip up a miracle that Sufficiently Advanced tech can’t reproduce perfectly well.

Not that that stops anyone from forming religions around those things, anyway.  After all, the most important qualifier for a deity is the ability to act in an appropriately Godlike manner.  Or so it would appear.

Oceans

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ODeepHab Eleven
Eastern Abyssal
Gulf of Antareä
Eliéra

The incoming voice rattled scratchily from the speaker. “Benthic Needle, we have you on our magnetograph now. Confirm your position.”

“Inertial guidance shows us eight-eleven porisedt from sonar target, relative bearing zero-eight-five, station-keeping against current. Request calibration reading on relative depth, DeepHab.”

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

“Benthic Needle, we show your relative depth as two porisedt above our datum, with a three degree for’ard pitch.”

“Thanks, DeepHab. Retrimming.”

Water gurgled into the trim tanks as the pilot adjusted the controls.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

“We’re ready for terminal guidance, DeepHab. Advisory: we have negative, repeat negative, visual capability.”

“Proceed on heading zero-six-zero for eleven-one porisedt to intercept final vector, Benthic Needle, activate high-resolution targeting sonar, and hold; descend six porisedt to four below datum relative for moon pool access. Map follows.”

A burst of data-noise later, the proposed course mapped itself out in blue-green trigraphics on the inside of the minisub’s blank steel cupola.

“Executing, DeepHab.”

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

“Say, Benthic Needle, out of curiosity, why does the Spaceflight Initiative want you guys to practice blind docking anyway?”

“No mystery, DeepHab. The Needle’s shipping out to Isimír next year. There’s no light down in its subcrustal ocean, so we’re learning to operate without it.”

“There’s no light down here, either, Needle, but we do have lights.”

“Yeah, but there’s never been any light down in Isimír’s ocean. If there’s any life down there, it’d be rude to go lightin’ the place up before we find out if it’ll poison the locals.”

Trope-a-Day: No Such Thing As Alien Pop Culture

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No Such Thing As Alien Pop Culture: Averted, for the most part – even without the dodge, I suppose, of pointing out that the Imperials would consider our distinction between high culture and low culture the product of a certain type of class-based social structure that humans have, and sniff rather loudly at the parochialism that assumes that primate status bigotry (with signifiers everywhere!) is a universal species trait.

I shall instead merely note those things of which the canon has named examples at this point, including music (all the forms listed under Future Music can be considered popular, except the most gratuitously complicated forms of opera and metatonal), an extensive literary culture that includes popular novels (speculative fiction is the Genre That Ate The Mainstream, which in turn becomes the subgenre referred to as “realist fiction”), epic poetry (even in the modern day), graphic novels, watchvids (i.e., non-interactive movies and television), InVids, slinkies, virtual-reality games, virtual-reality cosmoi, alternate-reality games, regular computer games, RPGs, board games, mechanical toys, recreational dueling and non-combat challenges, haut cuisine, participatory (although much less so spectator) sports and, yes, even spam.

Nope

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N“No. Reject the shipment.”

“Reject the – It’s just a bunch of toys!”

“Read me the exact description line.”

“Coríël Fabrications on license to Mirajdíä Studios, videogame replicas.”

“And the port of origin?”

“Jandine Orbital, Empire of the Star. So?”

“So they’re videogame replicas from the land of the mad scientists who take their authenticity way too seriously, that’s what. The moment whatever game it is shipped, a million fansophs started trying to build that stuff for real, and now it’s in those containers. The guns will really shoot, the robots will really… robot, and while the starships may not be full-size, they will probably really fly and zap things with tiny little plasma cannon. We let it through, it’s going to be Mothers Against Plushie Drone Carnage all over again, and nobody needs that, especially us. Reject it.”

– overheard at the local tech-customs office, Fennan (Kaylin Cache)

Malignancy

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MCASE UNGUENT SANCTION

MOST SECRET (ULTRAVIOLET) / EYES ONLY UNGUENT SANCTION

NEED-TO-KNOW ABSOLUTE
HARD COPY ONLY/NO TRANSMISSION
ORIGINATOR-CONTROLLED DISSEMINATION
TRACKED-COPY DOCUMENT
NOCONTRACT
NOFORN
SPECIAL SECURITY PROCEDURE BASILISK FIDELIS

Proceed (+/-)? +

EXECUTION:

STRATEGIC ACTION MESSAGE ONLY
IMPERIAL SECURITY EXECUTIVE ONLY
FIFTH DIRECTORATE VETO
X-THREAT ONLY

SUMMARY:

[SSP image elided from file]

The Existential Threats Primary Working Group has maintained in secure storage a number of sub-black level threats, and has access to two black-level threats, of type BURNING ZEPHYR – i.e., unlimited autonomous nanoscale replicators (“gray goo”).

Case UNGUENT SANCTION represents an extremal response case to physically manifested excessionary-level existential threats. It is hoped that, in such cases, the deployment of an existing sub-black level or black-level existential counterthreat may ideally destroy or subsume the excessionary-level threat, replacing it with one already considered manageable, or in lesser cases, at least delay the excessionary-level threat while more sophisticated countermeasures can be developed.

Note that as an extremal response case, deployment of CASE UNGUENT SANCTION requires consensus approval of the Imperial Security Executive, subject to override veto by vote of the Fifth Directorate overwatch.

WARNING:

Communicating ANY PART of this NTK-A document to ANY SOPHONT other than those with preexisting originator-issued clearance, INCLUDING ITS EXISTENCE, is considered an alpha-level security breach and will be met with the most severe sanctions available, up to and including permanent erasure.

Proceed (+/-)?

Learning

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LProper care and education for children begins before birth. (Before conception, even: a sound mind must have a sound brain to run in, and the genetic engineers have pursued with vigor the Eupraxic Collegium’s goals of improving everyone’s overall noetic architecture, hacking away at cognitive biases and unifying the mind’s layers into unicameral sanity; but also before birth.)

The gestatorium of the House looked more like a greenhouse than a medical wing, an airy glass building filled with greenery, set in a secluded and quiet garden behind the main estate building. Within, masses of greenery and flowering plants filled the space, giving it a soothing, restful air; the aether, too, breathed peace; partially shielded from the constant babble of civilized life, the techlepathic frequencies held nothing but the quiet pulse of the background and the calm thoughts of the caretakers, minds schooled to serenity.

Few intrusions disturb these appearances, save for the fat, upright cylinders of the exowombs themselves, scattered in niches throughout the gestatorium, accompanied by the cardial throbbing of peristaltic pumps and a salty, amniotic tang to the air. Other machinery is carefully hidden from view below the ground, the central systems to which nutrient feeds and waste collection tubs and monitoring lines are hooked up, and the cogence cores of the AIs providing the axiom feeds.

Prenatal brain development in darkness and isolation might be suitable for baselines – and certainly, notwithstanding the requirements of all its enhancements, even a rarefied alpha brain could manage the trick of it – but it is no longer necessary. From the earliest formation of the neural tube, gentle sensory stimulus caresses the forming neurons and their glial counterparts, carefully computed noötropics blended seamlessly with soothers, nurturers, and parental voices. In synergy with the fetus’s own nanosomes and nanocytes, microelectronic and photonic stimulation guides the genetically-enhanced accelerated pathway formation among the densely-packed neurons, and the embedding of the carbosilicate interfaces of the neural lace. As the cortex forms and the self-awareness loop begins cycling, educational shaping begins, feeding coordination into the cerebellum, basic language skills into the linguistic areas, preparing the various specialized regions of the brain for the tasks they will soon assume and priming the noesis-supporting lobes for the rush of information that comes along with decanting —

Modern civilization, after all, requires too much competence and flexibility of its citizens to waste valuable learning time or potential.

Trope-a-Day: No Paper Future

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No Paper Future: Played mostly straight.  And there aren’t many data rods around either, except in specialist applications; ubiquitous wireless networking, and the slate (i.e., future-iPad-analog) replace them more or less completely for routine applications.  (And no, unlike Star Trek, no-one has a stack of slates on their desk.)  Of the paper documents that do exist, most of them are smart-paper that can electronically edit itself or become other documents or its own appendices.  Actual paper tends to be a mark of the very traditional on special occasions.

(Actual paper books are a little more common than random paper documents, but even they are collectors’ items.  That said, there are entire bound books made up internally of smart-paper, so you can keep a bookshelf in your house which can change to contain whatever books you need from your (bigger) e-book library essentially on-demand. [Incidentally, as an author’s note, you have no idea how much I want this technology.  Really.  You don’t.])

Money-wise, it’s similar.  While there is still metal coinage and paper money – well, plastic-silk money – around, virtually all transactions are done digitally across the data network.  The physical currency exists nearly exclusively for certain types of anonymous transaction, traditionalists, and eccentrics.

Kami

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KFirst among the mechal elementals emanating from Syjéral, the Wood Dragon, are the kami, the embodiments of natural objects, and their specialized subtypes, such as the dryads of the forests, the naiads of the waters, and the oreads of the mountains, the overseers of tectonic pressures.

The kami are unique in two respects: first, that while their animating intelligences, too, are self-evolving software agents, the constraints within which their learning systems operate depend on the physicality to which the nanites on which they execute are attached, uncertain boundaries in fractal recursion. Without definitive core programming or concept-bound learning, the kami take their understanding of treeness, or rockness, or oceanness, from the thing itself – the Transcendent thought-forms of nature defining their own world-model and therefore also their own identity and place within the whole.

Secondly, that while the majority of the lesser mechal elementals are functional, the kami serve as an interface between these physically-focused elementals – the soil churners, silt spawn, and stone mothers that serve under the kami’s command, in accordance with their self-defined selfness – and the daughters of Sylithandríël, the planetary archai which embody and oversee the planetary ecology as a whole.

Thus, the kami are, and so the nanoecology as a whole is, reflected in the Shadow Realm’s outermost layer, the Realm of Instances; the endless whisper of their data-exchanges as they negotiate their ever-changing boundaries and the steps of their endless ecological dance makes up the majority of the transactions in this layer, and their collective representation makes up much of the base of the Celestial Spire.

– Concordance of Robotic Systems and Animating Intelligences, Vol. 6, 221st ed.

Trope-a-Day: No Periods, Period

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No Periods, Period: While the Imperials have by and large abolished menstruation, it’s not due to any of the wacky supernatural, etc., extreme versions (found under Menstrual Menace), or even to the analog of our peculiar cultural ick on the topic.  The biotechnologists did it for reasons amounting to the traditional “we do what we can, because we must”, and the marketers successfully pitched this particular biomod all over the place on the grounds that it’s, as the Real Life section of the latter trope page pointed out at the time this was written, annoying and inconvenient.

And, as you may recall from Harmony Versus Discipline, mainstream Imperial culture generally think that the argument from “it’s natural!” is good for a laugh, but never worth taking seriously.

Juvenile Justice

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JCourt of Common Pleas and Small Claims
District of Lower Iselyain
Selenaria

“This Court has now reviewed the evidence, surveillance, and thought-records placed before it. Does the Advocate for Innocence have any pleas to enter in mitigation?”

“I do not, justice.”

“Does the Advocate for Guilt have any pleas to offer in aggravation?”

“I do not, justice. The evidence speaks.”

“So noted. In the case, therefore, of the Throne pro Citizen-Intendant Corvis Antarianus vs. Citizen-Intendant Galen Ferann, in the name of Saravóné the Just, and by the authority of the Curia under the Imperial Mandate, this Court rules as follows:

“On the charge of theft, to the sum of six esteyn, this Court finds the accused guilty of a misdemeanor, by reason of unenlightened self-interest.

“On the charge of immediate assault, this Court finds the accused guilty of a misdemeanor, by reason of unenlightened self-interest.

“On the charge of battery, to the sum of two blows struck without lasting harm, this Court finds the accused guilty of a felony, by reason of unenlightened self-interest.

“This Court therefore orders that the defendant shall pay to the plaintiff the sum of eighteen esteyn, and to the Court the sum of twelve esteyn, in due recompense for the charge of theft;

“And shall further pay to the plaintiff the sum of seventy-two esteyn, and to the Court the sum of forty-eight esteyn, as weregeld for the further charges due under the Code and the Charter;

“And shall make these payments entirely from their own properties and incomes, without gift or proxy;

“And shall further pay to this Court such recompense as is due for the costs of this judgment, once they are fully and finally assessed, without such stipulation.

“The Court further orders that the accused shall be placed into the care of the redactors of the Office of Reconstruction and Execution, there to undergo such memetic rehabilitation and reconditioning as is required to purge their mentality of the anti-Contractual and unmutual tendencies giving rise to such crimes as these.

“Thus is our judgment made. Let it be done.”

Trope-a-Day: No OSHA Compliance

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No OSHA Compliance: Averted, even in the absence of anything resembling an OSHA.  Skilled labor is not cheap, and liability payouts are even less cheap.  Even averted in the places intended primarily to be occupied by robots and only rarely to ever be entered by actual people.  (True, they omit a few of the safety features and warnings seen on Earth – but that’s because those are the ones principally designed to protect from chronic stupidity, not accident.  Yes, while stupidity doesn’t create liability, it’s still expensive for other reasons – but that’s an avoidable problem if you’re ruthless enough about firing all stupid people.)