Month: May 2015

Trope-a-Day: Once Is Not Enough

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Once Is Not Enough: With the regenerative capabilities, smart cardiovascular nets, auxiliary hearts, and suchlike they engineer into people these days, you should be mindful of this trope, aversion of Only a Flesh Wound notwithstanding.  That goes doubly for races like the kaeth, whom nature has equipped with a particularly tough and redundant biology.  Check, don’t assume.

As a side-note, Imperials are in a much safer legal position than Terrans when trying to avert this one, when it comes to self-defense. The Curia is of the view that any law that requires you to act out bad horror-movie cliches is a bad law, and so, if you’re justified in having to put someone down, you’re entitled to make sure they don’t get back up.

Beep

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“Greetings, Citizen Asamis! You have reached the voice communications service of Bora Phylarius. Unfortunately, my principal is off-world at the moment and cannot be reached by real-time dataweave services.

“If you are calling about a non-urgent matter, a message may be forwarded using non-real-time services. Current estimated time until receipt, including light-lag, is one day, five hours, twenty-seven minutes.

“If your call is urgent, you may escalate to a real-time communication over tangle channel. Please note that full tangle service charges will apply. Be aware that frivolous-communication surcharges may be applied at my principal’s discretion to unwanted communications directed over either of these channels.

“For matters relating to the Epiphani Initiative, designated representatives of the Initiative are available to handle matters on my principal’s behalf; likewise, domestic matters may be addressed to my principal’s home directly.”

“Alternatively, you may speak to a proxy emulation/partial derivative of my principal, which has limited authority to speak on his behalf and may, if necessary, refer you upwards.

“How may I be of assistance?”

Trope-a-Day: Only a Flesh Wound

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Only a Flesh Wound: Averted.  Sure, modern transsophs have all kinds of enhancements for durability and healing – smart cardiovascular nets, auxiliary hearts, better blood clotting, etc., etc.  Those will help you if something slips past equally modern milspec combat armor with full kinetic barriers, or against a (very) glancing hit or ricochet, or against car wrecks, or shrapnel, or stabbing, or being on the fringe of an explosion.

But a mass-driver gun tosses target-customized flechettes downrange at appalling, air-plasmating, entirely excessive velocities.  If you get hit directly by one of those without armor, or with enough of them to overcome its protection, it’s a bone-pulverizing, flesh-pulping experience that is almost certainly not survivable – and there’s no safe place to be hit.

If they bring up the heavy weapons or go to full-auto, it’s all over bar picking the vector stacks out of the slightly-charred chunky-salsa-esque ooze.

Aftershocks (1)

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GORBIS (CORDAI GAP) – The Syndic of Tribunals has indicted all former officials of the People’s Bureau of Safe and Sustainable Technologies, nearly six hundred thousand in total, on a range of charges of which the most significant are 17 billion counts of cognicide by willful deprivation. Executions are expected shortly.

A list of several thousand other former Bureau officials, said to have been off-world at the time of the Fall of Bantral, are sought by the Syndic, which has published these names to the various public bounty registries active in the spinward Worlds.

– from the Objective Eye newswire

Trope-a-Day: Omniscient Morality License

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Omniscient Morality License: The Fifth Directorate would claim in public – well, insofar as they can meaningfully be public – that they operate under something closely related to one of these, granted by necessity in dealing with existential threats and other matters of that magnitude.

Subverted inasmuch as, internally, starting to think that you have one of these – rather than an extremely circumscribed exceptionary license unsympathetically overwatched by DREAMING SINISTER – is one of the things that will trigger your immediate retirement from the Directorate.  That’s a little more fast and loose than they like people to get.

Averted inasmuch as most of the posthuman weakly godlike superintelligences are too intelligent to grant themselves one of these, despite the lesser minds that might think that they really ought to do so.

Before the Phoenix: Imperfect Tools

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Launch Control
Spaceflight Initiative
Lormyrian
MET+0:00:02

Mission Coordinator Laras Stelliré looked up from his monitors and their unhelpful loss-of-signal markers, and barked, “Status! Status reports, by stations. Do we have the ship?”

Nellis Steamweaver, at communications, pushing his headset firmly into his ears, was the first to respond.

“Voice communications are still up, so we have the capsule. I’ve got a lot of roar from the solids, some voices…” He tapped his transmit key, spoke into his throat mic. “Either their receiver’s out or they plain can’t hear me, though. I’m not getting any acknowledgement, just muffled high-octane commentary.”

Even as he glanced over at the technical consoles, the flight dynamics/systems engineering team, Lauré and Fíöré Talith, spoke as one:

“Confirmed cleared the tower successfully –”

“– radar track is nominal to this point –”

“– negative telemetry input on main channel –”

“– most probable case a capsule connector failure due to unexpectedly high vibration on lift –”

“– switching to auxiliary.”

Laras glanced down again, and peeled his white-knuckled fingers off the edges of his console as the secondary telemetry – not as detailed, but enough – flooded in from Skyreach. The trajectory display on his central screen filled in the extrapolated earlier data; the capsule accelerating smoothly between the flight plan’s minimax lines.

* * *

MET+0:01:15

“Booster neck-down – thrust dropping!”

Nellis glanced over at the Taliths, nodded in acknowledgement, and spoke into his headset.

“Skyreach, Flight, can you hear me now? Skyreach, acknowledge, please!”

“Skyreach copies, Flight.” A burst of loud static came over the air. “– can hear you, too.”

“How are you doing up there, Skyreach?”

“On the good side, Flight, all systems are blue. On the bad side, so is my ass.”

Nellis snorted. “Thank you, Skyreach, we’re all glad to hear half of that. In that case, you are go to commence Roughneck ignition while you’ve still got ullage thrust.”

“As you say, Flight. Hydropower transfer initiated and igniters to run. Turbopumps spooling up… and ignition.” The slowly decreasing acceleration numbers on the monitors leapt forward again. “Confirm thrust, Flight.”

“Climbing on the curve, Skyreach… and holding at 20% nominal.” The roar of the boosters fell away in Nellis’s headset, overtaken by the throbbing rumble of the liquid motor. He glanced up at his status monitor, where flight dynamics had flash-highlighted the booster combustion chamber pressure. “And we show burnout on the boosters per sched. You are go for booster separation.”

“Confirmed, Flight.”

Three muffled explosions sounded in Nellis’s headset; the red-highlighted booster telemetry flicked over to no-signal amber.

“Skyreach, we confirm booster separation.”

* * *

MET+0:02:09

“Skyreach, Flight, we show you having passed max Q, confirm please?”

“Flight, this is Skyreach, we confirm max Q.”

“Skyreach, you are go for throttle-up.”

“Acknowledged, Flight.”

* * *

MET+0:02:20

“Ah, Flight, we may have a problem here. Give me the telemetry numbers on thrust, commanded versus actual?”

“Skyreach, we show 92% actual versus 100% commanded. We’re running diagnostics, but assume you are still go at this time.”

Trope-a-Day: Omnidisciplinary Scientist / Renaissance Man

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Omnidisciplinary Scientist / Renaissance Man: Yep, they have a lot of these.

(Well, maybe not quite omni.)

But consider, first, the incredibly broad-based education we discussed back in Education; then consider the effects of the mindpatchable-knowledge tools also discussed there; and bear in mind the effects of extremely long lifespans, regular changes of career, and a culture that lauds knowledge, exalts the notion of the polymath in its culture-heroes, and firmly believes that education never stops.

People young enough to not have had time to do the learnin’ aside, the modal Imperial-on-the-street has formal qualifications in several fields, informal qualifications in more, and is capable, if needed, of being scarily competent in an arbitrarily large number of others.

(Or, to put it another way, were I to game this out in GURPS, Science! and other exclamation-pointed skills would not be considered cinematic for this universe.)

As a side note: With reference to the way their university system works – well, their academic titles are based on that accumulation of total achievement, but scale up a lot further than ours do. Acquiring just one of their local doctorate-equivalents lets you call yourself Academician. The topmost academic title, Polygnostic, which comes complete with extreme respect, awe, membership in the Polygnostic Conclave and a really nice hat, requires the equivalent of twelve concurrent doctorates in disparate subjects!

Labor Theory of Value

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(I was going to post the next chunk of Before the Phoenix today, but it’s not quite ready yet. So, here’s a quick wee thing instead…)

In the Conclave of Galactic Polities, Ambassador llin-Terl-an of the Palnu Sodality put forward a measure – supported by others of the Socionovist Association – proposing a system of voluntary interpolity fund transfers for the support of those individuals deprived of employment by imported cornucopia and other “industrial magic” automation technology.

Speaking for the Empire, Presiding Minister Calis Corith pointed out that his polity had, by the definitions contained within the proposal, all-pervasive deployment of industrial magic and an employment rate of zero, and thanked those supporting the proposal for stepping forward to financially ease the citizen-shareholders’ negative-value labor deficit at what would surely be a great cost to themselves.

The measure was tabled for further study.

– from the Imperial Infoclast

Trope-a-Day: Ominous Floating Spaceship

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Ominous Floating Spaceship: It’s certainly possible (see, for example, all the examples of how it’s done under Floating Continent).  It’s almost never done, however, because (a) putting all the equipment to make it hover, and the power budget to power said equipment into a combat spacecraft makes it a pretty crappy combat spacecraft for its class; because (b) making your expensive combat spacecraft hang in the air at point-blank range for the ground defenses and the orbital defense grid both, with limited ability to maneuver, is not generally considered a career-enhancing tactical move; and because (c), putting your expensive spacecraft anywhere where a power failure (probably the one that’s about to result from (b), actually) will cause it to fall out of the sky, destroying both itself and the also expensive real estate you were trying to acquire, is even less so.  Although at least you probably wouldn’t survive (c) to be court-martialed.

Education

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So, Gregory Johnson was asking about education:

On a tangentially related note (to firmish SF), how does education work exactly, in your universe? It has been implied in several places that skills get basically downloaded (or can be), while it still takes to age 18 or so to be educated to Ph.D. levels. What does education really LOOK like?

Well, indeed, they can be. Data-sets, skill-sets, and so forth can be downloaded across the dataweave (mnemonesis), or even pulled out of the collective consciousness (remembrance), along even with personal memory sequences (exomemories). Indeed, dynamic mnemonesis enables you to remember any data on record as if it resided in your own memory. Advanced gnostic overlays permit the download of entire partial personalities, instincts, professional mindsets, and other similar temporary mental modifications.

The problem, of course, is that just having the knowledge won’t do a damn thing for you on its own. Grab some chump off the street and download a full knowledge of, say, proteomics into him, and all he’ll get is an uncomfortably full sensation in the brain-pan. The problems are two-fold: first, learning is associative, and without something to hook onto, said knowledge will be inaccessible. Second, it is a matter of processing power. Downloading knowledge into a mind that never learned to think doesn’t suddenly enable it to, whatever its genetic gifts.

So, education – about which I am only going to speak in general terms in case I want to use it later – is much more focused on teaching people how to think than on learning facts; facts are easy to acquire. The “primary” education initially focuses almost solely on this (logic, metaphysics, epistemics), followed by a “secondary” education that is their equivalent of a liberal arts education, which provides the very broad-based core that such modules you download later can hook into, along with the lots of practice needed to synthesize the gentle art of thinking.

(It’s actually rather broader than what we’d classify under that name – the traditional strands in it could be given as Advanced Logic & Mathematics; Business, Finance, and Economics; Domestic Arts; Engineering; Ethics & Civics; Fine Arts (both appreciation and practice); History; Literature; Martial Arts (both armed and unarmed); Natural Philosophy/Science. So, y’know, that this is what they expect any reasonably educated person to have good knowledge of might explain a few things…)

As for the hows, they don’t have schools (both for reasons of population demographics and because, well, they’d be absolutely terrible at doing this kind of education, rather than the kind of fact-and-discipline-centric kind we use). Education at this level is home-based, delivered by parents, the child’s muse, and companion AIs (and, of course, mnemonetically, for raw facts). Stylistically, it’s integrated into day to day life (since learning, they find, sinks in best when it’s fun and easy). Much of it is also practically-based; children are rather more integrated into society and work, and as such learning by doing – usually in whatever eclectic things strike their fancy – forms a great part.

By the time that this period is over, its average “graduate” has the equivalent of at least a couple of degrees worth of educational achievement, albeit widely spread and electic.

Now, as for higher education, it’s similar to ours; one attends classes at (or remotely from) a university. The distinctions would be that it’s very unstructured: organized by the class, and the degree one comes out with is just a matter of total achievement, not a specific pattern; and that there is little point to lectures in their paradigm, since information is easily conveyed mnemonetically. Instead, courses concentrate on class and lab time – discussion and practice at practical application are what synthesize and integrate the mnemonetically delivered knowledge with your core self.

Also relevant reading: Powers as Programs, Skilled but Naive, Neural Imprinting.

Trope-a-Day: Old-School Dogfighting

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Old-School Dogfighting: No.  Just no, except for specialized orbit-to-atmosphere interceptor craft that would more properly be described as “fighter-interceptor aircraft with limited suborbital capability”.  Ain’t no air in space.  Ain’t no space fighters, either – hanging the mass of a meatbody and its life support, including acceleration limits, off your combat craft ruins its performance envelope compared to more sensible designs.  Namely, proper AKVs with a digital pilot, tetrahedral thrusters for maximal all-vectors maneuverability in vacuum and microgravity, and all the ability to handle three dimensions, multiple reference frames, and relativistic effects that primate tree-swinging instinct does not provide.

As a side note: anyone who banks their ship in a vacuum anyway is just showing off and wasting RCS reserves, and/or thinks far too well of their paint job.

Before the Phoenix: Countdown

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Ienith Steamweaver tried and failed to restrain a grin as the techs tightened the straps holding him down, hooked up his oxygen mask, and slammed the hatch of the Skyreach capsule shut above him. It was happening. It was happening today. He was going to orbit.

…on top of a couple of hundred thousands of pounds of liquid hydrox.

Well, either way, he’d still end up in orbit.

* * *

“Flight, Skyreach Zero, primary comm check if you would?”

“Flight copies on the main, Skyreach, got you 12 by 12. Switch to aux channel and repeat, over.”

“Flight, Skyreach Zero on aux channel.”

“Comm check passed, Skyreach, ready to start the clock?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, Flight.”

“Copy that, Skyreach Zero, ready to start MET clock at minus twelve minutes on our mark. Three, two, one, mark.”

“Clock is running, Flight.”

* * *

“Skyreach, Flight at minus ten minutes, ready for systems checkout. Life support?”

“Tank pressures are nominal, oxygen flow is positive, cabin pressure test shows no leaks. Life support is go flight.”

“Life support diagnostics show all blue here, confirming go flight. Power?”

“Batteries show full charge, drain is nominal on external power. Fuel cells are stable shutdown. Power systems are go flight.”

“Power is blue across, confirming go flight. Guidance?”

“Gyros at speed and clutched. Instruments show nominal values for index location. Guidance systems are go flight.”

“Guidance is blue across, confirming go flight. Motors?”

“The Roughneck shows tank pressures nominal and diagnostics all blue. Decoupler self-test circuits, blue and blue. Booster self-test, blue. Motors are go flight.”

“Our diagnostics agree, confirming go flight. Data systems?”

“Three cores up and running, in agreement. Diagnostic request gives all-zeros-optimal. Telemetry ping is positive, main and aux channels. Data systems are go flight.”

“Ground mirror agrees, confirming go flight. Cargo?”

“That’s Flight Commander Cargo to you, Nellis,” Ienith said dryly, “and I’m go flight.”

* * *

“Flight, Skyreach at minus six minutes. Fuel cells prestarted and ready for load, over.”

“Stand by, Skyreach… Skyreach, you are on internal power. Umbilical is disconnected.”

“Skyreach confirms internal power.”

“The pad is clear, Skyreach. You are go for hydro power unit start.”

“HPU start, stand by… Flight, we show HPU start. Hydro pressure climbing on nominal curve.”

* * *

“Skyreach, Flight at minus one minute. Sequencer is running in automatic. You are launch commit. Acknowledge.”

“Skyreach is launch commit, acknowledged.”

* * *

“Flight at minus twelve beats, launching on the solids alone, ignition at minus three with clamp release on burn-through. Good flight, Skyreach.

“Six.

“Five. 

“Four.

“Thr-”

Even within the sealed confines of launch control, the remainder of the count was obliterated by indescribable thunder. 

* * *

Down in the launch control bunker, the mission coordinator shook off momentary paralysis and stared at his unhelpful monitors: the display from the pad showing nothing but clouds of fire, the downlinks showing loss-of-signal markers. 

“Status! Status reports, by stations. Do we have the ship?”

Trope-a-Day: Of The People

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Of The People: Possibly averted.  While the species name eldrae (which means nothing, except etymologically) is derived from the proto-Old-Empires el daratha, “the People”, that was not a tribe term, but rather a species term, in opposition to everything else, literally meaning “the thinking ones”.  Compare, for example, modern el daráv (“person, sophont”).  While you could take its opposite, ul daratha, and turn it into el uldaráv, by a similar process of linguistic evolution, that word – which does exist – refers specifically to automata, or more precisely, to p-zombies such as personality simulators, and is never used to refer to people unless you’re trying to start a fight.

Those wishing to refer to outsiders in general have the options of el lerán (“civilized person”), el qildaráv (“person-from-yonder, foreigner”), el nalathdaráv (“unknown-person, stranger”), or el zakhrehs (“barbarian”).  Of course, some would argue that the distinction between el lerán, effectively someone who respects liberty and property, honors their word, avoids entropism and pursues awesomeness, and el zakhrehs, someone who may not be all of a Defaulter, slaver, parasite, dullist, cacophile, or entropic, but, well, close enough, is pretty much this trope in action.

Trope-a-Day: Obstructive Code of Conduct

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Obstructive Code of Conduct: The Imperials would certainly argue that the Fundamental Contract, with its insistence on protecting people’s life, liberty, property, and contracts would be one of these.  (Of course, some non-Imperials would point out that, given the very large number of societies in the Galaxy that aren’t nearly so fond of those, the Contract also lets people like the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic set the war-drums to beating any time they feel like it; which is unfair, but not completely unfair).

Also to be mentioned here are the Code of Alphas (the rather detailed Eldraeic honor-code with specific sub-codes for each daressëf), the Five Noble Precepts (entropy is bad, and here’s how not to feed it), and, for military purposes, the Ley Accords (the basic rules of “civilized” warfare – although since they’re mostly reciprocal rules, anyone who prefers uncivilized warfare will find their challenge happily taken up.  Less happily for them, usually.)

Zeppelin

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ZWhile they are used on many colonies, due to the extremely small investment in infrastructure required, Sialhaith (Lumenna III) is the world on which the modern airship has reached its apotheosis. In Sialhaith’s hot, thick atmosphere – the planetary ecopoesis program was bought out and effectively terminated in its 150th year by the aerostat consortium – a standard oxygen-breather atmosphere serves as a potent lifting gas, the factor which enabled its sky cities to exist in the first place.

This same factor makes Sialhain an airship designer’s dream.

Picture, if you will, a broad, flattened ellipsoid envelope of tough, lightweight, clear aerogel – perhaps a full mile in length. It supports a traditional gondola, certainly, holding its reactors, ducted magnetoaerodynamic engines, and pylons for shuttle aeronefs hanging below, but unlike conventional designs, the gondola doesn’t represent the habitable space of the airship. The lifting gas, after all, is entirely breathable. Instead, look down upon the envelope, and in place of ballonets, ballast pumps, and other support machinery within, see instead a single, vast, open volume, in which the designer has scattered a small town’s buildings over a lightly wooded park. That’s the simplest possible Sialhain airship.

How many Sialhain designers do you think were content to build the simplest possible airship?