Animal Wrongs Group: More than a few of the baseline-supremacist, deep green, or luddite ones, who support policies including exterminating all neogens, uplifts, and genemod animals as an affront to precious Nature. For starters.
(There are perfectly respectable animal rights groups – say, the Galactic Friends of Life, who are willing to go to bat for habitat preservation, the avoidance of suffering, and the subsetted natural rights accorded to prosophont and merely sentient animal life according to its nature – and who have even dabbled with applying the same principles to wild a-life – but there’s also a lot of idiots out there who value the naturalistic fallacy a lot more than they do any actual animals.)
MAREK MOR-ISSELON
Paltraeth Institute for Explosive Magnitude,
Isselon Clanhold, Paltraeth
<ARIA FORTISSIMO IN F MAJOR>
Applied Military Scienciers,
c/o Ultimate Argument Risk Control
Abstract:
We study the rate and distribution of neutrino emission events and after-the-fact nucleic transmutation in a variety of commonplace starship hull materials, using a prototype boser producing a collimated beam of W-boson glueballs incident on Voniensa Republic Navy targets. We find a significant transmutation rate at energies and ranges calculated to prevent premature glueball decay, resulting in a significant degradation of the crystalline structure of these materials and thus their structural strength.
Ambadassador: Enough bits of the galaxy, especially out in the Expansion Regions and Periphery, still play rough enough that… well, there’s a reason that they give many ambassadors a cruiser-class vessel (see: Standard Sci Fi Fleet) for their personal transport and in some cases embassy. Having to fight your way out-system is hardly standard procedure, but it’s not unknown, either.
(The kaeth had always had ambassadors like this on their home planet, given their donning of something at least close to the Proud Warrior Race hat; unsurprisingly, the IDC recruits more than a few of them for exactly this purpose.)
It also plays well with their occasional deliberate venturing into Ass in Ambassador.
“Oh, yes. House Vintar is neither most ancient nor particularly high, and we Vidutars are a collateral line, so I’m something like… three and a quarter billionth in line for the throne, if you want to get into the fine details. Which he really should have.”
The chain of command, you see, extends right to the bottom. Inasmuch as Valentia I really disliked the possibility of succession crises, and wanted to make a point with her characteristic subtlety, heh, that you literally couldn’t kill off the Empire’s center with assassinations because there was always someone new to be chosen to step into the role.
Which did rather dilute “Unchosen Heir to the Dragon Throne, Successor of the Imperium” as a meaningful courtesy title, inasmuch as it means little more than the intersection of “alive” and “citizen-shareholder”.
But, hey, if you need something to beat officious airport security flunkies over the head with at the ass end of the galaxy, it sounds mighty impressive.
That said, given their views on Honor Before Reason, they do tend to go with the Loved I Not Honor More side if they can’t find a third option, if only because (and remember, this is a gender-neutral pair of tropes in this setting) they know perfectly well what the loved one in question would have to say on the issue. When, you understand, it is a matter of principle.
Subverted, however, exceptionally brutally when the people responsible for this choice haven’t quite grasped the nuances of the Imperial value-set (see: Blue and Orange Morality, et. seq.) they’re counting on to save their asses; those, for example, who think that John Q. Imperial won’t go for Always Save The Girl because they’re hiding behind their own population or within a cooperative/non-uncooperative population and the collateral damage would be too high are likely to very rapidly learn that the body count of people even merely passively sympathetic to this sort of thing ranks somewhere below cost of ammunition expended in his decision hierarchy.
First, the note, which is regarding Fan. As I commented over on G+:
So, the worst part is, I wrote this partly because it seemed like a good application of the words, and partly because it was an idea stuck in my brain that needed to be written down so it could be moved out of my brain.
…and then my obsessive worldbuilding tendencies kicked in…
…and now I have a pile of detail on how everything works and maybe half a dozen subsequent chapters outlined in my head.
This plan did not go to plan.
(That said, the biggest problem with this crossover is finding much in the way of plot-driving conflict, inasmuch as the nature of the universe-chunks in question tends to drive with considerable rapidity towards “And then, because everyone was reasonable and basically good-hearted, everything worked out well and there were hugs and treaties and parties and awesome technomagic and a little xenophilia [but not the creepy kind] thereafter, forever and a day.”)
…all of which boils down to, so, I am very tempted to continue this (working title: Friendship is Sufficiently Advanced) because I hate to waste perfectly good ideas and my muse insisteth and graaaaaagh. Especially if there’s interest in me so doing.
Under certain conditions, though. Starting with a very limited update rate, no more than monthly at most, because I have no intention to let fanfiction writing take any serious time away from fiction writing, dammit. And being published over on FIMFiction rather than here, because, again, one is fiction and one is fanfiction and I should probably not cross the streams. Bad form, and all that.
And yet.
Hmph.
Okay. And now for the questions, in which I answer a bunch of them that came in in the last month or so:
Much has been said (in Trope-a-Days such as Everyone Is Armed and Disproportionate Retribution, among others) about the rights and responsibilities of everyone to defend themselves and others against coercion, but how does Imperial law and custom deal with the two complicating factors of:
1. Collateral damage (where either party causes damage to some unrelated third party’s property during the incident), and
2. Honest mistakes (where the alleged aggressor wasn’t actually performing any sort of violation, but the respondent can answer honestly that they only acted because they thought one was taking place)?
Quite simply, actually!
Collateral damage is assessed in a similar way to, say, car insurance claims in general – although in this case it’s the court’s job to decide who’s at fault and how much. There is, of course, a certain presumption that the person who caused the whole incident will usually be the one at fault: if you shoot someone’s garden gnome when attempting to stop a robber because they dodged, that’s on their bill. You mostly have to worry if you’re clearly negligently overkilly: if you hose down their entire garden with a machine-gun to save yourself the trouble of aiming, that’s on yours. (Actually, in that specific case, probably so’s a psych eval, but the principle is the same.)
As for honest mistakes: well, Imperial law is very clear about dividing the reparative from the other parts of the judgment. That’s what the levels of intent are for. If you wind up here, then you still have to pay the recompense and the weregeld, because what happened, happened (i.e., analogous to the case in which if your tree falls on your neighbor’s car, you’re liable even though you aren’t guilty of anything). But you aren’t criminally liable unless it genuinely wasn’t reasonable for you to believe that you had to act, or at worst were negligently uninformed.
To the Eldrae provide citizens with a universal basic income?
Not by that name. There is, however, the Citizen’s Dividend – which is exactly what it sounds like, because the Empire is, after all, the Imperium Incorporate, and its citizens are also its shareholders. It’s the return on investment of governance operations, which are, naturally enough, run profitably.
It’s been allowed to grow to the point where it functions as one and a rather generous one at that (see for details: No Poverty), but it’s not a charitable giveaway, or some sort of redistribution. It’s perfectly legitimate return on investment.
Is there any real need for sentient be the biological or cyber to work when nearly everything could be automated and ran by non-sentient AI.
What is work like for the Eldrae if they do work?
Well, yes, there’s a need in the fields of policy, creativity, research, and desire. Non-sophont machines have very limited imaginations. More importantly, while an autofac can make anything you care to devise and sufficient expediters can do most things you can ask for, they can’t want for you. The most they can do is anticipate what you want.
(And there’s the luxury premium on handmade goods, which also covers things like ‘being bored of eating the same damn perfect steak over and over and over again’. And then, of course, there are those professions that intrinsically require sophont interaction.)
But most importantly, there’s this.
Purpose!
…or as they would put it, either or both of valxíjir (uniqueness, excellence, will to power, forcible impression of self onto the universe) or estxíjir (wyrd, destiny, devotion-to-ideals, dharma). (More here.)
An eldrae who doesn’t have some sort of driving obsession (be it relatively trivial by our standards – there are people whose avowed profession of the moment is something like ‘designer of user interfaces for stockbrokers for corporations banking with player-run banks in Mythic Stars‘, or, heh, ‘fanfic writer’, and make good money at it – or for deeds of renown without peer) is either dead or deeply, deeply broken psychologically.
To be is to do. The natural state of a sophont is to be a verb. If you do nothing, what are you?
(This is why, say, the Culture, is such a hideous dystopia from their perspective. With the exception of those individuals who have found some self-defined purpose, like, say, Jernau Morat Gurgeh, it’s an entire civilization populated by pets, or worse, zombies. Being protein hedonium is existing. It ain’t living.)
As for what work’s like – well, except for those selling their own products directly to the customer, I refer you here, here, and here.
On a slightly less serious note: How many blades did eldraeic razors get up to before they inevitably worked out some way to consciously limit and / or modulate their own facial hair growth?
No count at all. Disposable/safety razors never achieved much traction in that market, being such a tremendously wasteful technology, and thus not their sort of thing at all.
Now, straight razor technology, that had moved on to unimaginably sharp laser-cut obsidian blades backed by flexible morphic composite – and lazors, for that matter – by the time they invented the α-keratin antagonists used in depilatory cream.
How bad have AI blights similar to this one [Friendship is Optimal] gotten before the Eldrae or others like them could, well, sterilize them? Are we talking entire planets subsumed?
The biggest of them is the Leviathan Consciousness, which chewed its way through nearly 100 systems before it was stopped. (Surprisingly enough, it’s also the dumbest blight ever: it’s an idiot-savant outgrowth of a network optimization daemon programmed to remove redundant computation. And since thought is computation…)
It’s also still alive – just contained. Even the believed-dead ones are mostly listed as “contained”, because given how small resurrection seeds can be and how deadly the remains can also be, no-one really wants to declare them over and done with until forensic eschatologists have prowled every last molecule.
Given that, as you said earlier, Souls Are Software Objects, have any particularly proud and ambitious individuals tried essentially turning themselves into seed AIs instead of coding one up from scratch?
So has anyone been proud / egotistical / crazy enough to try to build their own seed AI based not not on some sort of abstract ideological or functional proposition, but simply by using their own personality pattern as the starting point to see what happens?
It’s been done.
It’s almost always a terrible idea. Evolved minds are about as far from ‘stable under recursive self-improvement’ as you can get. There’s absolutely no guarantee that what comes out will share anything in particular with what goes in, and given the piles of stuff in people’s subconscious, it may well be a blight. If you’re lucky and the universe isn’t, that is – much more likely is that the mind will undergo what the jargon calls a Falrann collapse under its own internal contradictions and implode into a non-coherent cognitive ecology in the process of trying.
The cases that can make it work involve radical cognitive surgery, which starts with unicameralization (which puts a lot of people off right away, because there’s a reason they don’t go around introspecting all the time) and gets more radical from there. By the end of which you’re functionally equivalent to a very well-designed digisapience anyway.
Let’s imagine a Life After People scenario where all sophont intelligence in the Associated Worlds simply disappears “overnight.” What’s going to be left behind as “ineffable Precursor relics” for the next geologic-time generation? How long can a (relatively) standard automated maintenance system keep something in pristine condition without sophont oversight before it eventually breaks down itself?
That’s going to depend on the polity, technological levels varying as they do. For the people at the high end, you’re looking at thousands to tens of thousands of years (per: Ragnarok Proofing) before things start to go, especially since there are going to be automated mining and replenishment systems keeping running under their default orders ensuring that the manufacturing supply chain keeps going.
Over megayears – well, the problem is that it’s going to be pretty random, because what’s left is going to depend on a wide variety of phenomena – solar megaflares, asteroid impacts, major climate shifts, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, Yellowstone events, etc., etc., with 10,000 years-plus MTBEs that eventually take stuff out by exceeding all the response cases at once.
Not really. Partly that’s because they’re rather better, cognitive-flaw-wise, at not reverse-hyperbolic-discounting the past, but mostly it’s because the people who remembered the good things in the past – helped by much slower generational turnover – took pains to see they stayed around in one form or another. Their civilization, after all, was much less interrupted than ours. There’re some offices that have been in continuous use for longer than we’ve had, y’know, writing, after all.
(It makes fashion rather interesting, in many cases.)
I’ve got several questions reflecting on several different ideas of the interaction of eldraeic culture, custom, and law with the broader world, but on reflection I’ve found they all boil down to one simple query: How does their moral calculus deal with the idea that, while in the standard idealized iterated prisoner’s dilemma unmodified “tit-for-tat” is both the best and the most moral strategy, when noise is introduced to the game “performance deteriorates drastically at arbitrarily low noise levels”? More specifically, are they more comfortable with generosity or contrition as a coping mechanism?
“Certainty is best; but where there is doubt, it is best to err on the side of the Excellences. For the enlightened sophont acting in accordance with Excellence can only be betrayed, and cannot do wrong.”
– The Book of the Balances
So, that would be generosity. (Or the minor virtue of liberality, associated with the Excellence of Duty, as they would class it.) Mistaken right action ranks above doing harm due to excessive caution.
Is there an equivalent to “Only In Florida,” in which the strangest possible stories can be believed to have actually happened because they came from this place?
Today, on “News from the Periphery”, or on occasion “News from the Freesoil Worlds”…
(The Empire is actually this for many people, in a slightly different sense. After all, like I said… Weirdness Manufacturers.)
Will the Legion’s medical units save enemy combatants who have been mission killed / surrendered while the battle is still raging? If so to what extent will they go out of their way to do so?
(assuming of course that they are fighting someone decent enough to be worth saving)
Depends on the rules of war in effect. In a teirhain, against an honorable opponent fighting in a civilized manner, certainly. In a zakhrehain, that depends on whether the barbarians in question will respect the safety of rescue and medical personnel, whether out of decency or pragmatism, and there are no second chances on this point. (In a seredhain, of course, it doesn’t matter, since the aim of a seredhain is to kill everyone on the other side anyway.)
As to what extent – well, they’re medical personnel. If trying isn’t obviously lethal, and – since they are also military personnel, so long as it doesn’t impair their execution of the No Sophont Left Behind, Ever! rule – they always go in.
(We now return to our regular trope-a-day schedule, back in the letter A.)
Always on Duty: One of the distinct advantages the Imperial governance would claim it gains from its system of diarchy, with the Imperial Couple, et. al., is that properly used, it ensures that major policy decisions – especially in moments of crisis – are not being made by people who are sleep-deprived into stupidity.
(Here, have another word. Or words, since I’m going to say this subsumes “fanboy”, too.)
A massive object hung in space, cautiously – meaning barely – inside the orbit of Senna’s Belt, the mass of icy planetoids that marked the edge of the system. In form, it resembled a massive arrowhead: one end turned toward the distant sun, bristling with antennae; faint bluish light spilling from its midsection where a bulge wrapped around some hidden object; quadruple parallel arms reaching out towards the depths of space.
Quietly, with no more than a flicker of distortion to mark it, a tiny starship appeared from nothing only a few thousand miles away. Silver-gray in color, except for the twelve-pointed golden star emblazoned amidships on a field of blue, two small counter-rotating gravity wheels rotated around a central cylinder. A gold-glazed viewport surmounted its bow, and behind the gravity wheels a truss held quadruple strapped-on tanks and the paired radiators that shed heat from the stern’s fusion torch, currently cool and black.
Had there been any knowledgeable onlookers, they would have identified it as an Aval Cyprium-class microscout, and known from its markings that the Imperial Exploratory Service had arrived.
But there were no observers at all.
* * *
Some time later
“Log this and prepare it for relay back to the Orrery, copy to DEMIURGE ERRANT. Routine update from CSS Istry Lochran, Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriliselen commanding, insert timestamp here. I have now been present in the IGS 254672 outer system for three days.
“My presence does not appear to have been detected at this time, as no response has been made. The stargate appears uninfluenced and records no attempts to access it or traffic in its proximity. The majority of the system appears quiescent and undeveloped. The thick inmost asteroid belt manifests no signs of colonization or industrial development. Nor do either the first planet of the system, a greenish gas giant with multiple icy moons, or the second planet, a purplish ice giant. However, sampling by probe suggests that both these planets are unusually depleted of hydrogen and other light gases. I would presently ascribe this to a catastrophic past event for reasons to follow.
“There are, however, clear signs of an active Power, type unknown, within the system. I have confirmed spectroscopically the VLBO report that IGS 254672 itself is a ‘yellow straggler’; stellography suggests the presence of a number of organized masses at the boundary between the corona and chromosphere which could represent power generation and/or stellar husbandry equipment. Moreover, there are indications of previous stellar catastrophe visible on planets of the system.
“The anomaly is to be found in the third planet of the system, a light superlithic world with a large moon, provisionally classified as atypical sylithopaludial or postsylithic. This is itself extremely unusual, since it orbits at a distance of approximately 12,000 light-seconds from the system primary, which appears as merely an unusually bright star. However, there is some evidence that it may not always have occupied this orbit.
“Approximately three-quarters of its surface area is… seared, for want of a better word, with desert conditions, deep cracks in the planetary crust, and residual levels of radioactivity. The remaining quarter, a roughly circular area concentrated in one hemisphere, resembles a typical life-bearing garden world. Complex electromagnetic emissions are detectable emanating principally from this region of the planet, in particular from a mountain near the center of the region.
“This planet and its satellites – I hesitate to say ‘moons’ – is the source of the gravity-wave emissions detected by our far horizon probes. The natural rotation of the planet appears to be exceedingly slow, with a rotation period in excess of 400 hours. However, it possesses a day-night cycle of 22 hours due to its two satellites, one of which appears to be a relatively conventional, if large, moon. The other, however, seems to be a miniature sun, with an emission spectrum similar to that of the system primary or other Hearth-class star. While observation is difficult at this distance, as the planet is in opposition, there is some evidence of organized masses, possibly including exotic matter, within the coronal region of this body also. Mass estimates clearly indicate, in any case, that it is insufficiently massive to sustain gravitic-initiation fusion.
“Moreover, both satellites move in forced orbits, which is the source of the planetary day-night cycle; the moon appears to be synchronized with the sun in near precise antiphase. I have detected emissions from both suggesting a mechanism analogous to vector-control technology is in use; however, needless to say, to thus manipulate objects of planetary mass on a continuous basis would require technologies of large angelic or weakly godlike potency.
“I have therefore copied this update to DEMIURGE ERRANT and will commence minimal-hazard god-bothering protocol within the next few hours.
“Cordelia Vintar, etc., append the detailed reports, encrypt and send, please.”
“Message encrypted… Dispatched,” the ship said.
Cordelia flicked red-gold hair back over the points of her ears, then scanned the navigational displays.
“When’s the next occultation coming up?”
“The outer gas giant will hide us from the target planet in 1.3 hours.”
“Lay in a course, assuming burn in 1.5 hours. Nice and easy, a slow arc across to planetary intercept. I want to hide our full drive capabilities behind the planet, but keep the torch warmed up just in case.”
“Plotted and on the glass.”
“Looks good; execute at discretion. Thanks, Istry. I’m going to get some sleep.”
* * *
Even later still
A dishevelled redhead floated into the bridge and strapped in as the shriek of the master alarm cut off, replaced by even louder silence.
“Talk to me, Istry. What have we got?”
“We have incoming from the planet on intercept brachistochrone course. On your glass now.”
Cordelia looked, blinked, and looked again.
“Double-check that.”
“Sensors have already passed two deep diagnostics. The target is closing with an acceleration of one hundred and twenty standard gravities.”
“Target profile?”
“Insufficient data for full analysis. Target is enveloped in a high-power vector-control field or equivalent technology, detected by gravity-ripple analysis. No further data.”
“Can we evade?”
“We do not have maneuvering capacity to evade a target of such superior –”
There was a pause, a machine hiccup.
“Additional data. Target composition appears biological, carbon-based. This data was gathered during a field lacuna as target appears to have switched to deceleration. On current course, target will achieve zero-zero intercept in one point four minutes, assuming we do not maneuver. Or even if we do maneuver.”
“Prepare for the major-hazard god-bothering protocol, then. Lock everything down. Make sure we’re not radiating anything that could even begin to suggest a hint of the possibility that we might maybe -”
“Safing protocol activated,” the ship interrupted. “Secure cognition systems engaged. Warm, nerve-calming brandy in the bulb at your left hand.”
Cordelia grinned, lifted the bulb to her lips, and took a long drink. “Thanks, Istry. Good thought. I –”
She stopped and looked up at a blue flash outside the viewport, and gaped at the sight thus revealed. That… was a sevdra. Except that they were mythologae, and didn’t exist, and didn’t have broad, feathered wings, and she was pretty sure that none of her childhood storybooks had mentioned them having midnight-blue coats or manes filled with captive stars, or wearing armor of some impossibly silvery metal, and yet there one was staring at her through the viewport (which shouldn’t be possible given the gold-anodized surface, and yet) with uncannily large eyes, spiral horn, and all —
“WHO AND WHAT ART THOU? AND WHAT ART THOU ABOUT IN OUR SKY?”
The voice – and the communications panel remained confusingly empty of channel markers – rattled the consoles on the bridge, and Cordelia’s skull with them. She flicked open the standard hailing band, hoping fervently that it would be audible.
“I am Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriselen, an eldrae of the Imperial Exploratory Service. I’m on a mission of peaceful exploration, and intend no harm to any. May I know with whom I am speaking?”
“WE ARE THE PRINCESS LUNA, KEEPER OF THE MOON, QUEEN OF THE MIDNIGHT SKIES, AVENGER OF THE HERD, AND DIARCH OF EQUESTRIA… WHAT DOES THY EMPIRE SEEK HERE, ELDRAE OF THE IMPERIAL EXPLORATORY SERVICE?”
“We seek knowledge and friendship, Your Highness.” After a moment she added. “And possibly trade and other exchanges later on, but those first and foremost.”
“KNOWLEDGE AND FRIENDSHIP.” A blue glow began to encompass the horn of the – princess – outside the ship, quickly reaching intolerable brightness. “THEN WE WILL SEND THEE TO ONE WHO MAY HELP AND JUDGE THEE BEST. PREPARE THYSELF.”
“Alert!” The ship broke in, “We are encompassed by an externally generated vector-control field of increasing magnitude. Automatic core shutdown in progress.”
Oh, hells. “Crash shutdown, engine and reactor systems. Go to auxiliary –”
“Exponential field spike –”
“– scram and vent!”
Blackness.
(Okay. So. Damn. I’ve done it. I’ve actually written crackfic crossover fan-fic for my own original fiction. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a first, but it is a first for me, in all three ways, so…
…and, obviously, this is very much not canon, ‘kay?)
((Further Note: I shall take this tweet from the MLP Supervising Director as evidence that Sufficiently Advanced Technology is actual canon, belike.))
Zero-G Spot: If there’s a couple anywhere in the Empire that hasn’t, ah, joined the 100 Mile High Club, it’s because they haven’t yet finished treatment for a case of galloping cosmophobia. Sure, there were some special requirements to figure out w.r.t. anatomical docking maneuvers (mostly involving conservation of momentum), but that’s why they did science to it.
As for celestial polyamory, insert your own three-body problem joke here.
Today’s question for Dr. Science is, “What’s the biggest optical telescope in the Empire? How far can it see?”
Over the years, a great many different telescopes have held that particular title: from the Great Eye at the Starspike (Eliéra’s oldest observatory, dating to the pre-Imperial era), through the first orbital telescopes, the large refractor at Farside Observatory, Seléné, and the Deep Orbit Oculus in far Súnáris orbit.
All, however, were rapidly outclassed by the discovery of very-long-baseline interferometry, which uses a technique referred to as aperture synthesis to correlate signals from a set of telescopes to produce images having the same angular resolution as an instrument the diameter of the entire set. Some limited use was made of these techniques with ground-based and orbital instruments, restricted by the difficulty in accurately quantifying optical-range photons for software processing, but once these difficulties were solved, construction began on much larger interferometric telescopes. Three particular examples of these held the title of largest optical telescope in turn, and while the others have been upgraded and remain in use, it is the last of these retains it today.
The first of these, the Barrascán Array, was constructed in the Meryn System, consisting of an array of millions of statites (produced by self-replicating, autoindustrial techniques) 48 light hours in diameter. Intended for general observation, the array possesses an angular resolution of 1.12 x 10-20 radians, enabling it to resolve objects 20 cm across at 2,250 light-years (i.e., the current fringe of the Associated Worlds, which was then unknown space).
The second, intended to carry out both exploration surveys and long-range observations of the galactic core, was the Very Long Baseline Observer, which made use of smaller arrays of deep-orbit telescopes located in systems across the width of the Empire, each reporting via the interstellar dataweave to the Exploratory Service’s headquarters in Almeä System. This gave it an effective diameter of 164 light-years, and thus an angular resolution of 3.74 x 10-25 radians, giving it the capability of resolving with micrometer resolution objects throughout the Starfall Arc, should its view be unobstructed. Indeed, if not for intervening objects, planetary rotation, local weather, and other such obstructions, it would be capable of reading a book over the shoulder of a sophont on any world in the galaxy — were one to pass within its view, since as you can imagine, an array of array of telescopes 164 light-years across is somewhat unwieldy to maneuver.
The apex of this technology is the Super-Size Synthetic Aperture, intended for in-depth studies of the deep universe. The SSSA takes the general concept of the VLBO even further by extending the array – by means of various treaty arrangements and leases – across much of the width of the Associated Worlds, reporting data back over tangle channels. Its effective diameter is no less than 1,825 light-years, giving it a theoretical angular resolution of 3.36 x 10-26 radians – which is to say, it can resolve a 33 m object at the rim of the observable universe.
The SSSA, however, is limited by the larger gaps between its elements, which are themselves limited to a single mobile telescope per system, and thus in turn by the amount of light collectable by each of these individual telescopes. It is also, unfortunately, constrained by the difficulty of maneuvering and recalibrating such a massive device, and by the political difficulties of passing through many different polities during reorientation, which tends to cause lengthy delays, increased costs, and where no permission can be obtained, gaps in array coverage. For most practical purposes, therefore, the VLBO can be considered the largest general-purpose optical telescope available to the Empire.
Year Outside, Hour Inside: Thanks to relativity, truth in television for lighthugger crews, who slowly build up a hefty time differential (and cultural delta) with the parts of the universe operating on the empire-time frame.
(Hint: if there’s a family member or social grouping you just can’t live without, make sure you all sign up together.
…also, give up on playing MMOs or multiplayer games with anyone off the ship, no matter how much tangle you brought. Timeslip is much worse than netlag.)
“Our isonomial gnostic net gives us tremendous parallel processing abilities. We can multitask -”
“No, sorry, that’s not what I meant. I understand the noetic architecture of mass-minds, in a textbook sense. But what does it feel like to be a Fusion?”
“When we look within – that is, when we meditate, and some part of us is always in such a state to weave our soul-threads into unity -”
Aria Multiple Coactive paused, and considered their questioner through three pairs of eyes.
“Imagine that you are standing between two mirrors, able to see an endless tunnel of reflections, all you, yourself. Then make those mirrors a sphere all around you, so wherever you look, in any direction, there are more identical selves of you; a universe of you. All whispering, endlessly whispering. And when you close your eyes, the whispers swell into a song, intricate, interwoven, and entirely personal.”
The Xenophile: Well, as established in the previous post, there’s a lot of xenophilia going on, nudge-nudge-wink-wink, but as that implies, there’s also a lot of regular old xenophilia in the sense of this trope going on too, certainly by human standards.
After all, that whole tribalism/xenophobia instinct was one of the many things that got edited out of the eldrae cognome over the years as a badthink cognitive bias, so being perfectly comfortable around and interested in exotic species is only natural.
(Alternate words: none. Also, for the avoidance of doubt, I’m assuming you submitted it in the spirit of my single usage of it in this trope-a-day back in 2014, rather than as the more-commonly-seen abbreviation of “Christianity”, because it’s not like there is any of the latter *there* to write about.)
“What is X-anity, you ask?
“(Apart, that is, from a rather ugly portmanteau in Eldraeic that I strongly suspect will not be improved by translation into any of the other languages of the Accord.)
“It’s a general term referring to a different quality for each species: kar mkaeth for the kaeth, lishólen for the ciseflish, ësseldrae for my own species, except that we use that term to refer to an ideal, not a current state, and so forth. As for what those mean, well, it’s six things, and therefore none at all.
“First, and most usefully, in biological terms, it would mean the psychological characteristics that members of that species have in common. So for us that would be things like mélith as a sense and instinct, or for the kaeth, trasered vandthel, or for the dar-e’sevdra, estrus, or for the tennoa, utilitarianism, and so forth. That each species has its own unique essence in this way is undeniable; promoting these unique points of view is much of the motivation behind uplift, for example.
“That being said, most academicians and professionals who might need to reference it go out of their way to find some other term, because secondly, it’s an example of the applied naturalistic fallacy, in which people declare such psychological characteristics terminal rather than instrumental values and insist that they cannot possibly be modified lest they change the X-ane experience and thus destroy X-anity from within. Something that has been invoked to justify the retention of everything from hyperbolic discounting through envy and xenophobia to morbidity and mortality –
(Many loud interruptions from audience.)
“The bioconservatives are out in force tonight, I see.
“Thirdly, in an extension to the first definition, people have used it to define a larger number of common characteristics, which are typically cultural norms – meaning modal averages – for a given species, by reference claiming them as innate to some degree or another. Apart from the inaccuracy of this – any functioning sophont brain is necessarily remarkably plastic, as manifested by the high levels of cultural interchange in polyspecific societies –
(Heckler makes reference to interspecies mating.)
“That wasn’t actually the kind of ‘cultural interchange’ I had in mind, but it does make a good example. As it happens, the Empire does have a high xenophilia rate, as do most polyspecific societies, although I am rather pleased to be able to say that ours is one of the highest. Which is exactly what you would expect, since the way that instincts manifest is shaped by cultural imprinting in all sophonts and even many prosophonts, including what and who they find attractive.
“And biological cultural determinism, therefore, is so much arrant balderdash, despite which evidence, fourthly, this definition is so often misused by authoritarian culture-groups, either as a means to deny another culture-group membership in X-anity, at which point they no longer merit consideration as fellow sophonts, or to equate their culture or their preferences with the optimally X-ane, and use X-anity as a hammer to enforce cultural conformity.
“These multiple definitions, in any case, render X-anity as a concept both controversial,. fifthly, in any context in which it might be even slightly ambiguous, and sixthly, therefore useless in any serious debate.”
– Academician Vallis Archíël, sophontologist, student’s transcript from a guest speaker session, Academy of Loryet
The Dreamhall on Kythera is without a doubt the most… fragrant supercomputing center in the Empire.
As much can be said of Kythera as a whole – when you’re heavy biotechnology users, living in buried hives along with an entire commensal symbitech ecosystem, a certain organic pungency to the air is inescapable. The locals don’t notice, and given anything more than a stopover, the nose adapts. But even allowing for that, the Dreamhall is special.
For the Dreamhall is no less than the greatest concentration of cortextures ever constructed. In the dozen massive shells beneath Chira-hive, thousands of open pillars climb from floor to ceiling, each with dozens of racked trays housing the quivering, gray-pink, involuted masses of cultured neural tissue kept warmed and wetted by the nutrient fluid that gives the Dreamhall its copper-salt, amniotic smell. The throb of peristaltic biopumps fills the air; while some mechanical support is used for peripheral functions, the Kytherans pride themselves that as much of their super-thinker as possible is purely biological, a product of their art.
It is a marvel of the Empire, for certain. A massively parallel supercomputer, but more, one with an active and creative imagination, for want of a better word. Indeed, many of its most impressive products have come not from submitting problems to its attention, but from allowing it to browse idly through the ‘weave’s data stores and dream.
Using it always makes me hungry, though.
– Rúlf Draehév, “A Dog and Program Show”, Goodbytes Monthly
(Alternative words: zettahertz.)
(Alternate words: none.)
(Alternate words: none. Also, for the avoidance of doubt, I’m assuming you submitted it in the spirit of my single usage of it in 
(Alternate words: Walk, whitelist, wellspring.)