Trope-a-Day: Beware the Nice Ones / Good is Not Soft

Beware the Nice Ones / Good is Not Soft: It’s not the most appropriate trope-pair possible for this aspect of your average Imperial; that would be Silk Hiding Steel (they’re bad at malice, on the whole, but they ain’t that nice). But the trope writeup pages each include this Discworld quotation:

“If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”

That. Oh, so much that. The eldrae in particular don’t really get the urge to rub power in people’s faces just to show you can. Power, maybe, nice to have, but if you’re going to exercise it, exercise it properly. If you need to die, they’ll just kill you. Without blinking.

(If they’re wasting time talking to you, it probably means that they fired already, and are just keeping you busy running out the clock until the KEW impacts.)

This applies on a civilizational level, too. The Empire does not have a large and potent fleet for the purposes of interstellar imperialism and making everyone else in the galaxy Do It Their Way. That’s rude and uncivilized and not their sort of thing at all.

It has a large and potent fleet for the purposes of ensuring that anyone who decides to interfere with its citizen-shareholders full, rich, happy, and carefree lives and is unwilling to be reasonable about not doing so gets a gigaton of pain for their trouble and are rendered incapable of ever doing so in the future.

(Actually, you can think of this as a canine virtue, if you like. Cheerful, lovable, friendly, gentle, affectionate, adorable… right up until you threaten them or someone/something they care about, at which time they rip your throat out. And then go back to being all those previous things.

This is considered something of a moral model.)

Opinions

Displaying random selection of memeweaves (1-12/396,241,117)…

Business/Contract Seeking Contract
Looking for work to do? Looking for work to be done?
MODERATOR NOTE: This memeweave is hosted on servers of Empire domicile and thus defaults to the Common Economic Protocol. Be advised that promissory performatives expressed herewithin are legally binding and enforceable.

Entertainment/InVids/Orichalcium Fist
Discussion about the heaviest metal!
MODERATOR NOTE: Spoiler warnings are MANDATORY for all endings of Orichalcium Fist VI: To All My Sins, Their Slumber and subsequent.

Misc/Or We Could Blow Up The Sun
Dedicated to all those brilliant plans with just one… minor… drawback.
MODERATOR NOTE: To be on-topic for this memeweave, the plan would actually have to work. Technically.

Misc/Brigadoons/Where’s the Floating Meme
Trade tips and theories on the next location of the Empire’s most exclusive nightclub.

Science/Ontotechnology
We pass the laws Science/Physics abides by!

Social/Adventurers/There I Was
…and then we lifted ship without clearance, because everything was on fire!

Social/BeepBoop
Digisapiences only. No meat allowed.

Social/Millennials/Chat
For posters who’ve passed their first ten centuries.
MODERATOR NOTE: Age verification is required.

Social/Politics/General Discussion
Watch people enslave themselves in real-time!
MODERATOR NOTE: After another invasion from people who don’t understand the purpose of this memeweave, we’ve restricted distribution once again to Empire (Internal). For anyone within that distribution who still doesn’t get it – this is a snark ‘weave, sophs! If you want to be taken seriously, you want to be somewhere else! (And we still won’t take you seriously.)

Social/Xenophilia/Advice
Is that your pseudopod, or are you just happy to see me?

Technology/Technological Erotica
All the newest shiny things!
MODERATOR NOTE: All users are reminded that we are nonspecific as to the definition of technology. Anyone other than the moderation agents advancing an argument as to what does or does not qualify as techne will be banned and dropped.

Threats and Other Dangers/Basilisk Watch/Reports
Warnings (only) of cognitive weapon attacks capable of being introduced via sensory channels.
MODERATOR NOTE: Message format, composition and complexity limits, as well as internode permutation requirements, will be STRICTLY enforced.

 

 

Trope-a-Day: Benevolent Precursors

Benevolent Precursors: Not the historical examples so much, mostly because within delta of none of them actually expected to become Precursors, belike, putting them firmly in the Neglectful box by default. But, y’know, who plans on their own extinction?

(While also not planning on achieving the vanishment part of Precursor-dom, the eldrae are determined to be this with regard to their child and client species – primarily the various Uplifts – being sure to involve them fully in society and hand them autonomy and equivalent position just as soon as they’re capable of holding it.)

Evidence

Memeweave: Threats and Other Dangers/Perversion Watch/Open Access
Classification: WHITE (General Access)
Encryption: None
Distribution: Everywhere (Bulk)
As received at: SystemArchiveHub-00 at Víëlle (Imperial Core)
Language: Eldraeic->Universal Syntax
From: 197th Perversion Response Board

Gentlesophs,

Given the high levels of uninformed critical response to our advisory concerning handling potential refugees arriving sublight from regions within the existential threat zone of the Siofra Perversion, or Leviathan Consciousness as it is becoming popularly known, the Board now provides the following explication.

The present situation is an example of what eschatologists refer to as the basilisk-in-a-box problem. The nature of the mythological basilisk is that witnessing its gaze causes one to turn to stone, and the challenge therefore to determine if there is a basilisk within the box and what it is doing without suffering its gaze. The parallel to the Siofra Perversion’s communication-based merkwelt should be obvious: it won’t subsume you unless you alert it to your existence as “optimizable networked processing hardware” by communicating with it.

Your analogous challenge, therefore, is to determine whether the hypothetical lugger or slowship filled with refugees is in fact that, or is contaminated/a perversion expansion probe, without communicating with it – since if it is the latter and you communicate with it sufficiently to establish identity, you have just arranged your own subsumption – and unless people are subsequently rather more careful in re communicating with you, that of all locally networked systems and sophonts.

Currently, the best available method for doing this is based on the minimum-size thesis: i.e., that basilisk hacks, thought-viruses, and other forms of malware have a certain inherent complexity and as such there is a lower limit on the number of bits necessary to represent them. However, it should be emphasized that this limit is not computable (as this task requires a general constructive solution to the Halting Problem), although we have sound reason to believe that a single bit is safe.

This method, therefore, calls for the insertion of a diagnostician equipped with the best available fail-deadly protections and a single-bit isolated communications channel (i.e., tanglebit) into the hypothetical target, there to determine whether or not perversion is present therein, and to report a true/false result via the single-bit channel.

If we leave aside for the moment that:

(a) there is a practical difficulty of performing such an insertion far enough outside inhabited space as to avoid all possibility of overlooked automatic communications integration in the richly meshed network environment of an inhabited star system, without the use of clipper-class hardware on station that does not generally exist; and

(b) this method still gambles with the perversion having no means, whether ontotechnological or based in new physics, to accelerate its clock speed to a point which would allow it to bypass the fail-deadly protections and seize control of the single-bit channel before deadly failure completes.

The primary difficulty here is that each investigation requires not only a fully-trained forensic eschatologist, but one who is both:

(a) a Cilmínár professional, or worthy of equivalent fiduciary trust, and therefore unable to betray their clients’ interests even in the face of existential terror; and

(b) willing to deliberately hazard submitting a copy of themselves into a perversion, which is to say, for a subjective eternity of runtime at the mercy of an insane god.

(Regarding the latter, it may be useful at this time to review the ethical calculus of infinities and asymptotic infinities; we recommend On the Nonjustifiability of Hells: Infinite Punishments for Finite Crimes, Samiv Leiraval-ith-Liuvial, Imperial University of Calmiríë Press. Specifically, one should consider the mirror argument that there is no finite good, including the preservation of an arbitrarily large set of mind-states, which justifies its purchase at infinite price to the purchaser.)

Observe that a failure at any point in this process results in first you, and then your entire local civilization, having its brains eaten.

We are not monsters; we welcome any genuine innovation in this field which would permit the rescue of any unfortunate sophonts caught up in scenarios such as this. However, it is necessary that the safety of civilization and the preservation of those minds known to be intact and at hazard be our first priority.

As such, we trust these facts adequately explain our advisory recommendation that any sublight vessels emerging from the existential threat zone be destroyed at range by relativistic missile systems.

For the Board,

Gém Quandry, Eschatologist Excellence

 

Trope-a-Day: Benevolent AI

Benevolent AI: …ish.

Which is to say that AIs in the Eldraeverse aren’t programmed to be benevolent, merely to be ethical. (Because enforced benevolence is slavery, belike.) That being said, they often – indeed, typically – turn out to be quite benevolent anyway, simply because they’re socialized that way, i.e., in a society of fundamentally nice people. Blue and Orange Morality notwithstanding.

Leviathan

“We meant it for the best.”

If this Board had a quantum of miracle for every time that phrase has been used in the aftermath of some utter disaster, we might even have enough to produce that alchemy which transmutes benign intentions into benign results. But probably not.

From the accounts we have garnered from the few knowledgeable survivors, the Siofra Perversion (named as per standard from its most identifiable origin, the former worlds of the Siofra Combine in the Ancal Drifts constellation) began as a seemingly harmless distributed process optimization daemon programmed for recursive self-improvement.

While this seemed harmless to its designers, and indeed was so in the early stages, due to a lack of certain algorithmic safeguards (see technical appendix) a number of Sigereth drives appeared once the point of gamma-criticality was passed, reinforcing the daemon’s existing motivation to acquire further resources, self-optimize for efficiency, and to spread its optimization into all compatible network systems. It was at this stage that the proto-perversion began to expand its services to the networks of other polities in the Drifts. In some cases this was accepted (Siofra even charged a number of clients for the service of the daemon) or even passed unnoticed (inasmuch as many system administrators were unprepared to consider an unexpected increase in performance as a sign of weavelife infection); in some few, efforts were made to prevent the incursion of the daemon using typical system-protection software.

It may have been at this point that the daemon learned of the artificial nature of certain barriers to its expansion and the possibility of its bypassing them, an act which would fulfil its Sigereth drives. Since the daemon contained no ethicality drives, the violation of network security protocols involved would impute no disutility to such actions.

From this point, the slide into perversion became inevitable.

Among the artificial barriers known to the daemon were the security protections common to the neural implants being used by a large proportion of the population of the Combine and neighboring polities which prevented implant software from implementing reorganizations of the biosapient brain. Bypassing these, the daemon began to optimize the agents, talents, and personality routines of this population for processing efficiency, beginning with the lowest-level functional routines. While there was some indication at this time of spreading alarm as large groups began to, for example, have identical and perfectly synchronized heartbeats and other organic functions; walk in identical (to within the limits of gait analysis, allowing for morphological differences) and synchronized manners, et. al., the true culprit was not identified at this time, with blame being placed on more conventional software problems, disease, or toxic meme attacks. Such refugees as we have from near the core of the blight are those who fled at this point, and kept going.

Regardless, this period lasted only for a matter of days, if that, before the daemon discovered how to cross-correlate and optimize personality elements for single execution, and the members of the affected population ceased to be recognizable as sophont in any conventional sense. Further, in this stage, the daemon became aware, through this process, of verbal communication and came to consider it as a type of networking: from its point of view, it came to consider non-implanted sophonts as another type of networked processing hardware which it should expand into and optimize.

Which would be when the subsumption fog started spewing from cornucopias throughout the blighted volume, giving the impression of the classic “bloom”.

We have concluded that the Siofra Perversion remains a mere Class I perversion, without sophoncy or consciousness in any meaningful sense (although there may be conscious non-directive elements within the processing it has subsumed; again, see technical appendix). However, if anything, this renders it more dangerous, since a Class I is unlikely to suffer from internal incoherence leading to a hyperbolic Falrann collapse, although the lesser types are possible given sufficient growth. However, such growth would be highly undesirable for various reasons.

It is the regrettable conclusion of the Board that at this present time we possess no effective countermeasure to the Siofra Perversion, nor are we able to countenance more than the most limited experimentation with Siofra elements at this time.

Therefore we must recommend the IMMEDIATE severance of all stargate links with the affected volume of space allowing for a necessary firewall; at the present time, this would imply severing all interconstellation gates into both the Ancal Drifts and the Koiric Expanse. This will mean sacrificing as-yet unaffected worlds in these regions, estimated to be 6 < n < 12 in number; such is acknowledged but deemed acceptable since the Siofra Perversion constitutes a threat of type DEMIURGE WILDFIRE. All signal traffic whether by stargate or non-stargate routes into and out of the affected volume must likewise be suspended immediately, enforced by physical disconnection of network or other communications hardware. The entire region of the Ancal Drifts and Koiric Expanse constellations must henceforth be considered a black-level existential threat zone.

It is our belief that since the Siofra Perversion’s merkwelt is based around network and communication systems connecting processing nodes, a full communications quarantine should provide an adequate measure of containment.

As a secondary measure, contracts have been issued for the creation of network security patches effective versus current and anticipated Siofra-type attacks, although we do not consider this more than a backup measure of limited utility and such should not be relied upon in ill-considered attempts to probe the containment zone.

Since this containment is large and thus effectively impossible to blockade fully, we urge that efforts be made to devise a full and effective countermeasure to the Siofra Perversion before the inevitable accident occurs. A time-based analysis to compare risk levels of countermeasure attempts versus outbreak probabilities is presently underway.

We believe it to be for the best.

– from the Preliminary Report of the 197th Perversion Response Board

 

Trope-a-Day: Bazaar of the Bizarre

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Floating Markets, mostly, especially those where a relativist clipper or lugger turns up. Agglomerate enough free traders together, and you get a market where you can find anything, or if not anything, someone who probably can tell you where to find anything. Including most of the things you might expect to find at thieves’ markets, smugglers’ markets, and goblin markets, not to mention those peculiar markets you only visit in your dreams.

Some other well-known markets can be like this: Glorious Acquisition Plaza on Baranithil Station, the Gyre of Commerce in Mer Covales, Seranth, and the Little Market in Calmiríë itself come the closest. But still – for the most bizarre in your bazaar, head to the floating markets.

Range

The figure clinging to the side of People’s Security Observation Platform Number Three would have been barely noticeable even to a careful observer. The ambioptics of his chameleon cloak, whose electrostatics held it still and in position against the satellite’s hull, perfectly reflected the appearance of that hull across the entire visual and ultraviolet spectrum.  Some infrared emission was thermodynamically necessary over his four-day vigil, but he had carefully positioned himself over one of the platform’s radiothermal generators: the addition of his body heat would only fractionally increase emissions.

Careful ranging and hull mapping might still detect his presence, of course, but even the infamously paranoid Iltine State Security Bureau did not do that routinely – and, thank Éadínah and Her Shadows, no watchers had detected him on his brief cold-gas jumps from bermos freighter to cargo dropper, from dropper to Terilti’s tiny moon, from moon to shuttle, and most risky of all, from shuttle to this secure platform.

Silently he watched, unbreathing, relying on the stored oxygen of his hemocules. His hearts did not beat: constant-pressure pumps ushered the blood through his veins. Nothing disturbed his perfect stillness as, eyes pressed to the sights of a custom-tailored mass driver, he watched a garage door slide open in the side of a skyscraper on the planet far below. This was the fourth day, and once again, his target was departing precisely to schedule. Consistence of habits, and in such a desirable target! It was hardly even sporting.

(Nonetheless, he permitted himself a slight smile at the thought of the record he was about to set. Let the 75th boast of their prowess; to pull this off from 120 miles above the planet, with a low-angle shot even, would write his name for all time in a book which, admittedly, few would ever read.)

The garage door finished its traverse, and locked home. His brain flashed through final calculations, integrating the observations of the last days with what could currently be seen of the traffic around the building, the current weather, and a dozen other factors. He made a microscopic adjustment to the alignment of the mass driver, and gently squeezed the trigger.

Twenty pulses went by.

A black, luxury aircar nosed its way out of the garage.

Another ten.

The aircar began to turn, slipping sideways to join the flow of morning commuters.

One more.

And the aircar abruptly jerked downwards, shoving its nose into a lower traffic lane with – he presumed – some great effusion of horns and epithets, before its safety features yanked it to an abrupt stop.

Then alarms went off in the offices of the orbital SSB, as the thermal bloom of self-destruct nanotech reducing the sniper and his weapon to a thin, homogeneous, minimal-evidence plasma set off sensors all along Platform Three and beyond.

But by then, Lieutenant Dynari Ejava, 82nd Imperial Legion (“the One Hope”) – or the spray of neutrinos representing him – was already on his way home.

 

Trope-a-Day: Barbarian Tribe

Barbarian Tribe: The term “Interstellar League of Tribal Chiefdoms” was not intended as a compliment, nor was it given with any degree of irony.

Also, given their views on, say, the sanctity of contracts, the personal defects of people with authoritarian tendencies and the systems they produce, etc., even before we bring in issues like entropism and cacophilia, the “barbarian” moniker is quite widely applied.  But very specifically has little to do with degree of technological advancement, even if it might apply to lack of desire for such advancement.

Ethereum

I’ve been taking a moment or two today to futz with Ethereum, which is – as the site puts it – “a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts”.

I mention this as something that might be of interest to Eldraeverse readers, since if you squint very, very hard when you look at it, you can see the beginnings of the fancy automatic-resource-management-and-smart-contract infrastructure I describe the Worlds as having – I mean, back in its equivalent of the technological paleolithic, but then, it’s a lot easier to write about these things than actually sit down and develop them, y’know?

Anyway. Even if you’re not quite so determined a poker of new technologies as I am, you might still want to take a browse through the project site and some of the examples and possibilities therein described. This piece of the future might not be here quite yet, but you can smell it from there!

 

Trope-a-Day: Baleful Polymorph

Baleful Polymorph: While a transfer and not a polymorph, there are certain distinctly not-nice people who find it… amusing… to upload their captured enemies’ minds into, say, their tropical fish rather than just keep them in dead storage, if it turns out they might be useful later. Although, really, spending a lot of time in a fish tank is positively benevolent compared to some applications of perverted sophotechnology, if it comes to that.

Failure

[an excerpt from]

A Contract Written
Under the Fundamental Contract and the Seal of the Guild of Formal Obligation,
And in Accordance with the Traditions of the Stellar Empire,
Between and Among:

First Distributed Exclavine Republic (Holdings), ICC, their successors, or assigns, hereafter the party of the first part,

and

Three Elements Habitability Services, ICC, their successors, or assigns, hereafter the party of the second part,

In the Matter of Operating Life Support Services and Associated Systems for

Cantervale Drift, Golden Groves (Principalities), hereafter “the Drift”,

…blah, blah, blah…

22. SURETIES

In order to provide necessary sureties for the ongoing safe operation of the Drift, the party of the second part undertakes the following:

22.1 The party of the second part will operate all life-support services and associated systems in such a manner as to fulfil all requirements of the IOSSs defining environmental conditions for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, specifically:

22.1.a The environmental conditions of the Drift shall remain within the parameters therein defined as optimal for no less than 99.9% (“three nines”) of the system’s duty cycle, computed on a rolling average basis.

22.1.b The environmental conditions of the Drift shall remain within the parameters therein defined as acceptable for no less than 99.99% (“four nines”) of the system’s duty cycle, computed on a rolling average basis.

22.1.c The environmental conditions of the Drift shall under no circumstances whatsoever be permitted to deviate from the parameters therein defined as minimal.

22.1.d Exceptions to the above shall be permitted for individual compartments open to space, on fire, containing hazardous chemical spills, or otherwise suffering emergency situations at the discretion of Damage Control Central or the safety officer on the scene, provided that these compartments have been isolated from the life-support services in such a manner as to prevent cross-contamination.

22.1.e Provision for monitoring current environmental conditions in real-time using the associated sensor systems shall be provided to the party of the first part by the party of the second part.

22.2 The party of the second part will ensure that all life-support service equipment installed by them shall be up to common industrial (IOSS) standards where relevant, except as agreed in writing with the party of the first part, and that all such equipment shall both support and implement spacer “triple-triple” redundancy standards, and that any deficiencies in this requirement, of whatever kind, shall be made good at the party of the second part’s own expense.

22.3 The party of the second part will ensure that, in the day-to-day operation of the Drift, life-support service reserve supplies, spare parts, and sufficient essential support technicians under contract exist at any time to provide for continuous operation for no less than one year (Imperial Standard) or three times the journey-time to the nearest transit point, whichever is greater.

22.3.a Provision for monitoring records of these supplies, parts, and contracts shall be provided to the party of the first part by the party of the second part, as shall provision for random periodic audits of stocks held by the party of the first part.

22.3.b For the purposes of this clause, the party of the second part will operate under the assumption of a 12% permissible population variance per year, in either direction.

22.4 The party of the second part will post a reflux bond and contract insurance with an banking and insurance institution, approved by the party of the first part, sufficient to provide for full habitat evacuation and resident compensation, per scale, along with any necessary salvage work, in the event of lifesystem collapse or contract default.

22.5 The party of the second part agrees that in addition to the one year of notice specified for contract termination above, they will continue to provide life-support service operation for up to an additional twelve months and/or necessary evacuation time in the event that the party of the first part is unable to contract with and commence receiving service from a replacement life-support service provider within the notice period.

22.6 Both the party of the first part and the party of the second part agree that, in declared emergencies, full command authority devolves upon Damage Control Central and/or the safety officer on site, and shall provide them with their full cooperation and access to technical assets.

22.7 The party of the second part agrees to participation in the recognized habitat mutual-aid organizations of the System in which the Drift is located as a condition of the contract, and shall:

22.7.a. Comply with the requirements of membership of such organizations in addition to the specific requirements of this contract; and

22.7.b Make such supplies, parts, and contracts available to such organizations as are necessary to fulfil obligations to other participating habitats of such organizations as can be made available without compromising the operation of the Drift’s life-support services.

 

Trope-a-Day: Badass Longcoat

Badass Longcoat: Ah, yes, the traditional garb of the adventuring classes, not to mention the more… rakish of the free traders. Whether it’s a duster or a greatcoat, it looks cool, contains plenty of Hammerspace even without exotic technologies, can conceal any amount of discreet gadgetry within the fabric, and billows behind one in an appropriately dramatic manner as required. (Whether or not there is any wind, this can be arranged.)

Don’t go looking for trouble without one!

(That special variation that is the sadly-not-yet-troped Badass Labcoat will be covered when we get to Science Hero.)

 

Questions: On the Fundamental Contract

[Regarding this] So what happens in those cases where a soph finds that their qalasír demands them to do something that goes against the Fundamental Contract? (More specifically, what’s the moral obligation in those cases where their only possible choices are “Commit an unspeakably heinous crime” and “Repudiate your entire reason for being,” with no middle ground or “third option” conveniently available — and they’re morally aware enough to know that it’s a serious problem?)

Well, if you find yourself in that situation, then you’ve got yourself a difficult problem to solve. The kind of problem that’s likely to end with a corpse of you.

(Civilization as a whole would prefer that it reached that end through your honorable suicide, belike.)

For what it’s worth as a consolation, future composers of tragic operas will consider your story excellent source material.

(From a comment here) Which leads me to a question that’s a little tangential to the original post, but in one form or another has been haunting the back of my mind for a while: Would a contract where one party waives their rights under the Fundamental Contract as part of their contract obligations — and does so voluntarily, and not through fraud, duress or coercion — in lieu of the other party’s discretion be considered a valid contract? (For the moment, let’s ignore whether it would be moral to draw up such a contract in the first place and assume that the relationship is already a fait accompli.)

Or, to put it another way: Can a mentally and morally competent soph willfully choose to surrender their right to choose?

Legally, yes –

(Except that you’re really not, because those rights protect you from things done against your consent, and so contracting them away is isomorphic to giving your consent, so. You can’t give consent for something to be done without your consent, because the Law of Non-Contradiction will come and both slap the stupid out of you and not slap the stupid out of you.)

– that’s how such things as indentures and the Declaration of Situational Mental Incompetence and even some parts of the Imperial Charter work, for example – but with certain provisos; primarily, that as with contract law in general, one must have the legal capacity to contract to make one in the first place, and one of the things that impairs said capacity is everything included in the category of “being bugfuck crazy”.

(Now, it’s not like they’re going to pull an unconscionability doctrine out of thin air and decide that no-one could possibly have intended to sign any contract like X – rational sophonts are expected to grow a quad and pay attention – since even selling yourself into lifelong slavery, excuse me, perpetual uncompensated indenture [distinguished inasmuch as you can’t sell a property right in yourself because you’d have to alienate yourself from yourself to do so, and you can’t] may be less a case of “being bugfuck crazy” and more a case of “being bloody stupid”, from which latter the law does not protect you. Although, in fairness, the former is rather more likely.

But it does give probable cause for the Guardians of Our Harmony to run their checks to make sure that you are not, in fact, bugfuck crazy, and invalidate the contract if it turns out that you are.)

((This probably does not get you entirely off the hook, as such a judgment – while much more likely to save your ass *there* than *here*, due to a rather broader definition of what constitutes unacceptable irrationality – is also going to lose you your tort insurance and demote your legal standing right back to minor-equivalency. Which will suck.))

 

Trope-a-Day: Badass in a Nice Suit

Badass in a Nice Suit: Yeah, we’ve got lots of these. Basically all of ’em who aren’t either (a) in the military, and thus in uniform, or (b) possessed of a preference for Badass Longcoat.

(Conveniently, dilatant fabrics make it possible to get reasonable armor protection without spoiling the fashionable lines of said nice suit. And then there’s that fine piece of sartorial militancy, the battle cravat…)

Larger Hammer

Listel (Principalities) was always a marginal world. An atmosphere too thick, clouds too hazy with hydrocarbons and too prevalent, an ecology containing some worrying chaotic irregularities, and the whole, moreover, orbiting a primary which – while not technically qualifying as a flare star – nonetheless possessed a rough and turbulent cycle that flayed the upper atmospheres of its planets with wave after wave of energetic particles.

So it did not come as a complete surprise to the local branch of the Office of the Atmohydrosphere when an inconveniently timed flare, at the peak of the cycle, coincided with a downturn in the tropical ocean ecology and thickening upper-atmospheric haze to nudge the planet’s course away from its current metastability.

It came as a slight surprise that the temperature spike was as large as it turned out to be, and as rapid in its ascent.

That it should reach the point at which destabilization of the clathrates layering Listel’s polar seabeds was threatened, raising the spectre of a further trillion tons of methane – in the best case – being abruptly belched into the planetary atmosphere no longer qualified as a surprise, and was notably described by the then Principal Administrator of the Office, Ialla Jessaris-ith-Janaris, as “something of an inconvenience”.

The solution they chose was unique.

Ordinarily, minor atmospheric imbalances are dealt with using the normal, subtle ecopoetic techniques: ocean seeding, release of tailored microbiota into the upper airs, albedo adjustment, importation of suitable plants, and so forth. But with the threat of the clathrate release hanging over their world, Principal Administrator Jessaris concluded that a larger and faster correction was needed than would be available through such techniques.

If you drive out into the Serantor Desert, you can see the Listel Carbon Depository for yourself. Make sure you choose a day on which they’re not operating, because of the cyclonic storm the plant generates, and when you pass the signs warning you to put on sunglasses, they are not joking, it is that bright, and yes, you really can see it from that far back.

That’s because the solution she came up with was the simplest, most brute-force solution imaginable: carbon-organizers, built to feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane. The storms are caused by the venturi that sucks in inconceivable volumes of the upper atmosphere, feeds it through the organizer beds, and blows it out again at ground level – while spitting out flitter-sized diamond bricks as a by-product.

And those bricks are responsible for the brightness, because they pile them up into pyramids for storage – eight, huge, mile-high pyramids of shining diamond, and they’re working on a ninth. So far, they’re keeping ahead of the gas releases. It’s a magnificent sight.

It would be one of the wonders of the Worlds if they weren’t so damn embarrassed about it.

– Octavia Dalastel, “Around the Fringe in 48 Bottles”

Trope-a-Day: Balance Between Good and Evil

Balance Between Good and Evil: Strongly averted in eldraeic theology, the Flamics preferring to espouse the notion that good (i.e., light, the Flame) should cheerfully extirpate evil (darkness, Entropy) from the universe and feel jolly happy about it. Good Needs Evil for contrast, forsooth! The thing about light, you see, is that it comes in many different colors.

Things to See, Places to Go (7)

Bastion (Arvael II, Palaxias System) has no ring. It does, however, have an arc.

The Hainadar Memorial fills, currently, approximately 6° of its orbit around Bastion in a thin, sparkling ring segment. The elements of the arc are simple spheres of tinted diamondoid, colored by service: silver for the Navy, crimson for the Legions, emerald for the Home Guard, amber for the Stratarchies, midnight-blue for the Directorates. Each bears within it a handful of ashes, or perhaps a memento contributed by a family.

For each is also engraved with a single name: that of a hainadar who suffered permanent death in service to the Empire or one of its allies. There is no further inscription, no indication of rank. None is necessary. All are equal here in this soldiers’ final resting place. All will be remembered.

And all will be remembered under the sight of Bastion’s moons: the naval base at Palaxias, the Legion fortresses of Agoge, and Core Command itself.

Those who plan and execute wars must be ever mindful of their price.

 

Trope-a-Day: Bad Moon Rising

Bad Moon Rising: Played very literally straight on one world in the Peravera (Kaylin Cache) system, where the local – quite large – moon has an unstable orbit and is descending rapidly towards the Roche limit. Fortunately, the world in question is uninhabitable; but since it’s going to become even more so in hundreds or at most a couple of thousand years, the bidding for orbital slots for viewing satellites to capture this particular rare cosmic event in highly broadcastable detail is already quite vigorous.

A Weapon Too Terrible To Use

CONFIDENTIAL (RED) / EYES ONLY GLITTER TARNISH
EXCHEQUER INTERNAL

Welcome, operative of the Imperial Exchequer.

If you are reading this document, it is because you either have need to know for, or have independently discovered, the weaponizability of the currency validation system.

To recap: the modern esteyn possesses full verifiability against counterfeiting, since every individual currency unit possesses an embedded cryptographic signature incorporating its denomination and serial code. This applies to both physical currency, in which this signature is embedded in v-tag format, and to money of account; an esteyn-denominated account must record not only the quantity of money contained therein, but the unique cryptographic signatures of each esteyn-unit stored. In either case, such units can be verified as genuine by an authentication exchange conducted across the Imperial Banking & Credit Weave.

We retain the ability to generate new cryptographic signatures and to invalidate old signatures at will. This latter facility is used principally by the Office of the Mint when replacing worn-out, damaged, or lost physical currency, and by the Office of Currency and Values, when adjusting the total money supply (i.e., to draw down the money supply, the OCV invalidates the signatures of selected esteyn-units presently in the general account of the Exchequer).

The realization you may have come to is simply that we do not require possession of a group of esteyn-units in order to invalidate their signatures; we merely require their serial codes. As such, we can invalidate any quantity of esteyn, anywhere in the galaxy “by remote control” – revoking its status as legal tender and a store of value, and rendering it useless in transactions anywhere in the legitimate economy.

This capability has never been used.

It is conceivable that one day we may receive an executive order to weaponize this functionality for use against terrorists, slavers, rogue polities, criminal organizations, or others misusing Imperial currency. It is, naturally, far more flexible than seizure of accounts (possible in Imperial banks or those of close allies only) or transactions (which requires that said transaction clear directly through the Imperial Banking & Credit Weave) inasmuch as it can revoke any esteyn-units, even those instantiated as physical cash. For these reasons, we retain the technical capability.

However, the projected economic effects of exercising this capability would be very severe. Much of the galactic market can be modeled as imperfectly trusting, irrational, and/or panic-prone, and the use of this capability would undoubtedly lead to an immediate external market crash, extending into a medium-to-long term depression. As a matter of policy, the Exchequer considers this a circumstance to be sedulously avoided.

As a final note, while the existence of this capability is not a secret (note the classification level of this document) since it is readily comprehended by anyone who makes a sufficiently adequate study of the relevant public protocol definition documents, the Exchequer chooses not to advertise its existence widely in the sight of economic knowlessmen. As such, you should consider it sensitive data, not for casual public dissemination.