“The associated Sunfire Club is an exclusive society and social club for those who have either triggered in person, or at least endured up-close, the detonation of a nucleonic weapon. While its numbers – still very few – did grow somewhat after the invention of the Greater Immortality, club rules adopted at that time require that the detonation remain within one’s personal continuity; that is to say, that members cannot have been restored afterwards from off-site backup. Only those whose vector stacks survived in readable form and were picked out of the smoldering crater afterwards are eligible for Club membership.”
– Veryn’s Guide to the High Branches, Cant & Sinistra, 6990
This kind of reminds me of an idea I had once for a quasi-fanfic-type-thing about a group of “death enthusiasts” who went out getting themselves killed in horrific ways so that they could post reviews about their experiences about different causes of death on the future-internet.
ref “The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect”. One of the main characters invents the sport of getting killed in interesting ways in a world of nearly absolute immortality. And manages to join the very exclusive club of “people who have killed someone else”, by actually managing to kill herself once, demonstrating that the “absolute immortality” of the setting was merely “almost absolute”. Everyone else in the club was a member because they killed someone before immortality was imposed.
Huh, I’ll have to check that one out one of these days.
I assume that the device in question has to be a weapon because a civilian civil engineering device would shut itself down if there was anyone close enough to potentially be harmed by it.
Unless they were the unlucky sod who discovered a new and unexpected bug in the safety software or glitch in the anti-explosion mechanisms. Utterly crazy accidents happen in every world.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” -Douglas Adams
Mostly.
(You might get in if someone else manages to bypass the safeties and blow you up with one. On the other hand, if you manage to blow yourself up with one, all you win is a lifetime membership to the Interstellar Society of Total Fuck-Ups.)
And what do they call the ‘Darwin Awards’ in the Eldraeverse?
“Well deserved.”
Is the use of nucleonic here supposed to be a reference to Mekton or simply a coincidence?
A coincidence. (I’m unfamiliar with Mekton.)