Month: November 2021

Selectivity

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6

The Habtech’s Peace referred originally to an agreement brokered between the various mercenary companies engaged on each side during the months of drift-habitat fighting that characterized the latter phase of the Black Web War, and continues to refer to similar agreements (again, usually between mercenary groups) up to the present day.

Under a Habtech’s Peace, all combatants engaged in extended combat operations aboard a drift-habitat or other hostile-environment shelter agree to

  • refrain from using control over or sabotage of structural, main power, thermal control, life support, attitude control, or orbital maneuvering systems as a weapon of war;
  • refrain from conducting operations in such a way as to impair the operation, repair, or maintenance of these systems, or in a manner that places key elements of them at risk;
  • permit the passage of identified habitat technicians through and between the combat zone and occupied areas as necessary, without let or hindrance;
  • refrain from making use of identified habitat technicians as agents of sabotage or espionage;
  • actively refuse any offers of intelligence from identified habitat technicians;
  • and so forth.

The purpose of such an agreement should be obvious: operations in such environments offer all too many scenarios in which all sides of the conflict lose, in the destruction of the asset over which they are fighting and/or a mass-death event which destroys or renders combat-incapable both sides. Death for death’s sake is in no-one’s interest.

While combatants often cut a course very close to the line, a Habtech’s Peace is rarely violated, and in such cases mercenaries and mercenary-support organizations adherent to the Iron Concord will often join forces to punish the offender. (It is widely believed that the lack of participation of polity forces in these arrangements is due to the lack of ability – in most cases – to punish defectors.)

– from an article in Blood Cheques and Bullets, 7282Q1 issue

Give Way

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4

“Okay, let’s go over how the traffic priority controls work. You can up-priority by paying a small fee, with a promise to pay more if your higher priority becomes relevant. The fee goes to us, the later charges to every vehicle that’s inconvenienced by yours. Or you can down-priority, which is free, but nets you a small payment every time the road-grid can pick you to ‘lose’ rather than another vehicle.

“But people don’t understand how the vehicle priority algorithm works underneath.

“It doesn’t affect vehicle speed, or routing, or any such. We can’t run vehicles efficiently at multiple speeds over the same roads, after all. No, what the traffic priority setting does is affect the way the road-grid handles resource-contention decisions where two vehicles require the same resource – odoblock, say – simultaneously, and resolving this deadlock require that one vehicle be selected to ‘lose’, which we define as a set of parameters including increased travel time, increased travel cost, vector changes outside the passenger comfort envelope, user preference deviations, and so forth. In those cases, the lowest priority ‘loses’, and where multiple vehicles share the same priority, a random function decides the loser.

“That’s a simplification, but it’s close enough to true. It’s most visible with emergency response vehicles, which naturally have a hard-coded top priority, but if you carefully study the patterns of traffic around some other vehicles over time, you can see the algorithm at work. Sleeper cars and fragile cargoes, for example, have their comfort envelopes weighted higher so other vehicles ‘lose’ to them when a maneuver is required. Bulk freight without deadlines is usually deprioritized for the potential savings, so statistically speaking, robotrucks ‘lose’ more than regular traffic.

“So why do people think that these don’t do anything?

“Well, how often do you think the road-grid system needs to make resource-contention decisions?”

– Eimil Murianos, odocorp engineer, IBC live interview

They Also Sell Anti-Shame Drugs

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2

ATTENTION, SHOPPERS!

CUSTOMER CONFIDENTIALITY IS NOT GUARANTEED
BUT MAY BE PURCHASED AS A RANGE OF AFFORDABLE OPTIONS

Hush (Ex. 16)
No-one will be told that you were here, but your information will be retained in my records.

Shopper? I Hardly Know Her! (ExV. 256)
I will forget that you were here, and identifying information will be removed from my ledger; the purchase will be attributed to “Some One”. Your presence will also be deleted from security footage et al. Warning: control of your presence information with regard to infrastructure not owned by me is outside the scope of this option.

Passing Without Trace (ExV. 384)
As above, except that both identifying information and the item(s) in question will be removed from my ledger; the purchase will be listed as “Some One bought Some Thing”. To maintain ledger consistency, the identity of the items will also be removed from their record of purchase.

Concealing The Backtrail (ExV. 512)
As above, except that the identity of the supplier(s) of the item(s) will also be removed from the record of purchase.

As an extra-cost option to the above, I will also undertake to contact my supply chain for these items and purchase similar confidentiality services on your behalf. Pricing for such additional services will begin at cost plus ExV. 128 for the first hop (per item), with the per item charge doubling for each additional hop. Undertaking to purchase such confidentiality services does not imply that such services are or will be available, or that they are or will be effective; no warranty is implied.

SPECIAL OPTION: AUTOCONFIDENTIALITY

That’s Not Mine, Officer (ExV. 128)
Your purchase of these item(s) will be redacted from your memory and transaction records will be anonymized. (Custom inoffensive false-purchase records can be added as an extra-cost option. Memories not included.)

I Was Never Here (ExV. 256)
Your purchase of these item(s) and your presence here surrounding this transaction will be redacted from your memory. (Custom inoffensive false-purchase and false-supplier records can be added as an extra-cost option. Memories not included.)

A 12% discount applies if this option is purchased in combination with “Shopper? I Hardly Know Her!” or any of the options above which include it.

Induced Startup Dysphoria

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Most bionic implants are designed to be controlled by simple mental commands in the same way as natural body parts; originally by painstaking training of the sensory and motor cortices to recognize the device and its functions, and in more recent times by engraving neuralware device drivers into the augmentee’s neural net. Either technique permits the use of an implanted device to be as easy and unconscious as flexing a muscle, rather than requiring the clumsy use of mnemonic sequences, narrative command phrases, or entoptic interfaces.

The problem with this, on the other hand, is that it bypasses the brain’s normal learning-to-mastery sequence, and until one is accustomed to the operation and functionality of such a device, it really shouldn’t be quite so easy and unconscious to use. That twitchy reflex that causes you to drop your drink and knock over your chair is merely a cause for mild embarrassment, whereas that twitchy reflex that causes you to pop off a cluster of micro-missiles and burn down the bar with your laser eyes is a cause for significantly more embarrassment, not to mention substantial liability and criminal charges.

Thus, induced startup dysphoria. This piece of neuralware exists to partially counter the effect of the neuralware drivers and make the implant feel unnatural and/or uncomfortable – to a mild degree, and continuously diminishing on a curve – for an appropriate acclimation period (usually defined in terms of a number of activation cycles) – in a manner which deters the brain from incorporating it into reflexive or non-deliberative-cognition-based actions until the augmentee has had the opportunity to properly internalize its functions. Mayhem beyond this point can safely be assumed to be intentional.

(Often, less scrupulous augmenteries in the black and red market segments omit the provision of an ISD module. It is unknown how many unintentional firefights this practice has started, but since many of these augmenteries leave the client’s new implant disabled until they have left the back office, it seems certain that they’re aware of the issue. As in every other business, you get what you pay for.)

– Augmentery’s Almanac