An interrogation room on GĂĄlish (Sullen Wildlands): The local agents looked at each other, then back at my aquastor. âSo, your perp has stolen this, this -â âSixteen-petabit colonial tangle-channel ansible.â âWhatever, this trillion-exval widget, and according to your numbers heâs now running a negative-frequency trading scam with it
Inside a Computer System: Well, yes, this is how virtuality works; the computers simulate the entire environment in full fidelity â which, I hasten to add, means even more when you have to come up with appropriate outputs for all possible sensory ranges of your polyspecific clientele â and then your sensory-link
From an unpublished extranet interview with Sev Tel Andal, seed AI wakener/ethicist: âWell, Iâm a libertist. But you know that, considering where Iâm from. Not that I was born to it â I grew up in the League, and moved to the Empire for my research. They donâ
âSelfish? You try livinâ in a world where persuasion and trade and generally makinâ nice with folks are the only ways to get anything, and see how long you can pull that kind of attitude off. âSpecially if youâre fond of eating1.â 1. Or, in the limiting case, breathing.
Innocent Aliens: Not very many, no, and certainly not the full extent of this trope. Evolution is rarely kind enough to produce a planetary environment that lets anyone this wide-eyed and innocent survive for long. And even on the rare occasions that it might, the greater Galactic community includes plenty
Infinite Supplies: While nothing in this case is actually infinite, thanks to the Laws of Thermodynamics, centuries or millennia of living in space have made most advanced cultures in the Associated Worlds very, very good at closed-cycle recycling; and on a simpler level, well, the cornucopia machine does wonders for
Improbable Piloting Skills: While mostly averted, âIf it fliesâŚâ is partially played straight thanks to Powers as Programs. Note that this still doesnât mean that anyone can fly well â but once youâve learned all the kinesthetic skills, reflexes, etc., etc., that a pilot needs, it sure makes adapting
The Ice Bitch, the Spawner of Calamities, the Father of Error, That Whose Laughter Rings In The Ears Of The Dying A near-ubiquitous spacer belief â even among the eldrae, who do not make a habit of placing masks upon the force of Entropy â is that of the many-angled god-goddess who
Powers As Programs: With the availability of mnemonesis to download knowledge and skillsets into your brain, gnostic overlays to do the same thing for professional personalities, and the ability to download recipes for your portable nanolathe or desktop nanoforge to build you the tools to use them⌠âŚyeah, this is
Skilled, but Naïve: The consequence of relying too much on mnemonesis and gnostic overlays to download distilled knowledge and skillsets. They can, and will, grant you extraordinary, even superhuman, technical skill. Excellence is guaranteed. You will outperform any mediocrity, even any average professional you ever meet on raw talent alone,
outside storage (n.): Also cold storage; vacuum storage. Among the things space has in plentiful supply are volume and insulation. The former affords a bounty of available space for various usages; the latter ensures that items occupying it require relatively little protection to be safe from environmental influences. Many habitats
Improbable Aiming Skills: Training for the various sentinel occupations, including the Imperial Legions and, yes, also the Watch Constabulary tries its best to achieve these, or at least to avert Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy really hard. In these modern days in which you can have a top-flight ballistics software package