ââŚand in exchange, you can keep anything you loot.â âYouâre not too clear on the concept of âmercenariesâ, are you?â âWeâre fighting to overthrow our oppressors!â âSo, itâs a good cause. My livers are quiverinâ⌠You want goodwill rates? Fine. Iâve got my own bills to
Fantastic Measurement System: Well, yes. Both for money (the esteyn, to match base-12 Imperial mathematics, uses the 288-system: 12 selenis to the lumenis, 24 lumenis to the esteyn, and also goes down so far as to include special units for micropayments and up so far as to include units convenient
Fantastic Light Sources: Unusual light sources include the fancy âsourceless glowâ, or âlight-cloud cyberswarmâ which is basically a hovering cloud of tiny glowing microbots; and gratuitous use of bioluminescence, from the mundane glowing spheres of microbes in solution used as non-power-dependent emergency lighting, through the bioluminescent organ-strips inside the organic
Fantastic Ghetto: The Galith Waste, home to the Silicate Tree loose alliance of renegade artificial intelligences, could reasonably be said to be one of these, especially considering the hostile attitude of the civilizations that gave rise to them, and their habit of running patrols around the connections into the Waste.
Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Well, yes. Did I mention the multiple planets? And the genetic engineering? An important caveat, of course, is that you canât actually eat most of them, different biochemistries being the annoying thing they are, although trace element supplements, extensive food treatment before/during cooking, and
Fantastic Fighting Style: Quite a few. The common characteristic of almost all of them, it should be noted, given the Imperial sensibilities towards casual violence, is that almost all of them are militantly unsuitable for âsocialâ fighting. There are sparring forms, but still. These are killing arts, even the ones
Waif-Fu: Some of the Empireâs Fantastic Fighting Styles (coming tomorrow) are like this â particularly those like, say, Silken Courtesan Style, which was intended for the courtier or courtesan required to fight when out of armor and with only opportunistic weapons (and which does include over 200 ways to inflict
Among the first known of all nanorobotic machines were the so-called mechal elementals, the maintenance mechanisms of EliĂŠra. While the common conception of that artificial world is that its ecology is maintained and guided by the computation and matter editation layers buried in its core, this perception is false â these
Fantastic Drug: Why, yes, the Empire has fantastic drugs! Lots and lots of them. Nootropics and mnemotropins to think better, stimulants for times of stress, myrmidonics for combat stress, relaxants for times of not-stress, hedonics to serve after dinner, and goodness knows how many more specialized pharmaceutical products. Hundreds of
If you enjoy reading my fiction and metafiction, please consider becoming one of my patrons via Patreon. Thank you very much for helping me continue, and expand, doing what I love.
immigration
(And now a metafictional document of introduction which, in a fictional universe, someone might have just handed âyouâ a copy of when you stepped out of the starship. Those of you whoâve read Accelerando may notice something of a Stross pastiche lurking behind this one; that was deliberate, back
Fake Memories: Again, something else that can be done with the dark side of sophotechnology (see also: Mind Rape, And I Must Scream, etc.). Also sometimes done with a more benevolent end in mind; redacting trauma, consensually removing security-sensitive memories, that sort of thing.