IMPERIAL PATENT #S/1AA882B4 / issued 3092-11-10 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR LIMITED-PARTY TEMPORARY GROUP MIND (“CONFLUX”) CONNECTIVITY Creator: Essene Steamweaver, <Adagio in Gray>, & Conflux Development Initiative (sub. Exogenesis, ICC) Holder: Cognitech, ICC Expiry: 3104-11-09 Ref.: Previous patents: #S/1AA8247A, #S/1AA85223, #S/1AA86386 Exogenesis internal documents: [redacted] Primary
It’s been a while, so here, have something that just rolled through my head today: “Get hence, wretch!”, I said. “You are no fit nemesis for the lady. An Excellence’s _mélith_ merits equivalent weight; I deem you narratively inadequate for the role.”  “An’ what can you do about
In answer to a general question elsewhere about “Third World” nations in your setting: Depending on whose perspective you look at it from, the Associated Worlds have lots of these. From the point of view of the Empire and the other self-designated “Core Economic Zone” powers – which is to say,
Today’s random snippet: “Select Committee on Long-Range Planning Perhaps better known as the committee on “excruciatingly long-range planning”, the SCLRP concentrates on planning for the long term defined as deep time – ranging from several kiloyears to matters of megayears and gigayears. Such matters include long-term secular stellar and planetary
Everything Is Online: Played entirely straight, including just about every piece of technology you can think of – infrastructure, houses, vehicles, appliances, even the simplest packaging will have at least an identity-location-and-v-tag beacon on it – and including people’s brains (which is where your modern chap keeps his PDA); all hooked
NO, IT IS NOT AN OMNI-TOOL. WRONG UNIVERSE, DAMMIT. Every Device Is A Swiss Army Knife/Magic Tool: The ubiquitous nanolathe is pretty much the poster child for these two: basically, it’s a bunch of processors, a future-iPad-equivalent, a complete universal network interface, a pocket-sized nanofac, and a bunch
Every Bullet Is A Tracer: Justified for non-slugguns, inasmuch as modern slugthrowers kick their tiny dust-grain bullets up to such a high velocity – a respectable fraction of c – that they plasmate the air they hit on the way to their target. The bullet doesn’t glow, but the resulting plasma
Even Evil Has Standards: Not in general played any straighter than it is in reality – the dumb and brutal kind of space pirate/raider, in particular, is infamous for atrocities – but seen on occasion. A lot of Renegades, even the gone-plain-and-simple-evil ones, still have their instincts and culture programming, and
Eternal Prohibition: Averted, because no-one in the Empire would consider it reasonable to ban anything that, say, didn’t cause immediate homicidal mania in the first place. Your psychochemistry is your own business, and no-one else’s – except the plentiful dealers in recreational chemistry. And enhancement chemistry, like nootropics, mnemotropins,
Eternal English: Let me put it this way: immortality plays merry hell with linguistic drift. (So does conscious linguistic engineering, but the ongoing presence of a very large body of speakers of the old version certainly helps.)
Most laws concern subjects that exist.  This is not, however, strictly necessary. The most obvious example of this is the language of the Fundamental Contract and the Imperial Charter which consistently refers, when discussing the fundamental and civic rights, the requirements for citizen-shareholdership, and so forth, the word darav, “sophont”
Eternal Engine: Quite a few of the Empire’s – and other advanced civilizations – larger factory complexes (mostly in space, to avoid heat-dissipation and environmental problems, but including things like most of ecumenopolitan Qerach) are like this, including city-like size. The interiors are not particularly friendly to biosapiences, mostly because they’