Enemy Civil War: Given the Empire’s preference for deviousness and indirection, not to mention preemption, by way of military policy, this happens surprisingly often. Well, okay, still not all that often, but if a society has a crack in it that a skillful warrior-philosopher/memeticist can use to get
Question: As master of an Empire-registered tramp trader, when may sophonts appear on the cargo manifest of your vessel? Answer: Under four circumstances: 1. When you are transporting steerage-class passengers under contract to a passenger line, and such passengers are both onloaded from and offloaded to port-side passenger processing as
Encyclopedia Exposita: I never could resist doing this, and I have so many metafictional books to choose from! (See, in face, much of the Fic-a-Day section.)
Empathic Environment: Much of the Empire has one of these, one way or another. On a small scale, this is because of the assorted Genii Locorum around the place, the house brains and city manager AIs and planai and other assorted minds at least one of whose functions is to
(‘Bout time I got back to these, I think.) Genius Loci: Quite a lot of them, from the simple usually-non-sophont AIs that run people’s houses and apartments (the “house brains”) to the increasingly sophisticated “city managers” and other AIs that run cities, provinces, transport networks, ports, and so forth,
For sale, any offers: 24 crates, half-container, assorted xenowidgets, function and identity unknown. Take ’em, they’re yours. No manifest, no guarantees, no liability. Contact free trader Mostly Spaceworthy Parts, dock 21-1645, Vervian Orbital. Wanted: passage off this bloody planet, out-system, out-constellation. Can work passage. S-license only. Drop 4147. Fuel
For those following along with these stories at home (or on holiday, or during your commute, or at work – why not?), I just found some time to clean up one of my rough sketch-maps of what the universe looks like, so thought I’d share it with you. This is
“Context is important.” “Take, for example, this syringe. From an objective perspective, it contains a small quantity of greyish fluid, a suspension of nanoviruses and proto-cytomachines in impure saline. Not the most commonplace of objects, but hardly a rarity, either.” “A pharmacist, however, would recognize it as an alpha-baseline corpus-editor,
“Those visitors unfamiliar with local custom in such matters should avoid those bars and other drinking houses displaying above the entrance a knotted wooden club, or a spaceman’s marlinspike. Such establishments thereby indicate that they are “brawler’s bars”, and as such, establishments which tolerate a nice friendly brawl
“Be advised that, following the recent series of incidents involving Imperial tourists, the Hierarchy of Transportation has added the following vehicles to the list of those requiring licensure for use on public roadways: flitters, hovercraft, psychokinetic amplifiers, skyhooks, grav-boards, floater disks, spiderpalanquins, rollagons, subterrenes, miniblimps, unispheres, brachiators, all forms of
Causal weapons are a myth, an arms-dealer’s con trick. Their official mention in the Ley Accords was no more than a paranoid’s precaution, deliberate disinformation, or a warning to those who might become too attached to oracles and knight’s-move stratagems. The universe was block, that was known;
“Know, O traveler, that you pass through dedicated lands; these places are sacred to the Blue and the Purple, and to them alone.” “Drink deep, eat well our fruits, hunt for your meat; but light no fires, claim no holds, and harm nothing that grows. Those who pass freely may