“Pig Ion, all docks at Javerna Orbital are currently occupied. Please re-route to Javerna Down. Coordinates follow. Javerna Local, over.” “Negative, Javerna Local, check our cargo manifest. We can hold or go to Orbital, but our cargo is not to enter planetary gravity wells. Pig Ion, over.” “Pig Ion, what
“A gentleman,” Olbria said firmly, “is always polite. Even to his zombies.”
Digital Piracy Is Evil: Well, on the one hand, it’s not called digital piracy (it’s called Unlawful Duplication & Conveyance, or Unlawful Derivation) and is a lesser crime than theft; and Imperial IP law is different and rather more generous, especially in re patents and discoverer’s licenses
“Disabling of road-grid transponders and/or the use of electronic countermeasures, sensory maskers, stealth coatings, chameleon paint, ambioptic invisibility, cloaking devices, or other detection-inhibition technologies on any flitter, ground-car, or other vehicle, in motion or stationary, on a public highway or skyway or other public-usage transportation volume is strictly prohibited
DRM: (and its cousins, Genetic Rights Management, Fabrication Rights Management, and Experience Rights Management) grew up in a very different environment in this universe; one in which the companies producing such things wanted the electronic market, knew that customers wanted flexibility and wouldn’t buy if they didn’t get
Digital Avatar/Myself My Avatar: Ubiquitous in the Empire and other noetic societies; as mentioned under Body Surf, people fairly regularly swap bodies for work, for visiting hostile environments, or just for the hell of it; or issue them to forked copies or fragments of themselves. Of course, that may
VIËLLE (Imperial Core) – The Landing District Court today returned an indictment against Five Pack Howl Memesplicing, ICC, advertising agency for the Mythic Stars virtuality game. The agency have been charged with negligent memetic engineering relating to their runaway “Rise Against the Fallen!” campaign for the game’s latest expansion, “Ghosts
Differently Powered Individual: Given that this almost inevitably means people who have one set of technological enhancements or another, the generic term is transsophont for those who are still recognizable as variants of their baseline species, and postsophont for those who aren’t. Of course, there are also plenty of
TERILTI (Osis Deep) – Iltine Minister of Affection, Kornáák har-Rin Ankór, who recently achieved notoriety with his placement of a personal bounty of 100,000 exvals upon the Directorate of Moon’s Eye Studios, ICC and other named “slanderers, wreckers, and defilers of the Blessed Union of the Chosen People of
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: I’m not saying it’s impossible. But remember: it’s a weakly godlike superintelligence that, in all probability, is using acausal logic processors to receive information from itself in the future. You aren’t. Expect the difficulty level to be… appropriate. The only
Deus ex Machina: Essentially averted – while the archai of the Transcend are arguably dei and quite definitely machinae, they abhor being anything close to this unsubtle. (Besides, if you’re the sort of person that is inclined to screw things up to the point of needing a deus ex machina,
Determinator: This is, of course, the essence of qalasĂr (see Blue and Orange Morality) – and while not every eldrae or Imperial possesses the degree of qalasĂr necessary to be the Determinator, some do, and lesser degrees of Determinatorism are positively common. (The sheer amount of not-staying-dead biotech around helps, but