âWhat do you people want from me?â âJust the usual. That you should continue to be exceptional, live forever, join a transcendent hyperconsciousness, and evolve into a demigod â or at least the closest thing the physical universe has to offer â sometime in the next few millennia. You can make up
Capital City: Of the Associated Worlds as a whole, that would be the Conclave Drift, the giant habitat in which the Conclave of Galactic Polities is situated. Itâs also a major commercial and cultural hub, it being â due to the room it sets aside for every polity in the
To my successor in office: Iâm leaving you this unofficial note to welcome you to the unique position of being an ambassador to the Empire, to pass on a few hopefully useful pieces of advice, and frankly, to wish you more joy of the position than I had, even
Can You Hear Me Now?: Averted even when there is a major disaster, because Empire-standard communication devices are designed to use mesh networking, and fall back on peer-to-peer routing between themselves if they canât reach a hub, either to get the packets through directly, or to bounce off each
Can Breathe In Space: Technically, you can do this by using a vector-control âenvelopeâ to hold air in around you (although you will still need some means of replenishing it if you plan to do this for long, special provisions like oxygen-carrying hemocules aside). While useful to avoid ebullism and
Coming this summer from Hedonitechnology, ReLimerance, a new and unique service for couples. Have you let your relationship grow stale with the years? Do you know each other too well? Let our skilled sophic engineers refresh YOUR relationship. Our latest memory-redaction technology allows us to selectively block your detailed knowledge
Calvinball: An awful lot of games played in the Empire are like this from our perspective, by virtue of having been designed to satisfy the game-playing urges of people with, well, transhuman intelligence. For example: One of the simplest is the card game Ăłmith. Itâs like poker, except with
Call a Smeerp a âRabbitâ: Another unfortunate aspect of Translation Convention. As described under Taxonomic Term Confusion, Eldraeic has a means of classifying â and words for â species-groups classified by homology alone, so that people can talk about the winged flying creatures that exist on multiple planets easily â without having to
âGot a good one for you!â âWhy is it, Annis, that when you say âgood oneâ, I hear âutter wire-and-tape jobâ?â âCouldnât say, boss. Anyway, todayâs case here-and-now one-thirteen. An infugee from the Republic â one of their scientists who wanted to defect, looks like. He managed to piece
To all to whom this shall be presented, be it known that this warrant entitles the bearer: Rhadam SinyĂŠren Daemar Owner and master of the armed merchant cruiser IS Gloriously Acquisitive; To subdue and to seize goods and citizens, to destroy goods that cannot be taken, and to destroy military
The history of ThalĂär remains a mystery. On this point, I must first acknowledge the salience of my colleaguesâ reports. The various shafts, canyons, and large-scale gaps in the upper and middle planetary surfaces do not occur in any geometric, fractal, or other discernible ordered pattern, nor do the edges
Taxonomic Term Confusion: Taxonomy is even more of a mess than it used to be, having to deal with life originating separately (it is usually thought; see Panspermia) in a multitude of different ecologies, which then got intermingled by ancient and modern terraforming and accidents of star travel to produce