When I come home from my journeys abroad, I like to render all the layers visible, and spend a while just watching the world. We are used to all things coming wrapped in information. People are ringed by their p-tags â identity, claims of affiliation, reputation haloes shining or shadowy, current
For those who found the time system in âWatchersâ on the confusing side, well, thatâs pretty fair, really. đ What youâre looking at is the Imperial Standard Time system, which is the traditional one â used on EliĂ©ra, and elsewhere as the standard/commercial calendar. (The other commonly used systems
All is prepared. The alignment is ready. My bow spindle is perfectly aligned with the empty central apertures of the paired stargates, themselves aligned in matching orbits; in time, they will drift again out of alignment, but for now forced thrust keeps them together. My accumulators seethe with energy bound
Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: While science hasnât exactly disproven religion â there are certain, ahem, logical problems with that notion â it has closed a sufficient number of the gaps for a hypothetical god-of-the-gaps that supernaturalism in general has an amazingly small number of adherents in the Empire. Most âreligionsâ of
âThese images are taken from the records provided by the command vessel of the fleet that carried out âOperation Ruby Gauntlet Sableâ, the Unyielding OrderâŠâ The ravaged planet hung in the center of the Conclave amphitheater, surface black and charred save for its fiery disfigurement; a crater over a thousand
14+48:00 <DistCom, Skybridge>: system idle, all well 14+54:00 <DistCom, Skybridge>: system idle, all well 14+55:11 <Oversight, Skybridge North>: suspicious activity detected, monitor 8817 14+55:11 <Oversight, Skybridge North>: subject with masked identity (no Universal ping
Magic From Technology: Played straight; it is a materialist, science fiction universe; any magic we see is, indeed, one or another form of technology, misunderstood. Which seems to happen with truly annoying frequency every time a Sufficiently Advanced culture runs into an Insufficiently Advanced one, especially with any technology that
âSometimes I envy you naturals. Your creator doesnât care if you worship him. Mine looks disgusted and starts muttering about making more revisions to our abstract mnemonic-processing architecture.â â darcĂ©lmek uplift program, subject 9-0243 interview (unpublished)
Burial In Space: I refer you to the entry under Arbitrary Maximum Range and invite you to consider why Sir Isaac Newton is once again slapping you upside the head for creating a giant hazard to navigation. (Also, see Hurl It Into The Sun for why that wonât work,
Hurl It Into The Sun: Donât. Just donât. Those belong to people, who will be very upset if you go around dumping your trash in there willy-nilly and giving their star indigestion. (Which, granted, would take an awful lot of trash, but still.) Give a hoot. Donât
basilisk hack: (from the mythical petrifying serpent); a class of cognoweapon capable of being introduced through normal sensory channels which attack metalogical defects in sensory input processing or cognition, causing various cognitive dysfunctions, neural storms, seizures, and in advanced cases, coma. Most publicly known families of basilisk hack are automatically
Human Resources: In space, where roughly 3/5ths of everyone lives, no-one wastes precious water, carbon, and complex organic compounds; therefore, yes, bodies are hereby committed to the recycling tanks. Of course, the bodies have to have died naturally first, which should make it marginally less creepy. There used to