(So, yeah, this is what you get today – not instead of a fic-a-day, because I will catch that up tomorrow – but before the fic-a-day because I’ve been trying to get it finished for three weeks and Never Quite Found The Time. So, today, I sat down and made it
Bioluminescence Is Cool: And available in several varieties from your local bodysculpt clinic, along with some interesting variations on the theme of chromatophores. Ah, fashion industry, what will you bring us next? Also used for some more practical purposes, like non-electrically dependent emergency lighting, engineered glowing trees for streetlights, detectors
CS Extropy Rising, one light-day outside Galáré system. Sophont intervention required. Supercargo processor: Engage emergency revival sequence for Command Conference in accordance with protocol 1030. Core, Cryobay Ess Zero. Fire and ice. Microwaves hammered at the frozen bodies hanging in the thick blue gel that filled the cryotubes, bringing them
Bio Augmentation: And how. While not exclusively their preserve by any means, the Imperials are so aggressively transsophontist that pretty much everyone you meet is a walking treasure-trove of millennia of biotechnological advancement. Not that the original bioengineers, or the later nanoengineers, knew exactly which direction apotheosis lay in, but
“The Microstatic Commission is the Impies’ bad joke at the expense of the rest of us. You don’t really think they care about thousands of tiny freeholds, do you? It’s just another means they use to defeat anyone’s attempt to build real institutions and real stability in
…and to push the bounds of my “relevant” category a little, but what we see here at, oh, 3:45 through 4:12 is now totally part of the mental image in my head when I imagine the Glorious Imperial Sky-Ship Fleet, back in the Age of Steel and Steam.
Binary Suns: Reality may be unrealistic, but that’s the way it is. Quite a decent number of the systems of the Associated Worlds, including many of the inhabited ones. Most prominent among these is the eldrae homeworld, Eliéra, which orbits one component of a far binary, with (essentially) the
As its end slipped clear of the ribosome, the protein folded once more, pivoting around now free-to-move bonds… snapping back against the already closely-folded main body. Brelyn Calaris muttered an imprecation upon the heads of all uncooperative fabzymes, paused the simulation, and grabbed the protein with both hands, peering muttering
Big Eater: Of course, this depends greatly on species, which in fairness doesn’t count, because it applies equally to everyone of that species. It does apply – in its “thin kind” form, mostly – to most transsophonts, though, simply because none of their modifications repeals the law of conservation of energy,
“The Curia has heard the plaintiffs’ argument that they merely engaged in ‘creative nonviolence’, and that therefore the use of force against them was unjustified.” “The Curia unequivocally rejects this argument. The term itself betrays a profound misunderstanding of the Right of Defense as it exists in the Fundamental Contract.
Big Dumb Object: Oh, plenty. Leaving aside those belonging to elder races – and thus little known due to the ability to enforce the Do Not Taunt rule – the Empire has a partially completed Dyson Sphere in the works at Corícal Ailek (it’s where the Transcend keeps its brain; and
It is important to realize, when working in the Empire, that your connection to your employer is defined strictly by your contract. There are rarely benefits attached to it (the tax system does not advantage providing them, and the locals almost all prefer additional fungible money), nor are there specific