Benevolent Alien Invasion: Well, sort of. It’s almost never an invasion (although there are some groups, like, say, the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic, who don’t mind holding Blast The Shit Out Of The Oppressors And Bugger Off Again Day from time to time). Much more common
Some governments maintain a rigidly defined chain of command, rights and duties, from top to bottom – from a monarch, an autocrat, an elected council, or what have you, directives emerge and are complied with by the lesser strata of administration. This is at best theoretically the case in the Empire.
Belief Makes You Stupid: Subverted, mostly, by the Church of the Flame, whose official doctrine adheres to an Enlightenment-friendly attitude that expecting the eikones to come down from the Twilight City and tell you everything about everything, or even just a subset of it that you “need to know”, would
The smell was a warning, hot, organic and yeasty like fresh-baked bread, with an underlying tang of metal, blowing across my chemosensors as I crashed into the apartment; the characteristic effusions of an active nanosystem. It was a useful warning, since this amateur nanohacker had ignored the procotols and the
title text: “The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space—each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.” Initially (economically) irrationally decision, anyway. I used this
The degree of cooperation which you can expect to receive in the course of your work abroad will usually – not universally – be a function of the local government class. Our most successful relationships are usually with the many private sovereignties of the Associated Worlds, large or small – the independent habitats
Bee People: There are several species out there with an approximately eusocial structure, although not always the conventional queen/drone/warrior/worker setup, and by far the majority of them do not have a Hive Mind – evolving bioradio-techlepathy ain’t that easy. Prominent examples would be the múrast (who don’
Beehive Barrier: Played straight when extended-area shields are required, both with kinetic barriers (which are vectored plates) and with various types of armor, because they do tessellate that well, and a geodesic sphere/dome is a very effective way to build a minimal-surface container out of flat plates.
Among the comforting things about living in the Transcend are that when divine commands are issued, first, you can be confident that they’re being issued by something with actual qualifications for the role, rather than externalized mental agents, brain dysfunctions, or particularly effective entheogens. And second, if you ask,
Becoming the Mask: Played straight with gnostic overlays, the special kind of downloadable knowledge/skillset that overlays values or other personality aspects onto the person using them (see, for instance, the constabular overlay and objectivity overlay mentioned under Incorruptible Pure Pureness). Long-term users of given overlays tend to find themselves
So, there isn’t an actual fic-a-day today, because ever since I read a news article about the TSA’s latest shenanigans, I’ve been too mad to have an idea – or rather, all the characters in my head have had nothing to do but deliver variations on The Reason
Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Not overwhelmingly more than any other reality (although the emphasis Imperial-style moral teachings put on self-integrity, importance of probably helps make people substantially more resistant to temptation). And, of course, remember Blue and Orange Morality, which does, ahem, offer a somewhat different slant on the qualifications for