…the Senate discussed a proposal to include parthenogenesis in the alpha baseline recommended capability list, for further insurance against the requirement to rebuild population following an existential event.
(After three hours debate, the proposal was returned to the Select Committee on Health and Genomic Affairs pending further studies on techniques to artificially ensure genetic variability.)
“Despite multiple submissions of copious data on relevant empirical regularities, the Conference on Teleics today rejected the proposal to designate ‘Things don’t go smooth.’ as a law of the field for the fourth year running. Proponents of the law stated afterwards that this was, in itself, further evidence in favor of their proposal.”
Just a quick snippet today, as I’ve been composing stuff for use elsewhere:
“absolutely sure”: A rare example of the double-positive negative grammatical form in the wild. “Absolutely sure”, in technarch jargon, means “educated conjecture”, or indeed “wild-assed guess”.
See also: “reasonably sure”, qualified certainty, dubifier, Rationalist-Empiricist Pissing Contest.
(I’ve got the allergies today, so am reworking some of my notes and doing light editing. But here, have this wee snippet I ran across in the process:)
“Sure, you could theoretically weaponize a nucleonic device, but what would be the point? Everyone knows they’d have no imaginable practical use in warfare. What possible use is there for a bomb that completely obliterates the economic value of whatever you’re fighting over?”
– Alys Amanyr
(Who was later disappointed, despite being fundamentally correct where planet-based warfare was concerned.)
“I want you to understand this, and understand this well. This is not making a deal under duress. This is extortion.”
“By which, to make our positions absolutely clear, I mean that some people would use the “you took the agreement to exchange goods for exval, even if there was an assault destroyer in low orbit at the time” to spread a fig-leaf of legality and compliance over their actions. I neither need nor want such a thing. I am robbing you. You aren’t receiving a crate of exval in exchange; you’re receiving one to rebuild so that I can rob you again in the future. That is all. Shake Downwell, clear.”
“Only the smallest, least enlightened minds accept the limits of the currently possible. Indeed, only small minds accept the limits of the possible, where greater minds strive to expand its reach. Some apologist philosophers would advance the claim that a finite mind is inherently limited in its ability to comprehend greater possibilities; to them, I say that only small minds indeed choose to remain bound by their own limitations. The strength of flesh is limited in itself, but the strengths of tools, wealth, and contracts unbind it. How, then, should we accept that the wisdom of flesh is limited?”
– ch. 2, Eternal Progress, Ianthe Claves-ith-Claves Elinaeth
“Progress begins with someone saying: ‘There has to be a better way to do this’. This, then, must be the basis of techneprax morality: never to fail to ask that question.”
– prologue,
Eternal Progress,
Ianthe Claves-ith-Claves Elinaeth
Or, A Typical (Paraphrased) Exploratory Service Response To The Embarrassing Problem of Xenodeism:
“So you’re some sort of gods?”
“That depends.”
“Depends?”
“If you mean: do we possess assorted skills, powers, devices, and other techne capable of duplicating pretty much any miracle attributed to the mythological deities of yore, yes. If you mean: are we exemplary, awesome, righteous, and worthy of emulation in all things, we’re flattered, and maybe. If you mean: should you get on your knee-equivalents and start grovelling before us in worship, knock that shit off right now.”
IT IS CYBER MONDAY!
So, I’m having the obligatory sale! If you don’t yet have my first book – a second is expected to follow early in the new year – now’s your chance to pick up the Kindle e-book for just $0.99. If you do , on the other hand, you can still tell everyone else you know!
…is what I have been thinking about this morning, seeing as it’s likely to come up before all that much longer in ongoing writing. So here, have a snippet that, I think, illuminates some cultural differences:
Article V: Salvage of Persons
1. No remuneration is due from sophont persons whose lives are saved; but the salvors shall receive positive-externality payments from the Admiralty Court assessed as if acting under the universal duty to prevent cognicide.
2. A salvor of sophont life, who has taken part in the services rendered on the occasion of accident giving rise to salvage, shall be entitled to a share of the payment awarded to the salvor for salving the vessel or other property or preventing or minimizing damage to the environment, properly reflecting and annulling their opportunity costs rightly incurred by choosing instead to salve persons at risk.
– Salvage Act, section III, article V
“The life of my patient is his to dispose of; he is its proprietor. I shall not desert any life for which its proprietor wishes to give battle; nor shall I force the struggle upon any who wish to quit the field.”
– Healer’s Code, first line
“Selfish? You try livin’ in a world where persuasion and trade and generally makin’ nice with folks are the only ways to get anything, and see how long you can pull that kind of attitude off. ‘Specially if you’re fond of eating1.”
1. Or, in the limiting case, breathing.
Behold, my first snippet – plucked from my deep internal slush/ideas pile – for Science Fiction & Fantasy Saturday, an authorial web-ring I’ve seen here and there in the past, and thought I might contribute something to from time to time. Welcome to all new visitors from thereabouts, and do click through here if you’re not a new visitor, and take a look at the snippets of the other participants!
“Quadrant 45 primary ballast transfer booster pump, main and aux bus.”
“Check, check.”
“Quadrant 135 primary ballast transfer booster pump, main bus and aux bus.”
“Check, check.”
“Quadrant 225 primary ballast transfer booster pump, main bus and aux bus.”
“Check, check.”
“Quadrant 315 primary ballast transfer booster pump, main bus and aux bus.”
“Check, check.” The tech glanced down the row of warm amber lights on the newly installed panel, flipped the associated command switches into ‘auto’ with the flat of one hand, watched the lights flicker into blue-enable, and closed the wiring case. “What’s the deal, Cal? We’ve been behind on getting these things installed for three months, so what’s made ’em so urgent now?”
“Flash mobs.”
“Flash mobs?”
“Yeah. Scuttlebutt has it that Elalie Celestial’s coming here in a couple of weeks to do some filming. The spinmaster was very clear that if he couldn’t pump twelve thou soph-equivalent-masses to wherever on the rim she wasn’t faster’n her fans could storm the transpods, we’d all be on triple-shifts for a year rebalancing the bearings and tryin’ to clean up the mess.”
“What makes the Blood of Tyrants and the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic extremists is that they divide the entire population of the universe into two categories: people who respect the principle of consent, and people who need to be shot. This eliminates the two additional categories the rest of us use: people who might learn better given time and information, and people who it’d be more convenient to shoot later.”
– Lorith Amanyr explains an important distinction
It’s been a while, so here, have something that just rolled through my head today:
“Get hence, wretch!”, I said. “You are no fit nemesis for the lady. An Excellence’s _mélith_ merits equivalent weight; I deem you narratively inadequate for the role.”
“An’ what can you do about it?”
“I could, were I of a mind, wreak such prodigies of unmaking upon flesh and logos each as to excite the interest of passing annihilation physicists and students of the infinitesimal.” I tilted my sword slightly, making the edge of the mollyblade gleam in the sunlight. “But I’m afraid that I don’t find you a suitable nemesis for _me_, either, and so I must content myself with removing a few of your more saleable organs.”
Not a fic-a-day – although I’m trying to get back to those now I’m almost done editing and publishing – just the opening to something I’m working on…
Her Divine Majesty’s Star Station Eádínah’s Bower is built in hell, or as close to it as they could find.
Scuttlebutt says the Naval Intelligence headquarters aerostat floats amid the warm ammonia storm clouds near the dark pole of epistellar Battlefield, in Palaxias with the rest of the IN’s worlds, but no-one knows for sure – since it was built, the only way to get there is to mindcast to the right address in the ISE darknet and hope your mindprint is on the access list. It would certainly suit our sense of institutional paranoia to hide it in some other gas giant altogether, maybe not even in the Empire at all.
It’s in one, though. Fleet Admiral Sarthal has his office right at the apex of the sky-dome so he can give his briefings with continent-spanning lightning bolts in the background – and arcing to the conductor terminal right above the office. It keeps us on edge enough to suit him, I suppose.
“A gentleman,” Olbria said firmly, “is always polite. Even to his zombies.”
“Yes, the Ley Accords do consider using ecocidal weapons on garden worlds a more serious issue than the self-genocidal use of strategic nucleonic weapons. That’s because, in the big picture, the sort of chumps who nuke themselves to death are rather less valuable to the galaxy than the ecosystem that might, one day, give rise to a second species blessed with less epic fail.”
“If we had a translocator, we’d have a mass reactor… which could power a translocator.”
…just tried to hijack a starship that he has no idea how to pilot by pointing a gun at the head of the immortal guy who doesn’t need a body. This is only a very tiny step on the smart side of, say, hyperlocal nuclear brinksmanship with the antideuterium cryocels, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like him on the outside of the airlock before the sheer density of stupid kills us all.”
– cut from tonight’s piece-of-writing-in-progress