We are asked, quite regularly, why the bandal was chosen as the first candidate for uplift. The simple answer, of course, is that as a domesticated animal that had, unlike every other, been bred selectively for millennia for higher intelligence and more, which is profoundly social, the bandal was one
Omnicidal Maniac: Fortunately, very, very rare, and generally outnumbered by everyone else. The best-known canonical example is the seed AI of the Charnel Cluster, discovered by a scouting lugger, which upon activation set about destroying all life within the said cluster – leading to a half-dozen systems of fragmented habitats and
While I’m really running dreadfully behind with this series, #4 is off to my subscribers, giving a taste of what the mainstream belief systems among the eldrae with regard to, well, Cosmos and Ethos are all about. For anyone coming to me recently – and this is the first time
“Gentlesophs,” the silver figure at the front of the room said. “Congratulations on your transfer to KalcĂr Station. If you don’t know me, I am Istry 0xC89ABB62, Chief Security Officer, and I’m here to give you a personal reminder of the security regulations pertaining to KalcĂr.” “KalcĂr Station,
Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: For the most part, thoroughly averted. With some statistically insignificant exceptions, no fully-individual species is entirely united (and even those exceptions still have criminals and dissidents), and generally have no greater inhibitions against killing their own kind than against killing anyone else, given a reason
For those who didn’t catch the reference in the title of that last fic-a-day, the reference was to the chorus of the filk piece Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song), copyright 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm. The lyrics are as follows: Oh, give me a
Apathetic Citizens: Averted in the Empire; also actually illegal, since after the first equivalent to the (popular understanding of the) Kitty Genovese case demonstrated the bystander effect, the Senate decided to make it really clear that when the Imperial Charter said that citizen-shareholders had the responsibility to defend their fellow
1 Let’s see, status board – blue across? 2 Blue across here, check. 1 Cabin ventilation; filters to micro, flow to high, temperature down to set-point 20. 2 Check. 1 Access panels stowed and covered? 2 Check. 1 Got the tethers and jets? 2 Right here. Honey wine, my dear?
Angel Unaware: Technically, the Transcend is everywhere. (Or at least everywhere any of its infrastructure, or any of its members, are.) This sort of thing, therefore, is arguably happening all the time, in background processing. Treat its constituents badly, and you will affect the metamind’s opinion of you, which
For those who might be a mite curious, Stop Fittling With That is set in “present-time” – that is to say, the furthest future point of my defined timeline (although, obviously, not the end of their history), so those mentioned technologies are things that won’t actually appear anywhere in the
Congratulations, my students, on your successful completion of the first half of Ontological Engineering. When you return in two months, it will be time for each of you to choose the research project you’ll be carrying out for the next two years. And with regard to that, I would
(No, don’t worry, I’m not turning into a political blogger, here.) But I did read an interesting little hypothesis which means I may need to revise my little internal guess as to what the Empire’s Gini coefficient, or your preferred measure of income inequality, is.  (I say