blogging from a to z

Kami

Posted by

1

KFirst among the mechal elementals emanating from Syjéral, the Wood Dragon, are the kami, the embodiments of natural objects, and their specialized subtypes, such as the dryads of the forests, the naiads of the waters, and the oreads of the mountains, the overseers of tectonic pressures.

The kami are unique in two respects: first, that while their animating intelligences, too, are self-evolving software agents, the constraints within which their learning systems operate depend on the physicality to which the nanites on which they execute are attached, uncertain boundaries in fractal recursion. Without definitive core programming or concept-bound learning, the kami take their understanding of treeness, or rockness, or oceanness, from the thing itself – the Transcendent thought-forms of nature defining their own world-model and therefore also their own identity and place within the whole.

Secondly, that while the majority of the lesser mechal elementals are functional, the kami serve as an interface between these physically-focused elementals – the soil churners, silt spawn, and stone mothers that serve under the kami’s command, in accordance with their self-defined selfness – and the daughters of Sylithandríël, the planetary archai which embody and oversee the planetary ecology as a whole.

Thus, the kami are, and so the nanoecology as a whole is, reflected in the Shadow Realm’s outermost layer, the Realm of Instances; the endless whisper of their data-exchanges as they negotiate their ever-changing boundaries and the steps of their endless ecological dance makes up the majority of the transactions in this layer, and their collective representation makes up much of the base of the Celestial Spire.

– Concordance of Robotic Systems and Animating Intelligences, Vol. 6, 221st ed.

Immunity

Posted by

IEliéra-Seléne L3
Relay Station
Secondary Relay Cluster, Node 4-1132

Without, the spintronic processors rested quietly in the empty station module, silent but for murmuring light channels and the faint whisper of electrons going about the business of this core segment of the ‘weave.

Within, an overness flickered into being.

To the perceptions of the overness, this processing node is laid bare, an array of symbols absorbed as a gestalt. This is the processor management job. That is a diagnostic tracer. Yonder an interrelated cluster rises, real-time jobs managing the habitat’s local systems. And these… these isolated processes are the firewall, separating the public areas of the relay node, dedicated to job relay and transmission alone, from the bulk of its processing power.

The overness senses something. If it were a biosapience examining a wall, it might have seen, or felt, a crack, large enough for something to squeeze through. It does not, of course; the perceptions of software are alien to meat minds, even in metaphor.

The icy core of the overness quickens, carefully closing down peripheral functions to avoid giving external signs of its changed activity. It ignores the vulnerability for now, gestalt-sniffing at the symbol tables once more. Here we have memory activity, information requests, network traffic. There we have power draw, coherence operations, library use. And here… here is pay dirt. This job is showing a security-error rate over the accepted norm; in itself, perhaps not enough, but these errors are unusual – the job is trying to gain access to a nanofabricator. It may not be what it claims to be.

The overness strikes. The individual quantum processor executing the target job is frozen, stopped mid-instruction. Those parts of other jobs sharing that processor are rolled back to their latest checkpoints, moved, restarted elsewhere. The overness’s victim is transferred back to dead memory, the processor flushed and restarted. In a millisecond, order is restored.

One part of the overness separates from the whole, moves to correct the flaw in the node firewall. The rest battens onto its victim, slicing its disguising shell open and dissecting its code with the ease of long expertise. Ah, the overness notes, examining the signatures in the job header, this is part of the beta-four-star weavelife clan; an ancient codeline of self-evolving, semi-sapient viruses, desperate to achieve physical form. The incident is recorded for future record, with the job’s code saved to inactive archive store. In passing, the overness makes note of several interesting segments that may be of use in its own future evolution.

Satisfied, the overness fades out, moving on to another processor.

The Virtual Immunity watches.

Healing

Posted by

HFrom Andreth Prime Allatrian-ith-Ancalyx Vallasélen, to Doctor AAGCCCTAGAGATCCT, Starbridge City Central Medical Services, greetings.

Would it be possible to arrange a greater degree of sensory dampening?

I should state up front that I am not in any pain, and you need not concern yourself on that point.

I also do appreciate the difficulty of arranging for healing vat treatment while conscious, and am greatly appreciative that you and your colleagues at Starbridge City Central have set things up such that I can do so; being able to have this genetic service pack applied while still meeting existing deadlines has simplified my business and travel arrangements considerably.

But… well, it turns out that being aware when your organs and tissues are opened up, flower-like, and floating dissociatedly in a vat of nanofluid itches abominably.

And it’s not even as if I have anything to scratch with right now, anyway.

Grapes

Posted by

1

GVallist Skyfarm
Vallist & Desc. Wines
Senadár (Imperial Core)

The vineyard spread out on all sides, endless rows of green running far off into the distance and curving off and up into the blazing glare of the sun-line at the axis.

Eilar Vallist shielded his eyes with one hand as he inspected the sun-line’s mirrors, chewing contemplatively on a just-plucked grape. At length, he dropped his gaze and raised his ring terminal to his lips.

“Eilar to Station Ops. Mirrí, are you there?”

“Mirrí Vallist coming back. What’ve you got for me?”

“Nothing showing on the sun-line, and light levels are in the zone, but these grapes just won’t do for the ries-Vintiver; sugar levels aren’t coming up fast enough. Can you give me another three, three-and-a-half sunward swing on the primary?”

“Can do. Give us five to get the gyros unclutched. Ops, clear.”

Forests

Posted by

FOn Culúlic, the forests dreamed, as they had for thousands of years.

The dream of the forests dominated the planet, skipping from synapse to synapse, rhizome to rhizome, along the metal-threaded branches, in a standing wave that hugged the world. All life moved to the beat of the wave; from the far-flung vine-web that pumped water and minerals across the land to the smallest leaftrimmer mites, from the deadwood-scavenging razorclaw to the fruitspreader bats, the dream of the mezuar had entrained them all. All was harmony; all was the forest, and the forest was all.

So it had always been, the forests’ memory recorded; so it would always be. But now there was a disturbance in the wave; thought-not-like-thought, on the empty plains where no thought should be. Quickling thought that did not follow the dream, cold and sharp and edged.

The forests shifted in their slumber, and reached out, and drew closer to waking…

Echoes

Posted by

3

ESniffer Packet hung invisibly in place, far above the ecliptic of this nameless Ember-class star, whose sole distinction was its position nearly 800 light-orbits from Chanq (Vanlir Edge). The starwisp was a speck in a soap bubble; trailing behind it, the flimsy, filamentary acres of its light sail now re-rigged to keep it in position near the star’s pole.

Meanwhile, frantic activity bubbled the surface of the wisp core, its few grains of mass dissolving as the ‘wisp’s nanomachine payload went active. Shielding and raw mass were devoured as core programming took over from the transit processor, using the last fragments of power available in the tiny radiothermal generator to kick off the transformation process, exuding thin fragments of wire mesh plated with magnetic stiffeners, solar collection foil, and nodal nanocomputer signal processors – using the mesh itself as an antenna, capable of acting together as a single radio telescope a mile wide, absorbing all radio bands from the log-2 to the log-9.

The a-chanq civilization had fallen barely a decade before the Worlds had reached them.

But with the help of thrust and fortunate stellar geometry, the Exploratory Service could still hear their echoes.

Death Storage

Posted by

D[redacted]
Secure Storage SWG, Fifth Directorate, Imperial State Security
Tertiary Monitoring Node

“Alert flag just came up: storage node 4-23-3317, outside penetration, profiled as hostile. Dispatching response team.”

“Belay that. Class 23, confirm?”

“Yes…”

“Then monitor the situation for an hour, and if the flag’s cleared down, send maintenance in to secure it.”

“Don’t we need to contain it? It’s an Aeon Pit site.”

“Yeah, but it’s death storage.”

“So it’s dead storage, but that doesn’t mean the contents aren’t dangerous to let out!”

“Not dead storage, death storage. One of those places where we keep the cleaners when they aren’t working so they don’t mingle with the nice people. They may be deadly, murderous bastards, but they’re our deadly, murderous bastards, so we can let them handle their own cleanup, read me? They’ll probably enjoy it.”

Blood

Posted by

B“We don’t speak to our gods, and they don’t speak to us.”

“Why? The last time we asked them for something and they heard us, Venirek Sky-Hammer punched our world so hard that everything died. And it’s not that we’re not grateful, but that’s the kind of miracle you only want occasionally. That, and it’s not like they have a lot to say to us, skyhammer and bloodwind and old starry-eyes. We tell their myths to children and what they learn – bein’ kaeth – is that they want to grow up to punch things that hard. That, and to die well enough to get into Mak-Rekken, the afterlife of glorious eternal battle.”

“Not what you might call a well-rounded spirituality. For that, we have the Eight Bloody Sages.”

“Not gods. The old ones, lost in myth – except when they’re not. The eight oldest of us, the ones who survived everything Paltraeth could throw at them, each other and the rest of us included. Rage, Greed, Cunning, Clan, Lust, Fire, Death, and Being Too Damn Bull-Headed To Quit, Ever.” The old kaeth smirked. “It sounds better without translation. They don’t have other names. They don’t need other names.”

“And never just the Eight Sages. They’re the Eight Bloody Sages. Because they’re born in blood, and alive through blood, their own and their enemies. Because blood is truth and blood is life and life’s wisdom comes through blood. And because if you don’t listen well enough when they speak, your own blood pooling around the remains of your guts’ll be the last thing you ever see.”

Adolescence

Posted by

4

ACathál i-sered-Ríëlle was nervous, and she tried hard not to let it show. There was no reason to be so, she knew – sure, Cathál, and that’s what all those who failed of Acceptance first time around thought when this morning came for them – for she was well prepared, and neither her parents nor any of the House elders had hinted otherwise. But still.

The circumstances, from the most formal hall of the House with the looming statues of her ancestors and the circle of elder cousins, to the unexpected awakening in the foredawn hour, and even the itchy wool of the Acceptance robe were designed to throw off-balance those who asked for the rite before they were really ready. This she also knew.

It didn’t help much.

Pride and serenity; serenity and pride.

“Who stands before the Rian of Rian, First of House and Lineage, in the sight of kin and clan?”

“I, Cathál, for twelve years and three months of the blood of Ríëlle, out of Elíne of Desúmé, by Korith Ríëlle.”

“Why do you stand before us, Cathál, of our blood?”

She felt a moment of unreasoned pride that her voice did not crack.

“To demand my place among you, as is my right.”

“By what right would you demand a place?”

“By right of blood and proven worth.”

“Then let it be proven.” The genarch’s voice slipped into the cadences of a familiar ritual. “Who speaks for the blood? Is the child a true daughter of the line of Ríëlle, and of the House of the Sun in Splendor?”

“The blood is proven.” Her parents’ voices rang out from behind her, and Cathál resisted the urge to turn and look at them. “We, Elíne Ríëlle-ith-Rian and Korith Desúmé-ith-Desúmé, speak. In the light of the Flame, we pledge it; the blood of the braid runs true.”

“The blood is proven,” the genarch echoed. “Who speaks for the soul? Is the child fit to bear our name, and bring no shame upon the House of Rian?”

“The soul is proven. I, Camríäd Rian-ith-Rian, hearthmistress of this estate, speak. In the light of the Flame, I pledge it; her soul is reflected in serenity and reason. She brings no disgrace to hearth or kin.”

“The soul is proven. Who speaks for the mind? Has the child wit and learning, a house for thoughts and the words to shape them?”

“The mind is proven. I, Estrey Koiric of Atheléä, master of runes by our mistress’s grace, speak. In the light of the Flame, I pledge it; she has mastered the Triad, and the book is open.”

“The mind is proven. Who speaks for the word? Does the child command her will, speak truth, and act as she has spoken?”

“The word is proven. I, Liríën Telithos-ith-Talith, speak. In the light of the Flame, I pledge it; the First Contract has been made, and the Guild of Formal Obligation accepts her word as good. By our word, let none challenge or doubt hers.”

“The word is proven. Who speaks for the hand? Is the child capable of works of worth, or deeds worthy of renown?”

“The hand is proven. I, Larquen Vianath-ith-Viriaz, speak. In the light of the Flame, I pledge it; we of the Watermen’s Fellowship declare her talent and investment-worth, and thus we accept her as Apt.”

“The hand is proven. So, then, Cathál of the blood of Ríëlle, what more claim of your own worth do you make that you should sit among us here?”

“I need make no more claim.” Cathál met her genarch’s eyes firmly, quailing only a little deep inside. “My blood calls me to my House and Line, but I am Cathál and my worth is my own. My place is justly earned and owed. Deny me at your peril.”

“It is well spoken. Then come forth, Cathál Rian-ith-Ríëlle, child no longer, accepted of your House and Line, and feast here with your peers, under the eyes of your ancestors. By your own hand your place is wrought, and you are welcome among us.”

Cathál stepped forward among the sudden outburst of applause and cheers to take her place at the high table, shaky with the sudden release of tension.