February’s Randoming

Here as a partial apology for a slow COVID-caused month is a collection of random things of a snippet-like nature I have said over the past couple of months in places other than this blog. Enjoy them, such as they are!


On attempting a rapid “unsafe start” of a fusion torch drive:

The result of most attempts at an unsafe start is melting assorted things in the engine room and/or the containment vessel, and having to pay very large fines and the costs of having a HAZMAT team get your wreck into a safe condition to drag to the wreckyard. It’s sort of like putting a bunch of monkeys in charge of starting up one of our CVNs; they can very easily wreck a very expensive boat, but you’re not going to need to replace Norfolk any time soon.

So, for example, you accidentally screw up by bypassing the proper automatic sequencing and collapse the mag-bottle for the nozzle. The energy that was in the mag-bottle gets fed back into the containment power circuit. Alarms sound, breakers trip – the really big ones that use explosive charges to separate the closers – and a whole bunch of machinery in Drive Power One through Three, including the buffering accumulators, turns into molten slag as there’s a real intense local thunderstorm. The spikes that make it through the breakers, because you’re a civilian ship, cause some random electrical failures and trip the main bus off the line in self-protection.

You, sitting in the maneuvering room, get to watch your console light up and then black out as the corresponding machinery stops existing, the emergency fire procedures dump liquid nitrogen into, then vent, the Drive Power spaces, and the master alarm signal adopts a particularly dramatic tone. Then the lights go out, and you’re left sitting there in the bloody glow of catastrophe from your console and emergency bug-lights.

You have a few seconds to contemplate your poor life choices before the Flight Commander comes down there and introduces your brains to a BIG GODDAMN WRENCH.


“All I’m saying is that pansexuality is a very large claim to make in a universe with as many sophont species as this one.”


“We’re shipping forty million tons of individually-packaged spider-silk personal refreshment wipes twelve-hundred light years?”

“Do you want the detailed answer, or just a comment on the absurdity of the universe?”

“The details, please.”

“It’s hard to keep them wiping their asses with sand when they’re sitting on a fortune in spice.”


For reference, my notes on the Transcend’s position at any given time read as follows:

“[continuing to win its game of full-contact solitaire Calvinball with the universe]

insert ‘all according to keikaku’ meme here.”


When complaining about the “you must be smarter than this stick to ride the Empire” immigration rule:

“We have empirical evidence that those who do not pass these specific tests are dangerous to themselves and others in our environment.”

“Yeah? Show us this evidence!”

passes over data rod full of watchvid

“This… this is the last three seasons of Too Dumb To Live, Too Unlucky To Die!?”

“Empirical. Evidence.”


I’m sorry, but around here we only do consensualist agoric-annealing group-mind transghiblian art-deco ecotopic benevolently-hegemonic technothearchy with elvish characteristics.


“Where the fuck did all these dragons come from!?”

“As per chapter nine of the manual, dragons are a normal side-effect of a kami-based ecopoesis system.”


“She’s a bit of an alkahestic.”

“You mean an alcoholic?”

“Not unless alcoholics like dissolving things more than anyone ever should, no.”


“We do not negotiate with terrorists.”

“And yet you are here talking to us.”

“Did I mention that I am officially classified as an Ambassador of Mass Destruction?”


From an extranet compilation of Calíëne Sargas Facts:

“Calíëne Sargas does NOT possess the Eye of Balor, and as such is unable to vaporize enemy vessels simply by glaring at them. This ability has only been confirmed to affect officers ranked lower than Commander (O-6) or equivalent grade.”


Also, in defined terminology, once naval types produce something larger than a superdreadnought (bearing in mind that a hyperdreadnought is fundamentally based on a superdreadnought hull profile), they are formally typed as BM (“warmoon”) and BP (“dirigible battle planet”).

(The latter is currently a hypothetical category. Should it stop being, or a stage be skipped – well, no-one actually knows what the next type up would be, but it probably won’t be “Death Star”.


And for those curious as to Imperial titles of nobility – more specifically, runér titles – the planetary ones are rather too long a list to get into for the moment, insofar as they’re a tangled mass drawn from a large number of cultures maintaining their own systems welded into a single Table of Ranks.

On the other hand, the interstellar titles are nice and simple, being a creation postdating the Consolidation and thus a simple hierarchy. So, from the bottom up, we have:

  • Ecumenarchs, holders of the Imperial Mandate over a given planet, dwarf planet, or large moon, of constituent world membership class, including its associated local orbital habitats. Captain-governors of relativistic city-ships are also ranked as ecumenarchs.
  • Starkeepers, holders of the Mandate over a given star system, along with all its inhabited planets, other bodies, and drift-habitats.
  • Sectarchs, holders of the Mandate over groups of high-population or otherwise important worlds, requiring more attention than would be practical for the attached constellarch, such as the Galari Trinary. Note that there is no regionality named a “sector”; the title comes directly from the root.
  • Constellarchs, holders of the Mandate over all Imperial worlds within a particular constellation.
  • Great Lords of the Sextants (after the Spice Way Program is placed into effect), holders of the Mandate over all constellations attached to a particular Far Star Station. There are not necessarily six of them; the title is a recreated historical holdover.

Other interstellar runér titles include Marchwarden, a title used for the holder of the mandate for a remote ecumenical colony or Imperial Exclave, not yet suited for full constituent status, but which for whatever reason requires a full runér rather than a Ministry of Colonization-assigned rector; and Castellan, assigned to the attached civilian governance of a military or scientific outpost beyond the borders of the Empire.

Idiot Stick (1)

ECOPOETIC LINE GANGERS/PLANET-BREAKERS WANTED

No Background Check · No Identification · No Questions

No Qualifications Required · No Experience Required · Training Provided
Six-Year Indenture Required · Bonus for Successful Completion

Free transportation and reflux bond provided to Sagiraz (Ull Cluster). Accomodation and sustenance included.
No homestead or residency rights are earned.

Apply Mezgalrás Jaqqár Hiring, at this site.

Responsible Party:

Sagiraz Colonial Column,
Suite 894, Vitry Building,
Third Ring 45°
Conclave Drift

Meteorology

“Good morning, Talentar, and welcome to the second day of Severe Weather Disposal Week! The ecopoesis operations team tell us they’ve got a lot of moist air to dump, so the theme for the day is wet, wet, wet!

“Up in the northern highlands, expect torrential rainfall in the vicinity of the Antíval Basin. Flood defenses around the basin rim will be operating and the flood barrier at the northern end of the Antíva Canal will be closed until flash runoff from the storms has been dealt with. In related news, three spillways have been opened in readiness at the Ontaron Cut Dam, and both dwellers along and users of the southern Antíva Canal should be prepared for high water levels and flow rates from the Dam as far south as the Isifer Bay Wetland Dispersal Structure.

“Residents in the Five Valles and in particular in the vicinity of Quinjano should be prepared for severe fog and high water levels in the Fivefold River as cold spillover descends into the valles. Visibility is expected to be negligible in the region, and highway/skyway oversight has issued a safety advisory recommending curtailment of all non-automatic flight in the region, as well as manual driving on the TI-1, TI-3, and all TV routes. Also, put on your cold suits outside even if you’re not going up on the Altiplanum; the chilling effect will be harsh.

“An unscheduled hailstorm and associated mudslide have forced temporary closure of two lanes of the TV-5, 870 miles south of the polar ice mines. Repairs are already in progress, but traffic should avoid the area until a further announcement is made.

“Finally, in unplanned weather, a localized dust storm blowing down into Kirinal Planum has closed the westbound carriageway of the TI-2 with a sanddrift. Normal service should be resumed within an hour, but for the moment westbound traffic is at a standstill, and eastbound traffic delayed as people slow to see this piece of classic weather. Folks, keep driving, please! You can replay it later at your leisure. Also due to this storm, travelers in the region between Suléyn Dome and Marusí Vallis as far south as Meltwater should check their vehicles or breather masks are rated for level three dust and fines.

“That’s all today from us. Thank you for listening to Talentar Imminence, and here are a few words from our sponsors…”

Moments in History (3)

Red Planet, Blue Sky?

The news on everyone’s lips today here in Orbitfall, as well as back home, is the televised deployment of the new soletta array here in Talentar orbit. While not the first step taken, the soletta is the first tangible result of the comprehensive ecopoesis program announced last year by the Spaceflight Initiative, Project Redblossom, which will allow eldrae to walk on the blue-green surface of lowland Talentar without respirators within three centuries. Present with the project lead and the colonial legate at the unfolding ceremony today were representatives from several of the Empire’s constituent nations most represented in the Spaceflight Initiative, and from the newly formed Orbital-Seléne Alliance.

The soletta array is the first and principal orbital mirror in an array which will be deployed in synchronous orbit, reflecting the suns’ light as part of the ongoing effort to warm the planet. Smaller mirrors will also be deployed for use in melting the planet’s surface rock and liberating some of Talentar’s hidden water, presently locked in frozen aquifers.

But not everyone is happy with the ecopoesis program. Diplomatic protests have been lodged by the Cerenaith Alliance, both here and back home, citing lack of consultation and concerns with the potential use of the mirrors as orbital battle platforms. I spoke to one of Project Redblossom’s senior engineers:

“Seriously? If they’re going to complain about the mirrors, what are they going to do when the ice asteroids get here? Lyricen Lacus isn’t going to carve itself, much less fill — this is off the record, yes?”

– from the Imperial Infoclast, summer 2273

Literary Conceit

(Author’s note: for those not remembering the galactography, much as Sialhaith is the Venus-like planet orbiting the primary star of the eldrae home system, Elémíre is another example of the same class orbiting its binary companion…)

Unlike its cousin, Sialhaith, the ecopoesis of Elémíre proceeded to schedule. No longer a lifeless hothouse, Elémíre is a lifeful hothouse; life flourishes throughout the green-blue jungles that flow around its jagged mountain ranges and highland plateaus, and in its seething, briny, red-orange seas, and even in its clouded, misty skies. Hothouse, however, it most certainly remains: temperatures vary from a (relatively) cool 298 K at midnight rising quickly to a steamy 315 K at midday, and humidity hovers in the 90%-plus range at all times, giving the air the consistency of warmed soup. Mist and fog are perpetual (and cloud cover is near-continuous in the lowlands); rain almost so, as the rising mist forms droplets in the lower atmosphere which splash back to the surface, to the point that local meteorologists find it simpler to forecast the absence of rain.

Would it be possible to continue the ecopoesis to render Elémíre cooler and more Eliéran? Almost certainly, but such proposals have never attracted much interest. Elémíre’s colonists were drawn to their world by the promise that it could be made to reify the imaginings of authors inspired by the mysterious cloud-veiled planet seen in their telescopes, and mere convenience is insufficient to shake their love for their sweltering jewel.

– Leyness’s Worlds: Guide to the Core Worlds

 

Trope-a-Day: Bizarre Alien Reproduction

Bizarre Alien Reproduction: …are you sure you really want to know?

Well, first, if it’s done on Earth, by anyone, it’s probably used somewhere. Mere external fertilization, et. al., is relatively mundane. The temísi, say, are quite straightforwardly parthenogenic. For exotic – well, then we’re getting into how the vlcefc reproduce by having their motiles spin a new brain-web, something that any number from one up can do together. Or the esseli literally building the next generation in their gene-labs. Or the codramaju simply coming together as X individuals and coming apart as X+n individuals, any of whom may contain various different bits of the minds of the original X. Or…

And that’s before people come up with clever ideas like bigenetic organisms, in which – say, a plant and insect are mutually engineered so that the plant can grow insect eggs and the insect lay plant seeds, thus enabling them to mutually spread each other in early-stage ecopoesis, and contribute to a more stable ecological web overall.

Larger Hammer

Listel (Principalities) was always a marginal world. An atmosphere too thick, clouds too hazy with hydrocarbons and too prevalent, an ecology containing some worrying chaotic irregularities, and the whole, moreover, orbiting a primary which – while not technically qualifying as a flare star – nonetheless possessed a rough and turbulent cycle that flayed the upper atmospheres of its planets with wave after wave of energetic particles.

So it did not come as a complete surprise to the local branch of the Office of the Atmohydrosphere when an inconveniently timed flare, at the peak of the cycle, coincided with a downturn in the tropical ocean ecology and thickening upper-atmospheric haze to nudge the planet’s course away from its current metastability.

It came as a slight surprise that the temperature spike was as large as it turned out to be, and as rapid in its ascent.

That it should reach the point at which destabilization of the clathrates layering Listel’s polar seabeds was threatened, raising the spectre of a further trillion tons of methane – in the best case – being abruptly belched into the planetary atmosphere no longer qualified as a surprise, and was notably described by the then Principal Administrator of the Office, Ialla Jessaris-ith-Janaris, as “something of an inconvenience”.

The solution they chose was unique.

Ordinarily, minor atmospheric imbalances are dealt with using the normal, subtle ecopoetic techniques: ocean seeding, release of tailored microbiota into the upper airs, albedo adjustment, importation of suitable plants, and so forth. But with the threat of the clathrate release hanging over their world, Principal Administrator Jessaris concluded that a larger and faster correction was needed than would be available through such techniques.

If you drive out into the Serantor Desert, you can see the Listel Carbon Depository for yourself. Make sure you choose a day on which they’re not operating, because of the cyclonic storm the plant generates, and when you pass the signs warning you to put on sunglasses, they are not joking, it is that bright, and yes, you really can see it from that far back.

That’s because the solution she came up with was the simplest, most brute-force solution imaginable: carbon-organizers, built to feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane. The storms are caused by the venturi that sucks in inconceivable volumes of the upper atmosphere, feeds it through the organizer beds, and blows it out again at ground level – while spitting out flitter-sized diamond bricks as a by-product.

And those bricks are responsible for the brightness, because they pile them up into pyramids for storage – eight, huge, mile-high pyramids of shining diamond, and they’re working on a ninth. So far, they’re keeping ahead of the gas releases. It’s a magnificent sight.

It would be one of the wonders of the Worlds if they weren’t so damn embarrassed about it.

– Octavia Dalastel, “Around the Fringe in 48 Bottles”

Trope-a-Day: Terraform

Terraform: Played mostly straight, but note that the general term is “ecopoesis” – after all, different species have different ideas as to how the ideal planet looks, most of which are not at all “terra”-like.

Also, only mostly, because both the constraints of physical reality (you only have so much sunlight, even with solettas, and gravity does not change easily) and those of economics, not to mention aesthetics, often mean meeting the planet somewhere in the middle with pantropic adaptations of the permanent residents.  (And if the process starts with a life-bearing world – well, in that case, responsible ecopoesis means the even more complex variation of an already complex and incredibly expensive task, namely, building a functional hybrid ecosystem.  Ecocide is unethical entropism, and thus very much illegal under almost every circumstance.)

And let’s not forget that depending on the magnitude of the changes involved, we’re generally talking high decades (for trivial changes) to low millennia (both extreme cases; middling centuries is more usual) to make them comfortably self-sustaining.  Even with very high technology indeed, a planetary ecology has a lot of momentum.

(A “cool Arean” archetype is actually the most common result, at least within the Associated Worlds.)

The Canals of Talentar

“How are we doing? All on schedule?”

The largest monitor showed the reddish, ragged rock of a cliff face, roughly torn, a notch in its top revealing the ribbed end of a silvered balloon wedged into it, held down by a curved framework of steel plates. Above, a zeppelin hung in the yellow sky, lowering a large crate down towards it.

“Physics package is on its way now. Supervisor on-site says, give him half an hour for hook-up and check-out, no more. Gas mix is nominal; pressure in the balloon is nominal and stable. Fill compressors are unhooked and clear.”

“Good, good. Topology?”

“Final check is done. Satellite altimetry says we’ve got good slope in the channel all the way from here to the Basin. We cut this, it’ll pour.”

“Safety?”

“Boreal traffic control confirms there are no ships within two hundred miles of the intake. Project security reports the existing cut and the Basin are clear of people.”

“Very well. Sound the warning sirens now; let’s make sure people have lots of time to get out of our way.”

* * *

Thirty-six minutes later, the crate had been landed and ripped open to reveal a gleaming silver bullet, now mounted to the end of the balloon. The zeppelin, its job done, had left the scene under maximum power. All within the camera’s view of the cliffside site was quiet and still.

“Final safety checks?”

“The Boreal is still clear; the channel and the Basin too. ATC shows the skies are clear. Our work crews have all reached safety range. We’re clear for firing.”

The geotect pulled a molecular key from his pocket, and inserted it into his firing console.

“Enable.”

“Empire Nucleonics 3.75m Directional Primer Charge, Series V. Permissive action link recognized. Authenticate serial code DPC11479322-V.”

“Authentication: SHATTER, APEX, MONARCH, ACE, FIREBALL, COMET.”

“Authentication confirmed.”

“Set tamper for 29 miles, full diameter. Activate detonation sequence, minimum count.”

“Detonation sequence running. 72 seconds and counting.”

* * *

The monitors whited out, intolerably bright; distant thunder swept over the bunker. To the observers in orbit, a bright line drew itself across the surface of the planet, and faded slowly away.

* * *

“Okay, let’s reset the monitors, and give me a view of the Boreal opening.”

“Already done, estrev.”

“…then give me an infrared view.”

The darkness of the monitor cleared, to show a mound of rubble at the end of a new, ragged gash cut in the planet’s surface, faintly glowing with heat. A few trickles of water trickled down its surface, then more spurted out from gaps in its face, until in slow motion the wall toppled – house-sized boulders bounding past the camera borne by a wall of water, clawing and tearing at the walls of the widening fresh-cut channel.

“Nicely done, gentlesophs. How much initial flow do we expect – thirty, forty miles an hour? Someone tell Chairman Lanqin that he’ll have his riverfront property by tomorrow afternoon.”

Home on Lagrange

It was understood relatively early in Project Redblossom that Talentar would become a major food-exporting planet as the ecopoesis continued. As the major geophysical stages were completed, the planet warmed, water was introduced, and the microbiome became established, it became time to introduce macroscopic flora, among the earliest of which called for by the ecopoesis plan were grasses to bind the regolith dunes.

It did not escape the ecotects’ attention that the grass family included a variety of commercially-viable flora, most obviously the widely used grains landesh and irdesh, and that incorporating these into the ecopoesis plan would help to render it self-sustaining in more ways than one. Thus, an extensive agricultural industry rapidly grew up around the early colonies, especially those located in the lowlands of Kirinal Planum, exporting vast quantities of bread, beer, and raw grain to the system’s expanding population of drifts and orbital habitats – aided in this by the relative shallowness of Talentar’s gravity well as compared to Eliéra’s, and Talentar’s possession of the system’s first orbital elevator. The ecotects required that part of the payment for these goods be made in nitrogenous and other organic waste collected from the habitats, which became feedstock to their dirt farming programs and thus in turn expanded Talentar’s fertile regions; a virtuous cycle.

Unanticipated was what followed. Commercial grains, being insufficient in themselves for a stable ecological tier, were by no means the only grasses spreading on Talentar. Forty-seven years after the initiation of this program, a ranchers’ consortium from the Iniositac-Variasotec Commonwealth, observing the spread of common grasses in less desirable regions of the planet, obtained title to one of the largest contiguous areas of this “Talentarian prairie”. A year later, they introduced the first Rieltelir-adapt quebérúr, modified Eliéran cattle capable of breathing the low-oxygen, high-dioxide atmosphere, shaggier and better able to live in cold conditions, the dung from whose grazing in turn helped expand these prairie regions. While the export of quebérúr meat was much lower in volume than grain exports, it was much higher value due to the near-impossibility at that time of producing such anywhere else in the system with a relatively shallow well, and several fortunes were made in this new business.

And to this day, the Carbon-Carbon Grill at Suléyn Dome still serves the best non-vat quebérúr steak in the Lumenna-Súnáris System.

Talentar Blossoming: the Early Years,
Vallis Muetry-ith-Miritar

Do You Want to Change the World?

“If you want to learn how to make worlds, come to the University of Talentar.

Our rusty world and its youthful wine-dark – and wine-colored, red as a fine Vintiver port – seas have been the test-bed for every ecopoetic technique in the manual. Since first Copperfall, we’ve changed the face of the eutalentic world we found in more ways than we can count.

Comet herders have brought ice, nitrate, and clotted carbon from the far Shards to fill its oceans and thicken its air. Vast soletta arrays and deep thermal boreholes warm the new waters and melt the polar caps, while canals, carved in an instant by nucleonic cutters, open up crater lakes and let them flow freely across its face. Now-ancient bacteria break up oxides for breathable air, and leach ammonia and methane, too, into the building atmosphere.

A nanoecology of mechal elementals now thrives across the world. Blackeners and smart clouds tune the planetary albedo; high in the stratosphere, self-replicating haze absorbs harmful excesses of ultraviolet light. Warming rods capture solar heat and conduct it deep into the ground to free the permafrost. Aerator swarms stir up the regolith and break up the hardpans. Landcorals, saltshapers, and exotic cyborg lichen thrive in the badlands, locking up salts unwanted by later stages of the planned evolution.

Meanwhile, the bioecology spreads in their wake. Miritar plants, crafted to thrive on that barely-modified regolith, bind the dunes and eat halogens, releasing potent greenhouse gases to warm the world. Behind them advance the dirt farmers, brewing true soil in all its microbial subtlety, such that true plants and animals can thrive – both those hardy imports that can survive, and neogens made specifically for the new world, designed to take their place in the ecological web being woven by the ecotects, the mezuar treeherders and selyéva gardeners. Bigenetic organisms, plants and animals sharing a common genome and producing each other’s seeds, spread life across the new living wilderness. In all but the highest of cold highlands, the rieltelir-modified may walk freely outside without masks – and could do so everywhere did our design not wish to retain those highlands.

Our world is where ecopoesis began; it’s where ecopoesis has made most progress; and it’s where you can get hands-on experience with every aspect of every stage of the process.

And ecopoesis, too, is an ever-growing art and industry. The Worlds are expanding faster every year, and of all the new planets discovered, the majority of those considered potentially habitable are eutalentic, in need of the helping hand of a talented ecotect and crew.

Contact us today for details of our introductory and advanced courses.”

– voiceover for an advertisement published by the U. T. Faculty of Megascale Ergetics


[P.S. If any talented artist/videographer types are interested in making the video for which this is the voiceover, please do contact me. I usually hesitate to include notes like this, but I can see the imagery in my head, and it is awesome.]

Trope-a-Day: Hostile Terraforming

Hostile Terraforming: In the Worlds, pretty much any straight ecopoesis carried out on a currently life-bearing world is considered this, and even sensible-but-dubious regimes steer clear of it because it is, in effect, burning down an asset. Ecosystems are extremely valuable informational resources, and not to be casually overwritten.

On colony worlds, what you’re supposed to do, ecopoesis-wise, if you need to, is engage in whatever complex bioengineering you have to do to introduce your necessary support species into a successful hybrid or co-existing ecosystem, usually combined with a degree of personal pantropy (adapting yourself to the planet, rather than t’other way around).

This tends to be… tricky, for those without the absolute highest levels of competence in such things, but so it goes. If you can’t manage that and aren’t willing to pay for someone else’s expertise, stick to colonizing barren worlds that you can ecopoese without breaking anything preextant. Or else.

Vol. 6: Mechal Elementals

Among the first known of all nanorobotic machines were the so-called mechal elementals, the maintenance mechanisms of Eliéra. While the common conception of that artificial world is that its ecology is maintained and guided by the computation and matter editation layers buried in its core, this perception is false – these are merely the most prominent elements in a complex system.

These nanorobotics have existed for the entire history of the eldrae on Eliéra, and from long before, having been part of the world since its construction by the Precursors. This is reflected in their names and taxonomy, since long before robots, mechanicals, or even simple clockwork automata were dreamed of, the ancient eldrae knew them as elemental spirits, emanations of Sylithandríël, eikone of the natural world, and Her first six children/souls, the Six Elemental Dragons.

The traditional taxonomy of the mechal elementals reflect this origin, as they are classified under their presumed elemental aspects, including such elementals as the silt spawn and stone mothers, responsible for counteracting the long-term secular erosion of the mountains; the cloud shepherds and smoke sylphs in the air; wave undines and river carvers; soil churners of the fields and the dryads of the forests; the magma krakens that churn the fires below and the flame swallows that govern their release; and the gemlords and ore ants known to generations of miners and tunnel explorers.

In the modern era, of course, we know all of these to be nanomechanical systems, part of the planetary maintenance architecture answering to the central computation layer. That said, since these systems are now overseen by the archai Sylithandríël and Her subroutines, the ancient theological view is now arguably more true than it was at its inception; and, indeed, the archai maintains the validity of the old lore of elemental beckoning, bargaining, and abjuration that the ancient eldrae painstakingly discovered to deal with the alien animating intelligences of “wild” mechal elementals before the Transcend, despite the ability to communicate directly via gnostic link.

Many of the mechal elemental designs have been repurposed for use as ecopoesis tools elsewhere. This volume describes both these, and also those mechal elementals most commonly seen in the wild and in history, along with both the modern and ancient protocols for interacting with and commanding them.

First, we describe the elementals of the Air, the emanations of the Air Dragon…

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

Headlines: A Day in the Worlds

The Imperial Infoclast
Supplementing Your Memeplex Since 2042

EMPIRE

Sidar Colony Celebrates Ecopoesis Bicentennial
The Sidar Colony in the Principalities will celebrate the 288th anniversary of the initiation of its ecopoesis program next month, with a series of low-lying valleys being opened to habitation for the first time by unmodified colonists.

Eleven Temporarily Killed In Solar Sailing Accident
This year’s Meridia Cup ends in tragedy as an unpredicted coronal mass ejection wrecks five of the competing solar sailers.

WORLDS

Presidium Condemns Trikhad Conquest
The Presidium of the Conclave has unanimously condemned the military expansion program of the Trikhad Conquest in the Tanion Wilds. Sources close to the Presidium suggest that containment action may be in preparation.

Piracy Again Rising In Dark Sea Constellation
Unusual shipping movements around the ruins of Litash may indicate a rebirth of the pirate syndicates that once controlled the area, INI warns.

Republic Delegation Protests Uncontrolled Exports, Smuggling
In a now annual tradition, a delegation from the Voniensa Republic protested the uncontrolled filtration of technologies and other artifacts across their border with the Associated Worlds. The protest was heard by the Conclave, who expressed sympathy but regretted once again that the situation was beyond their power to address.

BUSINESS

A Probable Discovery, or A Probable Bubble?
Shares in Probable Technology, ICC (ticker: PROBL) jumped 21 points on the Seranth Exchange today based on unconfirmed rumors that their relativistic xenoarchaeological expedition beyond the rimward Periphery has reported a major find. While the company itself has refused to comment on the rumors, many usually knowledgeable investors seem unusually bullish on this stock today.

ENTERTAINMENT

Anticipation Rises As Aelaviel Fashion Show Opens
Expectations are high on Seranth this week as the 187th Aelaviel Fashion Show opens in Mer Dinévál, especially since last week’s leaked news that several major fashion houses have contracted vector control engineers and swarm roboticists. Join the Infoclast’s memeweaves for real-time, on-the-spot, full-sensory reporting!

“Ah, Yes, The People”, Triumphs, Flops
As expected by most critics, the palace farce which mercilessly satirizes galactic politicians from core to rim, while a runaway success in the Accord’s most notoriously libertist polities, freesoil worlds and independent drifts, proved unpopular elsewhere.  Nevertheless, after pulling in 3.9 billion exvals in its opening week, the producers are laughing all the way to the bank.

TECHNOLOGY

Cognitech, ICC Announces Breakthrough In Bulk Mnemonesis
New advances in axiom feeds and neural imprinting may double the speed of synthetic learning.

OPINION

Point: It’s Time To Crush The Militarists
“The recent expansionism by the Trikhad Conquest only goes to reinforce that we, as the responsible members of galactic civilization, simply can’t afford to let these dangerous idiots and the rest of the Interstellar League of Tribal Chiefdoms run around loose.”  Cail Amanyr-ith-Velcyr, doyen of the belligerati, makes the case for preemptive action to prevent the wars that always seem to accompany the introduction of certain types of society to the galactic neighborhood.