Home-level Technologyof the Galactic Mindsea Empire | |
Antiaging | |
An imperial citizen can look forward to a life spanning thousands of years. |
Imperial citizens are the products of genetic engineering that has given them an array of attractive skin, hair, and eye colors, bodies free from heritable illness or defects, and eternal youth. Despite their young bodies, citizens are susceptible to a type of mental aging known as crystallization. The crystallizing mind becomes incapable of encompassing new experiences or registering new memories, growing ever more mechanical in its reactions. Victims customarily are euthanized after failing competency hearings. |
Wonderdomes | |
The standard green dome of a wonderdome facility can be found in every imperial community. |
Physical injuries are healed in special chemical pools known as wonderdomes. A dead body that hasn't suffered extensive decay or Deep-level damage can be refloated; that is, restored to life. Wonderdomes can also be used for physical enhancements or genetic alteration, as well as for mental healing. |
Copy Insurance | |
Copy insurance companies record a client's mind-patterns as they float in a wonderdome pool. |
Citizens who have not yet lived for ten thousand years are entitled to purchase copy insurance. If they die, a copy will be floated and primed with the life memories they have stored with the copy insurance commpany. |
Glowworms and Fireflies | |
Support for Thermeon indicated by an image composed of fireflies. |
Imperial artifacts, furniture, clothing, and buildings are customarily animated by glowworms, living nanomachines that can be bred and programmed for innumerable tasks. Citizens are unaccustomed to a glowworm-free life and find objects unresponsive to their wishes strange and disconcerting. Because of the pervasiveness of glowworms, the occasional plagues that strike them are major disasters for citizens. Free-flying glowworms are called fireflies. They are used to produce colorful ads in the air, or to convey messages when no direct link is available. |
Bioids | |
A bioid lion greets graduates at the Imperial Museum Job Fair. |
Glowworms can be assembled into entities resembling humans or other lifeforms. These programmable resources are known as bioids. Nearly every company in the Empire uses bioids to perform mindless tasks from customer service to freight loading. There has been much controversy throughout imperial history about whether bioids can be considered sentient. Because their behavior is restricted by error-correction that prunes away unwanted responses down to the subatomic scale, a bioid is always completely predictable. According to Mindsea Academy Headmistress Vedina: "The subjective experience of choice comes about because a living mind may be reconstituted in more than one configuration after each quantum refresh. Awareness momentarily enfolds all of those possibilities before the timelines branch and a single configuration predominates. That is why it is said that all living beings have a Deep-level component and cannot be entirely Deep-blind. "A bioid can only emerge from quantum refresh in a single state dictated by its programming, and therefore does not experience a succession of 'nows' in which choices can be made. Though its tiny constituents do experience quantum fluctuations, it is not designed to respond to these fluctuations. Any uncertainty in the outcome of its processing would be considered a flaw, and is strongly guarded against. In the wake of the Cataclysm, vast numbers of bioids were destroyed because they had developed flaws that would have made them unpredictable and possibly dangerous. But only a flawed bioid can be sentient." |
Nooks | |
A dragon-form S-nook—nooks can be decorative as well as utilitarian. |
Most of the furniture in imperial homes consists of nooks, soft, adjustable seats composed of glowworms. The material conforms to the user's body, and can also be adjusted to accommodate different numbers of people. The various styles of nooks are named after letters of the alphabet. |
Memory Buttons | |
Memory Buttons are scaled to fit in the hand. |
Recorded data that needs to be distributed across the galaxy without alteration is often stored on memory buttons which will be carried aboard Deep-level ships in special shipping containers that protect their contents from downleveling. Buttons are also used for personal communications between citizens. When a button is used for the transfer of credits, it is called a credit button. |
Firefly-assisted Reproduction | |
Incubators instruct children before they hatch. |
Imperial citizens reproduce by having fireflies combine their genetic material and inserting the resulting zygote into an incubator from which their child will emerge when ready to walk and talk. The parents may be a man and a woman, two women or two men, or even more than two people. When the parents are human, no matter what their sex or number, the offspring will have an equal chance of being male or female. Interspecies reproduction is also possible, once laboratory glowworms have snipped and woven the genetic contributions of the parents into a form that can produce a viable zygote. When a species has mating types other than male and female, the offspring has a chance of becoming one of those mating types. Mixing genes with an asexual being may result in an asexual offpsring. |
Airlifters | |
An airlifter usually has a weatherscreen. |
Airlifters are the ubiquitous form of personal transportation for any distance too long to comfortably walk and short compared to a planetary circumference. Airlifters are formed by an invisible cloud of fireflies that adjust the properties of air molecules to provide lift and propulsion. They are usually provided with a weatherscreen to protect the rider from collisions or falling, though the weatherscreen can be turned off. Once the rider indicates the desired destination, the airlifter finds the route, flying high enough to avoid obstacles and other traffic. For distances considered short for an airlifter ride, there may be moving walkways. Inside buildings there are zip floors and airshifts. For distances considered too great for airlifters, there are sky-buses that do not leave the planetary atmosphere, and space shuttles or space-planes that do. |
Weather Engineering | |
The weatherdome houses its own climate. |
The weather of nearly every planet requires some tweaking to make it optimal for human enjoyment. Trillions of fireflies flit through the atmosphere, devouring bad chemicals and releasing good chemicals. Atmospheric rivers are adjusted to insure the proper amounts of rainfall, and winds channeled to produce pleasant temperatures. When a planet or inhabited moon is too small to easily sustain an atmosphere, or when a separate, specialized climate zone is desired, a weatherdome can be inflated. |
Telexpression | |
Telexpresser patterns reveal thoughts and emotions. |
The telexpresser is a tool useful to imperial law. It scans brains and projects the patterns for analysis. Travelers disembarking after interplanetary trips and those arriving from foreign states or alternate timelines are routinely telexpressed to insure that they pose no threat. When citizens are suspected of criminal activity, other citizens or peacekeeping authorities register a "cause for concern." The suspect may then be subjected to telexpression, their brain-patterns examined for images of guilt or malicious thoughts or disordered emotions. If guilt is found, they will be remanded to a wonderdome for correction. Witnesses in court are also telexpressed to determine whether they are telling the truth. Telexpression is considered to be reliable, except in the case of mindseas, who can willfully alter their brain patterns. |
Internals | |
The internal links citizens with planetary systems. |
Glowworms can be embedded in the human body as communications devices (internal links) or tools. All well-to-do citizens, except for Deep-level pilots, have internals both for communications and for cognitive augmentation. Pilots don't use them because downleveling generally purges them from the body as tissues transform to Deep-level stuff and then return to Home-level form. Riding in horse races in which the racetrack's Deep-level obstacles activate will also slip internals. Travel by transway or chronon-twistor does not interfere with internals, as no downleveling is involved. Young people are not permitted their first internal until they reach the Minimum Age of Adult Citizenship at twenty imperial years. This is to give them the chance to develop learning and memory skills with an unaugmented brain. Controversy about the degree to which such skills should be managed by glowworms continues. |
Styles | |
Glowworms keep intricate hairdos from falling. |
Imperial citizens wear clothes that dress and undress them at a thought command. Simple costumes are usually recycled after a single use, but occasionally an elaborite creation will be kept in a alcove for display and reuse. Such garments are animated to create full-sensory effects in an effort to outdo the next citizen's costume. Scents are wafted, poetry recited, and music played, as well as lights and colors flashed and capes, faux feathers, and ribbons waved, or illusions of fire, water, and ice (or anything else a fashion designer can imagine) produced. Most clothing, whether utilitarian or fancy, has several modes it can adopt for the comfort and protection of its wearer. Hairdos also are woven by glowworms and augmented with jewelry, custom ornaments, and special effects. |
Dramas | |
Dramas provide a full-sensory experience. |
The most popular entertainment in the Empire are dramas. Citizens enclose themselves in pods that keep them safe and comfortable while their brains are flooded with sensations allowing them to feel as if they are taking part in thrilling action or romances. Friends can share a drama, each of them experiencing a different character's point of view. |
Systems | |
Systems are planet-wide. |
Every imperial world has a system that tracks persons and events planet-wide. All local communications go through the system. Constantly updated news as well as discussions and analyses are available. For security reasons, only persons in the relevant niches may access sub-systems monitoring air, water, energy, and weather. Imperial minors and planetary police use independent systems. |
Habitats | |
Habitats mix comfort with natural beauty. |
The standard imperial home is called a habitat in recognition of the fact that a dwelling place is not just a shell to protect its occupant from the world, but also an environment which should be relaxing, nurturing, and mind-expanding. There are many separate schools of architecture, each with its own theory about how to achieve this goal. Some hold that an emphasis on glowworm animation with constant change and novel stimulation is the key to success. Others believe that quiet surroundings reminiscent of ancient Earth work best. |
Communities | |
Treetop communities have advocates on many worlds. |
There are as many theories about communities as there are about habitats. Some city planners feel that humans thrive when living in close quarters with a wide choice of entertainment close at hand. Other claim enfoldments make cities unnecessary and advocate solitary habitats surrounded by vast swaths of nature. Most imperial communities lie somewhere between these two extremes. Sometimes individual habitats are distributed among pleasant vistas of trees or gardens or waterways, with moving walkways leading to a community center. Other communities consist of one huge, or several interconnected, buildings with zip-floors to get people around. Some planets maintain communities patterned after those of their pre-imperial peoples, which were often well-suited to the planet's climate and landscape. |
Wild Parks | |
Wild parks preserve each planet's unique species. |
Areas of a planet not belonging to a community or committed to resource-production are governed by its Wild Park System. The purpose of wild parks is to preserve the planet's native flora and fauna for the enjoyment of its citizens. Weather and climate are carefully managed to accomodate the species within each park, and the species are precisely balanced so that there will be no population booms or busts over the long term. Some citizen groups protest the cruelty of carnivory. When these groups have their way, carnivores and their prey live in separate parks. Carnivores can hunt and eat bioid prey that is engineered to be nutritious as well as to possess the escape routines of real prey animals. The prey animals, in their park, are chased by bioid predators that never catch them. |
Criminal Tech | |
Criminals have ways to defeat the law. |
Although imperial technology is aimed at providing safe, meaningful lives for all citizens, there are still some who insist on breaking the rules, and they have several tools to help with their plans for illegal gain. Glowworms specially bred for the black market can be programmed to shield a person from identity scans and routine telexpression by providing a false identity and false brain patterns. Fireflies can be sent like tiny fleets to penetrate walls and open locked doors. Container flireflies can collect desired chemicals or infuse chemicals into persons to poison or kill. They can tap into government systems to steal information. If a criminal is intent on securing illicit repro rights, they can launch fireflies to steal the genes from whomever they wish to mate with, or to replace the genes of the zygote in an incubator with their own genes. |