Superluminal

by Tony Daniel

  Project Alsace-Lorraine

  A military adaptation of the “Mouseflowers” experiment that produced infectious military nano that did not obey the usual grist “harm human life” overrides, since it was designed to reengineer exactly the human genome. Suppressed, the PAL virus was eventually rediscovered by Tacitus and used against DIED forces on the Neptunian moon Nereid.

  Raphael Merced

  In 2511 C. E. on a Monday in April, as Martians reckon the months, the first scientist who was not an Earthling and who belongs in the pantheon of such figures as Newton, Einstein, and Galileo was born. Raphael Merced laid the foundation for linking Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics, and as such is considered the father of quantum gravity theory as well as the first theorist to offer a precise mathematics of time as a property of the universe. His work with quantum gravity on an experimental basis also revealed the now-familiar quantum information leap that has since taken his name, the Merced effect. As if this weren’t enough, Merced made major contributions to nanotechnological engineering, inventing—with Feur Otto Bring—the Josephson-Feynman grist, which now permeates all of our lives. Merced can truly be considered the defining scientific presence of our time, in much the way that Albert Einstein defined the science of the five hundred years that preceded Merced, and Newton before Einstein.

  The Vas After Sunset

  The Vas After Sunset is a guide to the seedier side of the Vas portion of the Met, with several essays on the underground history of the Met. Written by Leo Sherman.

  Vas Soft

  News channel popular on the Vas with multiple branches of programming. Phyllis Dulcimer is a popular news reporter on the channel.

  West Point

  Located on Earth, the ancient and principal training facility for the Army of the Republic—in use until the army was forced out of the Met and the Department of Immunity took over its functions when the Met changed over from republican to direct democracy shortly after the Conjubilation of 2963.

  Appendix Six

  SOLAR SYSTEM CULTURE

  Abacus

  The Abacus is the main accounting algorithm for Teleman Milt on Mercury.

  Army of the Republic

  AKA the Federal Army. The former armed forces of the Met, relegated by Amés to policing the outer system before the war.

  Asap Gymnasium

  Claude Schlencker’s school on Mercury.

  Battle Day

  Full-participation virtual-reality war show, available to Met citizens. Viewers experience directly the bodily sensations of soldiers in warfare, or drop back for a war- game-like perspective on the battle. There is a great deal of subtle Department of Immunity censorship underlying the show, however.

  Berkhultz

  A piano-making company.

  Clinical Party

  Local moralistic political party on Neptune’s moon Triton.

  Confidence

  A passportlike marking grist adopted during the war to regulate travel and behavior within the Met.

  Convert and Free-convert Iteration Section

  Division of the Department of Immunity that sets rules for convert copying and transfer.

  Department of Immunity

  The vast administrative and enforcement bureaucracy of the Met. Answers directly to Director Amés. The Department of Immunity Enforcement Division, or DIED, is the collective name for the Met armed forces and the internal police force.

  Eighth Chakra

  Local group of “Neo-Flare” poets on Neptune’s moon Triton.

  Enigma Box

  AKA puzzle box. Interlocking grist puzzle that Sint Graytor likes to play with.

  Extrema

  A pelota fanatic.

  First Constitutional Congress of the Cloudships of the Outer System

  April 2, 3013 (e-standard) C. E. Adopted the Metaplanetary Constitution of the Solarian Republic.

  Flare School

  Group of poets who published in Beat Myers’s journal during the 2600s C. E.

  Friends of Tod

  This is the “religion” that sprang up around the gnostic time tower named Tod. It has a following of computer programmers, designers, engineers, and poets and artists of various ilk—nerds, as Aubry Graytor says. It is similar to the old “Church of the Subgenius” on ancient Earth—that is, a belief system undercut with irony at every turn (or, as the Friends would have it, it is meta-commentary on human belief in general). Friends of Tod are normally pacifists. Along with the escaped “protocol vermin” of the Carbuncle, they formed the partisan resistance in the Met during the war. The leaders of the Friends of Tod are Otis and Game.

  Free Integrationists

  Whig-like political party that supports full free-convert rights in the solar system and believes that all intelligent systems are persons. Strongest in the outer system.

  Greentree Way

  AKA the Way. The major religion of the Met. Zen-Lutheranism, with a strong “shamanic” component as well. The main teaching center is on the Mars-Earth Diaphany in Seminary Barrel. Priests complete their initiation with the Walk on the Moon—that is, copying their original personality into another body and stepping with their original body into a special valley of Earth’s moon and “dying” in the vacuum. The major tenet of the Way is that there is a living Tree that somehow both represents and embodies the spiritual and genetic imprint of humanity upon the universe.

  Interlocking Directorate

  The main governing board of the Met. The directorates are administrative and legislative agencies whose activities and administrators are voted on by the population of the Met constantly over the governmental merci channels. These can sometimes change hourly. The Interlocking Directorate membership is voted on in turn by the Directors. Director Amés chairs the Interlocking Directorate.

  Keys

  Used for currency in the Carbuncle.

  Motoserra Club

  Hoity-toity club to which descendants of the first settlers on Neptune’s moon Triton belong.

  Neo-Flares

  Modern-day poets who style themselves as revivalists of the ancient Flare school of poetry.

  Old Seventy-five

  Alcoholic drinking grist. Thaddeus-Ben drinks a version modified with military grist and accidentally coughs up a woman.

  Positions Room

  The command center of Teleman Milt financial services.

  Pelota

  Soccer-like game played in weightless environment with a rotating arena and two oppositely rotating goals. The most popular sport in the solar system. Premier league teams include the Jets, the Nebs, the Celtics, and the Rangers.

  Roguesville

  Created by the eccentric genius Stacey Cartwright, a Pogo-like semisatirical merci show where viewers can participate in the lives of various small-town characters.

  Solarian Republic War Bank

  Bank formed for the financing of the war after the dismal failure of the first war bond issue by the cloudships’ virtual merci banks.

  Sluice Juice

  Breathable Integumentary fluid in the Met.

  Snap-Metal Advertisements

  Virtual-reality advertisements set into grist-coated stickers, on beverage containers, etc.

  Teleman Milt

  A financial brokerage company on Mercury’s E-Street for which Kelly Graytor was a junior partner.

  Trade Economists

  Pro-Met political faction on Neptune’s moon Triton.

  Appendix Seven

  METAPLANETARY GEOGRAPHY: THE MET AND INNER SOLAR SYSTEM

  Akali Dal Bolsa

  Typical manufacturing bolsa on the Vas section of the Met. First settled by a Sikh population.

  Asteroid Belt

  Cutoff point for the Met. Cloudships began forming here, incorporating as a materials shipment service for the building of the Met. This old company was called Alquitran Incorporated. There are Alquitran relics and historic landmarks in the asteroid belt.

  Bach
>
  The principal city of Mercury and the financial center of the Met. Situated in the Bach crater. The architect Klaus Branigan designed much of the city. Branigan claimed to have based his conception upon structures he found in the final movement of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto no. 1 in D Minor. Like Bach, with his two interwoven themes, Branigan took essentially two cities and knitted them together. First, there is residential Calay, with its bulbous pearl strings of apartments. These exist between the square, almost mineral, stretches of New Frankfurt and its central corridor, Earth Street, which houses the powerful banks and brokerages of the Met. The bus fare is thirteen greenleaves to get from Bach to the polar lift.

  Bagtown

  The nearest thing to a city in the Carbuncle. Near where the garbage sluice from the Met comes in.

  Bendy River

  The sloughlike river of goo that runs through the Carbuncle.

  Carbuncle

  The Carbuncle is the garbage dump of the Met. Filled with mutated and unregulated grist, this is where all the old code comes to die and where all the escaped code comes to hide. It is located at the outer fringes of the Met, just inside the asteroid belt. The “protocol vermin”—escaped code sequences that inhabited actual biological vermin—arose here before the war and were developed into fully functioning human beings when they migrated to Nirvana, the independent “micro-Met,” or mycelium, of the Friends of Tod, which circles the sun inside the Martian orbit.

  Clarit Bolsa

  An average working-class habitat on the Vas. Dory Folsom, DIED sergeant, hails from there.

  Earth

  Sparsely inhabited. A few major population centers remain, including New York City. In 2802 C. E., the Earth was declared an “Ecological Repatriation Area” with limited construction and population growth allowed, and now vast stretches of our native planet have been returned to their natural state.

  Upstate New York on Earth has returned to wilderness and is inhabited by various feral machines, principally automobiles, trucks, and utility vehicles.

  Near the old town of Rhinebeck on the Hudson River is a secret research institute working on a crash project involving time travel and superluminal flight.

  Esolo Armature

  Where Leo was stationed before the invasion of Io.

  Fork

  Region in the local grist on Neptune’s moon Triton where free converts have established a virtual business and residential district.

  Integument

  The Integument is the outer coating of the Met cables and the Met spinning habitats. This is a semiliving “skin” that mediates biological and chemical transfer and balance within the Met, and forms a protective covering. It is a product of both design and stepped-up evolution. No one normally lives in the Integument, but it can be accessed.

  Mars

  Densely inhabited. Home to Bradbury University. Victim of the failed terraforming experiments of the 2700s C. E.

  Mas El Daví

  Carmen San Filieu’s estate in New Catalonia.

  Mercurian Transportation System

  The South Vect is the main polar transportation conduit on Mercury that leads to the South Polar Lift, know locally as the Hub, which leads in turn to the transfer habitat above the Mercurian pole, Johnston Bolsa.

  Mercury

  The financial and governmental center of the Met. High population density. Principal city is Bach. Earth Street, or E-Street, is equivalent to the old Wall Street on Earth. San Souci is the Interlocking Directorate headquarters.

  Moon

  Inhabited. Greentree shaman-priests initiated in Valley of the Bones. Cloudships Tacitus’s and Lebedev’s human aspects met in old Farside Station in mid-2400s C. E.

  Mycelium

  AKA a micro-Met. A small system of cables not directly connected to the overall Met but which participates in the virtuality through the grist and can be reached either by spaceship or by occasional concatenation with the larger Met. The most important of the mycelia is Nirvana, the self-made home base of the Friends of Tod.

  New Catalonia

  Met habitat on the Diaphany where the locals, descendants of Catalán from old Spain, play wicked social games in a late Renaissance setting. The principal city is New Sabadell.

  Polbo Armature

  Agricultural habitat on the Diaphany and birthplace of one Claude Schlencker.

  Ru June’s

  A rowdy bar in the Carbuncle.

  San Souci

  The central edifice on Mercury in the vast conglomerate of buildings, all interconnected, that made up the Interlocking Directorate Headquarters in the Met. It includes, in its center, a small mountain made entirely of grist, Montsombra. La Mola is the inner sanctum of Amés. It is atop Montsombra.

  Silicon Valley

  The Noctis Labyrinthus area on Mars that served as a concentration camp for free converts during the war. Mengele-like research was conducted there on selected free converts by the infamous Dr. Ting.

  Sui Sui University

  Second largest university in the solar system and principal center of learning on Mercury. The Elkinstein Facility is the physics department there, and was Ping Li Singh’s first workplace. She later went to work in Lab Complex B, the black box physics laboratory.

  Appendix Eight

  METAPLANETARY GEOGRAPHY: OUTER SYSTEM

  The Planets

  Outer System

  Area beyond the asteroid belt, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Kuipers, and the Oorts. Space cables are not feasible to build there, and the distances are covered by spaceships. All outer-system planetary moons are inhabited. There is grist everywhere, so outer-system inhabitants fully participate in the virtuality of humanity. At the beginning of the war, the outer system was nominally under Met sovereignty, but in practice most government was local. While the population of the outer system is much more thinly spread than that of the Met, it is still enormous by historical standards. At the beginning of the war, it numbered nearly 10 billion, with the Met claiming another 90 billion souls (in their various forms), for a total human population of around 100 billion. The bulk of the outer-system population lives on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

  Jupiter

  All of the Jovian moons are inhabited.

  CALLISTO

  Callisto had a utopian “free grange” movement, and some free grange collectives still exist. Alethea Night-shade was raised on one of these. Telegard is the principal city.

  GANYMEDE

  Ganymede is the center of commerce for the outer planets. Ganymede also has plate tectonics, and earthquake-inducing warfare technology was used to secure its fall early in the war. The moon fell to Met forces in Meta-planetary. One million members of Federal Army were taken prisoner there. It must use nuclear power when cut off from the Capacitor feed at Io.

  EUROPA

  A scientific disaster in the Lost Sea of Europa—a vast sea under a layer of ice—resulted in the death of Roger Sherman’s eldest son and Leo Sherman’s brother, Teddy. There may be an extraterrestrial nano life-form there. Leo Sherman lived on Europa for a while before returning to the Met. Leo Sherman’s brother, Roger Sherman’s son, lies at the bottom of the under-ice sea there, killed or transformed by what might be extraterrestrial life that can manipulate the grist. Captain Quench’s lover Arthur works in a biological research facility there. The moon is also the headquarters for IDC, the news service that Jake Alaska works for.

  IO

  Io is a center for energy generation in the system, existing, as it does, at one pole of Jupiter’s enormous magnetosphere. Its Capacitor power plant taps the Jovian magnetosphere for power and converts it to microwave radiation for uplink and distribution. It supplies enough power for the needs of the four inner moons of the Jupiter system. Possession of Io was hotly contested during the war. The “gristlock” is control and command center in the Capacitor. Free converts retreated here during invasion and were captured and “flashed” to Silicon Valley on Mars.
/>   Saturn

  All of Saturn’s moons are inhabited. The largest population is in the moon Titan’s principal city, Laketown. Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system, has a thick atmosphere that manifests as a reddish brown photochemical haze. The locals have come to like the color.

  Uranus

  The Uranus system is the poorest area in the outer system, and before the war, the local government was essentially a puppet for Met business interests.

  OBERON

  Principal settled moon in the system, it was a victim of an information plague grist-mil attack by Federal forces during the war.

  Neptune

  All moons inhabited. An important provider of energy in the outer system. The Mill operates within the semipermanent storm known as the Blue Eye of Neptune.