Core dotTech is concerned with the health, and quality of life of its carriers. This nanotechnology is self-sustaining, and operates independently; it does not need reprogramming of specialist instructions, but rather automatically repairs and maintains the bodies in which it exists. Specialised dotTech is an extraneous addition to the majority, core dotTech. It can adapt the body in a wide variety of ways, from encouraging the growth of hair and special skin, to the addition of whole limbs, modified breathing ability, and most things the human imagination can conceive. Humans exercise a degree of control over dotTech, swallowing tablets or applying skin-passing gels containing specialised cultures to adapt their body in predetermined ways.
DotTech is one of the defining aspects of t'T culture. Other cultures, such as the Wheah, refuse to carry the sophisticated problem-solving dotTech of the t'T, believing it to be devilish, an interference with God's divine purpose. Nonetheless, simpler, older forms of pre-programmed nanotechnology are widely used within the Wheah.
DRAGONSAlso known as GRAPPLING LEVERS. The chief method of moving large mass through space (for architectural purposes or world-building) in the realms of the t'T and the Wheah. A similar device may be operant amongst the Palmetto tribes, but information is scarce. A 'dragon' establishes a focussed gravitational grapple between the object to be moved and a much more massive nearby object – for instance, the local star. The disparity of mass means that effectual leverage is a straightforward matter around a particular node. Very large objects can be moved through normal space in this way.
EMBREAn orange-coloured opiate drink, popular in the Tongue-ward systems of the t'T.
Embre opens the doors of the mind, plots paths. [Ab-Kemic (t'T), Praise of Madness. A Poem.]
It is characteristic of the hedonism and dissolution of the peoples of the fast-space that they are so many of them addicted to such a Demon's potion as 'embre' and 'aroin'. [Wheah propaganda broadcast, twenty-third system.]
FASTER-THAN-LIGHT TRAVELThe capability for travelling faster than the Einstein quantity c was developed within two hundred years of the first space flight. The transport depends upon a very rapid processing of quantum recalibration; it is not possible (for quantum reasons) to be absolutely precise about the co-ordinates of these recalibrations, but a general direction can be established easily enough. With a suitably sophisticated processing capability speeds very much in excess of c can be achieved, subject to two major constraints. One is size; the larger the object being moved the less efficient the quantum relocation, with efficiency dropping off in a stepped exponential pattern from a notional mathematical point (which can, theoretically, be accelerated infinitely fast) through to a sphere of 1.24 metres diameter which can be accelerated to several thousand c in ideal conditions. Larger than this and the acceleration drops so markedly as to become sublight at under 2 metres, and less efficient than other modes of acceleration quickly after that. (The 1.24 metres threshold is a function of the Planck length.) Early attempts to miniaturise spacecraft, or to send only automated and probe-machines faster than light, were not satisfactory for human needs; so the system of developing what eventually became Zhip-packs to move individuals solitarily through space was developed. Spaceships are not a major aspect of t'T culture, although a certain number of them do exist for sublight travel. The second constraint is the relatively small area of space uncontaminated by the various interference and disruptive elements of dissipated superstring and gravitational material. The t'T is a culture in which faster than light travel is prevalent, but many areas of the galaxy (for instance Palmetto space) permit only sublight travel. See FAST SPACE, SLOW SPACE, SUBLIGHT SPACE, T'T, WHEAH, PALMETTO TRIBES.
FAST-SPACESpace in which faster-than-light travel is possible, to an upper limit of about 3000c or three thousand times the speed of light; distinct from 'slow-space' and 'sublight space'. Travel at such speeds effectively avoids Einsteinian time-dilation effects.
Recent developments suggest that fast-space is not a natural occurrence. Its provenance, however, remains a mystery.
[Committee of the Seventh and Twelfth (t'T), Official
Report O.]
FRACTION-GODReligious dogma of the Wheah. Many in the t'T believe it to be a single religion, but in fact it is a belief system that takes many forms across the Wheah, existing as three main doctrines. Historio-theologically speaking it is a development of broad mono-trinitarianism from the ancient world, a belief in one God from within the perspective that God is three in one; and therefore a belief that God is only a third of Him/Herself. The most popular form of Fractionarianism amongst the Wheah is that God created three universes, and we exist in one (variously believed to be the 'parental' [in our terms, God the Father] universe; the 'offspring' [God the Son] universe; only extreme sects believe ours to be the 'Holy Spiritual' universe). According to this faith, the inadequacy of and evil in our universe is explained by the fact that we only have access to a third of the godhead; and the ultimate destiny of the cosmos is to be reunited with its two other universes at the end of things. A second, lesser but still widespread strand of fractionarianism sees God as subject to entropic laws. Believers in this see our universe as the only one that exists, but assert that the once whole God has now diminished to a mere fraction of His/Her former self. According to this religion, at some point in the future God will cease to be altogether; and with this 'death of God' the universe itself will die. The third version of 'fraction-God' faith is more akin to a primitive animism; various phenomena, particularly stars and nebulae, are seen as having divine presence, each one being a fraction of the whole.
The fraction-God delivers a fraction of Grace; but since we are talking of the nature of Divine Grace, which at the end-time is infinite, we must remember that a little is enough. God fills what God fills, and after that there is an absence, a vacuum; to that vacuum in the Spirit of our universe we give the name Demon. [Haj7oussi (Wheah), Religious Questions: Fifteen Meditations and a Map.)
GLICEThe language most common across the t'T. A distant descendent of the old 'English' tongue, via 'Amgl-ish' (or 'Amerenglish'). The development of this language demonstrates interesting aspects. The common tongue of Amglish disintegrated during the early days of space travel, when the distances involved meant centuries might pass between contacts, and one hundred and eleven separate and distinct descendants of Amglish have been documented. With the coming of faster-than-light travel and the sudden reintegration of a widespread galactic population, language imploded, guided by the necessity of mutual communication, around a form of ur-Glice, and as the technologies perfected themselves modern Glice became established widely. In other cultures, such as the slower-travelling Wheah or the disparate Palmetto tribes, a number of different languages prevail.
The story of linguistic development reaches, in Mediate and Modern Glice, an extraordinary dead end. Amglish lasted as a common tongue with only trivial change for five hundred years; over the next thousand years various derivatives mutated and changed with remarkable rapidity; but then, two thousand years before the present, Glice assumed a general currency and language development simply stopped, except for some non-essential vowel shifts. Of all the major artefacts of our civilisation, material and virtual, Glice is the one that has lasted the longest. [Ban-darita (t'T), Poems on the Hypo-Linguistic Development and Stasis of Mediate and Modern Glice (here translated into prose).]
GRAPPLING LEVERS See DRAGONS.
HAÜD-MACHINES (sometimes translated as 'ROBOT').There are few technical units or machines of human size in the worlds of the t'T; automated jobs are almost all done by nano-machines, and inter-personal work is undertaken by actual human beings. In t'T culture, periods of 'work' represent a wished-for break from the endless rounds of leisure and recreation, and most people are happy to do such labour provided only it is interesting enough. One such job – handling and greeting visitors at planetary orbitals – is very widely undertaken by human workers, who get to meet an interesting range of people when
washing off their foam and orienting them in the new place. On a few worlds, however, this work is automated too. Haüd-machines are person-sized pieces of programmed technology; a hard skeleton is overlaid with smart-gel that shapes and adapts itself to tasks (forming, for instance, 'fingers', 'gripping limbs', 'tentacles', 'sound-boards' or whatever). Each Haüd-machine is programmed with a complex processor, enough for their tasks but not of sufficient complexity to mean that they have AI or sentient status.
JAILSTARThe insertion of a spherical living-space into the star Axa(b)-8682 was undertaken to house the criminal Ins al t'Gr after his double murder quasi-religion. Since his death it has housed seven inmates.
He went to space in a religious cult/In a cult he went to space.
The tiger, the tiger, and he killed two humans.
They built him the seedpod jailstar, deep in the heart of a sun;
[vocoder] heart of a sun, cult to space, etc.
They called the tiger/The tiger/They called him the tiger. [wich-Bona-al-adred (t'T) Al T'gr 'the tiger': musico-vocal for piano, voice, uhr-monium and template.]
LATAKPopular t'T sport, involving three teams of seven players. The rules are complicated, but are based upon throwing a 'pij', a form of dart, so that it catches in a designated opponent's hair. Hair can be any length; there is more credit and honour in a LaTak player having hair as long as possible, but the rules only stipulate that a player has hair longer than 1.5 centimetres. If the pij knocks the scalp the score is counted as one point, but if it catches in free hair without touching skin (for instance, as long hair is swirling through the air as a player spins about) it is counted as three points. Players may carry only one pij at any one time, but once thrown another may be collected from the distribution point in the centre of the playing pitches. Pijs caught in hair must be carried through to the end of the game; it is not unusual for a player to end a game carrying twenty or more of these darts, and since each weighs well over a kilogram this is far from comfortable. There are three accredited layouts for playing pitches, and many more unofficial ones; Children's LaTak is played all on one level, but Adult and League LaTak courts are several levels tall.
PALMETTO TRIBESThe Glice term for a range of peoples living in the sublight space proximate to the t'T. Very little is known about these peoples; rumours are that they are fiercely loyal to family, and that internecine warfare is common. 'Palmetto', meaning 'Littlehand' is a Glice name from a myth; an individual who fathers hundreds of children in order to devour them and so be assured of a supply of food – a bogeyman.
The Tall Child drifted and drifted, and arrived at the space of the t'T, where she prospered; the Broad-bellied Child drifted and drifted, and arrived at the space of the Wheah, where she fell into mental error, conditioned into believing the impossible things of the Wheah, but at least she lived a life. But the Small-and-thin Child drifted and drifted into the realms of the Palmetto tribes, where she was savagely chopped into a thousand pieces with laser knives, and all the pieces thrown into separate stars, for they are a barbarous peoples in that part of space. [Children's Sleep-time Story (t'T).]
Littlehand howled with rage, and set his beast-people to run down the hill. Raising his deformed left hand, bright red and a quarter the size of the right, over his head he cried out 'I swear by this little hand to enslave everybody in this village!' [ju-ju-manneai (t'T), Littlehand: the saga, prose recital.]
PEBBLEPopular game of skill and chance in many t'T systems. The playing board is a circular platter with flat rim and conical centre; playing pieces are pebbles of white, blue, or transparent hue. Two players place and move these pebbles in shallow grooves and specific nodes on the board, sometimes shunting opponent's or their own pieces along or down into the dip. A player loses if their pieces are stacked two or more high in the depression at the centre of the game; if any of their pieces are knocked so hard they rise up from the central dip, that player wins.
'POLICE', THEIn a society such as t'T, almost entirely free of crime, there is no need for standing police or military forces. Any citizen might become 'police' if the eventuality required it, although in practice there are a number of citizens who tend to specialise in the role. The 'police' in the t'T are mostly concerned with investigating unusual natural phenomena, unpredicted stellar flares, planetary convulsions, anything out of the ordinary that turns up liable to threaten life. The very rare instances of crime in t'T space are also within the provenance of these temporarily assigned citizens.
ROBOTSee HAÜD-MACHINES.
SLOW-SPACESpace in which faster-than-light travel is possible, but only intermittently, and with an upper limit severely reduced from that experienced in 'fast-space'. Speeds of three c (three times the speed of light) are unusual in slow-space, and a more usual 2.5 c or 2 c prevails. Einsteinian time dilation has only minor effect at such speeds, adding 5% or more to the benchmark timeline.
SPAN-TONA form of ceremonial weapon, a lengthy pike-like object, carried by the hereditary rulers of the Askleroth cluster. 'Span' is a Glice word meaning 'of long length and small girth' and 'Ton' means 'weapon.' Other ceremonial devices include the 'Ton-brijouels' and the 'spik-en-span'.
SUBLIGHT SPACESpace in which the interference from matter, gravity and other weak-force pollutants means that faster-than-light travel cannot be achieved. Most of the galaxy is sublight space.
TONGUE, THEA stretch of space rimwards of the t'T in which only sublight travel is possible; it marks the effective border of territories between the Wheah and the t'T.
The Tongue, where our fast-space detunes into a vapour, and all speed stops. [wich-Bona-al-adred (t'T), Contours of t'T. An opera with three acts and a sculptural interlude, Act 1.]
TRENCH, THEAlso 'The Great Gravity Trench', 'The Gravity Wall'. A large-scale gravity phenomenon running through the heart of t'T space, and according to some theories the reason why this broad patch of fast-space was cleared in the first place. There are many theories as to the provenance and nature of this thousand light-year-long strip of intense gravitational space-time depression, a folding so pronounced as to constitute a unique vertical drop-down spatial phenomenon. Theories as to the origin of this peculiar 'rip' in space-time are manifold; but the very existence of a gravitational object that does not so much warp space-time as tear it altogether has caused the science of gravity to be reappraised. Up to 1200 metres of the phenomenon, the gravitational attraction is minimal; from 1200 metres to 1.2 metres gravity approaches 1g; closer than that it approaches the infinite potential of a black hole (with the difference that a black hole affects space all around it logarithmically as does any gravitational object).
T'T, THEThe generic name for the swathe of fast-space in the mid-spiral arm of Galaxy A, and for the peoples who inhabit this space. The name is a Glice self-identification, derived from a worn-down or abbreviated form of 'to Tau' ('the People', or 'the Fans-of-the-Same', or more loosely 'us'). The t'T regard themselves as humanity's first successful Utopian society.
WHEAH, THEThe Glice term for a wide range of peoples inhabiting the slow-space and sublight areas rimward from t'T. Although a limited degree of faster-than-light travel is possible across a percentage of the spaces of the Wheah, in general they inhabit sublight spaceships of great size and population, and travel slowly, command of the ships passing down through generations. 'Wheah' is derived from the Mediate Glice word for 'where? (far away or distance unknown)', as opposed to the word 'hiah', meaning 'where? (near by)'.[31] The most common Wheah self-identification is 'allamk', which means (in their own trading language) 'the people of the fraction-God'; some Wheah call themselves the 'gof or 'travellers'.
Where do they go to, the Wheah? When you're asleep in your bed? [(t'T; author deliberately anonymised) Allosaurus; a Grand Opera in Fifteen Acts.]
ZHIP-BOXor ZHIP-PACK Primary technology for faster-than-light travel throughout human space; especially widely used amongst the t'T. Worn directly against the skin, as close as practicable to the centre of gravity, t
his machine (a powerful processor although non-sentient) puts out needle quantum-foam that continually redefines the position of a material body at the atomic orbital level. The quantum jumps of electrons and positrons from various positions of potential around an atomic nucleus are immediate; the same process, multiplied billions of times, relocates an atomic aggregation, such as a person, faster than light. These instantaneous relocations, co-ordinated and directed in an environment free of interference, promotes extremely rapid travel. The fastest recorded journey by Zhip-box is 3002.15 c over a distance of four hundred light years. Travellers are encased in foam as prophylactic against the vacuum, and a modicum of protection against impact – although at such high speeds any impact would be fatal. Impacts, however, are very rare; it is a function of faster-than-light travel that processors become extraordinarily sensitive to gravity, and paths automatically avoid larger gravitational foci (like water choosing the lowest point to flow along, faster-than-light travel inverts the gravitational potential beyond a certain level). Einsteinian time effects are also minimised; FTL, such effects follow a fractal sine pattern, and between 2790.8 and 3000 + c are negligible. 'Zhip' is a Glice word meaning 'very fast.'
Adam Roberts - Stone(2002) Page 29
