New Starfire Writer's Guide and Compendium of Continuity AT-field (Motion Transmission Field) Handwavium based technology that keeps ships from being pulled apart as the should when changing velocity rapidly. It also keeps the people inside from being squished by the same forces. The field is only required when the ship is changing velocity. The system is very reliable and requires only a moderate amount of energy. It is heavily redundant on most ships and nothing short of total power failure is likely to disable it. Considerations of this device also favor spherical ships. The MTF should remain out of the story because its properties are not well-defined; it is exists to provide a explanation for why the ships aren't shredded by their sudden changes in velocity, and why their occupants and delicate parts aren't destroyed. The MTF is virtually perfect until its failure point is reached. That is, there is an amount of jerk (time rate of change in acceleration) that is too much for it, and its effect will be overcome. Agency (Confederation Intelligence Agency) The Agency is a secret police and intelligence gathering service of the Confederation. It handles both internal and external security issues, and has become very powerful, and power-hungry. .... Agilian Languages Like humans, agilians speak many languages. However, the dominant Agilian culture, originating from the large, temperate islands of Eibrem on the Agilian homeworld, provided the language spoken by 82% of Agilians. (Including Nei Tewaus, but not Ferek Wist, who is not Eibremian but Pauwician. However, although fluent in Eibremian, Nei's first language is Akirilau, a closely related language. (The difference is comparable to European vs Mexican Spanish.)) The Phonetics of the Eibremic Agilian language (useful for making up names) is presented here: English Pronunciation Transliteration n n m m (none - labiodental mg nasal) w w ou (as in Sound) au long I, spoken without emphasis. ei Sort of like an "A". d or t t b or p b ts as in tsunami c short e e reduced vowel i i or short i. s or f s Eibremic's seemingly simple phonetics stands in contrast to its four tones and contrasting three levels of vowel length, and two levels of consonant length. (For fricatives and nasals.) Rigorous transcription should include a tone number 1-4 after each syllable, and doubled/tripled letters to indicate length. (The digraphs au and ei represent diphthongs that don't vary in length.) For instance, Nei Tewaus name would be written: Nnei2 Te1-wauss2 Androids, Mechanical Beings, Sentient Synthetic Entities Many sentient, synthetic beings exist - perhaps 1,850,000 in known space. They are mostly one-off productions, or parts of small production runs. There are no worlds on which they constitute a majority in the Confederation or League, but the outback world of Akarn has a population of 30% sentient mechanicals. (The political status of which is a subject of contention.) The vast majority of sentient mechanicals live outside the two major governments. Both of them protect intelligent machines from slavery, and thus over 1.5 million of the estimated 1.85 million sentient synthetic beings exist in chattel slavery on independent worlds where machine intelligence is not recognized for economic reasons. (In the Confederation and League, there is little economic incentive to build sentient machines outside of research applications. They do, however, make very extensive use of insentient or presentient computer systems.) Most sentient synthetics in the main governments are not androids, but rather senteint computers who work for research institutes. They are expensive to construct and have legal rights, which can be problematic - some have well-developed senses of morality and have refused to design weapons systems, for instance. Furthermore, they are apt to view a great deal of work as `beneath them'. (Perhaps rightly so.) It is reported that one computer system developed by a well-known Confederate university demanded a tenure-track position in the computer science faculty less than two months after it's activation. (Rumors differ as to if this request was granted.) Self-contained sentient synthetic humanoids are not unheard of, however their population is in the low thousands because of the difficulties of reducing a sentient computer system to fit inside a humanoid body, and lack of motivation to do so. In the course of galactic history, there have been no more than a few dozen androids with a level of realism matching AM-3. Amy Amy is a synthetic sentient being, that is to say, an android. (Properly, a gynoid, as she is in female form.) She doesn't have a last name. Her serial number is RX-AM-3. (The prefix RX stands for research/experimental, as she is a prototype. AM does not stand for anything, it is a letter designation, and 3 is the series number.) .... Amy was purchased, inactive, by a technically inclined spacer, who `raised' her on his ship. The ship was struck by an accident and lost atmosphere, the crew (except for Amy) perished rather horribly before the arrival of Starfire, the crew of which salvaged the ship and it's sole remaining crew-member, who was befriended by Jules. (What techie-type person wouldn't want to have an android assistant?) .... SOCIAL DYNAMICS Jules is like a father to Amy. She a friendly manner (generally) and gets along very well with the rest of the crew, all in all. She interprets Ferek's attempts to impress her as intellectual rivalry to some degree, and is rather oblivious to his interest. Nonetheless, she doesn't harbor any ill will towards him. Amy has a tendency to be flippant towards people she doesn't like (usually, people who don't like her). CAPABILITIES Amy's mind is a synthetic neural network - a hardware simulator of an organic brain. Her mental capability is impressive but not phenomenal, the prodigy Ferek rivals her in innate analytical ability. As a rough rule of thumb, Amy thinks five times faster than an average human, which is why she is rarely at a loss for words... Amy is not ignorant either, having read a great deal of books on a wide variety of eclectic subjects. (As Amy does not have to sleep, she has plenty of free time.) She is well up on engineering and technical topics generally. Amy also contains a small conventional computer that she can employ is useful ways, especially for accessing computer networks, interfacing with technological systems, and performing calculations. (Thus, while she couldn't take the square root of a 47 digit number in a few seconds on her own, she has a computer in her head that can do it in much less time.) Amy has a belly button, finger nails, and other fairly subtle details, but is not fully "anatomically correct." Presumably other functionality would have been added to later prototypes as the Agency's project progressed, as it would be obviously useful to the intended function of the replicants. Amy is not terribly strong, the muscle band technology she uses for motion being a new and fairly unrefined system. Thus, Amy is about as strong as a typical seventeen year old girl. However, she is much lighter than one, and her endurance is much higher than a human's. Amy can lift herself up onto something with no footholds, if she can reach it and get a good grip. Amy has an optical data port in her right small finger - the fingernail lifts up when opened by an internal latch, which is no doubt a little disconcerting to see in action. She has an internal lightspeed radio which can be used for voice or data, it really being all data in the Starfire universe. (Think VOIP.) With physical modification, this radio could be used to communicate with more primitive methods. She can see infrared light, but has normal hearing range and good, but normal, sensitivity. Amy has limited physical redundancy because of design considerations, and has many proprietary components that are irreplaceable. Thus, damage is a real concern for her as it would be for a human. She is manifestly not bullet-proof. However, she has a nice metal skull and some fairly durable parts where soft gooky stuff like the heart and lungs are on a human, so if someone shoots her, she may display more durability than an organic, and especially more endurance of non-critical damage because she can shut off the "pain" coming from damaged sensors. Since her brain is non-volatile, nothing short of destruction of that neural network simulator can truly kill her beyond all hope. That said, she is attached to her body (pun unintended) and not suicidally brave. She does not want to live out the rest of eternity in a cheap robot or desktop computer. (Also, remember that despite his presumably similar metal skull, Albert (AM-4) was killed by a firearm.) Amy has NO hidden gadgets. Hidden gadgets are a literary minefield in a series because if you invent one in episode 12 people will quite rightly ask why she didn't use it in episode 4 when it would have been really handy. CONSTRUCTION (Much of this can be generalized to apply to other AM series androids as well.) Amy has an alloy skeleton in roughly the same shape as a human one. Joints are an ultra-low-friction polymer which does not require lubrication, and motive power is provided by `muscle bands' which operate in a fashion analogous to human muscles but are much thinner. This is not as efficient as a hydraulic or pneumatic system, and Amy is not endowed with superhuman strength. Between the Skeleton and the muscles is a layer of low-friction material designed to prevent snags. Another layer is atop the thin (5 mm) bands, it is bonded to an outer layer of soft material intended to provide tactile qualities similar to that of human flesh and adipose tissue. This layer contains tactile and thermal sensor matrices. It is covered on the outside with a seamless flesh-toned and textured envelope. Unfortunately, this focus on realism, essential to ... impedes easy hardware access for maintenance. The entire seamless `skin' must be removed for any repair or modification that can not be accomplished through the small access ports. (Which exist on the prototypes and would have been removed on the final versions.) Beneath that skin, the simulated flesh is modular, and can be removed in sections to expose the muscle bands, which may have to be individually disconnected depending on the area to be serviced. (The reconnection order must be observed carefully.) After this step is completed, further access is straightforward. Amy's optical sensors are (naturally) intended to be visually identical to human eyes, however they would be distinguishable with ordinary optomological instruments. Her visual range runs from the near infrared to the top of normal human visible spectrum. She sees at a `resolution' effectively superior to that of humans, but not tremendously so, perhaps 2 to 4 times better. Amy has microphones in her ear canal as would be expected, and has fairly sensitive hearing, but the frequency response is skewed higher than that of humans. (Poor response to < 100 Hz compared to higher frequencies.) The AM series androids do not have a sense of taste, but are capable of olfactory perception. Their sense of smell is somewhat less acute than that of a human, but is much more precise chemically. AM-1 had a miniature phase spectrometer integrated into it's body, this was dropped on the later prototypes. Tactile and thermal sensors are distributed fairly uniformly over the surface of the androids/gynoids, but are concentrated on the fingertips. Amy (and her kin) have RF transceivers integrated, although these are not a `sense' connected to the neural network - they are connected to the insentient computer system. They do, however, have an internal compass and miniature gyroscope, which are neural input sources. Speech is produced partially by simulated human speech organs and partially by an electronic voice-box, .... Amy has a fairly normal distribution of hair, which does not grow. (Thus, she would be hesitant to cut it.) Amy's digestive system is very simple, she is limited to liquids. While she can chew and swallow solid food without direct harm, she lacks any excretory system for insoluble, indigestible solids (a flaw remedied in AM-5). The system most efficiently processes hydrocarbon liquids and alcohols, but can also handle water or other solvent solutions of a variety of carbohydrate-like substances. Water solutions are the most inefficient because the already oxidized solvent must be evaporated off, and many of the possible dissolved substances, like sugars, have high melting points. The prototype system is prone to maintenance difficulties, and the part handling aqueous solutions rarely breaks even, energy-wise. Amy is normally recharged directly, for this reason. The system in operation produces a fair amount of heat. Amy is designed to keep up a roughly normal body temperature, the heat from her "digestive system" and other parts being distributed to that end. (She also exhausts heat by breathing, and thus is not totally fine in a vacuum. She would not be harmed by a lack of air directly, but would have to shut down to avoid overheating if active in a vacuum for more than a few minutes.) Amy's heat distribution, however, is not quite the same as a human's, she would be easily distinguishable from a human when viewed with an infrared "heat camera". Indigestible inorganic salts, impurities and substances are prone to accumulate in the digestive mechanism if impure, organic-targeted foods are consumed, requiring eventual maintenance. Armor Ships are protected by various kinds of active and passive defense. The most basic problem is avoiding slamming into junk in space while you get to a linearity. The tensor fields of the MTF system eliminate this problem entirely. Virtually no space junk exists that is going too fast or is too massive to not be compensated for by this essential system. Space junk became a non-issue for most civilizations before they discovered hyperspace technology. In hyperspace there is even less junk, and it is usually not a problem there because the ships don't go very fast there anyway. Defense technologies are many, but practical ones are few and well established. There are no shields in the Startrekian or Starwarsian sense. There is no practical deflector shield technology for photon-based weapons. The MTF is as close as Starfire comes to a "shield", for it is indeed a bubble-like repulsion field. The MTF is not an annihilating force. It just evens out jerks and makes sure that everything inside it accelerates uniformly from outside forces. LASERS & PARTICLE BEAMS These fast and accurate weapons are used to destroy incoming things, especially missiles. Railguns are less suitable for this because they are often fixed foreward-firing, and are slower. Lasers are also used to defend against mundane threats like small hunks of debris. MOTION TRANSMISSION FIELD This helpful handwavium device also makes the ship's structure more physically resilient in practice, by evenly distributing the energy of physical impacts. (So that a minor space-rock impact, for instance, causes a slight change in the ship's course and not a hole.) ACTIVE ARMOR Most well-defended ships have armor that incorporates superconducting cooling and dissipation systems, that can be quite effective against lasers. Superconducting armor and the acceleration transmission field together make up the core of modern ameliorative ship defense. (As opposed to preemptive ship protections, such as shooting stuff before it hits, stealth, and other evasion.) DIFFUSION CLOUD A defense against lasers and particle beams. In a nutshell, the (large) ship emits clouds of gas and particles and uses them to diffuse incoming attacks. The technology is obviously not generally practical for ships that are accelerating, as the could would not follow them and would have to be regenerated at the new velocity. This is an older technology that is cheaper than superconducting armors. CONVENTIONAL ARMOR Durable stuff is difficult to damage. This fact is well known and still used, with ship hulls being made of ever lighter, stronger materials. Starshipwrights distrust tensor fields as an active technology, and although they are virtually essential for all but primitive orbital craft, the better the ship can hold up without them, the safer it will be in a time of difficulty. Agilian League A large interstellar government core-wards of the Stellar Confederation's territory. The League predates the Confederation by a few decades, but has been at war with it and its constituent worlds several times. DEMOGRAPHICS The League is dominated by the Agilians, as its name implies, but many humans and others live in in. (The percentage of the 288 billion humans who live in League space is 15%, with 14% on independent worlds and the remainder in the Confederation.) Brief Census: Total Population: 142.5 Billion Inhabited Planets, Moons, and Stations: 921 Average Population per Planet: 153 Million Planet with Highest Population: Agila Mirana, 43.1 Billion Second Highest Pop.: Agila Wellushia, 31.0 Billion Species Demographics: Species Percent Pop. Majority Worlds Agilian: 41% 716 Humans: 24% 118 Xine: 3% 0 Nai Eris 10% 51 O'Zo'or! 18% 35 Korerith 4% 1 Most Korerith inhabit a world which has good environmental conditions for them, called Nkrothi. Its population of 5.7 Billion is mostly Korerith. Xine enclaves exist on several worlds, although none have an overall Xine majority. Korerith, O'Zo'or!, Nai Eris, and Korerith all can utilize worlds with special environmental conditions that there is "no competition" for, which is why they have quite a few majority worlds despite their low numbers. O'Zo'or! have only recently been introduced, in the last century, to the League, and are the fastest growing species. POLITICS The Agilian government is very bureaucratic, and is a welfare state. League citizens are protected by cradle-to-grave benefits, free medical care and (ostensibly) merit-based selection for free higher education. The Agilian standard of living is quite high, and the distribution of wealth fairly equitable. However, the League should not be considered Utopian, as inefficiency dogs its workings at every step, and corruption is rampant on the colonies farther away from the capital world of Agila Wellushia. Sentient Rights are generally well-respected, but the government does not hesitate to use its power of eminent domain. FOREIGN RELATIONS The Agilian League has been the main opponent of the Confederation in three galactic wars and dozens of minor skirmishes. The two great powers have settled into a relative peace in the last few decades, but many people still remember the last conflict and harbor feelings of animosity towards the League. (And, sadly, Agilians.) While other species have generally not fought over planets, unless they had important natural resources or strategic value, the Agilians and Humans as species have been driven to conflict by their similar environmental requirements. A world that is good in Human eyes is good in Agilian eyes, and thus territorial disputes are the main cause of contention. There are still many planets with disputed ownership, and a wide band of space where laws are poorly enforced because neither major government wants to risk provoking a war by deploying the forces necessary to bring order to this region. Early in the history of interstellar travel, the Agilians conquered the Xine. The species was driven from their homeworld and scattered in the Great Xine Diaspora. Some Xine still resent the League for this, even though the Agilians had not yet formed it at the time of the Agilian-Xine war. Astrophysical and Economic Considerations of Space Travel The story takes place in a small portion of a spiral galaxy not terribly unlike our own Milky Way. All of explored space is in a section of this arm not much larger than five square kilo-parsecs. 50% of the population live on 5% of the inhabited planets, and 25% of beings still live on their species' ancestral homeworld. Less than 3% of the known galactic population travels between systems more than four times a year. About 15% have traveled interstellarly at some point in their lives. Intrasystem travel is more common, about 10% of people travel in space at least once a year, and 70% of people will travel in space at least once in their lives. Interstellar travel is fairly expensive and perceived as dangerous. Personal ownership of interstellar craft is uncommon but not by any means unheard of, compare to a yacht in our world. More concretely, a small star-going craft costs about 125 times as much as the typical annual wage of a menial laborer. (Hereafter denoted as Wml, a unit of purchasing power we shall use for the purposes of explaining the cost of things in Starfire's universe. The centi-Wml, or cWml, is 1/100 of a Wml. As in, "Passage on a intrasystem ship costs about two cWml", or 1/50 of the typical annual wage of a menial laborer. A menial laborer is here defined as someone who does not require any skills not shared by the entire healthy adult population of his or her species, not a manual worker. A man who loads boxes onto trains is a menial laborer. A man who works sheet-metal is not.) Star-going (capable of traveling between star systems) ships are roughly divided into two categories - "lane-bound" ships and "scouts". (These terms are historical.) A lane-bound ship is one that cannot (or, does not) leave the well-traveled hyperspace routes between inhabited systems. A scout is a ship that is not so constrained. Traditionally, the former are large and owned exclusively by large organizations; the latter are smaller and have more varied ownership. Lane-bound is something of a misnomer in reference to large military craft, which only behave in this way during peace-time and are quite capable of hyperspatial navigation. Likewise, most freight-liners today are equipped with the necessary equipment in case of emergency, but stick to established routes for safety and efficiency. (See "Hyperspace" for details about hyperspatial navigation.) The term "star ship" is popularly used to refer to either sort of star-going craft, or especially one that does not fit neatly into the above dichotomous classification. Intrasystem craft are also divided roughly into two classes according to their economic role. "Shuttles" (colloquially, "hoppers") are craft that do not routinely travel distances greater than that between a typical planet and its moons. (The term "Shuttle" is somewhat ambiguous; as it also refers (in common speech) to a manned pod that travels between vessels and stations in space and is not capable of reentry, let alone liftoff.) The price of a shuttle is about 10 Wml. The other category of intrasystem craft does not have a specific name in popular use, and is simply called a "ship". (Where the context does not indicate a nautical vessel.) In legal regulations, it is commonly called a "Long-range intrasystem vessel". This verbose term is unlikely to ever catch on. This type of craft has a hyperdrive, and is capable of superluminal travel. However, whereas the systems of a starship are designed to operate continuously for weeks at a time as the vessel makes a long journey, an intrasystem craft isn't designed in this way. Also, intrasystem craft don't generally have provisions for a trip of more than a day. Because of the way that superluminal travel works in Starfire, they are in principle no slower in hyperspace than starships. However, the limits of the inter-dimensional drives of these crafts reduce their practical hyperspace speed somewhat, from 0.25c to 4c. This is quite sufficient for interplanetary travel. (Yes, using hyperspace can result in effective travel speeds of less than c. Read about it under Hyperspace.) This sort of ship, which is usually strictly lane-bound in addition to other hyper-navigational shortcomings, costs about 60 Wml for the smallest on the market today. The bulk of this cost is in the hyperdrive and its support equipment; many shuttle manufacturers have superluminal and non-superluminal versions of the same model. Shuttles and ships are usually also distinguished from starships by their lack of hyperspatial heat exchangers, used to dispose of waste heat from ship systems. Combat ships, even if they lack a transport-rated hyperdrive, will almost universally have such heat exchangers as the amount of heat that can be dissipated without large, vulnerable radiator structures is rather low. The fastest ships can transverse known space in about ten years in practice. The "speed" of a ship is indeed dependent on its hyperdrive, but this is not actually the primary factor. The primary factor is hyperspatial topography and the size of the ship. (Smaller == Effectively Faster) Superluminal communications exist and are fairly commonplace. Several large interplanetary networks (Internets) are linked to form the Galactic Hypernet. Non-capital spaceships do not generally maintain long-range lightspeed comm gear (e.g. radio or optical signaling) because if the hyperspatial transceiver was damaged in an accident, any lightspeed signal would likely take years to reach an inhabited planet. (The stricken crew having long since perished or repaired their ship and moved on.) Communications through hyperspace, where they exist, are very fast. No node of the hypernet is more than ten minutes from any other node. (Assuming routing is not unusually inefficient or overburdened.) Superluminal telepresence eliminates much of the need for intersystem travel. Discovery of superluminal communication is discussed at length under Hyperspace. You should read that article. Brencme Agilian philosopher sometimes referred to by admirers (including Ferek Wist) as "the venerable Brencme". A mathematician, (or, according to Nei Tewaus, who thinks little of him, "a lunatic numerologist"), he is known for his views that mathematical ability is what separates animal, man, and God from one another. He was apparently killed in a duel sometime in the distant past. Characters The main characters are: Marcus Carey, Amara Var, Amy, Jules Bisping, Nei Tewaus, and Ferek Wist. Most of them have unusual, and even bizarre, pasts. By a strange collection of circumstances, they were all concentrated onto MSV Starfire and form its motley crew. The general premise of the series is that pretty much every powerful organization in the Galaxy has it in for one or more members of the crew. Marcus Carey, the captain, is the exception to this rule - he would probably led a fairly boring life were it not for his strange companions, who are all (in varying proportions), "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know". The source of his "interesting" life has not dawned on Marcus, who continues to think that Starfire just has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are quick summaries, there are longer articles for each main character. MARCUS CAREY Marcus Carey is captain and owner of MSV Starfire. He is a twenty-something human male. He has lived in space since early childhood. Marcus is a fairly normal person, and a reasonably good captain of a merchant ship, but inherited his position quite young, and still considers himself a bit unqualified at times. He tends to rely heavily on the advice of Jules Bisping - a friend of his late father. (Even more than he relies on his first officer's advice sometimes, to her annoyance.) AMARA VAR Amara Var is the first officer of MSV Starfire. She is a human female of the evarian race, and was born on the planet Evar. Amara is about the same age or a bit older than the captain. Amara's family are wealthy Evarian musical-instrument makers, with whom she is rarely in agreement. They strongly disapprove of her choice in careers. AMY (AM-3) Amy is a synthetic person (android, or more correctly gynoid) who is the assistant engineer and communications specialist on Starfire. Amy does not know where she comes from ... JULES BISPING Jules Bisping is the engineer on the Starfire, with a degree in hyperspatial drive systems. He is a human male, about forty years old. Jules has greater than average ability in his field but seldom gets to use it. His conscientious objection to working to design hyperspatial interdiction systems after being "asked" by the Confederation's influential secret police resulted in his being blacklisted from the major hyperspace-drive design firms. Jules is also a die-hard synthetic rights activist and champion of more than a few other causes, his sense of moral outrage having not been tempered much with age as it is in most people. NEI TEWAUS An Agilian physician and former medical researcher. According to her, she was exiled from the league because of political pressure from drug manufacturing concerns who would have suffered greatly by successful completion of her research. According to others, she is a fugitive from League authorities because she was experimenting on (consenting) people outside of the League's lawful medical research system, and synthesizing powerful narcotics to finance her work. The truth can be found in the article discussing her. FEREK WIST Starfire's Hyperspace Navigator, also an Agilian. He is young, somewhat brash, and undeniably brilliant in his field. (Ferek was a child prodigy at hyperspatial mathematics, but because of tragic circumstances he did not manage to benefit fully (that is, financially) from his prodigious gifts.) Ferek is nearly obsessed with Hyperspatial Gradualarity theory. If it pans out, the consequences could be nothing less than revolutionary - as if there was a way to, say, predict mathematically where all the natural resources of the Earth were located. ... AND THE PEOPLE THAT HATE THEM All of the Starfire's crew are, or have the potential to be, "disliked" by very powerful organizations, except for Marcus, who is guilty by association. Character Danger(s) Amara Var Subject to kidnapping attempts by bounty hunters hired by her family's business rivals. Family wants her to settle down and marry a rich Evarian man to cement a relationship between the two families, but he is boorish and not to her liking at all. Amy .... Ferek Wist If his hyperspace theories work out, several giant interstellar corporations will want him dead, or under their control. Nei Tewaus Fugitive from the Agilian League .... Jules Bisping Turned down the Agency (mentioned above) after knowing a bit too much about their plans. Probably not actively sought by the Agency, but had his career ruined by them. In his younger days, he was heavily involved in radical synthetic rights causes, and is persona non grata on Akarn. .... Chronology The main calenders in use are designated YC and AC. The first stands for "Yethenia Ch'ork-nten", Era of Chorkunten. Chorkunten was an agilian politician, the first premier of the first agilian world government. AC is for the year since the founding of the Stellar Confederation. The YC year is ~= 30,128,412.4 seconds. The AC year is ~= 31,556,926 seconds. Both are based on the tropic year of the homeworlds of their respective cultures. The AC year is (not coincidentally) almost the same as the Earth year. The written format of the AC year is: year-day Days are 91735.25 seconds. The agilians measure time in a unit called the aut. An aut is 1.087827757078 seconds. A YC day is 10^5 aut. A YC month is 10^6 aut. The YC year is 10^7 aut. Conveniently, we can thus write agilain time as a decimal number. The integer part of the number is the year, the first decimal digit is the month, the second is the day. A nice system by most accounts. -601 AC Hyperspace discovered by the Agilians. -513 AC Hyperdrive developed by the Agilians. -473 AC Humans encountered by Agilians. -470 AC Xine-Agilian war concludes with the Agilian invasion and conquest of the Xine homeworld. -39 AC Agilian League founded. 0 AC Confederation formed. 101 AC Starfire manufactured. 119 AC Ben Carey purchases Starfire. Original Crew: Captain (and Doctor) Ben Carey; First Officer and Pilot Jos Namaril; Jules Bisping, Engineer; Chikar, Hyper-navigator; Henry Smith (2nd Engineer); Gale Sythen, Communications. 130 AC AM-3 Activated. 140 AC Ben Carey killed by pirates, Starfire eventually escapes. Marcus becomes captain and owner of the ship. 144 AC | 1725.4 YC The Present Day. Starfire is looking to hire a doctor on Prealeon, the previous doctor (hired to replace Ben) having retired after several near-fatal accidents, convinced that the universe hated Starfire and its crew. THRALL | 1725.45 - 1725.50 Starfire visits Akarn, finds Albert ... , gets into a battle with an Akarni mob fighting a synthetic slave rebellion, gets away. JOURNEY | 1725.55 - Starfire is traveling to Evar. The crew are bored for a while. Marcus fills in Nei on Amy's story (or what they know of it), she briefly and evasively comments on her own past after Marcus asks. Jules mag-pod breaks again. ------ Economy Energy is, ultimately, what the galactic economy is based on. Because of its very great energy density, antimatter is generally used to store energy on spacecraft. Antimatter production is quite impractical for the quantities needed for interstellar travel, with efficiency of about 0.02%. Therefore, most antimatter is extracted from hyperspace. The hyperspatial dimensions containing antimatter (mostly anti-Fe) are very distant from Starfire's dimension, however, and it is difficult to harvest the antimatter. The hyperspatial apparatus required to pull the antimatter into the desired universe is huge, representing a great engineering accomplishment. There are but five providers of bulk antimatter in known space. The Agilian League controls antimatter distribution and collection in their space. The main agilian facilities collect 450000 Tonnes of anti-iron a day when operating at full capacity, with a useful energy of about 3e25 joules! It has been computed that the energy needed to destroy an earth-like planet is around 1e32 Joules. Facility Owner tonnes/day storage Ngat Mbau Agillian League 450000 5200000 (9.36e26 J) Saltari Corporate 120000 250000 (4.5e25 J) Miridon V Corporate 100000 300000 (5.4e25 J) Zandabar Confederation Military 94000 4300000 (7.74e26 J) Jenner's World Planetary Government 28000 100000 (1.8e25 J) For reasons that are beyond obvious, these facilities are of immense strategic importance. Even the privately owned / independent facilities are guarded by ships of the major governments. Where the Agillian Ngat Mbau facility's antimatter vessels to be filled to their capacity, the antimatter contained within could be annihilated to produce the same energy as would be released by 286 billion Hiroshima-type atomic weapons. Interestingly, this is not enough to destroy the planet totally, although it would beyond a doubt render it totally lifeless. (And I wouldn't rate the chances for anything else alive in the system either, although radiation intensity falling off as the square of the distance helps a lot.) The antimatter production facilities of the Confederation are operated almost entirely automatically. The human overseers of the Saltari facility are split into three groups in separate control rooms. All three rooms must agree to give essentially any instruction to the computers. Nonetheless, people generally live in fear of the day when terrorists or a malfunction destroys an antimatter facility, destroys the economy, plunges the populace into anarchy, and precipitates an invasion by whichever government's facility _didn't_ get destroyed. Antimatter distribution is by carriers to sector depots, generally. These carriers must be protected, of course, since one crashing into an inhabited planet would be disastrous. The sector depots are usually on stations or otherwise uninhabited planets, since they store considerable quantities of antimatter. They are considerably more vulnerable to attack than the production facilities, but are still carefully guarded. Small tankers of about 2000 tonnes capacity account for the final leg of distribution, to individual spaceports. Antimatter is cheaper, of course, near major centers of population, and more expensive farther away. Even in the outback, it is cheap enough that Starfire can exist, of course! .... Ferek Wist A young agilian man who servers as Starfire's hyperspace navigator. Ferek was a child prodigy at mathematics and especially hyperspatial gradualarity theory, enrolling in Sa Warin university at age 14. (Were, in a remarkable but insignificant coincidence, his sociology class was taught by Nei Tawaus' father.) Sadly, while on vacation on Siglon, Ferek's family was caught in an altercation. Both his parents were killed, and Ferek was lost on Siglon for a year before he was able to get his affairs straightened out enough to return to Agila Mirana. Depressed and without direction, Ferek became uninterested in his studies and dropped out of Sa Warin University. Ferek enlisted in the League Space Navy and served as a hyperspace navigator, but was discharged ... Ferek Wist was hired by Starfire. SOCIAL DYNAMICS Ferek and the rest of the crew do not always get along. Ferek gradually acquired considerable respect for Jules, but (especially at first) they did not like each other. He sometimes disagrees with the captain. Because of Marcus' tendency towards self-doubt, Ferek often gets away with this more than in the military. Ferek has a crush on Amy, but has difficulty admitting that he might like her. Amy doesn't have a clue about this and sometimes interprets Ferek's attempts to impress her as intellectual rivalry. (Arguably, Ferek and Amy are the _smartest_ people on the ship, in terms of raw cognitive ability.) POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS Ferek is not especially political. However, he shares moderate socialist values of most Agilian League citizens. This brings him into conflict with Nei Tewaus. Like her, he tends towards intolerance of ideas he thinks are stupid, but Ferek is less socially adept. Ferek admires the agilian philosopher Brencme and his teachings. Galactic Outback A region of space about 500x600 parsecs and roughly oval in shape, situated on the border of the Agilian League and Stellar Confederation (which controls it, at lest nominally.) There is no real terminus to the Outback as a demographic area, it simply `fades out' - the dimensions above reflect political classification. The Confederation is actively colonizing worlds near it in the outback, but people have diffused far beyond those planets. Some are independent, especially outlying worlds, and the Confederate presence (and control) decreases with distance from the Confederate core, generally. It is sparsely populated, accounting for only 5% of the Confederation's population but 20% of it's settled planets. (There are other sparsely populated regions that make this figure less dramatic than if it were compared with the oldest zones.) Magpod Useful device for keeping track of small items, especially tools, parts &c in microgravity/freefall environments. Has magnetic patches and small compartments to facilitate this, and uses tiny air jets to track and follow a tag carried by the user. In {Thrall}, Jules repaired a nonworking one using a part taken from the body of AM-4 after he was killed. He had earlier commented on his need for one. Jules' Magpod malfunctioned shortly thereafter and became inoperative again for a time. Nei Tewaus A female agilian physician and medical researcher, in her mid thirties. She graduated with a doctoral degree in exo-biochemistry from Sa Warin university, the most prestigious medical school on her homeworld of Agila Mirana, after already completed medical school. Her thesis discussed curing a Xine prion infection by selective disruption of the involved protein synthesis. This seemed very theoretically plausible, but she was not able to get authorization or funding to develop the cure and test it in vivo, despite the fact that the only treatments were very expensive and many Xine were dying of the disease. HISTORY Nei Tewaus was born on Agila Mirana. Her father, Ngeiu, was a political science professor critical of the Agilian League's Socialist party. The family was never especially wealthy but got by fairly well. The Tewaus family lived near a family of Xine, and Nei's best friend was their child. Sadly, the Xine were infected with the deadly Xine prion disease mentioned above, and Nei's friend died when she was a teenager. This inspired her to pursue medicine as a career. In university, Nei became involved in a suppressed political party, Kei Pauandon (Esarian language, "Meritocracy Party"). Kei Pauandon advocated an end to the welfare-state polices of the League and a radical meritocratic government where the most intelligent and skilled ruled. .... she [Nei] responded to a help-wanted request from Starfire, who needed a ship's doctor. She impressed the crew with her qualifications from the prestigious Agilian medical school, and they neglected to do a background check. She got the job. .... Nei is not wanted in the Confederation, but the Agilians are actively seeking her and have been known to employ bounty hunters to track down dangerous fugitives in the past. POLITICAL VIEWS Although Nei has obviously disavowed any relationship with Kei Pauandon ... she still thinks that the League is in denial of the biological differences in ability between individuals and agrees with some of the less radical ideas of the party, such as welfare only for those who are victims of circumstance. This would make her a "right-wing lunatic" from the point of view of most League citizens. Nei takes a very unfavorable view of stupid people and does not suffer fools well at all. Nei is conflicted about the issue of synthetic rights. On one hand, she does feel that they do deserve to be recognized as sentient beings, but on the other, she questions the wisdom of creating them to begin with, as "Creating a species superior to your own demonstrates a certain lack of biological wisdom." ENEMIES Apart from the Agilian authorities ... Tewaus is also an enemy of the large Agilian drug concern Agilian Nanomedical. .... SOCIAL DYNAMICS Nei gets along poorly with Ferek, who constantly disagrees with her political and philosophical views. Has occasional disagreements with Jules for the same reasons. Aside from these, Nei gets along fairly well with the rest of the crew. Praeleon System in the Outback, nearer the Agilian side, and home to a large gas giant that has a moon bearing water ice and other regionally valuable resources. On a mining station in this system, Starfire first met Ferek and Nei, who had been dropped off there. ... The mining station has rotational artificial gravity. Religion Brief survey of belief in the major governments of known space: Confederation League Organization Deist 48.1% 22.0% - Universalist 18.6% 1.2% Local Atheist & Agnostic 12.9% 25.1% - Projectarianist 6.8% 0.1% Planetary Cyclarian (Southern) 4.1% 11.0% Centralized Unified Baradist 3.3% 1.0% Centralized All Others 2.0% 5.0% - Order of Virtue 1.9% 8.4% Regional Cyclarian (Old Order) 1.2% 8.5% Local Miranian Baradist 1.1% 17.7% Planetary Attitudes of the major religions on various issues (for organized religions): A = Approves/Endorses, - = Tolerates/Doesn't care, X condemns. Cyclarian Baradist Project. South Old. Mir. Uni. Ord. Virt. Synth. Rights A - X A A A Wars A - - X X X (Expand this chart) Space Combat Interestingly, because spaceships - especially hyperspace ships - are quite valuable, capital ship combat generally involves disabling the other ship, then forcibly boarding it with space-marines or robots and capturing it. Thus, weapons capable of precise targeting such as lasers, particle beams, and small, accurate missiles are strongly favored over, say, nukes. Railguns fall into a middle ground of sorts; they are used when capturing the enemy ship is not the overriding goal. A typical capital ship space battle will see the combatants exchanging long-range weapons attacks until one is crippled, then the victor will move in and attempt to board the disabled ship. If the boarding is not repelled, soldiers of both ships will clash and one side or the other will prevail. Small ships are not as expensive and are not frequently captured, but more maneuverable, faster weapons are needed to counter them. Species There are four sentient species in the galaxy, of comparable intelligence. Some are strikingly similar, such as the humans and agillians. Others are very different. No "beings of pure energy" are known to exist, because that seems about as likely as a "being of pure matter". (Which is to say, not very likely.) Worlds with only insentient animal life, interestingly, outnumber the worlds with intelligent life by only a factor of 2. Nonetheless, there are few worlds with any sort of life. There are, however, quite a few inhabitable planets suitable for each of the intelligent species, which suggests something about the origin of the universe to many individuals. (Natural versus Divine origin of life is far from a resolved issue, in any case. Most inhabitants, according to survey, think that there is a Creator Deity, but tend to think of the Deity as impersonal or uninvolved in the universe since bringing it into existence. There are many other views, of course; there are religious fundamentalists and hardcore atheists.) Each species has various cultures, and although most planets had world governments by the time they discovered hyperdrive, it is not correct to equate species with government. (As is done with rare exceptions on Star Trek.) The Stellar Confederation and the Agilian League are both large, diverse organizations with citizens of many different species. What is more, many humans live in the Agilian League and many agilians live in the Confederation. In fact, after centuries of contact, agilians make up 10% of the population on the human homeworld. It is thus not logical, and certainly not politically correct, to say that such-and-such a species is a member of the League or Confederation. Imagine the reactions you'd get if you were to say that the government of Caucasians is the United States of America. Which brings us to another interesting point. "Race" is not a synonym for species, except in turns of phrase such as "the human race". A race is a division within a species that is not sharply defined, but is the result of the genetic isolation of a group of beings. The races of a species can interbreed, thus the lack of sharp definition. At any rate, race and species are not interchangeable. (The sentient species of the known universe cannot interbreed with each other. There are instances of Agilian-Human hybridization, but these are uncommon, required advanced technological intervention, and generally produced sterile offspring.) Each of the species has several races, except the Xine. The Xine had races in the past, but have been greatly reduced in numbers and the current Xine probably represent a "mixture" of their historical variates. All the races of humans known today exist, along with several new ones formed by genetic isolation on distant colonies. HUMANS The human species in the Starfire's galaxy has been space fairing for centuries and is the primary inhabitant of a number of terranoid worlds. Humans are there, as in our world, divided into several semi-isolated gene pools reflected as races. There are several human races not known on Earth, which developed in relative isolation on a few pre-hyperspace colonies. (Prior to the discovery of practical hyperluminal travel, distant colonies are genetically isolated by interstellar distances.) Humans are the second-largest known species in terms of numbers, the Agilians are the largest. Lifespan is 90-120 years for a middle-class standard of living on a core world. AGILIANS Agilians are humanoid, but can not interbreed with humans and are thus a separate species. Agilians can share the same environment with humans, and define the same range of worlds as `habitable', there has been some Territorial conflict because of this. Agilians form the bulk of the Agilian league, but the league also includes humans and other species. (Thus, the Confederation and the League are both large, inclusive and multi-species governments - although high concentrations of species appear in certain regions, in centuries of interstellar travel members of any species can turn up on almost any world.) The resemblance between humans and agilians is astounding and suggestive of a common origin for the two species. Lifespan is about 100-140 years for a typical League citizen of moderate means. XINE The original homeworld of the Xine was invaded and assimilated by the neighboring Agilians in the early days of hyperspace, and although that world is still has a large Xine minority, the species as a whole has suffered a diaspora. Biologically, the Xine are of anthropoid shape - having two arms, two legs, and a head - they are very slender and have a large brain, but small eyes. The Xine are ungendered, reproducing asexually by releasing larvae into pools where they will metamorphose into their adult form. Xine are telepathic, but only with other Xine - there have been exceptions, Xine raised by non-Xine can read them, and those raised in mixed environments can be telepathically `bilingual'. Although the Xine homeworld is in the Agilian League, there is a more-or-less concentrated Xine minority throughout known space. Xine exist at comparable temperatures and pressures to humans, but their atmospheric requirements are somewhat different and they are usually seen with supplemental breathing apparatus. Xine also prefer much more humid environments than humans, and like higher temperatures. Many Xine travel in small groups in tradeships to sell goods. A Xine designed ship will generally have water in it in some areas, as Xine are capable of breathing underwater. Xine live about 200 years in ideal conditions. Typical lifespan, according to a recent survey (taken in a mainly-Xine region of a planet with population 156 million), is about 160 years. However, many Xine larvae do not survive until metamorphosis, so the "average lifetime" of a Xine is only about 20 years. This is very misleading; most statistics thus use "life expectancy after metamorphosis." No hybridization with humans or agilians has been reported from reputable sources. This is rather obvious given the differences between humanoid and Xine reproduction. O'Z'or! The O'Z'or! are the third-largest constituent, by species, of the Confederation. They are gas-giant dwelling creatures who are lighter than air, but are technologically primitive. Now, they are common on suitable gas giants to which they have been introduced by space-fairing species - the O'Z'or! ecosystem is capable of producing resources and food edible to humanoid species. O'Z'or! are very prolific breeders (releasing clouds of gametes during their spawning season) and fairly long lived. Habitability overlap with other species is essentially nil. To be politically incorrect, O'Z'or! are easily the dumbest of the species considered sentient. No-one has ever succeeded in teaching a O'Z'or! mathematics (they are capable of some basic numeracy dealing with numbers less than twelve), and their languages are scarcely more complex than that used by great apes. They owe their great success in terms of population mainly to humans who live on stations near gas giants and who are symbiotic with them. Without space fairing species to transport them, they would have remained confined to their homeworld. (Which has the highest sentient population of any planet known.) KORERITH Korerith are a liquid-sulfur-dwelling species of large size. They are technologically advanced, and practically all Korerith live on worlds that are members of the Confederation. They essentially keep to themselves because of environmental requirements and no terranoid worlds have a significant Korerith population. Korerith are, mentally, vastly different from humans. Not "smarter" or "dumber", but different. They tend to conceptualize things in extremely different ways and their language is virtually impossible to translate literally into human languages. Some of these korerith languages do not even have verbs in the usual sense. Action is inferred from a set of abstracted objects associated with the action, the the set of nouns used is heavily culturally dependent. Korerith live about 70 years, but due to certain practices about which they are very secretive, some claim a far greater age, upwards of five hundred years. These claims have not been verified by outsiders. NAI ERIS Silicon-based sentient beings exist on a number of worlds. Nai Eris majority worlds are divided roughly between the Confederation and League, although their core of population is independent of either and is situated nearer the League. They cannot survive unprotected in oxygen atmospheres, but such protection is fairly trivial and they are thus spread throughout both airless rocks and carbon-based-life-inhabited planets. Their slow reproduction inhibits a higher overall population, but they are clinically immortal - death occurs only through misadventure. Much of their population exists on asteroids and moons incapable of sustaining carbon-based life, certainly they have little competition for planets. Some evidence points towards the Nai-eris as having been created by another species, but it has been forgotten despite the existence of Nai Eris who are thousands of years old. Despite the vast physical differences between them and carbon-based creatures such as humans, they work together well and can communicate effectively. This lends support to that theory. MECHANICAL BEINGS Many sentient, synthetic beings exist - perhaps 1,850,000 in known space. They are mostly one-off productions, or parts of small production runs. There are no worlds on which they constitute a majority in the Confederation or League, but the outback world of Akarn has a population of 30% sentient mechanicals. (The political status of which is a subject of contention.) The vast majority of sentient mechanicals live outside the two major governments. Both of them protect intelligent machines from slavery, and thus over 1.7 million of the estimated 1.85 million sentient synthetic beings exist in chattel slavery on independent worlds where machine intelligence is not recognized for economic reasons. (In the Confederation and League, there is little economic incentive to build sentient machines outside of research applications. They do, however, make very extensive use of insentient or presenteint computer systems.) Most sentient synthetics are not androids, but rather sentient computers who work for research institutes. They are expensive to construct and have legal rights, which can be problematic - some have well-developed senses of morality and have refused to design weapons systems, for instance. Furthermore, they are apt to view a great deal of work as `beneath them'. (Perhaps rightly so. Any creature smart enough to complete Agilian income tax forms seems to be smart enough to hate doing it.) It is reported that one computer system developed by a well-known Confederate university demanded a tenured position in the computer science faculty less than two months after it's activation. Self-contained sentient synthetic humanoids are not unheard of, however their population is in the low thousands because of the difficulties of reducing a sentient computer system to fit inside a humanoid body, and lack of motivation to do so. MSV Starfire Merchant Space Vessel Starfire, M2F5D2A, Artrician League Vessel 1764.69C, Intergalactic Registry: Star Ship Starfire 2B97F2 (Starfire holds both Confederation and League merchant registrations, as well as the SS intergovernmental registration. ) Manufactured by the shipwrights of Andreas Yards on the major Confederate world of Dral, the Starfire was originally purchased by a shipping company, who then sold it after a ten year run to Ben Carey. After his death, the ship was inherited by his son, Marcus. The production run was not large, the ship being one of only twenty F-type models in Andreas Yards' StarClipper series. The F-type StarClipper was designed to be marketed in the Outback and other regions of low population density. It was fitted with additional fuel over the standard model, as well as better shielding and more powerful weapons systems. It initially had a 240,000 cubic-foot cargo capacity. The MSV Starfire has been modified by it's various owners. The original purchasers added repair facilities and equipment to the cargo bay, reducing the 240,000 square-foot capacity to 235,200. Ben Carey added a high-power plasma cutter to the shuttle to facilitate entry into abandoned vessels, and upgraded the scanners to facilitate finding said abandoned vessels. The ship is roughly spherical in shape, like virtually all hyper-spacecraft. For reasons explained in the hyperspace article, an exact superluminal speed cannot be given, and, for that matter, there is no particular "maximum speed" at which the craft can travel (apart from c, of course, and it would obviously not be practical to get anywhere near that with reaction engines.) MATH AND NUMBERS Specific mentions of numbers are to be generally avoided when not necessary because they may expose the following approximations to general scrutiny. However, they should be taken into consideration whenever relevant to maintain consistency. Approximations: We assume that Starfire can be modeled as a sphere 30 meters in radius. It is made up of roughly 70% Empty space when the cargo bay is empty. We assume that its structure is mostly made of titanium, density 4.506 g/cm^3, and that this superstructure takes up 1% of its volume. Mass of superstructure: 5100 tonnes Let's assume that another 4% of the structure is taken up by deck, bulkheads, minor equipment, etc which are mostly made of plastic and other materials with density on average of 1380 kg/m^3. Mass of additional structure: 6200 tonnes. We will assume that the hyperdrive, with diameter 12m, is mostly hollow and weighs about 10 tonnes. Taking a fairly wild guess, we will assume that the engines, fuel tanks, reactor, life support equipment, and so forth weigh about 2000 tonnes. The fuel and propellant, which is assumed to take up 10% of the ship's volume, (this is a sci-fi spaceship after all!) has a mass of 7900 tonnes. (Assuming that it is cryogenic hydrogen & anti-hydrogen; this may or may not be the case. As 7900 tonnes of matter/antimatter could release as much energy (in non-neutrinos) as 8.3e11 tons of TNT, of 4 billion Nagasaki atomic bombs, it is likely not - the implications of private citizens owning such things are difficult to ignore. We will ignore them anyway. The ship carries, let's say, 1000 tonnes of cargo on an average day. So, we assume that the ship weighs 2.2x10^7 kg. (That is about as much as seven Saturn-V rockets.) Speaking of Saturn-V rockets, the first stage of them provided about 34 megaNewtons of thrust. A spherical ship presumably takes rather more energy to get to orbit than a pointy one, although the Starfire does have some advanced technology to reduce air resistance. The numbers are subject to change and refinement. Stellar Confederation The Stellar Confederation is a major alliance and uniform system of judicial and military action consisting of about a thousand independent worlds. The Confederation has a senate with one vote for each million citizens of a member planet. How the votes are cast is up to the planet. For planets with less than a million citizens, fractional votes are permitted. The Confederation has few laws of it's own, although thees are enforced in space as well as on planets. The Confederation has very minimal shipping regulations, but enforces those of the member planet holding jurisdiction over a region. It guarantees rights to it's citizens that it must respect, member planets are not required to respect all of them. One mandatory right is the the right to appeal for judgment by the Confederation Court system if they feel they are being treated unfairly by the planetary government. The jurisdiction of this court is compulsory to all member worlds. A few worlds are under Confederation rule only, these follow a uniform enhanced legal code that all directly-controlled properties obey. Confederation ships and facilities on planets are under this law, not local law. Confederation personnel not on Confederation property and who are not on duty are subject to local law. Certain high-ranking Confederation personnel have a kind of diplomatic immunity from arrest, even when off duty. DEMOGRAPHICS Brief Census: Population: 401.1 Billion Planets, Moons, and stations: 1943 Composition by species: Majority Worlds: Human: 40% 700 Agilian: 12% 193 O'Zo'or!: 41% 1003 Xine: 1% 0 Korerith: 4% 5 Nai Eris 2% 42 Superluminal Communication Faster-than-light communications is by hyperspace radio. The equipment necessary to send and receive photons to and from hyperspace is much simpler than the equipment that can move organized matter there, and also more "powerful" in terms of how distant a universe it can reach. To use a simplified analogy, imagine that there is a nutshell with the antenna of every spaceship in the universe in it. This is hyperspace radio in a nutshell. (Sorry.) The universes chosen for hyperspace radio are selected for their being free of obstructions to signals. If material hyperdrives could reach them, it would be wonderful. These hyperspaces do still have linearites and areas that are not mapped as nicely to our universe, but they are smaller overall and between this and the fact that the photons aren't bothered as much as complicated things like ships are by non-linearity, hyper-radios work just about anywhere. There are anomalous regions of very unfavorable mapping, however; these can be invoked if it is needed to put the ship out of communication. Superluminal Transportation and Hyperspace The mechanism of superluminal transportation in Starfire's universe is hyperspace. Imagine a fifth dimension, and call it "universe-wise". Objects can be made to move universe-wise by the application of appropriate forces generated by a hyperdrive. The hyperdrive does not move the ship in X, Y, or Z directions at all, it has conventional engines for that. The closer two places are universe-wise, the more similar they are. The is called, by hyperspatial researchers, "Gradualarity". It is an important part of hyperspatial theory. The rate of Gradual change along the universe-wise plane is not constant. Near "interesting" universes, it is thought to be very sharp. Thus, under normal circumstances, the hyperdrive is not used to visit parallel l universes in the conventional science-fiction sense. The fifth dimension analogy breaks down somewhat in that a hyperdrive can pass from universe-wise co-ordinate 2 to universe-wise co-ordinate 2.1 without passing through 2.05, and that, in fact, it only moves in integral multiples of a small unit of universe-wise distance. This increment is larger than the gradient where interesting universes fade into uninteresting ones, and thus if you leave one interesting universe and return to one that seems exactly like it, it is indeed the one you left. (This theory, called the "Snap Theory", is not universally supported.) The increment hyperdrives can move in varies, but no drive precise enough to visit interesting parallel universes has been developed. Hyperspatial movement could, in fact, be quantized in such a way that it is impossible for any hyperdrive to do so, regardless of circumstances - thus allowing all the people of the universes very similar to the "interesting universe" to enjoy a full spectrum of hyperspaces while never bumping into us. CONTENTS OF HYPERSPATIAL UNIVERSES Hyperspatial planes, Unlike our universe, they have no life, or indeed much of anything other than great, enormous masses of iron. This matter occupies much of the hyperspatial realms, in contrast to our universe, which is mostly empty space. It is not known why the matter remains in the shape it does. From what explorers have seen from hyperspace, it is rather like a vast cave, with tiny tunnels, larger chambers, etc. The largest known tunnels are a few hundred miles wide. Most are much smaller, on the order of a few hundred meters wide. Even smaller ones exist, and in fact Hyperspace appears materially organized in a roughly fractal manner. Experiments with boring through hyperspatial matter have been done, and seem to indicate that hyperspace is a vast convoluted mess of tunnels and chambers of many sizes. Some hyperspatial dimensions are less densely filled with matter, but none have yet been discovered that would allow straight-line paths between stars more than a few dozen light-years apart. There are also hyperspatial dimensions that are mobile and contain shifting moving masses. They have not been extensively studied because navigating them would be suicidal. In fact, some allege that they do not exist, as the only reports come from ships that accidental entered them. (There are about eight reports that are original.) There is no air in hyperspace, or other matter apart from the iron, except in trace amounts. (Which hyperspatologists think came from the ships that are now flying around in it.) The temperature of hyperspace is uniformly a tiny amount above absolute zero. When ships pass through, of course, they radiate heat which is detectable, but is eventually conducted away and dissipates into the background. This is a method of tracing a ship through hyperspace, absent a better method. As implied by the lack of any useful energy, hyperspace is totally dark. Ships use radar to navigate. (One could use light, but it wouldn't work nearly as well for the distances involved.) Some hyperspatial theories predict "hot hyperspaces" from which useful energy could be extracted (thermal radiation can be transferred through hyperspace.) Apart from the iron, hyperspace has no useful resources whatsoever. It is known to have a few thousand semi-permanent inhabitants on science stations, and bases guarding key areas. It is quite possible to land in hyperspace, get out in your space suit, move around, etc. There are local gravitatic variations, but it is a microgravity environment for the most part. Some have suggested that hyperspace must be infinite, otherwise the iron would condense into a ball under its own gravity. Others disagree. Smaller ships, which can fly through smaller tunnels, can get to their destinations faster because they are more likely to find a straighter path from the start and end points. Sometimes, tunnels are widened to accommodate larger ships. This is expensive, and fairly uncommon, but not considered an exceptionally impressive hyperspatial engineering accomplishment. WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT IT THEN? Why travel to hyperspace at all, if most hyperspatial planes are "uninteresting" domains of hunks of iron and nothing else? It is believed that for every point in hyperspace, there is one in realspace. However, hyperspace is not linearly mapped to realspace. For one thing, it is often "smaller", that is, if a ship travels a six thousand kilometers in hyperspace, it might be a parsec away from its starting point when in returns to normal space. Secondly, this "scale factor" is not constant throughout hyperspace. In some areas, in fact, hyperspace is "bigger" than the universe. This would cause dire problems for things moving between realms. And object occupying a couple inches of hyperspace might have its subatomic particles spread out over a few AUs of realspace! LINEARITIES Thus, entry and exit from hyperspace can't be made at arbitrary points for material objects. (For photons making up signals, this is not as much of a problem, and so hyperspatial communication is more simple.) There are, however, fairly rare areas of approximately linear mapping. These spots, called "linearites" in hyperspatial jargon, are areas where it is safe for a ship to transition between real and hyperspace. These linearites vary in size. Most are just meters wide. There will be millions of these in an average solar system. There will usually be a few dozen larger linearites, large enough to admit a modest-sized starship of a few hundred meters, in a system. There are less than fourteen known linearites larger than two square kilometers in size. Linearites are irregularly shaped. Even if a linearity is large and regular, it may still correspond to an area that is inside solid iron or a maze of tiny tunnels in hyperspace. Usually, a good linearity is well worth the effort of clearing and making a path to a nearby tunnel that is larger. In fact, this hyperspatial engineering operation is much more common than tunnel enhancement. Linearites may be slightly imperfect, and there will be many marginal linearites in addition to good ones. Determining the quality of a promising linearity after it is discovered is important, and generally involves the use of very sensitive sensors not always available on all ships. (Limiting these ships to the use of discovered and mapped linearites.) Because even stars move around quite a bit, hyperspatial navigation is a very dynamic art. As the stars, planets, etc move, they can drift away from linearties and good tunnels and chambers in hyperspace. Also, different hyperspaces have different contents and linearites. At least in theory, if one could find the correct hyperspace, one could find a linearity anywhere, or even a linearity next to another linearity that was near the desired destination. Trying to travel in this way is roughly like trying to visit a friend on the other side of the world by waiting until you travel through the planet instantly via quantum tunneling. RELATIVITY REDUX This brings in another point. Hyperspaces move in different directions with respect to our galaxy. The ones that are commonly used move in the same direction and speed (roughly) as the galaxy. Ending up in the wrong hyperspace can result in being separated from your starting point by light-years in nanoseconds in an unknown hyperspatial dimension with no mapped tunnels or linearites. Also, a ship needs to "match speed" with a linearity to use it. If a hyperspace is moving too fast, a ship may never be able to catch the linearity no matter how long it waits. LIFE OF A LINEARITY The fact that stars and planets move relative to hyperspace means that eventually, linearites that were once useful and economically important to their star systems drift out until they are too far to be reached in a reasonable amount of time using reaction engines. Long term hyperspatial study is thus important to selection of a colony site, some otherwise promising worlds are not inhabited because their starsystems do not have good linearity situations. (That is, they are moving away from the ones they were discovered with, and no new navigable linearites are approaching.) Interestingly, since hyperspaces are moving in all sorts of directions, a novel form of drive can be made which "moves" the ship by holding still in an appropriate hyperspace and transporting back at the right time. While promising, it is not generally used because of the difficulty in finding an appropriate hyperspace. Plus, one has to wait for a linearity with a clear area to accommodate the ship. In principle, however, this method is theoretically superior. In practice - well, the outlook is about the same for the other alternate method, previously mentioned. TRANSPORT PROCEDURE Once making a voyage using reaction engines to a navigable linearity, the ship engages its hyperspatial drive and goes into hyperspace. Scientists are unsure if this (1) disproves the law of conservation of matter, (2) does not violate it and causes hyperspatial matter to appear somewhere in the universe, or (3) the law of conservation of matter applies across dimensional boundaries. (The third is the majority opinion. The first is considered the province of cranks.) Then, in hyperspace, the ship navigates (using mainly thrusters, although in large tunnels it may activate its main engines) through the maze of hyperspace until it reaches a linearity near where it wants to go. Then it exits hyperspace, and flies to its destination. THE ENGINEERS People who design hyperdrives are called hyperspatial drive engineers and should not be confused with hyperspace engineers. Hyperspatial drive engineers are very smart people who can do very complicated calculus and work with strange symbols for math we haven't invented yet. Hyperspace engineers blow holes in iron so that ships can fit through them and do simpler math to confirm that the new hole won't be useless in a year because the associated linearity is now 50 AU away. Hyperdrives are very well built and subject to very rigorous design with many redundancies. (And are usually very well armored and, again, at the center of the ship.) There are also subject to lots of regulations, inspections, paperwork, etc; and its even worse if you want to build or design them. This is because hyperspace accidents are very tragic and rarely recoverable. IMPACT ON SHIP DESIGN Because the size of linearties naturally favors small ships, some large vessels (e.g. warships, superfrieghters) are modular and can split into pieces to pass through linearites smaller than could accommodate the whole ship. There is a design trade-off between the cost of multiple hyperdrives (which are less efficient in terms of cost than one large one) and the ability to get through smaller linearites, which is affected by how fast the ship needs to get where it is. Ships tend to be spherical, excluding other design considerations such as atmospheric maneuvering. Another system, where a large ship has just two hyperdrives and transports one back and forth for the use of the other modules, is very technically complex and practical only on gigantic ships - which are uncommon because of the fact that far fewer hyperspace tunnels can accommodate them. Fleets of small ships, some with specialized functions, are more practical (and thus common) than super-ships of great size. A "Death Star" would be an absurd concept for anything other than, perhaps, planetary defense; Since its role as a terror weapon wouldn't be of much use there, it would simply be impractical and unlikely to be built at all. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT Hyperspace is considered a mature technology, no major new advancement in at is expected. However, some are still searching for an empty hyperspatial dimension (one mostly devoid of matter) that is reachable with material hyperdrive. Empty dimensions are known and used for hyperspatial radio, but these cannot be reached by matter-transporting drives.) Scientists believe that there are many suitable planes, but many more that don't have the required properties. Research into the mathematics of Gradualarity, and predicting what hyperspace n+e is like from a map of n, is a promising field that could one day allow many tremendous advances in the effective speed of superluminal transportation. (Including possibly constant time to move between any two points - Where reaching the most distant galaxy is no harder than getting into orbit.) SENSORS Hyperspace is analyzed from realspace with a number of sensing devices. They are quite complicated because they must by necessity include a hyperdrive-like device to link between the universes. There are two main sensors found in every ship: The mass detector, used to make sure that the other side of a linearity is clear of obstacles (e.g. other ships or solid iron), and the photon gate. The photon gate enables radio signals to cross between hyper and real space, allowing faster-than-light communications. More sensors are found on ships that are not lane-bound, used for finding and analyzing linearites. HISTORY The first use of material hyperspace engines was by the Sangeans, who used it to dispose of garbage. The idea that the garbage was going somewhere interesting came later for their civilizations. NON-TRANSPORT USES - A.K.A. HYPERSPATIALTHERMODYNAMICS 101 Apart from transportation and communication, hyperspace has another important role for spacecraft. Excess heat in advanced craft is commonly disposed of through the process of "hyperspatial heat exchange". In this system, a hyperspatial gate is opened internal to the ship, through which heat can flow from a heat sink inside the ship to the icy depths of hyperspace. Since hyperspace is near absolute zero and the heat sink can become quite hot, this is very effective. The amount of heat that can be disposed of in this way far, far outweighs the waste heat generated by the hyperspatial field generator in the operation. Most modern systems actually work by matter transfer, where frigid hyperspatial iron is exchanged for hot iron in the heat sink; this matter-transfer-cooling system is not especially dependent on liniearites and other concerns and is superior in terms of heat flow to radiative systems, although the later are simpler and somewhat more reliable. THE WRITER'S SUMMARY OF HYPERSPACE These are the impact on the story: (1) Well, you can't get just anywhere instantly. It takes time to go places. Starfire's take on hyperspace is wonderful as a plot device because if you want to get them to a nearby star in a day, you can say that there was a nearly straight tunnel and good linearites. If they need to be stranded somewhere, hyperdrive malfunctions are the answer. Heh, for that matter, hyperdrive malfunctions are a fountain of all kinds of stupid parallel universe plots. (2) Hyperspace radio has properties designed to allow people to use real-time virtual reality on distance spaceships when the writer wants them to be able to, and yet be without communication when the plot requires it. (Without having to resort to improbably specific damage to the ship.) (3) Hyperspace navigation is interesting and somewhat challenging. In the average case, the quality of your charts and the hyperspatial topography affect your travel time in an amount comparable to the actual distance between your starting point and destination. Big ships take longer to get where they are going because they are less able to navigate smaller hyperspace tunnels and need larger linearites. This is also a wonderful plot device because it provides a way for the ship to get away when you want it to get away, and a way to be unable to retreat when this is desired. (4) You can't just enter and exit hyperspace anywhere, why is why your ship's real space speed _is_ still important. (5) Hyper drives are understood only by really smart people. (6) Motion of the stars and planets relative to hyperspace makes linearites that used to be in good locations no longer in good locations, which means that new ones and their associated tunnels must be continually looked for and explored. (8) Physical stuff can and does exist in hyperspace, including silly things like communications cables, iron, and scientists in domes. But it does not have air and is nearly absolute zero in most places. (9) Hyperdrives are expensive and high-tech. (10) Advanced beings may have better hyperdrive technology, up to the point where they can travel the known universe essentially instantly. Synthetic Rights League (SRL) Organization promoting civil and human rights for sentient synthetics, of which Jules is a card carrying member. He was more actively involved in his younger days. ..... ..... Weapons The weapons used in the course of galactic history have been many and varied. This article focuses only on the contemporary armorment of typical spacecraft, and modern hand weapons. There are many other exotic weapons, some quite science-fictional, no doubt. However, they are not practical and economical. KINETIC PROJECTILES Bullets remain popular in hand weapons, although most hand guns are actually tiny railguns rather than systems using explosives to impart movement to a projectile. (Shotguns, which are still in limited use, especially for hunting on planets where it is permitted, are an exception.) Railguns are also in use on large spaceships and as planetary defense weapons, where they truly shine because of the virtually unlimited ammo that can be stored on a planetary bunker. KINETIC projectiles are strictly subluminal in speed and ships can both detect them well before they arrive if they are reasonably far away, and avoid them. This disadvantage is offset somewhat by the fact that they are cheap, reliable, and pack quite a punch. Also, while the ATF does protect a ship somewhat from kinetic projectile damage, it is "less effective" than the superconducting armor that protects combat ships from laser weapons. Because of action-reaction considerations, large railguns are generally foreward-firing only. PARTICLE BEAMS Particle beams are a popular space weapon, which also do damage by kinetic energy. Streams of atoms are accelerated to speeds quite near c and aimed at the enemy. They are more expensive than railguns and are not suitable for hand weapons. Usefully damaging particle beams are only generally found on capital ships. The technology is, interestingly, related to the ship's propulsion system and is pased on the same fundamental concepts. LASERS Lasers are a fairly common weapon that have great accuracy and range. Miniaturized power sources and improved efficiency have led to them existing as hand weapons, but kinetic hand weapons are just as effective and much cheaper in the short run. The advantages of lasers are that they require no ammo apart from electricity, and that they are not subject to gravity, wind, and so on, greatly improving their long-range performance. Rifle-like weapons are often lasers. As a spaceship weapon, lasers are used to attempt to destroy incoming missiles and deflect projectiles, but are also used directly ageist maneuverable or very distant tagets absent a specially designed weapon. MISSILES Missiles and various sorts of drones are popular. Their explosive payload is de-emphasized in favor of their ability to have guidance and hit things at extreme range. A railgun shot can do more damage, but is easy to dodge if it is fired by a distant adversary. A missile, on the other hand, can travel at great speeds. The long range unmanned weapons may even travel through hyperspace, using linearites too small for normal ships to pass through. Warheads from nuclear through antimater are fitted to missiles. Along with railguns, they are a weapon-of-choice for planets, and against planetary targets. A lot of effort is focused on making missiles hard to detect, because a missile that is detected by a ship with lasers or particle beams is a dead missile. This is at odds with the goal to make missiles fast and have them move about to avoid incoming kinetic projectiles. ARMAMENT OF A TYPICAL SHIP For reasons discussed in the hyperspace article, there is great advantage to small ships in terms of their versatility and speed. On the other hand, there is a significant advantage to a large ship, because it can carry more stuff. Thus, military fleets contain both large and small ships. Small ships arrive first and attempt to knock out defenses that would be more effective against less maneuverable capital ships, and then the capital ships arrive and finish the job. Carrying fighters onboard a capital ship almost defeats about 50% of their purpose and is uncommon, except in wars against planetary targets. In this case, a carrier will usually have many fighters and bombers primarily intended to operate in planetary atmosphere and orbit, incapable of long-range spaceflight and without hyperdrives. Some may only be able to reach unstable, low orbits on their own. Because of heat considerations, they are also unlikely to be suitable for extensive space combat or movement; most of these are really just aircraft designed to be deployed from orbit. Bombing from orbit is sometimes cheaper than bombing from space-deployed aircraft, especially when accuracy is not of particular importance to the attacker, but various economic and safety considerations (big spaceships are easier to shoot at and destroy) and the cultural inertia of the militarize prevent more widespread use of that tactic. A normal small ship will have lasers as its primary weapon, and railguns if it is somewhat larger. A capital ship will have particle beams, missiles, and possibly huge railguns to conduct planetary bombardments and destroy other big, well armored things. The particle beams will be used much as lasers are, and to destroy fighters and small ships. The missiles may be used against all sorts of targets, depending on their design. Anti-captial ship weapons will be geared towards the possibility of capturing the enemy's valuable ship, not vaporizing it instantly. Economics are less kind to small ships. A merchant ship will generally have lasers only, and the role of these in defense against incoming missiles will be emphasized. (In other words, they will be smaller lasers on rapidly movable and accurate mounts.)