The AI Council

by on October 18, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

While the AI Council probed Alpha Centauri for us, they also helped us colonize the Solar System. From Mars and Venus in the inner system to Jupiter, Saturn, and even Nepturne in the outer system. They helped us maintain peace inside Luna’s orbit, and kept us from going to outright war in the rest of the system. We were constantly arguing over who owned which peace of rock out there, but they brushed over most of that by being the first to arrive in each location. No, the Chinese and the Russians never officially accepted that the AIs were alive, but they accepted the reality that the AIs at least said they were. And as long as the AIs avoided being hostile with them, they refrained from starting outright hostilities with the AIs.

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The Memory Worlds

by on October 17, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

I’ve been to Memory Worlds from Proxima Centauri to Wolfenheim and beyond. I’ve visited ones operated by the Peloran and even the Aesiran cybers who have grown up since War’s End. I’ve looked out upon the blackness of intergalactic space from a Memory World on the very top of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. And I’ve gazed upon thousands of stars packed into stellar clusters. You can find a Memory World just about anywhere near space we’ve settled. Assuming they like you. Even they don’t know where all the Memory Worlds are. That’s a security precaution in case one of them turns. They don’t want any single being in the universe to know where all of their backups are. Where all of our backups are. Some people think they’re a bit paranoid. I do not.

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Chloe

by on October 16, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Chloe was not done when she convinced her Napoleon to come back to France and save her. It would take him time to organize, and the surviving French government still cast about fruitlessly for some way out of the crisis. The French police still struggled to bring order. The Islamic Brotherhoods and the French Resistance still fought in the streets on a daily basis. And Chloe still helped them. The Resistance, not the Brotherhoods. She happily helped kill those who had declared her kind an abomination before Allah and set off the bombs in Old Paris. She fought them in both the cybernetic and physical worlds, and became one of the most famous freedom fighters of her day. And she did all of that without coming out of the networks to anybody in the public. Everybody thought she was a normal human being who just had real amazing cybernetic security. She liked it that way.

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Minnesnowta

by on October 15, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Minnesnowta lived up to its name today. It snowed. In October. It wasn’t much. Just enough to cover the roofs and ground. The ground snow melted within a matter of hours, but our cars are still covered with snow now because the air temperature never warmed up. I have no idea what this means for the future. Will it be a cold or wet or warm or dry winter? I don’t know. But snow this early in October is not common even up here. I do have to admit that I’m looking at Halloween with a bit more pensiveness though. There was that Halloween blizzard a while back that I’m rather hoping doesn’t repeat itself. For the kid’s sakes. And for their older siblings and parents who go Trick or Treating with them because we are smart enough not to ban them up here…

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The Memory Worlds

by on October 14, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

We did not know about the Memory Worlds when we first went to space. We spread out and colonized our Solar System because it was there and because we wanted to see it all. We wanted to plant our flags on alien worlds and then around alien stars. We did it because there is a drive, a wanderlust deep in our genetic code. We will always believe that the grass is greener on the other side, and if it is not, then we will water it until it is. The AIs left Earth and built their Memory Worlds to save us all. We left Earth and built our colonies to find out who we were. To find out what we could do. Who we could be. To see things no human eye had seen before. We would have died on Earth without that drive to see what is out there. And we would have died out there without the AI’s drive to save everything. It is perhaps the final irony that we saved each other, and that knowledge is forever saved in the Memory Worlds should we ever forget it.

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