Alpha Centauri

by on November 29, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Humanity lost more ships at Alpha Centauri then in any other system during The War. The warehouses, the elevators, the hyperspace runs, everything about it made Alpha Centauri more valuable than any system short of Terra itself. And some people considered it more important than that. The riches that flowed through it, the starships that could use it, and defenses that held it all made Alpha Centauri an amazing target for the Shang and the Chinese. They wanted to drive us out. We wanted the same thing. None of us got everything we wanted in that deal, and we lost far too many ships before the end came. But trade must continue, and so it did, and so it has.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on November 28, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

One thing I learned about Silicon Valley is that they have seemingly endless patience when it comes to technological accidents. And they have exactly zero tolerance for outside interference that results in things that look like accidents. Hacking someone else without their prior permission is one of the very few unforgivable sins you can commit in that city. When I visited the city as a teenager, some hacker deployed a virus that broke the smart clothing of everybody within three blocks of the city center. I later heard that Silicon Valley’s tame white hat hackers blew straight through The Great Firewall of China and dropped a living virus on the girl that burned out every electronic item she ever touched for the rest of her life. They really don’t like hackers.

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Hello, my name is Betty

by on November 27, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Back before the Second Great Depression the Indian tribes were split up between many small reservations all over the country. They had little physical power but a procession of Indian-owned casinos over the previous three quarters of a century had many of the tribes impressively wealthy and that bought them political power. When the United States government and many State governments fell to the depression, many Indian tribes took the opportunity to declare independence. The producers of Twilight worked with the local Iroquois chiefs of then New York State to show America how their new system was working. They also showed a very interesting political process where most of the western New York counties were effectively merging with the Iroquois to protect their own interests better than the State could. That was the beginning of what we now recognize as the Iroquois Nation.

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Alpha Centauri

by on November 26, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The oldest Pre-Contact trade routes were the richest. Most of them started or went through Alpha Centauri due to how its three stars twisted hyperspace. Alpha Centauri hyperspace runs were the fastest way to get anywhere and Alpha Centauri was home to the first Extra-Solar orbital elevators and the largest warehouse complexes we had yet built. Alpha Centauri was the one place other than Earth every company that styled itself an interstellar player simply had to be at. That is why Alpha Centauri became such a large target during The War. Everyone wanted it.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on November 25, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Silicon Valley is what some of the more artfully minded people call a monument to invention. It focuses on computer technologies of course, but any inventor is welcome in the city, and the Edison Patent Office is the busiest patent center in all the worlds. It’s normal to see some young inventor walking through the streets testing a new invention in the wild. It’s also common to see when the invention fails, sometimes in rather hilarious ways. The amazing thing is that the locals actually celebrate those failures. Their founding ethos is that every success is built on a thousand failures, so failing is simply one step on the path to success. I wish more people thought like that.

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