The Memory Worlds

by on October 4, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AI Council’s Memory World on Proxima Centauri was a closely-guarded secret for decades, and a more open secret afterwards. Very few people traveled to Proxima before The War because the AIs did not invite visitors. All of that changed after they built the Privateers my Cowboys used during The War. With all the publicity we acquired, people wanted to see the place that built them. Which is how biological humanity finally came to Earth’s closest stellar neighbor and discovered just how beautiful it was. Most of the system infrastructure is built into moons and asteroids all over the system, and the primary habitable world is only lightly settled even now. It was a vacation destination before The War, a place for cybers to rest and relax and enjoy a slower life for a few days.

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Lake Country

by on October 3, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I grew up in the Lake Country, seeing trees and sky reflected off the surface of the water. It’s like a perfect mirror when the lake is calm. Sometimes the ripple of a fish or bird will disturb it a bit. Maybe a boat will send waves all over it. But if the wind is calm and the people and animals are quiet, the lake will always calm back down again. And that is when you see everything above by keeping your eyes down. Trees. Bonfires. Clouds. Stars. It’s amazing what you can see in a crystal clear lake in Northern Minnesota.

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Chloe

by on October 2, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Chloe wasn’t the first person to meet the heir to the name Napoleon when he visited France. She wasn’t the second or fifth or tenth to meet him. She’d managed to pack his schedule with a combination of government meetings and tours of France so he could just how troubled the country was after the bombing of Old Paris. She only revealed herself after she was confident he understood just how badly things were going. It didn’t take him long to realize she was playing him. He was a fast cookie. But it was too late for him. She’d snagged him.

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For We Have All Sinned

by on October 1, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve heard lately a charge coming from some that Christians who support those who have sinned are hypocrites. This usually comes from people who are not Christians. Perhaps they think that Christians believe they are holier than thou and should cringe from those who have sinned. But that misses the entire point of Christianity.

We have all sinned. All of us have done things we should not have done. We have fallen short of the glory of God. The Reverend Franklin Graham is a famous example of someone who rebelled in his youth. His father was a world famous preacher man, and Franklin walked away from all of it. He spent his youth in rough places and doing things a Christian should not. And then he came back. He was, as we say, born again and chose to live a new life. He joined his father’s ministry, and in time the black sheep of the family became the head of that ministry.

Anyone can be Redeemed you see. Many of our greatest leaders did bad things before coming to God. The Apostle Paul who spread The Word across the world was once Saul, a man who persecuted and killed Christians in Jerusalem. We do blame Saul for doing those horrible things. But we celebrate Paul for the good things he did.

For we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are taught from our youngest days not to judge people for the things they did in the past. Judge them for what they do now. Because people can change. They can spend their life doing better than they did. It is why we support statutes of limitations in our laws. It is why we treat children differently than adults when they are charged with crimes. We recognize that people change. We know that they are not the same person they were a year ago, seven years ago, or forty years ago. Because neither are we.

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The AI Council

by on September 30, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Proxima Centauri is the AI Council’s oldest and most well-known Memory World. But it was a top-secret mission when it was young. They told no one outside the council it event existed until after they had built more Memory Worlds in other uninhabited systems. And even then, it was rarely talked about. Even most leading politicians and elite Family members like my own assumed it was little more than a storage facility for memories. Most of us did not consider how much industry went into building new storage systems, or how much storage and processing power was required to save every digital record of Earthborn humanity. And we always had this vision of dark and cold buildings on an airless hunk of rock full of rack upon rack of computer systems powered by orbital solar arrays. The truth of what they built on Proxima Centauri is anything but that. I should know. I’ve been there.

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