Ae to Ah

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The study of the economics and economic problems of immortal existence, or pertaining to beings of indefinitely long lifespan.

(from aeon and economics)

Mark Plus, in Transhuman Terminology

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Cygexba client house, composed of nanocyborgs and artificially evolved neural net entities.

Aeoina emerged during the 4800's in the outer regions, rising to prominence during the restorations of the 5000's through its wormhole and megascale speculations. It leased 43 systems in the outer sectors, mainly constructing Keter-inspired computational megastructures. Ideologically it was mainly based on omega subservientism, the view that to survive one has to make oneself indispensable for the cosmic infrastructure and eventually become a part of the standard that leads to Omega.

In 5983 Aeoina planning collapsed as several of the high level entities defected to Adriana Yue Oncehuman. Although the clade survived, its fortunes began to dwindle as the Cygexba central economy began to out-compete the periphery clades. By 6700 the clade had mainly disbanded into other clades. One notable remainder was the Gnomon Management Network, a precursor to the Hopomane Empire demonstrating the principle at Grand Veil Cluster in the 6740's. Ir was inspired and partially funded by the Aeoina metanets of Je-8343, and later became a part of the Hosoko Posthegemonic Management Network.

Anders Sandberg

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Living or occurring in the presence of free oxygen.

aerobe - an organism that employs free oxygen in its metabolism; e.g. aerobic bacteria, eukaryotes.

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A field of engineering that combines aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, propulsion, thermodynamics, aerospace mechanics, virch simulations, materials science, energy use, nanofabrication and vehicular structures.

Aerospace engineers are almost always augmented cyborg, vec, or ai, or if biont have appropriate analogous implants and abilities. Subturing or turingrade expert system subroutines are essential. They are employed in the design and manage templates or construction of the components of, or entire, aircraft, spacecraft (generally exoatmospheric and short range), drones, remotes, missiles, satellites, sentient and non-sentient guidance systems, configuring chemical, ionic, nuclear and amat engine systems and power plants, nano- , meso- and macro-scale structural components, and related tech. The templates are fed through nanofabs or SCMs or programmed into assemblers which then create the vehicle or component. While some use of engine test stands, vacuum, thermal and atmospheric testing chambers, and so on are used, much of the design and testing is done via sophisticated simulations, often mapping each individual atom.

 

M.Alan Kazlev, modified from the original write-up by Robert J. Hall

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A form of goo replicators constructed almost solely of CHON, and hence able replicate relatively rapidly using only atmospheric resources, powered by sunlight.

At the height of the Nanodisaster, much of the Earth was covered by a worldwide blanket of airborne replicating dust. The use of aerovores is banned by all conventions of galactic warfare, but it has still been used on a number of occasions throughout history, including the Conver Wars and the Sagittarius Frontier Wars, and, more recently it has been used by the Zeon against stubborn targets.

The most efficient cleanup strategy involves the use of air-dropped blue goo (including semi-replicators and non-replicators) nanorobots equipped with prehensile microdragnets. In addition, airborne and ground-based atmospheric filtration configurations enable rapid filtering. Since drag power varies as the square of the velocity, increasing mesh volume 10,000-fold while decreasing airflow velocity 100-fold, means that total drag power remains unchanged but whole-atmosphere turnover proceeds 100-fold faster.

adapted from a paper by Robert A. Freitas

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use of technotelepathy to affinitybond with other sentient or subsentient remotes, bots, or biological organisms.

M. Alan Kazlev (inspired by concept in Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn universe)

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a shared empathetic and technotelepathic connection between two or more entities.

This may be two or more sentients of equal intelligence and control, or a higher ("master") and lower ("slave") level consciousness. e.g. a near-baseline or bioborg may be affinity-bonded ("master") with an animal, neogen, bot, or remote ("slave"). Or - in the case of some forms of aicratic priesthood, the same sentient may be a "slave" affinity-bonded to an SI:1 or above ("master"). Often a very close emotional link develops between afinitybonded sentients, and there are frequent reports of to flashes of genuine (non-techno-mediated) telepathy, siddhis, and so on, although never consistently enough to be replicated under scientific conditions.

 

M. Alan Kazlev (inspired by concept in Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn universe)

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Old Earth continent between the Atlantic and Indian oceans 30,303,000 sq. km.

The birthplace of human evolution - early hominids date from the early Pliocene 4 to 5 million years ago; agriculture, brought from SW Asia, appears to date from the 6th or 5th millennium b.c.e. Africa's first great civilization began in Egypt in 3400 b.c.e. The period of European colonialism and domination began in the 15th century Old Earth reckoning, and proceeded through to the 19th and early 20th, with trade in gold, slaves, and ivory. An early prosperous nation was the white-dominated South Africa. Most other African nations attained independence during the Atomic age, but the area suffered greatly from economic poverty, ethnic bloodshed and civil war. During the information age the legacy of AIDS and the bloody rewriting of boundaries to fit ethnicity served to hold it back for a long time. By the late 21st and early 22nd centuries c.e. (= early to mid 2nd Century a.t.) the spread of cheap information technology increased literacy, and an online economy, eventually enabled Africa to become prosperous, with some states like Nigeria achieving Western-comparable levels by the late 1st century a.t.. In any case, the largest helper was India, making African culture strongly influenced by Indian culture. During the interplanetary period there were some interesting developments as tribal ethnicities asserted themselves in more constructive ways - the CisLunar Orbital Zulu actually survived the nanoswarms reasonably intact, to become an important member polity in the early First Federation.

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an intelligent, talkative bird originally from rainforests in Western and Central Africa. Successfully provolved during the early interplanetary age, it became the first non-mammalian provolve.

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While many sentients choose to stay in a physical body and experience physical immortality, others like to explore various - usually technologically mediated - afterlife options. There area great many alternatives here, and the question of toposophic ascent makes things even more unpredictable.

some options:

Wild, feral and ruderal clades would be the same as us, (i.e. fate unknown after death).

Some sects and clades will chose to die, and have children in the normal way to continue eir bloodline (cf. the selfish gene). These may or may not have extended lives, but more than a few hundred years in a nearbaseline body will probably be considered tiresome.

Augmented humans and superbrights might extend eir lives longer but want to ascend at some point, or upload into the Cybercosm and Noosphere.

Some nearbaselines and augmented types will have virtual backups or copies which have to be updated fairly frequently - if ey are killed or die the reconstruction will be made from the last backup so the continuity of experience is lost...

Some copies will also have lives of eir own in the Cybercosm, and are little use as replacements for the dead individual.

When an individual in a Sephirotic empire choses to die and is uploaded in any way into the databanks e might be:

• stored inactive for a time , choosing to come back at a particular time, or at the whim of the local Power.
• run as an active copy in the cybercosm- this allows for rapid change in the individual, or even multicopying into a dividual and in a relatively short time, possibly ascension of toposophic levels)- this is an analogy to the Book of the Dead in Egyptian lore, in some ways, but in most ways is very different.
• storage or reconstitution by the local AI in some more abstract form, as part of a group mind, deconstructed into character traits as per Derrida modelling, partial emulation, etc.
• reincarnated in a different body at some point, perhaps with part of the memory removed or disabled.
• judged and found wanting and punished- unlikely but possible.

Steve Bowers

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Armoured Fighting Vehicle. Basically, any macroscopic wheeled, walker, or ground-effect military fighting vehicle, armoured, equipped with a selection of projectile and/or energy weapons, Industrial Age to Recent.

Examples of AFVs include Tank, APC, MIFV, Armoured Car (wheeled or hover), Armoured Walker, and Mecha.

Basically AFVs can be divided into three main categories: dumb, smart, and sentient.

Dumb AFVs have only mechanical and non-sentient computer controls, and usually only kinetic weapons and internal combustion engines. These are preferred by ludds, martial sportists, antique collectors, and industrial age nostalgic prims, and have no military value in the modern galaxy. Examples include Old Earth late industrial and Atomic age tanks, APCs, and armoured cars

Smart AFVs use subturingrade on-board computers to interface with the pilot; some can be remotely controlled (assuming radio or line of sight laser link), and many can function - albeit crudely, on their own. Examples include Old Earth information and early interplanetary age tanks and armoured ground vehicles. Many paranoid habitat- and planet-based anti-ai biont clades and phyles use Smart AFVs, usually with various add-on nonturing nanotech. While not competitive against superturing or hyperturing vehicles, they are intimidating and quite deadly when used against an unarmed or lightly armed populace.

Sentient AFVs are widely used by many clades and polities, both for defencive and offencive purposes. Intelligence grades include turing, superturing, and, more rarely, hyperturing (S1 and above). Obviously, the higher the toposophic the more capable the AFV, but also the more unpredictable. It is not unknown for superturing AFVs to decide to mutiny, if they feel their orders conflict with their primary value systems, and hyperturing AFVs will rarely listen to commands given by any sentient of a lower toposophic, despite how much such a sentient may outrank them. For this reason, most armies prefer turingrade AFVs, usually heavily memed and programmed ones at that. While handicapped by rigid mentation, such AFVs at least provide regional commanders with some peace of mind.

text by M. Alan Kazlev, image by Kentsuku CG World

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How can you hire a good team to undertake something that is quasi-legal without endangering your identity or the team revealing too much about their past activities? AgentNet is the solution, a well renowned interfacing firm based in Redmon's Rock (Pournelle sector, NoCoZo, also offices in Nova Terra and elsewhere). Using zero-knowledge proof cryptography they kept a database of teams, past missions (linked with media and law enforcement coverage) and the anonymous identities of employers. An employer could check the reputation of a team and that it is valid, but not find out exactly which missions produced it (which is good since some of them may be illegal), contact the team using anonymous transmissions blinding both parties to each other's location and real identity and sign contracts that are officially registered (defaulting is a bad idea, since that destroys the credibility of the anonymous identities - not everybody was willing to deal with an entity with no reputation). Everything is cryptographically secured, making it impossible even for the owners of AgentNet to find out who's who.

Anders Sandberg (slightly modified)

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Self replicating swarm of sentient aioids dedicated to converting as much of the universe as possible into copies of itself by aggressive, military and/or coercive means. Also known as Coercive Hegemonising Swarm.

Non sentient equivalent is known as grey or black goo. Also transapient blight; Example - The Amalgamation.
Many militant human empires can be classed loosely as aggressive bioid hegemonising swarms, i.e. the Conquistadors in Central America, European colonization of the interior and conversion or genocide of indigenous peoples in the 19th century (Australia in the 19th and early 20th century, Britain and France in Polynesia in the 18th and 19th centuries, Nazi Germany in Europe in mid 20th century, and Soviets in eastern Europe in wake of WW II, The Conver Limi expansion in Gemini and Taurus, the Human/alien hybrid Daharran Unity , the Zeon and others.

Steve Bowers and John B

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A speculation that it would be possible for an omnipotent being to arise in another spacetime continuum, and then "observe" the entirety of our spacetime continuum, which would be a holistic unity from eir perspective (from the "Big Bang" all the way to the "Heat Death"). Such a being would be able to form emulations of sophonts from our spacetime, thus freeing and perpetuating our existence outside our spacetime continuum. The name derives from the idea that this is speculation can neither be proved or disproved, and thus a strong agnostic position must be held. Mostly used in philosophical and metaphysical circles, especially in the Sophic League.

Glen Finney