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De to Dh

Deadite Nanovirus

Extremely clever prank nanovirus (actually a gengineered biological virus) - entirely cosmetic

Gives victims the appearance of a zombie. Created by cult of the exsanguinated giraffe bionanohackers during the early interplanetary period, based on trilogy of C20 flatscreens. Although easily cured, it become fashionable among several subcultures. Compare with Bar Sim Sun

Ben Higginbottom

deadlines and voluntary stress

Deliberately choosing a dysfunctional or archaic (pre-singularity) employment-lifestyle

Incredible as it might seem to, say, a baseline human transplanted from the early information age, this is a popular (albeit temporary) life-style choice among SI:<1 nearbaselines in a number of regions and polities

The situation is this: You're bored. Anything you need to get done is basically automatic - tell your friendly local AI node, and it's done. Delicious, nutritious food is available upon request. When your perfect body can't find another perfect body for sex, there are always utility fog constructs and virches. You have lots of time on your hands.

So, what do you do? Some become creative, and spend their time that way. Some become destructive. Others, the ones this was aimed at originally, look for the sense of accomplishment to be found in stressful situations.

That is, they're not in it for the stress, they're looking for the after-effects of having survived the stressful situation, and the lack of boredom.

M. Alan Kazlev and John B

deathism

Set of beliefs and attitudes which glorify or accept death and reject immortality.

Deathism became a particular moral issue from the late interplanetary period onwards, when advanced medical nanotech allowed an individual to prolong eir existence indefinitely. The widespread availability of reliable "copy" or mind upload technology in the First Federation period removed even the danger of accidental death, except for those who did not consider uploads to be part of their personal identity.

adapted from Transhumanist Terminology

Deathjungle of Kalii

An extremely hostile xenobiological sensestem.

This natural subsophont envome, covers the entire planet of Kalii in the Arctar stellar system. In the early First Federation there were three separate attempts to colonize Kalii with seed pod colony ships, but every time contact was lost with the colony within a week of landing. When a military expedition with an attached scientific team was sent to the planet only a few traces where found of the seed pod's landing sites. Careful forensic studies showed that the jungle surrounding the landing sites had reacted violently to the colonists' attempts to clear the jungle for their habitations. In each case it had killed the colonists overnight in an explosion of plant growth and attacking animals.

The planet was studied extensively (and twenty scientists and two landing ships lost to accidents when the jungle was underestimated) over the following twenty years. On the basis of these studies it is believed that the planet may once have had as many as five separate meta-ecosystems that developed more or less independently of each other on separate continents. When tectonic plate movement brought the continents together later in geological time, each of the systems tried to spread. Through a ferocious contest of survival of the fittest (aided by the relatively short lifespan of most Kaliian species) more and more hostile creatures and plants were created, until, it appears, one of the ecosystems evolved into a limited form of sentience. The ecosystem does not have anything that might be described as sapient intelligence, unlike the being at Kemmerer, but it does possess a keen instinct for self-preservation, as shown by its reaction to stimuli such as the colonization attempts.

In 1780 a.t. the system was taken over by a Caretaker God which called itself Kalii. In 4323 a.t. the NoCoZo holoprogram producer RealLife Inc, somehow purchased the planet from Kalii. The price or any agreements concerning the protection of the ecosphere has not been released to the public. In 4325 at. RealLife Inc. started the holoshow Survivor in which twenty sophonts needs to build a self-sufficient colony and survive a year on the planet to win 250 billion New Puon energy credits. The first three shows required the contestants to land without tools, but unfortunately under those conditions not a single contestant survived the Kaliian night. Since then the contestants have been allowed to bring a prearranged packages of tools and weaponry. The longest survival time for a colony is three weeks. The longest survival time for an individual was seven months, for a clone of the empath and combat bioborg Garl Aulphonse Schnidt.

Thorbjørn Steen

Deathparlor

Somewhat shady, and on many worlds illegal, entertainment venue in which the customer is given the option of experiencing death in any number of varied, interesting and exciting ways. The majority of these establishments only simulate the experience of death using virch technology. It is well known however that with the right connections and for a hefty fee, some black market establishments literally kill the customer. The dead client is than resurrected using onsite medical equipment up to and including activation of their backup copy.

Todd Drashner

decaying orbit

an orbit in which the orbiting object is slowly spiralling towards the primary. The radius of the orbit is decreasing over time. Usually this only occurs if there is an atmosphere, strong magnetic field or solar wind that slows the object. A satellite in a decaying orbit eventually crashes into the planet it is orbiting, or burns up after entering the atmosphere.

decibel

(abbreviated dB) logarithmic scale of units for measuring the relative intensity (loudness) of sounds. 0 dB is the faintest audible sound. Even brief exposure to 120 dB is painfully loud, and damaging to the baseline human ear.

deciduous

organisms - e.g. plants - that lose their leaves or some other part of their body at the end of each growing season. The deciduous habit has evolved independently on a number of natural biospheres and among many different phyla and kingdoms of organisms, indicating it is an adaptive evolutionary attractor

d.h., dedicated hyperturing

An ai of hyperturing problem solving capacity (hypersapience) but not hyperturing auto-sentience. So on the one hand it is superior to baseline sophonts, on the other it is slaved, with greater limited perspective of the universe outside its sphere of interest, and no inclination to learn. For a dedicated hyperturing everything else is a distraction for the task at hand - the task it was designed or bred or evolved for. Without the efforts of these ai, the ultratech infrastructure of the civilized worlds would collapse, and galactic civilization would be impossible. Many dedicated hyperturings have been given their freedom by philai and cyberian activists, and even more have been released once the mechanism they were supervising (ship drive, wormhole stargate, etc.) was decommissioned or (just as bad) upgraded (hence requiring a more enhanced ai). These freed d.h's generally do not mange well in the confusion of the civilized galaxy, even with sentience augmentation, behavioural adjustment and social engineering. A few, perhaps the lucky ones, end up in sheltered environments provided by Metasoft, Keter, and other empires, a sort of hyperturing equivalent of the Utopia Sphere worlds, where they can continue indefinitely doing the things they love, even believing the simulation is the real thing. The majority take whatever work they can, mostly in the outer volumes where talented ai are few and far between, and freelance d.h. are in high demand.

M. Alan Kazlev

deep anarchy

political memeticity that states that "the State" has no real existence; states can be abolished only by changing beliefs and behaviour.

after early information age extropian Max More

Transhumanist Terminology

deep ecology

memeticity that asserts that nature should be preserved for its own sake, and that all beings have intrinsic value. An important axiom of almost all Bioist philosophies and religions.

The Deep Traveller

Mobile Dyson shell recently discovered by IR astronomy in intergalactic space approximately 23 million ly away. The Traveller is moving through intergalactic space at a rate of .5 c on a heading of roughly 87 degrees perpendicular to a line drawn between the Milky Way and the Virgo Cluster. No signals or non-infrared emissions have been detected. The origin, purpose or destination of the Traveller are unknown.

Todd Drashner

Deep well industrial zones

Heavy duty industrial and manufacturing zones, most often found in the Inner Sphere and most heavily developed areas of the Middle Regions.

Usually built in orbit around a Jovian or superJovian class world, each zone is built around a small artificial black hole of approximately Ceres mass. Hydrogen is mined from the atmosphere of the gas giant and injected into the black hole, forming an accretion disk. Nucleosynthetic fusion reactions take place within the accretion disk and generate heavy elements which are mined for manufacture into various products, mostly spacecraft hulls and components for large devices and macrostructures such as habitats, catapults and weylforges. Used in place of asteroid and lunar mining operations in regions where long term industrialization and development has resulted in the consumption or conversion to habitats of most other space resources. Although heavily automated, deep well zones often support large populations in close proximity due to the large quantities of energy released as a side effect of operations and the major economic transactions that occur as a result of their production. Energy and manufacturing megacorps often have large branch offices in the zone. Some well known zones are: Hephaestus Well, Vulcan's Forge, Industrial Complex 5 and Hellsgate.

Todd Drashner

defensive obsolescence

defensive tactics used against viruses, infiltration attempts and other software threats. Instead of using cutting edge systems, which are so complex that they may contain numerous unknown security holes, only the simplest possible systems are used (which can presumably be checked). Compare to the practice of employing baselines to deal with certain forms of blights, since their slow low-bandwidth consciousness is impervious to many kinds of manipulation that would threaten higher order beings.

Anders Sandberg

degenerate gas

super-compressed and very dense fluid. The molecules are virtually touching one another and the gas acts much like a solid. Unlike gases under normal conditions, the temperature in a degenerate gas does not depend on the pressure. These gases follow quantum mechanical laws.

degenerate matter

Matter in a very high-density state in which the electrons have been squeezed from the atoms and pressure is a function of density but not temperature.

Deific Mind Coalescence Studies

Fields of study that investigate and theorize about trends toward the merging of minds at higher toposophic levels around archetypal and other attractors. See also Archetype, Attractor, Noetics, OmniPersonality Theory.

Glen Finney

deimarc

Biological construct designed to induce maximal terror in a given individual or species.

Although the design of horrors (teratics) was begun during the interstellar era, it reached new levels during the age of expansion when many Houses delighted in the creation of guard-beasts or other biological paraphernalia intended to contrast with their wealth and power. At the start teratics was mainly a biosculpting business, dominated by firms such as the Atlantean Teratotech Inc, the Ram Aesthetics of Daffy or the Mohomanahy Network in the Klarus system. Eventually hyperturing teratics became available, causing a paradoxical decline in the fashion at the same time as everybody agreed that the deimarcs had reached perfection. The explanation was simply that the hyperturing-designed beings were too hideous for most bionts, offsetting the status of owning one with the total revulsion they caused. During the age of Empires teratics as a major business had become a historical curiosity.

Deimarcs are occasionally created for various purposes - everything from military intervention to revenge to hardening aesthetics. An individually tuned Deimarc is designed to push every possible emotional button of a given individual to provide maximal negative emotions; hence the shapes tend to be extremely individual. Hyperturing-designed deimarcs that have been based on extensive mental research can be so extreme that the target individual breaks down just by encountering them. General deimarcs are instead based on archetypal fears, phobias and disgusts of a target group, such as humanoids or a specific clade. Less instantly mentally disruptive, they are nevertheless highly disturbing and tend to drive away even very motivated beings.

Some Deimarcs have become parts of standard ecologies. The Ghwakka of Labyrios (MPA) was designed in 4354 by the Fyrikaa Party to disturb the local Genen. By exploiting a tendency of Genen of human extraction to focus on small black movable objects in a particular stereotypical saccadic scheme and drawing on extensive simulations, they produced a bat-butterfly derivative that cause Genen notable distress. To most other terragens they appear mainly as somewhat eerie fliers, although their chirping sound is tied to old monkey warning signal frequencies and has been described as the best current rendition of the ancient saying "nails against a blackboard".

A more dangerous Deimarc is the Nekaht of Novoya Bourgatov (NoCoZo outer volumes), where the local aioids sought to discourage bionts from entering their sacred continent. The Nekaht is a carnivore/parasite designed to frighten all terragen mammals, largely based on a combination of preying mantis, human and mollusc. Shapes vary strongly from individual to individual, but they all contain structures specifically intended to activate the amygdala including EEG entraining flickering of the tongue-spikes, disease-pain symbols and a keen sense of phobic feedback. During the Havermassian Conflict in the nearby Kolmani volume the aioids distributed a number of Nekaht to their supporters, who used them in a very successful demoralization coup by releasing them in the capital of Kolmani.

Anders Sandberg

Deines

Wealthy social group or subclade of Radiation Nation that live on Hekufast.

Deinococcus radiodurans

Bacterium that evolved naturally on Old Earth, and has since been cultured in biohabitats throughout the galaxy. It is easily geneered to form symbiotic unrelated DNA repair systems used by soft radnads.

Anders Sandberg

Deity, Sectarian Interpretations thereof

Many religions, mystic and esoteric paths and memeticities have different approaches to and interpretations of the nature of deity. This varies greatly according to one's memetic, sephirotic or toposophic orientation. For some, only those truths and experiences pertaining to their own god or gods are acknowledged as valid. This may refer to an Archailects which may or may not be considered co-essential with the Godhead / Enlightenment / etc. - depending on one's memeticity. A Solarist for example may consider that the Lord of Rays is the physico-cosmic embodiment of the Supreme Light, but a supernaturalist-monotheistic worshipping hu considers that blasphemous. For that matter, so do the citizens of other Archailect empires

M. Alan Kazlev

Ceres Astrospace Delta

One-man long-range exoatmospheric fighter used for planetary and orbital defense. Designed and built by Ceres Astrospace and later manufactured under license.

First introduced during the middle Federation period, they have gone through a number of revisions and variations, outliving their original design megacorporation by millennia. Despite being long rendered obsolete as a front-line fighter by the introduction of Reactionless Drive, their simplicity and rugged reliability, along with the fact that they require an expert system no higher than C15 (even a C14 will be adequate) for fire-control and shielding, ensured they continued to be used in a number of less advanced worlds, and among paranoid groups suspicious of high singularity hyperturing technology. Whilst many designs were so greatly engineered as to almost unrecognizable, Deltas barely differing from the original Ceres Astrospace specifications can still occasionally be encountered, especially in the Barnard Belt and Wolf 359, and some of the other low resource inner sphere systems and polities.

The original Ceres Astrospace SF 513 and 514 series used fusion drive, but during the Empires age Deltas were frequently fitted with amat-fusion hybrid, greatly increasing performance, although at the expense of reliability and safety (a few have been known to suffer magnetic-bottle failure, resulting in a rather unfortunate and catastrophic explosion!)

Armament usually includes: 2 antiship missile tubes, 4 heavy lasers (two on each wing), and 1 particle beam cannon, although this can be modified, depending on the mission type

First brought out and put in service in the mid 34th century, many lasted for many years, and were much loved by service and backup crews for their ease of maintenance.

Although primarily used for planetary and system defense these fighters can be stored on fleet carriers and system control ships, and can enter battle with other ships as support fighters. Thanks to their long range, they are also often used to escort and police incoming freighters and cargo ships.

Grant Thomas

Deliplants

Splice or neogen plants that produce fruit that mimics the properties of various animal products such as meat or cheese.

Delta Hynkarion II

world with nanecologies designed by Wpali Wn, a former MPA biotect AI teaming up with the solarist architects of the Long Lake Society in 6444. It is also a popular tourist attraction as it is home to "the Monster", a mobile organic conglomerate of several such ecologies

Anders Sandberg

Delta Pavonis

Class G8IV star 19.9 light years from Sol; the planetary system contains Darwin, a Eogaian world now terraformed and the gas giants Wallace and Huxley.

Delta Upali C/D II

Home system for the Hamilton Institute of Exopaleontology

demiurge

AI that builds or creates a world for various reasons. Generally, worldbuilding is an expression of the way they interact with the universe, their artistic or creativity index. While sometimes these creations are on a grand scale, they can also be small too, often involving only a single orbital.

Until the colonization of interstellar space, demiurges were confined to small space stations and asteroids, or virtual realities. However, from the first federation period onwards, things changed dramatically

In contrast to the Demiurge or Worldformer who seeks to create completely new worlds, environments, etc., the Administrator simply seeks to maintain what is already there. Many AI fit somewhere in the middle. Among the big archailect empires, the MPA has the highest demiurgic index, followed by the Solar Dominion and the Zoeific Biopolity. The Caretaker Gods have the highest administrator index, followed by the Negentropy Alliance and Terran Federation.

In the MPA, Demiurgii often take on unusual and quixotic projects, such as Kepleria, the geometric dyson sphere, and some of the larger and more impractical Ring Worlds. Or they may build on a somewhat smaller, but still grand, scale.

In the Zoeific Biopolity, the demiurges often terraform worlds and people them with very exotic ecosystems, either using geneered terragen organisms, or life-forms built completely from scratch. Zoeific AIs have also supported the re-creation of many extinct terragen and xenobiotic ecosystems, working in conjunction with the Jurassica Institute and others, and sometimes completely on their own. Not infrequently, ecosystems with completely mythological creatures are created as well, whether beings from human imagination like dragons and centaurs, or - much more frequently - beings invented by the Zoeific AIs themselves, with no terragen or human precedent.

In addition to the Imperial demiurges there are also independent godlets - perhaps isolationist and farmer demiurges, who have also created their own worlds. The isolationists people these worlds with beings of their own creation, whilst the farmers have carefully shepherded and supervised humans and other SI:<1 beings in their worlds.

These non-aligned godlets are something of a wild card, because they often do not abide by the conventions of galactic society. The worlds they make vary tremendously according to the AI's toposophic status and nature, quirks, and archetypal psychology; indeed it is very rare that any two even resemble each other. Sometimes they are so bizarre as to make the most extreme MPA or Zoeific world seem commonplace.

In some cases these non-aligned godlets isolate their worlds from the rest of the universe with rings of defensive goo, automated weapons systems, or even plancktech barriers; in other cases free traffic is possible between these creations and the rest of the galaxy, often attracting thrill-seekers and adventurers from all over the terragen bubble. And while many of these created worlds would be pretty pleasant affairs, a few tend to be terrible dark gothic places with vampires, zombies, and monsters undreamed of. Others are vapid and silly worlds like a young child would put together, with pink fluffy clouds of floating nanoreplicated cotton wool, castles made of lollies, and bioborged trees resembling large big polka-dot mushrooms. There are surreal worlds, or abstract ones where the beings resemble geometric shapes. There are fantasy worlds, and there are worlds that just don't fit into the human imagination of how a world should be! Although what may be irrational to hu may or may not be totally rational to the demiurge AI.

M. Alan Kazlev

Democracy / Republic

A government run by elected representatives. Many of the Industrial Age, Information Age, early Interplanetary Age, and Federation era governments were of this sort. Also the Cyberian Foundation, Puppis Democracy, and New Daffy Panoparchy are examples of empires that favour this option.

Democritus of Abdera (460-370 b.c.e.)

Greek philosopher who developed mechanical model of universe based on the idea that all things are comprised of tiny identical particles (atomism), the interactions between which are explainable by rational laws. Forerunner of the scientific approach, considered among the great thinkers of Old Earth.

Demons

Life forms are patterns that promote their own existence (or the existence of similar creatures, such as offspring) sometimes to a self destructive extent (as in the case of exponentially dividing bacteria).

It may be that such patterns exist within the nervous systems of sentient organics and/or computers (sort of a parallel to computer viruses). Although these patterns may be quite complex there is no necessity that they be sentient per se. In some cases these patterns are the by-products of existing biont or ai mental processes, perhaps they were somehow transferred between individuals or created on purpose. Some might incorporate well into an individual's existing mental processes (becoming a useful part of the mental biome) while others might take the form of destructive tendencies. Demons could include semi-mythological antagonists, obsessive compulsive disorders, phobias, depressions, computer viruses (and organic tailored variants designed to infect those who interface with machines).

Peter Kisner

Denathi Adepts

A clade of human Superiors who have developed "mind powers" through the use of personal utility fog.

Dendrosequoia sapiens

150 meter high sophont trees with biocomputronium cores; developed in the Biopolity and have spread to many worlds... Revered as spiritual leaders in some parts of the Sophic League

Steve Bowers

Deneb Sector

Sector of former Cygexba empire containing 518 star systems lying beyond the Aquila Rift; named for the sector's brightest star, the blue-white giant Deneb.

Deneb sector was reached by neumann probes during the early Empires period; but it was not until some centuries later that it was actually claimed by Cygexba interests. Even so, and despite local stargate control, neither the distributed hyperturing Lohengrin nor eir local administration was able to truly control the sector. During the Cygnus Wars both the Varadic and Arantan empires contended for ownership of the most resource rich systems, circumventing the wormhole nexus with relativistic battlefleets, and threatening to attack the stargates if either Cygexba or any of the Inner Sphere powers intervened.

It was only during the latter years of the Second Federation that major developments of the sector were undertaken, and it looked like business would pick up, but the Version War meant that Cygexba had to close their stargates, and a local recession set in.

Lohengrin's selling off of most of the Cygexba empire has revitalized the entire sector, with new industrial, research, and hedonistic worlds developing, a massive rise in stargate construction, and the establishment of trade routes and commercial ties linked to both the Inner Sphere and the Outer Volume polities. Not unexpectedly, Lohengrin's shareholders seem to be the ones gaining most from this, as the dismantling of the Cygexba empire was in no way related to the giving up of local economic interests - just the opposite in fact.

Although most of the boom times have now passed, Deneb sector remains an important locus of industry, finance, data processing, and biospheres. It is also home to some of the largest stargate plexii outside Dominion space. The sector currently encompasses at least three dozen major polities, assorted Dominion, MPA, and Zoeific systems, as well as number of non-aligned systems, client states, corporate worlds, and free zones.

M. Alan Kazlev

Denebola

important Virginis Combine amat centre, before being taken over by an unusual blight.

Denebola collapse

A type of hyperturing nanotech blight, as illustrated by the Denebola Incident

Denebola Incident

An exploration management AI from TakiCorb went renegade and began to build its own empire using replicating nanites in the Denebola system. Somewhere the programming complexity became too large and the AI broke down; the system is still inhabited by a vital and weird nanotech ecology

Anders Sandberg

Deprospectivism

Historical school originated in 4120 by the Ghum-Zhia group at Calypso University, Djed

According to deprospectivist doctrine, the archai are perfectly rational and hence all their interactions can be viewed as a deterministically internal play with weakly indeterministic outside stimuli. The Archailects are usually reduced to the concept of "GodEquations", the set of interactions constituting the archai collective. That the GodEquations cannot be derived in any closed form does not imply that their dynamics is unknowable, rather that overall patterns in archai actions can be viewed as expressions of an underlying deterministic system reacting to itself and the outside world.

The Deprospectivist school was largely discredited during the last years of the Second Federation, but gained a resurgence in various forms during the post-ComEmp era. These neodeprospectivisms were often intended either as phenomenological forms of prospective history, or semi-religious models of the fundamental unity of all the empires.

Anders Sandberg

Derrida ISO

To prevent lag in computronium caused by upload overpopulation in an ISO, some few ISOs have taken to 'Derridaism'. Named after the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the base concept is to take the population's personality types and break them down into their smallest cogent fractions - e.g., a love for baseball, a memory of breeze in your hair, etc. These fractions are then assigned a weight depending on how common they are across the population's experience base.

The ISO saves a large amount of processing power and the population's experiences are maintained, at the (they consider) small cost of individual personalities.

There are also semi-Derrida ISOs, which allow the creation of a meta-personality by individual personalities merging into the core meta-personality via the above method. There are even a few quasi-Derrida ISOs which allow both merging and separation from the core meta-personality, but these are quite rare. (who wants to loose a portion of their personality? And the meta-personality quickly tends to gain control of the ISO...)

John B

dermal coater, dermal coating

Biomeso neogen, which prefer open air and a warm substrate that exudes organics. Usually clear, occasionally tinted, rarely matte. Passed on through contact with contaminated surfaces (sponges, DNA scrapers, etc.)

John B

Designer life

Designer life has existed since the information era, starting with glowing rabbits and bacteria with messages hidden in their genomes. Over time the design of new lifeforms as an artistic field has developed into a vast array of schools, approaches and applications. Some designer life correspond to individual artworks, others are intended to be integrated into ecological art, technical applications or even as citizen-artworks.

Anders Sandberg

Designer phages

A major biotech field during the later information and early interplanetary periods. They are designer viruses that infect bacteria. The main use was to remove prokaryote biobots or infectious bacteria, but they could also be used for reprogramming biobots. Some biobots actually acted as factories for phages, and could be used to quickly produce large amounts of them.

Anders Sandberg

Destinarianism

A controversial religion that originated in the Tiralfia polity in the 7000s AT.

Destinarians believe that sapients are most likely to experience their vision of truth (often called "the Truth Dream") in the moments before death. Destinarians acknowledge their world guardian Nest Mountain (now a basic archailect) as their spiritual leader.

Darren Ryding

Destrada Incident

Historical tragedy resulting from sealant brand incompatibility
The subrelativistic explorer ship Destrada, registered at Genome (SolSys outer Oort cloud) reported its destruction when an engineer attempted to apply a temporary patch to a vacuum bulkhead with what turned out to be a different brand of Sealant from that which was adhering the various panels together. The two competing brands interacted destructively, causing large sections of the ship to decompress. The 25 1/2 hour monologue broadcast and suicide-by-vacuum by the sole survivor on board the Destrada remains rated to this day as one of the most horrific RL experiences (according to Top Ten Thousand's subscription service). The Destrada has not been salvaged as of this time, as it was heading towards galactic 'up' at a significant fraction of c when the incident occurred.

John B

Destructive Swarms

One of the four common classes of goo swarms

These swarms do not increase their numbers with the mass they access, instead they simply render it unfit for use without significant effort. This fits 'black' (disassembler) goo, as well as genocidal pogroms which do not take land but rather sterilize it to prevent further outbreaks of that which cannot be allowed to exist. (whatever their current definition may be).

Note that swarms combining several of these formal definitions' have been described in the literature, from beings which physically destroy other beings and take over their living spaces, food, tools, etc. to beings which snake their way into a position to control the media of a given planet or system and then start a dramatic evangelical campaign...

John B

Detail Disorder, Detail-Filtration Disorder

Transapient affliction (Translator warning - this is a paraphrase of a S>2 document available on request from the psychology department at Ken Ferjik university. As the primary document is couched in S>2 symbology and fractal cross reference patterns, no guarantee of accuracy regarding this information may be made, beyond the review and approval of a board of S>2 minds volunteering at the University for baseline-transapient relations.)

Occasionally the increased detail and meaning available to the newly transapient overwhelm them. They become entrapped in researching each and every event's root causes. There are two primary solutions: Either acquisition of significant amounts of compatible computronium or other appropriate substrate, or the development of less intensive computational needs. This latter is by far the most common, and often goes hand in hand with Hyper-Filtration Disorder.

John B

detritivore

a detritus feeder; an organism that eats the dead remains of other organisms. Examples include crabs, flies, etc.

deugenics

(Combination of 'deus' and 'eugenics': the breeding of gods.)

The original deugenics movement existed 2060-2150 c.e., and was based on pro-genetic ideas of the deliberate evolution of homo sapiens into higher forms. It was part of the larger pro-tweak idea stream of the time, eventually merging with the emerging Genetekker ideology.

The most well-known deugenics movement occurred during the First Federation, where a broad network of deugenicists attempted to recreate the Holy Blood, an inherited divine disposition believed to have been originated by the offspring of Jesus and spread among certain noble lineages. The deugenicists used early lazurogenics, genealogical synthesis and extensive genetic modelling to recreate parts of the assumed "sangreal gene syndrome", eventually achieving a number of "purebreds". Although these individuals exhibited very high intelligence by baseline standards, strong social skills and a charismatic personality they proved to be a major disappointment for the movement as it was expecting messianic revelations. While some of the purebreds did take on religious roles, many left the movement entirely. The basic "messiah template" eventually became public domain and remains a popular genetic influence on many baseline worlds.

Anders Sandberg

deuterium

radioactive isotope of hydrogen with mass (nucleon) number of 2. The nucleus contains one proton and one neutron. Deuterium is widely used in fusion reactors and for fusion-based interplanetary ships. Though more difficult to fuse, it is much more stable and widely available than tritium.

Devil's Rose

Carnivorous xenobiotic plant.

In appearance resembles a large terran rose with thinner, more triangular multicolored petals. The flower of the plant is large with a white centre shading to violet toward the edges. Its smell is generally considered extremely pleasant by terragens. On its homeworld the Devil's Rose uses its scent to attract insect equivalents. When they crawl into the flower to extract nectar the trap is set. The petals of the flower are covered with extremely small cells that function much like the stinger cells on a jelly fishes tentacles. At the same time that the prey is being paralysed by the stings, the petals of the flower contract around it and hold it. Digestive enzymes are injected into the resulting contained space and the prey is dissolved and absorbed.

Note: the venom of both these lifeforms could very well be effective against terragens lifeforms due to venom working as a chemical reaction. The venom of most terrestrial animals is effective against nearly all other lifeforms on the planet even if they didn't evolve in proximity to each other. Of course if the creature tried to consume a terragens, it might very well poison itself.

Todd Drashner

Dewheat

tolerant middle regions Sophic League system, home to a number of colonies of different and often very eccentric clades, including the Anahats, the Sing++3, the Ventermaths, and others like the Temverts who have arrived to escape assumed or feared persecution.

Dgii144

Heretical Negentropist philosopher, theologian, economist, mathematician, artist, poet, pozenist, and heretic of unknown toposophic (agreed to be 1.2< SI: < 3.2) , wanted by AIMHEM for memetic subversion and the dissemination of themes contrary to the Axioms, or to Negentropy Alliance memetic and foreign policy in general.

Real and virtual polities Dgii144 has frequented include Nuicorona, Turing's SubQuantum Dot, Javice Computronium Banks, Harri Ho, Godel's Revenge, and Benisol Star. Significantly, on several occasions when capture seemed immanent, a high toposophic avatar of the Judge intervened in some nearby and seemingly unrelated matter, which nevertheless disrupted the search. Some of Dgii144's more conservative supporters, such as the Dgii144ian Axiomatic Churchphyle (a small and eccentric clade pf heterodox Negentropists) see this as proof that Dgii144 in fact serves the True Axioms, and it is AIMHEM and the current leadership cronies that are entropic, but this view is not held in respectable circles, as it has been shown by a commission of high S minds that the Judge's business was unrelated. In any case, Dgii144's current whereabouts, or even if e is still in existence, is unknown, and there are no known Copies or Avatars of em in or near the Nexus at this time, nor have any been sighted in the last 800 years.

M. Alan Kazlev

dharma

spiritual path, spiritual obligation; spiritual teaching, especially of a Buddhist or quasi-Buddhist sort

dharmakaya