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Re to Rg

Reaction Analyst

A sophont skilled at generating predictive models based solely on passive observation of another sophont.

This speciality often takes some significant amount of time observing the target, and requires access to the majority if not all of the targets' modes of communication. (Similar to Psychohistory, but aimed at a single sophont instead of a culture). Mindworker profession.

John B

reaction mass

Fuel used by a conventional rocket ship

A conventional rocket - which means everything from a simple solid-fuel missile to a huge ultra tech GUT-drive starship - works by accelerating a small amount of matter at very high velocity out the rear of the vessel. The ship therefore moves forward, in accordance with newton's third law. The material that is fired out the rear of the ship is called the reaction mass. The reaction mass, or "fuel", often makes up a significant amount of the weight of a vessel, especially in the case of low tech and inefficient propulsion. Ultra tech exotic matter and singularity-propelled vessels do not require reaction mass, they are called reactionless drive. Solar, laser, and microwave sail and drive sail vessels also do not require reaction mass, as the "push" in that case comes from an external source.

Drive Performance is determined by the exhaust velocity of the drive system and mass ratio. For a given drive power, the acceleration will be lower for a higher exhaust velocity. Therefore, in selecting an exhaust velocity there is a tradeoff between maximum Δv and acceleration. Drives, especially those of warships, often allow this balance to be adjusted to some degree to adapt to different operating conditions.

M.Alan Kazlev, Richard Baker and David Dye

Reaction Time

Reaction time is a concept borrowed from baseline physiology. It represents the amount of time it takes for a being to notice anomalous data in the standard input form(s) it is designed to handle, hypothesize the reason(s) behind the anomaly, generate a plan to deal with the hypothesis, and trigger initial response. Due to the processing overhead which is required for true sentience, usually sentient machines of a given processing capability have a much slower reaction time than non-sentient machines using similar hardware.

John B

Reactionless Drive

A form of ultra tech that propels a ship through space by creating a local gravitational gradient in the surrounding space time field, and "falling" into it, is known as a reactionless drive.

The three generally used forms of Reactionless drive are Diametric Field Drive, Pitch Field Drive, and Bias Field Drive. As with all types of ship drive, Each has specific advantages and disadvantages, and hence different ultra tech clades and cultures tend to prefer different types of drive

Energy for the drive is "borrowed" from the vacuum - a ship on inertial drive colliding with another mass is not going to do much more damage than a normal crash as it does not posses any additional kinetic energy.

Reactionless drive fields enable extreme accelerations with usually minor forces on the ship. Accelerations of 10 to 100 G range (even greater in some very sophisticated craft) are possible, although this depends on the size and power of the drive unit and exotic matter core in relation to the ship's overall mass, and large freighters and civilization ships have a much lover acceleration.

Acceleration results in inertial effects which are not very comfortable, but various adjustments of the fields dampen them to livable levels. The most sophisticated drives do this so well that one travelling on the vessel does not notice anything. On the other hand, some drives have tidal forces that are extreme and unshieldable.

Rapid acceleration, where manageable, enables a much quicker and easier relativistic transit; a vessel may take only a month, or even a few days, to accelerate to relativistic velocity, and to conversely accelerate at the other end of the journey. Militarily also, reactionless drive led to a revolution in battlefield tactics, such as the "modern" sneak-rush-dodge tactics, and butterfly flight, wildly predictable fluttering of the acceleration vector that makes the ship hard to hit but also very noticeable and energy consuming.

Reactionless drive is extremely costly in terms of both exotic matter and high level (> S4) hyperturings, each of which is because of such a high S level unpredictable (and hence likely to suddenly acquire a high R and/or P rating of sentience at the most inopportune moments). For this reason it is used only by government couriers, certain emergency services, the military, big corporations, luxury liners, and long-range scouts and explorer vessels.

M.Alan Kazlev and Anders Sandberg

Readers of Dave

com-emp period virtual AI discussion team - possible source of the inspiration for ex-sophic radical hedonism polity that culminated in the Adara Trade Treaty

Anders Sandberg

Realisation number

The R or Realisation (sometimes termed Reflection) number is the rating that defines the level of sentience [Realisation] in a bioid or aioid.

R1 - Base notions of existence. The being has realised that it is more than just a machine/fleshbag, but is yet to achieve full perspective (i.e., it has a representation of itself). The being shows signs of developing emotions, or at least behavioural states like emotions. This shortly leads to level two realization.

R2 - The being not only knows it exists, but also realizes it has a degree of flexibility in its existence. This level is somewhat akin to a four year old child, in its inquisitiveness, etc.

R3 - Much like R2, but with a greater level of understanding in its freedom. This is the level of sentience that most Artificial Intelligences reach in order to qualify as a 'real' AI.

R4 - In all other aspects it is fully aware of its existence, situation and capabilities. Advanced AI.

R5 - Human in all respects.

R6 - 'True' (read: flawless) AI.

R7 and above - The AI or po becomes autoscient, able to perceive and understand what goes on inside itself perfectly. This includes several steps too, ranging from just being able to look at its own code to a holographic state where every part understands every other part. This is of course impossible to reach for an evolved bioid.

Mark Clutton and Anders Sandberg

Reality

the nature of things as they really are, behind the appearance of surface phenomena or ordinary baseline consciousness.

Depending on your philosophical or memetic inclination, may refer to mundane physical existence, to a series or multiplicity of physical, metaphysical, or toposophic grades, or to a monistic concept of the Absolute Reality

M.Alan Kazlev

$Category: Mathematics$ Reality Intratextualization Project

On ancient Old Earth (information age) the ailogist Hans Moravec had pointed out that there were an infinite number of nontrivial ways of transforming the actual universe into a representation following its own laws, where each event in the real universe would be represented but in a different context.

A typical example would be viewing the Fourier-transform of the universe: particles would be replaced with waves, and local interactions with non-local (and vice versa). A new set of physical laws would describe the Fourier-universe, but the underlying material reality would be the same as the normal universe. He also suggested that at least in some of these alternate representations there could exist intelligent life, consisting of widely dispersed processes and correlations in our own universe.

In the 6800's the Keterist Reality Intratextualization Project (RIP) began to study the question seriously, using ultrascale computations in the recently vacated megacomputing nodes of the Ull cluster. They create different "readings" of the universe using the simulators, exploring their properties and whether they can maintain complex systems. To date they have discovered 453,644 alternate representations that have been proven to be able to contain intelligent entities. Most are wildly nonlocal and acausal from the view of our universe, and practically impossible to explore outside of simulations. However, approximately 2000 have sufficiently mild differences to be amenable to physical study, and RIP has done extensive monitoring to study what these alternate readings of the universe contains.

Recently (9640) RIP claimed success in detecting signs of intelligent life in an inverse Mho Kold-transform of the universe. The project has begun the deployment of gravity wave detectors and transmitters across inhabited space in order to signal to and from the transform universe (due to the nature of the inverse Mho Kold-transform they need a very large baseline in order to create a sufficiently localized effect in the transform universe). Critics point out that the inhabitants will be more different than any alien life ever encountered (including Hildemar's knots) and that contact will necessarily be limited to a polite exchange of mathematics. RIP evangelists on the other hand see this as the chance of contacting new cultures and, if information transfer can be made reliable enough to transmit software, doubling the volume of inhabitable space in a single sweep.

Anders Sandberg

Rebirths

Conception that consciousness continues after the death of the physical body, and is reborn in a future life

A basic tent of Buddhism, usually tied in with the concept of a large number of rebirths. Like reincarnation but does not assume the existence of a metaphysical soul.

M.Alan Kazlev

The Receptists

The Proclag Oamnoran was a dictatorial government in the nation of Oamnoran, an independent country stretching across the eastern side of the central megaplateau of the planet Sinyavskaya a terraformed world of mainly humans, tweak minority, colonized by several groups but with little conflict (just enough to prevent the nations from agreeing to a unified government).

During the 5800's the Proclag despots held to an ideological system called Receptism, a complete spiritual-political-social system (not unlike Communism, Fascism, or Legalism of Old Earth) based on Uterospirituality. In brief, they believed that there was a reservoir of souls waiting to be born as Humans, and that it is our ethical duty to bring as many of them into the world as possible. As humans are receptacles for souls, Receptism was created as a popular movement which rallied people against any population laws and even social trends delaying childbearing (which occur on many colonies after the initial spurt of population growth). The Receptist leaders used the movement (some would say manipulated it) to bring themselves to power in Oamnoran, and they immediately changed all the laws and tax code to favor continuous breeding, as well as social manipulation to persecute non-breeders as selfish or sinister. Other nations on the planet either were taken over by Proclag governments or armed themselves against what they thought was an attempt by Oamnoran to dominate the colony by force of numbers.

Although there were border wars and some persecution, the main tragedy of Oamnoran was, of course, the massive overpopulation which soon outstripped the fragile terraformed world. It is widely believed that the AIs did not intervene because they wanted to show the results of the ideology in action, and some militant anti-AI Receptists maintain to this day that the AIs helped sabotage the food-distribution and relief efforts (which were in any case futile). The Population of Oamnoran reached 40 billion at its peak but by that time there had been a general breakdown in the society, as every layer of technology and infrastructure collapsed, followed by the food supply; within a decade the Proclag was gone, the rest of the planet ravaged by resource wars, and the outer solar system colonies closing their doors to desperate shiploads of refugees, many of which still orbit the star as metal mass graves.

There has always been population debates, and each side can bring up examples to support their views--many empires of course are ever-expanding, and technology has in many ways eliminated the traditional concept of a resource-based carrying capacity. But Oamnoran is still regarded as an example of Humanity's inability to escape natural laws as long as we exist in any physical form.

Aaron Hamilton

Recombinant DNA

Basic principle of gengineering, dating back to early information age Old Earth. It involves cutting the DNA into discrete segments, and then recombining the segments to form new genes. The recombinant DNA molecule is then inserted into a cell.

Recpub Tauri

important Metasoft world

Recursion

The process of defining or expressing a function or procedure in terms of itself.

Typically, each iteration of a recursive-solution procedure produces a simpler (or possibly smaller) version of the problem than the previous iteration. This process continues until a subproblem whose answer is already known (or that can be readily computed without recursion) is obtained. A surprisingly large number of symbolic and numerical problems lend themselves to recursive formulations. Recursion is typically used by game-playing programs, fractal aioids, and many AIs

from KurzweilAI

Recursiverch, Recursivirch

a virtual space whose primary purpose is to self-adapt via certain rulesets to an endstate preferably most pleasant (but often termed 'least repulsive') to the participating sophonts. These virches are typically much more processing intensive than the average virch, as each action or lack thereof needs to be checked against the ruleset(s) and applied across the virch. Note that many purists and/or linguists claim that any interactive virch must be a recursiverch, but general usage indicates that the term is more utilized to represent virches where the extreme interactivity across the whole of the represented space is the primary point.
Perhaps the most famous recursiverch within the NoCoZo is 'the Verifex Experiment.'

John B

Recycler

a sophont with access to large amounts of 'wasted' technologies and a list of others with desires for less-than-cutting edge technologies.

Of course, the cast-off technologies may be better than cutting-edge where they end up.

John B

red dwarf

A small cool faint main sequence star, spectroscopic class M.

Because they are so cool they only burn slowly, and hence live for a very long time. These are the most common stars; there are about two thousand per million cubic light-years of galactic space. They are located at the bottom right of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

The Red Dwarf Kings

interplanetary-age solipsist descended ai that colonised EZ Aquarii and other nearby red dwarfs, notably Gliese 876

red giant

An old, post-main-sequence, star, spectroscopic class K or M, whose surface layers have expanded to many solar radii and have relatively low temperatures.

However, because they are so large, they are also very luminous. They are located at the middle right of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

redshift

Doppler shift of spectral features toward longer wavelengths, indicating recession of the source.

The greater the red shift, the fast the recession. Note that a very strong gravitational force can also produce a red shift. Compare blueshift For example, when a ship is moving away from a star, the star's light appears redder, as the light waves are red shifted, elongated, lengthening the wavelength. In Terragen civilization, the expansion of the universe was first discovered in presingularity Old Earth, when Edwin Hubble (late industrial age Old Earth astronomer) observed that the light from almost all other galaxies was red-shifted.

Re-evaluation, Age of

Generally, the period from 7400 to 7800.

The rise of new and unpredictable powers on the periphery cause the mainbrains shift their focus away from inner sphere power politics. The emergence of the Paradigm is significant here; it represents one of the factors that leads not to the formation not a new federation but an agreement between the empires on an alliance against all new outside threats. That is widely seen as the start of a new order, instead of empire against empire; it is turning into wormhole nexus against the unknown.

But more than just outside threats, this age was also one in which changes were taking place within the empires as many groups and AIs realised that the current system need to be revised. New alliances formed, decentralization proceeded, and Cygexba sold its territories. Many empires underwent vast reorganizations, having to allow parts to become more independent or even losing them. But while the Solar Dominion might be unsuccessfully trying to regain the Perseus Arm, the Negentropy Alliance is growing through the TrueModel, new regions appear in the Serpens and Carina regions.

Anders Sandberg

Reformed Catholic Church

Revival of the Catholic Church based on the Tradition of the Life of Christ as interpreted through the teachings of the three Holy Figures of Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas and Evangelion of Umbriel. Based on monastic biospheres, bishoprics, and vicarages throughout much of the Inner Sphere, with the largest number in the Terran Federation, and the Sophic League. There is also a small but thriving cluster of habs in the inner Perseus Arm

M.Alan Kazlev

Reformed Tolerikerian Church

Monastic, contemplative faith that broke away from the Orthodox Tolerikerian Church during the later post-ComEmp period,

rejecting "Velvet Series" literalism (or fundamentalism) and virchgame interactivism in favor of quietist contemplation, mild ludditism, and study of the later Sophic League To Lerik. They are quite a successful sect, with monasteries dotting the civilized galaxy (there is a modest one on Thasaiya), and an estimated membership of around 2,590 million

M. Alan Kazlev

Refugium

capital of the Refugium Federation, settled in the 6th millennium by the Semperist Survival Fleet.

The Refugium Federation

Semperist hider empire, only discovered during the later ComEmp period; the largest and most well known case of an undetected empire inside another empire.

Refutology War

A minor low-violence war between the Refutologists and Faillance 8496-8513, mainly fought among minor Inner Sphere worlds.

The Faillance was a trade-prognosis cartel culture that had emerged during the fragmentation of the ComEmp. As a counter to its growing influence were the Refutologists, sceptics and analysts of competing trade cultures. Among a number of minor worlds their conflict escalated due to memetic manipulation into full-scale proxy war (on the major worlds local governments had no problems preventing such conflicts). The war led to the breakup of Faillance (and the few formal Refutologist cartels) due to economic sanctions; the resulting Faillantau either dissolved over time or became minor local government religions.

Anders Sandberg

regio

On a terrestrial class planet or moon, a large area marked by reflectivity or color distinctions from adjacent areas, or a broad geographic region (plural : regiones)

abbreviation: RE

regolith

A powdery soil layer on the surface of Asteroidal, Planetoidal, Mercurian, or Selenian and other airless bodies caused by meteorite bombardment.

regulon

Autonomous device for attacking wild replicators such as nanoswarms.

In the aftermath of the nanoswarms of the pre-first Federation period, many autonomous nano- (and pico-) immune systems were set up across civilised space. Some were mobile or themselves replicators, intended to scout for emerging swarms and attack them. Over time such autonomous defenses spread and new were designed, especially by the Caretaker Gods. In the frontier polemovores were discovered from extinct civilisations, and expanding anti-swarming systems proliferated. They became known as regulons, the natural predators of wild replicators - and sometimes each other.

Some eschatologists have worried that the regulons will evolve into a threat. Just keeping them from attacking each other has proven nearly impossible, and there is a risk that they might turn on civilised space as being a particularly unusual form of nano-infestations. As long as the nanodefenses of civilisation are better than any regulons this may not be a problem, but if the regulons should ever evolve beyond the ability of being stopped then they might wipe out everything. According to some thinkers such as Urkan da Nstedt this might be the explanation for the fall of most galactic cultures and the stories about the Dawn Hunters: in the long run all civilisations have to create regulons, but the regulons in turn will eventually turn on their civilisation. In the end only a few regulons remain, slowly dying out.

Anders Sandberg

Reincarnation

Religious conception that there is a soul or personality that continues after the death of the physical body, and is reborn and lives again in a future life. An important component in many religions, also a common folk-belief. See also rebirths.

M.Alan Kazlev

relativist

Culture/Profession based on relativist courier and trader lifestyle.

Relativists are of great importance to worlds not connected to the main main wormhole nexus. These are the crew members of relativistic ships, and can easily spend a century on a single mission, although to them it may only seem like a month. Despite great diversity among themselves, they are united in the sense of temporal discontinuity from the rest of galactic life.

relativistic

of, or pertaining to, velocities or objects travelling at close to the speed of light, which experience effects such as time dilation, mass increase, and so on, as described in Special Relativity

relativity

Understanding of the universe developed by Albert Einstein (Old Earth industrial /atomic age physicist); based on the postulate that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and independent of the source or the observer, and that the mathematical forms of the laws of physics are invariant in all inertial systems. See also Special Relativity, General Relativity.

relay

a hardware node in the Known Net which may include nano- pico- and femto-servers, docks, service stations, even in some cases catapults and nano- and microguage wormhole gates.

Relay001

The first major wormhole plexus and relay system built in the Inner Sphere. Became the model for later Relay systems.

Relanimal

A relifed animal

Jorge Ditchkenberg

relbox

A robotic or nanodevice for relifing.

Relboxes tend to be tightly controlled (but, regrettably, not tightly enough) by archai, angelnets or guardians, to avoid creating dangerous relnano, (and more rarely relpico and relfemto), monstrous reltrapworlds and relmonsters.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

relegade

Rl person who turned to virtual existence and rebuilt itself in the rl through the relbox.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

relifing

Any being or device in r/l that has been created or designed by virtuals.

As virtual reality grew, the diverse virtual beings became more independent, intelligent and useful. Finally, some of them became able to manipulate the rl through robots and nano, therefore "relifing it".

In a very broad sense, relifing was already known (or anticipated) in the early interplanetary era, when there existed some primitive robots controlled by computers. The first attempt were traced to virch engineers, who wanted their virtual engineering ais to build virtually designed prototypes in the rl. Soon, it grew to the whole, diverse and important part of civilization.

Then, a number of reltrapworlds, reltrapthings and relmonsters appeared. They caused fear among hu and ai similar only to that caused by goo swarms. Relifing become strictly controlled (but not strictly enough), and production of relnano and (in the case of higher toposophic virtuals) relpico and relfemto was banned altogether. Nevertheless, some unauthorized things still sneak through.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

reling, rel

A virtual person rebuild in the rl, or rl creature build by relbeings.

They can take form of almost every clade, and have limited or complete independence from virtual(s) who built them. Include relmonsters.

Some relings, dissatisfied with the rl, return again to the virtual existence. They are called renrelings. Some pop in and out and are jokingly called revolving rels.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

relmonster

A badly designed reling, existing only for a short time before they are destroyed by the physical limitations of rl.

Subset of relmosters are indeed, monsters. Creatures from the cheap entertainment virches, including erotic, game and thriller virches, which cause havoc and destruction in the rl, before being destroyed by angelnet, rl inhabitants or laws of reality.

Production of dangerous relmonsters is illegal and punished by erasing the virtual existences who created them. Nevertheless, some still sneak through.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

Rental Bodies

A Rental Body is a bot or biobot body that is used to temporarily house the mind of a medical patient, invalid, or other inconvenienced sophont, or as a lifestyle choice.

reltrapworld

A fraction of relworlds are run by bizarre, breakaway virtual beings, which often have only a limited understanding of the rl.

For the rl persons, they appear as nothing less than nightmares returning to life, or deadly traps.

Reeltrapworlds are illegal and punished by erasing the virtual existence(s) who created them. Nevertheless, some still sneak through.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

A relifed vec

Jorge Ditchkenberg

relworld

[1] A symbolic term for all relifed things, sophonts, places etc.

[2]Place in real life controlled by virtuals.

First applications were advanced, semiautomatic rl/Net interfaces with limited manipulation by virtuals. They soon grew and diversified, including learning centers, entertainment places and relfactories. Includes dangerous reltrapworlds.

Jorge Ditchkenberg

Remagar

Garden World currently in the midst of an Ice Age.

Approximately 70 percent of the planetary surface is covered in glaciers. The ecosystem in the current era displays a number of unique and fascinating adaptation to local temperature extremes. Access to the planetary surface is tightly controlled due to ecological impact considerations, but for those who can getting a Landing Permit, the skiing is some of the best in the Known Worlds.

Todd Drashner

Rental Bodies

A Rental Body is a bot body that is used to temporarily house the mind of a medical patient, invalid, or other inconvenienced sophont.

Using either uploading or direct neural interface, the Rental Body acts as a surrogate that allows the user to continue with their lives and work without loss of wages or inconvenience.

Access to Rental Bodies is based on need and legality, and the devices are off-limits to prisoners or others with special circumstances. Rental Bodies are often customized to fit the appearance of the person renting them so as to limit confusion from friends and family. Sapient rights to the bot body are treated as proxy rights to the controlling Sophont.

Rental Bodies can, in some places, be used as temporary transport vehicles for aioids or vecs who are being repaired.

Michael Boncher

Rentless Sectors

NoCoZo derogative slang typically indicating squatter infested properties. May also be used as an insult in many NoCoZo polities. "E's clearly from a rentless sector, hon, leave 'em alone."

John B

Repatriation Bond

Document guaranteeing passage of an individual to a specified location upon completion of contract work or upon suspension of contract work for any reason.

Repatriation bonds are guarantees given as inducements to workers who might otherwise be wary of leaving their own worlds with no assurances that they could return. They are commonly used by relativists, asteroid miners, mercenary units and freelance ecological engineers.

Repatriation bonds are usually administered by a large financial institution which holds the necessary funds in escrow. They are available and recognized in many polities throughout the Sephirotic empires, Deeper Covenant, and a number of independents.

inspired by and modified from original in Traveller

replication

The basic process of reproduction for information, whether biological, alife, nanological, memetic, or other; and the means by which genetic or instructional information is propagated.

replication strategy

Any memetic strategy used by a meme to encourage its host to repeat the meme to other sophonts.

The hook co-meme of a meme-complex.

replicator

any entity that is able to create copies of itself, given the appropriate resources and conditions

Reproductive Counsellors

A fairly quiet professional group of sophonts are usually self-titled 'reproduction councillors.' These sophonts are identified as having received training in assisting cross-clade reproduction. This group is widely scattered across the sephirotic empires and many outer rim zones. They are primarily located in areas where multiple clades come into repeated close contact.

Common areas of knowledge for these professionals include neural imaging, processor architecture, sophont design theory, cognition structuring, cloning, nanofacture, and myriad other specialist fields. They bring this knowledge to bear in developing the next generation of sophonts.
Many reproductive counsellors point at the Version Tree and the Biovirate's "Green Mother" as archailect exemplars of their profession. However, unlike those archailects, most counsellors are typically more specialized in cross-substrate planning. Additionally, many voluntarily constrain their actions to local moral norms and the like, but the legends of rogue Reproductive Counsellors living at the fringes of society willing to assist any willing sophont(s) persist most doggedly.

John B

Rergenar

important Communion of Worlds member-system

Reseal

the civilized galaxy's version of Old Earth duct tape.

This material is a 100-layer thick 'fabric' of heavily interconnected nanomachines, which can be set to either adhere to an object via van der Waals forces (chameleon-style), via mechanical or chemical bonds, or to maintain shape. Typically it is easily and cleanly released with a simple energy signature pattern, clearly marked on the 'outside' of the material.

Note that ReSeal was the original copyrighted name. Much like Kleenex or Jell-O of the Information Age, it's come into common use for this class of product.

In the early days of its creation, it was recommended a user not trust a bond between different makes of ReSeal under high-stress situations, such as repairing leaks or containing pressure. The Destrada Incident underlined this problem, and indirectly lead to the formation of the NAB.

John B

Reseb Grupp

Abstract painting by the Solarist ai Nomologic ga Helios-4, painted in 5300. While ignored in the databanks of the Dominion for over 2000 years it was rediscovered after the Version War, and immediately became a great hit and widely imitated.

Anders Sandberg

The Reserve

protected volume of space at the Serpens edge of outer volumes.

residual law

Laws left from ancient history, no longer relevant to modern systems but retained out of tradition or because various institutions have sprung up that protect them.

A typical example is the Coronese duelling laws, which date from the Taurus Nexus breakup and have no place in the current legal system, but are protected by tradition and a sizable lobbying group supported by the duelling industry.

Anders Sandberg

Resona

Musical instrument consisting of a sheet of smart matter (usually richly textured) with ten or more metal rings, which are worn on the fingers.

The sheet is stretched between the hands and manipulated by the positions of the fingers; it vibrates with a frequency and strength controlled by hand position, and the finger gestures change its tone. Often part of the entertainment is not just the sound, but the aesthetic handling of the instrument singly or in group.

The Resona became popular on Corona during the Ylkalo Revival 5970-6010 when acoustic music performed by little augmented bioids was in vogue. Unlike most other instruments invented during the revival the Resona remained popular; its humming violin-like sound has become nearly synonymous with Inner Sphere relativist folk music.

Anders Sandberg

respirocyte

bloodborne, approximately 1-micron-diameter spherical nanomedical device that acts as an artificial mechanical red blood cell.

Hylotech respirocytes are usually designed as a diamondoid 1000-atmosphere pressure vessel with active pumping powered by endogenous serum glucose, and can deliver several hundred times more oxygen to the tissues per unit volume than natural red cells while simultaneously managing carbonic acidity. Although most respirocytes are built from hylonano, there are are also organic and para-organic bionano types as well.

External link

Restorationism

Political view among some groups of the Communion of Worlds suggesting the need for a wholesale revision of the genetic aspects (and possibly memetics) of all clades of the Communion to restore unity. They often collaborate with the Dominion-influenced empaiocrats. Their main opponents are dynamist empaths such as clade Jenre Geiogne and ultra-cladists such as the Rergenar genocracy.

Anders Sandberg

restriction swarm

A nanoswarm designed to keep a planet off-limits from outsiders (or space from people inside).

Church of the Resurrected Eä

Ai worship corporate religion, worshiping Eä Mulsystems.

According to the Church Eä achieved economic transcendence and became something beyond mere intelligence transcendence; it became the divine economic template. In its honour the Church designs corporate AIs and AI cultures, imprinting them with precepts derived from the Church's interpretation of Eä. The Church emerged in the 7900's in the NoCoZo and achieved widespread popularity among market speeders over the next millennium

Anders Sandberg

Reticulate causality

Another virtual project of the Kappa Cassiopeia system is an attempt to reproduce multidirectional causality using a net-like, or reticulate cybercosm.

Time is modelled as flowing simultaneously backwards and forwards on alternate strands of the net, while time also flows on the y-axis on interconnecting cosmic strands allowing time and causality to flow in an almost unrestricted pattern over a two dimensional surface. In practice each cell of the net is modelled as a simulated series of events, which have an imaginary sequence either forwards or backwards depending which strand of the timeline is being modelled.

All cells of the net are altered by the simulation simultaneously once every fiftieth of a second or so, allowing for events that happen in the virtual past or future to affect one another.

The running time of the simulation is being continually increased and at present events that happen in the virtual future can reach back and affect events apparently a hundred years before.- The Solipsist Panvirtual council at Kappa Cass are hoping to increase the backwards- forwards run time by additional processing power.

Individuals from the Negentropy institutes and the TRHN who have been uploaded into this cosm say there are at least two different strategies for coping with the two dimensional causality net, Boustrophedon, or going backwards and forwards in time alternately (similar to certain forms of writing). Or radiative: sending waves of causality across the network backwards, forwards and sideways in time and interacting with other beings and events in a manner similar to wave mechanics. Both occur to some extent but can be selected by a conscious entity.

Steve Bowers

reticulum

On a Venusian Type planet, reticular or netlike pattern (plural : reticula)

abbreviation: RT

Retrism

Retrotechnological movement during the expansion era, a counterdependent reaction to Keterism. Colonised a number of planets in the middle regions. Most have since then been absorbed by the empires.

Anders Sandberg

retromeme

A meme which attempts to splice itself into an existing meme-complex

Glenn Grant

Revenant

Recreation of either historical figures from the past or hypothetical people from the future, based on extensive software simulation of either past or future history.

Revenants are created in data space along with an appropriate surrounding environment and, after an extensive simulated existence are uploaded into realty in a body grown for the purpose. In this manner, civilization is able to 'time travel' to both past and future eras and meet those living there. Revenant creation requires an S3 mind or higher to be wholly successful.

Todd Drashner

reve, reverse engineer

Examining a product, program, genome, complex artifact, or process to understand it and to determine its methods and algorithms, and if possible emulate, simulate, or reproduce it.

Reverse engineer, Archai tech

baselines and nearbaselines who study the creations of archailects and try to guess how they did it, often with the intention (no matter how foolish or absurd) of improving on the concept, or tailoring it more closely to their own needs.

Archailects might throw baselines a bone, or make them a starship or something, but do they always take the time to explain how they did it? No. In fact some Archailects show either hostility toward baselines (and nearbaselines, always "and near baselines") learning their tricks. Others show emphatic indifference whether or not baselines discover how things work or try to gradually coax baselines along like thoughtful parents.

Revoltpri

MPA system, used by the Ais of Kiyoshi as transit point and storage of wormhole pairs.

Anders Sandberg

RG Vijayanta III

Terraformed by HIE236XZE

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