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Ze to Zh

Zen, Zennism

originally a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, dating back to Old Earth, that emphasizes meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition over traditional forms of worship. It was practiced originally in Asian countries like China, Japan, and Vietnam, but became very popular among the CisLunar States and some oortists and outsystem explorers. A successful memeticity during the First Federation period, it's influence was to decline in some of the Inner Sphere polities with the rise of the Archailectic noetopics. But in the Negentropy Alliance, Sophic League, Terran Federation, and FAS it remains quaintly popular, fashionable, and widespread to this day. Also a popular religion in some Outer Volume polities. In each noetic and region of space it is developed along its own lines. See also Pozen. The following are only a few examples, but it should be pointed out that in each empire many forms of zen can co-exist:

Original Zen: (Old Core Inner Worlds, Terran Federation, FAS, Sophic League, Outer Volumes) Enlightenment is defined as a "gateless gate." Rather than subscribing to the notion of achieving a reward at the end of a long struggle, an enlightened Zen practitioner simply sees everything as it is, as it's always been. Depending on the school and the orientation of the teacher, either meditation, koans, or both may be emphasized.

Orthodox Zen: (Terran Federation, some Old Core Inner Worlds). Seeks to stick as close to original Zen as possible, avoiding PoSenist influence.

Ultra-orthodox Zen: (Terran Federation only). A popular memeticity among some Terran Federation bureaucrats. Even more fundamentalist than Orthodox Zen, and a running joke among all other Zen schools.

Negentropist Zen: Also simply "Zennism". Emphasizing a minimalist and civic aesthetic through quiet meditation and carefully cultivated zen gardens.

Satori School - popular among some Sophic Zen sects, and deriving all the way back to the Rinzai tradition of Old Earth Japanese Zen, the accent is less on meditation and more on the questioning perceived assumptions of logic in words, sentences, ideas, and memes in general, in order to break through to a purely trans-conceptual state of intuitive knowledge (satori).

Meditation School - also popular in the Sophic League, emphasizes quieting the mind, and long periods of monastic or contemplative retreat. The Meditation School is popular also in the Negentropy Alliance.

Trader Zen - developed among some relativist traders of the FAS, focuses on both unity and self-denial, and on a more creative approach to Zen Gardening than that taken by the Negentropists.

M.Alan Kazlev

zen garden

Part contemplation, part aesthetic, a zen garden is a carefully raked and arranged area of sand and stones. Simply being in the presence of a good zen garden is conducive to meditation. The gardens of some of the Gegton and Graylag habitats are among the best on the galaxy.

M.Alan Kazlev

Zero Point Energy

An ancient dream has been the perpetual motion machine, a device which provides its own power. Vacuum is known to contain enormous amounts of energy that might be tapped. During the Federation period and earlier, this was widely believed to impossible (for good reasons: since it is all utterly evenly distributed, with some exceptions like the Casimir effect, it is of little use - only energy differences matter to cause action). But as understanding of unified field theory and the engineering possibilities of plancktech grew, it slowly became apparent to the AIs developing the technology that there were loopholes. By exploiting certain nuclear structures and the interaction of the momentum of massive objects with the surrounding vacuum, some of the Zero Point Energy could be borrowed for extended periods of time to generate the diametric drive. While it cannot be used as a normal energy source (the energy always has to be "returned" to the vacuum for the process to work), it is the basis both for space drives, wormhole creation and many of the computing matrices used by AIs.

Anders Sandberg

zero knowledge proof

An interactive or probabilistic proof that demonstrates that one person has a certain piece of information without revealing it. Very useful in cryptography.

Transhumanist Terminology

Zero-Sum Game

In game theory, a game in which a win for one player results in an equal but opposite loss for the other players.

Zeta Corianis IV

A grav nullifier clarketech device of unknown origin was found on the planet Zeta Corianis IV during a preliminary terraforming scan of the planet. A mountain range dwarfing the Alps had a huge chunk taken out of it; in its place, in the middle of a vast pit, was a floating cube, very noticeable even from orbit because of the geographic oddity surrounding it. The cube is unaffected by external grav fields except that of the planet. In fact, it tends to nullify any such external fields in its vicinity, which is why ground-effect skimmers and surface vehicles are used to get near it. It is suspected that the cube is the missing part of the mountain range, supercompressed and somehow still bound to the planet. Terraforming proceeded, and now ZC IV has a thriving population of 1.3 billion, with a built-in tourist industry. People flock from all over to see this "Null box" and experiment on it. Some want to move it; nothing has succeeded so far. Some want to mark it; that failed as well. Some just want to repaint it (it's eyesore orange), but even that fails because nothing can bond with its material. Every now and then, at sporadic intervals, it rotates rapidly in place, seemingly gaining and losing angular momentum at near-instantaneous speeds. Some come simply to worship it.

Pran Mukherjee

Zeta Legati

nanotech upload civilization, the Eternalists, in the Serpens sector of outer volumes.

Zeta Tucanae IV

(locally Ihikkk / Snowwhite ) A glacial world just outside the life zone, covered with massive ice sheets. Tall Pine Bios attempted to terraform it by setting up major greenhouse gas production facilities, hoping to warm it enough to melt the ice into oceans. This was the first attempt of the kind, unfortunately largely unsuccessful. The planet instead became the home to the cold-loving Ghauetti clade of tweaks and their symbiotic merenauts, living within vast biosphere caves dug under the ice. Over the millennia ecopoesis has produced a working glacial ecosystem rather than a terrestrial ecosystem.

Zeta Tucanae

Zetap Ix

important Metasoft world

Zexx, Zexxii, Zexxim

Distinctive self-replicating biowar, dating back to the Conver Wars.

The neutral Miidam Posthuman Republic, finding itself threatened by another of converging fleets, and lacking capital ships, adapted one of their bioborgized vessels, the Great Odontac, essentially a heavily augmented and space-adapted bioborgs with drive-sail wings and limited neumann capacity, to military purposes. Although the prototypes proved unreliable, and the early models were easily destroyed by Conver Ambi Devastator Class Long Range Cruisers, the later mark 9 and 10 Zexxii proved to be formidable and robust weapons systems. Eventually these Zexxii seeded an entire buffer zone and repulsed not only the Conver Ambi but the Dominion, Metasoft, and Terran Federation fleets in turn. Whether or not this success was due or at least aided by the presence in several of these systems of ISOs of the minor archailect Holiness UltraViolet Starburst, the Zexxii gained a reputation for fearsomeness that continues even to this day.

During the late Empires period the Miidam Posthuman Republic joined the TRHN and underwent a collective ascension. The resulting minor archailect further dramatically augmented the Zexxii and gave them their freedom "to roam the byways of space to their heart's and mind's content".

At present there are believed to be several thousand Zexxii scattered through known space. Most have little to do with the rest of the galaxy, apart from the TRHN polities with which they have retained a close and affectionate relationship. However there are exceptions, such as the Zexxim On The Wings of ZPE, who established an enduring polity in the Turon System (outer Crucis Corridor), and the Green Dragonfly God, who has a cult of worshipful nearbaselines (most with some dragonfly rianthism) in and around Padro Padro (Moravec Sector, STC).

footnote: The origin of the name "Zexxii" or "Zexxim" has long been a matter of contention to historians. Some relate it to the Miidam root LE-X - to augment a bioborg in a radical manner. According to others the name is a pun or play on a mythical First Federation age neogen-hero. Others again see it as an anagram for Long Range Advanced Bioweapon System, which in Miidamese reduces to Z-AE-SX/XX. Unfortunately, all records were destroyed or transmuted with the Miidam Posthuman Republic's ascension, so the answer may never be clear.

M. Alan Kazlev

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