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Betrayals: fiveby Steve Bowers |
(Extract from Encyclopaedia Galactica Human (Anglic) Revised 299th edition
Index of Colonised and Civilised Worlds)
Arkab Prior A+B
(Beta 1 Sagittarii)
Constellation-Sagittarius
382 ly from Sol
Primary- Arkab Prior A
Current allegiance ~ Negentropy Alliance
Stellar class B3
Luminosity 440 x sol
Planets- formerly 4 subjovian and eujovian class- dismantled and reconfigured-
Replaced by the A1A cloud, an efficient energy collection swarm, extending out to 3AU.
Inhabited planetary remnants
1/ Al-Masu'di 10500 km diameter
orbit 4.5 AU
2/ Christaller 10700 km diameter
orbit 5.9 AU
3/ Santos 10100 km diameter
orbit 6.9 AU
The inhabited worlds of Arkab Prior A were designed during the initial colonisation of Beta Sag in 4311, and created from the gas giant worlds which were being dismantled. However they were still too heated by the dismantling process to terraform or colonise for several thousand years, the first rain finally falling on Santos in 8019. During this period the population of Prior A was almost entirely virtual.
By 9900 all three planets were habitable, and have stable, autonomous, nearbaseline human, populations. (total 8 billion)
Political systems –The axioms of Negentropy are observed, and society on the three terraformed worlds of A1A is stable and orderly, yet as pleasant as is possible.
The three worlds are dedicated to three of the five axioms:
1/ Al-Masu'di Life must be preserved – an ecological paradise ruled by the Priests of Being
2/ Christaller Energy must be preserved – with a culture built around entertainment, self-expression and narrative
3/ Santos Order must be preserved – dedicated to the exploration of political life, with a balanced and surprisingly open approach to innovation
n.b. Former jovian planet A1Ac partially converted to exotic matter for wormhole construction
Secondary: Arkab Prior B (A1B)
Separation: 3309 AU (9900 epoch)
Stellar Class: A5
Luminosity: 13 x sol
Current Allegiance: Mutual Progress Alliance
Planets:
1/ Bayer: Epistellar superjovian, orbit 0.8 AU, diameter 200,000 km converted to deep well industrial zone
1 remaining satellite Gzeut: extensive energy farms and processing nodes
Main population centre Boltzmann (mostly Clan Esase, heat-adapted humans) 18,000 souls
The extensive asteroid belt and all other satellites of Bayer have been dismantled and are being utilised to construct the A1B Necklace.
Artificial habitats- The Arkab Prior B Necklace- in 2.7 AU orbit around Prior B.
Construction of the Necklace was started in 6800 by the Mutual Progress alliance under the terms of the Prior B territory agreements.
The first one hundred habitats were finished by 7500, many more have been added since (total number of habitats in 9900 is 213)
Construction of a second string to the necklace has been commenced at 3.5 AU orbit, but no habitats have been completed to date.
Since 8599 thirty two habitats have converted to MPA-Keterism and are now solid state computronium structures with virtual post-singularity inhabitants. These habitats have converted the carbon, aluminium and oxygen of the original habitats to diamondoid and corundoid computronium and are often known as the Jewels or Jewelled Habitats, with external decorative shells of diamond, sapphire and ruby.
All habitats are two thousand one hundred and six kilometres in diameter, and rotate at various speeds to produce various values of artificial gravity. The width of the ring floor is eight hundred and seventy kilometres in each case, giving a total living space of 5.8 million square kilometres each. The total area of available living surface at present in the Necklace is more than twice that of an average Earth type (Gaian subclass) planet, and this value will increase as more are constructed. Each habitat is open to space at the sides, with a 100 km high carbonfoam atmosphere wall to prevent loss of volatiles.
Non-virtual population 18 Billion all species. (mostly near baseline or tweak, some splice, uplift, neogen, reanth.
Average non-virtual population per habitat 98 million.
Virtual population (mostly MPA-Keterist, rarely leaving the jewel habitats) 76 billion estimated.
Each habitat is edge on to the local star, and collects stellar energy for processing and industry and also for illumination of the inner surface. This illumination is emitted by the central Lamp (or Luminaire) and is controlled to produce a tailored climate, which is specific to the ring concerned.
Since 8754 the habitats have been connected by the Tubeway Cable, a continuous ring maglev vacuum railway which replaced the former rotating slingshot transport system.
Examples of Ring Habitats with specific climate regimes
Tropical (maritime); Frunobulax, FooBar, Anse
Tropical (stormy) Bermoothes
Tropical (rainforest) Manaus, Efe
Tropical (desert) Micah, Xero, Elsirac
Temperate (rainforest) Ñadi
Temperate (maritime) Rendell, Alliance, Sulphur Blossom
Temperate (steppe) Piedmont, Ishim
SubPolar (maritime) Hoy, Xo'on
SubPolar (desert) Ulan, Kochil
To’ul (venusian) So’ul’ll’ss’oo’s (completed 9945)
New Martian (low pressure terraformed) Hellas, Carter
Mutual Oort cloud ---2.5 Billion objects in common orbit around Arkab A+B
Distance out to 1 light month
Zero minus one hundred-fifty nine years
Overcast skies, and the wind kicking up leaves. An apparently young man, an apparently old man, and a fractal brushrobot wandered through a large private garden.
"When the leaves fall, the world spins more slowly." Lorca was talking into the wind again, and Auguste found it difficult to hear him.
"It does what?" said Gus, who was the older looking one, although he could easily change his appearance in a matter of days if he wanted to. Eventually he knew he would have to rejuvenate and take on the body of a young man again.
"The ring spins more slowly as the winter comes, just because all the leaves fall off the trees and the rain falls out of the sky. It places the mass further away from the centre. Slows the rotation down by a fraction of a second."
"Is that one of his?" Hoping to change the subject, Gus was pointing to a delicate statue now visible between the trees. Bronze green against the brown/gold of beech trees. Moving almost imperceptibly, like a huge mechanical sloth/giraffe.
"Hmm. Neogen Metamorphoses #3. Yes, that's an Alrami alright," contributed Max.
"If I could come up with something as ugly as that," said Gus, "I'd think I'd done well."
Lorca was unruffled, except by the wind. He looked like a skinny longhaired kid, dressed in worn-out clothes, but Gus knew he had been a consultant for the Rendell Academy of Concrete Artforms for nearly ten tenyears. On top of that, Lorca was apparently using some form of mild projection, as he seemed to look slightly different to everyone who looked at him. He looked solid enough now, as the drizzle started in Toney Alrami's private garden.
The trees were thinning, now, and they could catch glimpses of the house in the rain. It looked to Gus like a folded paper sculpture, and as if it should dissolve into a sodden mass or blow away. In
fact it was more solid than stone.
A large marquee was added onto the front, also paper white and flapping somewhat in the wind.
They wandered towards it, in no particular hurry.
"His stuff is still excellent, Lorca; don't get me wrong, but what is driving him to carry on working so hard? And why do I feel compelled to try so hard to follow his style, and fail so miserably?"
Max the brushrobot, wrapped around Gus's neck, chirped. "Gus, if you find any artist that has a half-decent style, you have no hesitation in copying them for a week or three."
"I acknowledge my mediocrity, Max. But what is the point of trying to be original? Any one of the hyper-brains could whip up an avatar that would be a better sculptor than me. Heh. With a bit more effort ey could make one better than Alrami himself. No offence," he said quickly.
"No, I don't think that is altogether correct," said Lorca. "There is still much room for human artist endeavour. Most transingularity entities do not have anything like a human aesthetic sense, and aren't even interested in developing one. The ones we meet with as members of the Mutual Progress Alliance are the exception, and are usually quite content to leave us to our own cultural development, precisely because they are able to sympathise with us."
They crunched though fallen beech leaves and mast, and brilliant red carngaladh leaves from gene-tweaked trees.
"Well, that's big of them." Max muttered.
"The subjective nature of art means that there is no absolute scale of comparison between art produced by a hyperturing or by a human. If it speaks to you, it works. Nothing else matters."
"This is your own subjective opinion, of course," said Gus.
"Exactly. The subjective opinion of an ordinary human, or even a sparrow, is as valid as that of the largest Godbrain in the Civilised Galaxy." Lorca said.
"But a sparrow doesn't have the firepower to back up its opinion. Nor does a human for that matter," said Max, with his hundreds of tiny coloured lights twinkling.
They walked on, in silence, for a bit.
"So tell me about your mother, Autumn SilverBirch." Gus glanced at the apparently young academician, hoping to see beneath the illusion he wore.
Lorca paused, and stared into the windswept sky.
"She came back from the other side of transcension, to be human again. The Keterist Ascendance crusaders persuaded the population of Poletao Ring to ascend all at once, except for a few people and artificial intelligences who all migrated to other habitats in the Necklace.
Silverbirch, my mother, did agree to ascension however, and she became a transingularity entity in one of the first Jewel Nodes in the Necklace.
"She could never fully describe the experience, but she said it was ecstatic in nature… yet the duty of responsibility each entity had to bear was great, and perhaps oppressive in its way. They all
worked together on intellectual projects within the Jewel Node, and like I said before she could not describe them afterwards except as vague feelings of purpose."
"Nobody at our level has any idea of what the great brains are dreaming about," said Gus, but he wondered silently if Lorca really was on the same level as himself. The style of speech Lorca used was strangely similar to the way transingularity beings spoke
whenever they could be bothered to address humans at anything like Gus's level. This guy is practically posthuman himself, Gus thought.
"Well, after a while inside the Jewel node," continued the young seeming man, "Silverbirch came back to rejoin stupid, base humanity, saying she could no longer stand the intensity of the Keterist
technorapture. She once told me that the entities inside the Jewel worlds lose many of the comforting illusions of our human state, and the real world bears down heavily upon them all. By considering any problem they determine the most efficient course of action, and are forced by their own intellect and peer pressure from the other Transingular beings to follow that course and none other."
"So, they are stuck with being sensible- no wonder they want out…" said Max, raising a light-spangled tuft from where he was draped around Gus's neck.
"The enormous expansion of mind and faculties, and the real companionship with the other new demigods suits most people that enter into ascension," Lorca went on. "It seems they can control
their own moods, and closely examine every aspect of their own minds... but they find it hard to ever escape from the realities of the world.
"The Keterist philosophy encourages unconventional solutions to problems, so they say… the solution my mother found was to abandon transingularity altogether.
"SilverBirch used to say something like `the horror' when she thought about the singularity. And she liked a drink or too, when she was truly human once again - that was how she met Macaroney, in the lowest, most disreputable bar in the Necklace."
They were now walking across a wide green lawn towards the marquee. The overhead Lamp was visible through the speeding grey clouds, and was starting to dim as designated evening approached.
"Macaroney! Does he still use that name?" Gus was a little surprised.
"Oh, yes, now if he decides to talk to you, Auguste, call him Zar Alrami, or Zar Macaroney, or even Captain… but don't call him Toney unless you want a display of fireworks. My father has been many things in his long life, but he has never been at ease with strangers, and you have to tread carefully."
Toney Macaroney Alrami had been a narrowcast virch comedian many hundreds of years ago in his youth, far away in the MPA capital system Djed. He then briefly played a captain in a relatively
popular space opera, and became even more famous and eccentric.
However Gus knew Alrami best as a surrealist artist and megalithic sculptor, and knew his son Lorca well in various Rendell Ring social circles; but this was the first time he had been given the
opportunity to meet the grand old man in person. Gus himself had recently allowed his physical body to age somewhat, and his goatee beard was long and white. He hoped that this appearance made him look both artistic and respectable at the same time.
Perhaps it did.
Inside the roomy marquee five or six men and women were trying to play indoor croquet, but half a dozen tables and several stone or bronze statues prevented an easy game. The bronze sculptures were independently mobile, and would try slowly to get out of the way of the game, which made things worse.
Alrami was at the far end, trilling away in an impenetrable Djed accent. He turned and saw his son.
"Ah! Lorrrca! You have come back to eat my brrread with me once again!"
With a huge smile Alrami carelessly threw his croquet mallet over his shoulder, and it hit the white canvas wall of the marquee, bouncing into a polymer table, which fell over scattering napkins.
Gus was amazed at the mayhem caused by this causal act, which nevertheless managed to avoid breaking any of the wine glasses stacked on the other tables by the wall.
Alrami might be eccentric, but he didn't want to smash his own glassware…
Gus wondered if the old sculptor had neural augmentation hidden beneath his pointy white hair. That had been an accurate throw, all things considered. Of course it was second nature for citizens of cosmopolitan societies like the Arkab necklace to be constantly assessing the technological and toposophical level of any new acquaintance. Gus reserved judgement for now.
"Still well, Papa?" Lorca replied. "This is Auguste Gienah, the sculptor I was telling you about, and his robot, Max Handy, to see you."
Alrami turned his searchlight gaze on Gus and Max, and he bowed low like a Penglai mandarin. "Pleeased to maike your aquaintenczz."
Max secretly emailed a tiny vid file of Alrami saying the same words to a new alien species while acting in the old Dark Quest space opera---the stretched vowels of his Djed accent so comical
that Gus nearly laughed, but shook the great man's hand vigorously instead.
~Shut up Mx u'll gt me in trbl,~ Gus sent to his symaiote companion.
Alrami took Max's largest branch and shook it like a hand. "I am honoured to meet you, Zar Alrami," said the brushrobot.
"Sooo, what do you touch, eh? What do you mould, what do you maike?" said the great man.
"Things - sculptures, figurative work, you know, not very good I'm afraid –" Gus started to say.
"No, no, that won't do, it is verry good, Verry good indeed. Do you like this?" The shockheaded artist indicated one of his own stone statues. "It is rrubbish, nothing, non-sense."
It was a figure of a woman, seated on the ground, leaning over, lifelike yet stylised, weary perhaps, a marvellous work to Gus's eyes. "This," continued Alrami, "is non-sense."
"It is beautiful," said Gus.
"This is the everryday. It is disappoint-ment, sadness. Carrrying on, maiking do. It is not," He paused, and the three or four mobile bronze sculptures that shuffled around the covered croquet lawn all froze in anticipation. "It is not trans-hu-man."
He tortured the word, as if he hated the sound of it.
"Look, Gienah, look at people. They have little lives. Now that the trans-hu-mans have built this paradise, we can have our little lives in peace. Don't let them stir you up, whip you up, goad you to
greater things. This is the greatest thing. Ordinary little lives."
Alrami spoke quietly, now, and his flamboyant accent had mostly vanished.
"I'll try to remember."
"They will want to make you remember things, things, so many things. You must remember to forget. This is your right, Gienah."
The grand old man whirled around, and walked away without saying more.
Lorca watched with alert, amused eyes.
It was obvious now that Toney Alrami was not augmented at all, but was simply extraordinarily precise in his movements, gracefully dancing between the slowly moving bronzes and the attentive hangers-on as he disappeared into the house and out of Gus's life.
"I'm honoured that your father should give me advice," Gus said to Lorca.
"Although it might take a while to work out what it was," Max put in.
"He is not a great fan of the postsingularity crew, is he?"
Gus sat down at a table with Lorca, and Max found them drinks from the buffet. The brushrobot made light work of carrying two full glasses of orange juice while climbing on and off tables.
"It is strange," Gus began, "but your father seems very different from his public image."
"Yes, he is, but tell me your impressions." Lorca said, leaning back.
"All the arty types you meet back in ArGartha," Gus went on, "well, just about everyone considers his style to be the great example of transhuman influence on a human artist; they say that somehow your parents together created a fusion of many unascended and ascended artforms. But, now that I have spoken to him, it seems to me he holds the state of posthumanity in, well, contempt. Lorca, tell me what he really thinks about this, I am confused."
"Yes, but my mother had no respect for the transingular community, she wanted to get away from them. The influences you see must have been unconscious. They were enough to cause my parents to separate after a hundred and seventy years of working together, and Toney went back to mixing with the space opera fans for a while."
"A very brave, or foolish man, I'd say."
"He has always wanted to be in touch with the unthinking mass of humanity, the only real people he calls them. And space opera fans are about as unthinking as you can get.
"They got back together several times, but they were apart when my mother killed herself. The telecommunications to Bermoothes ring where she lived were temporarily disrupted, and she thought Toney was deliberately avoiding her calls, so she disengaged her consciousness. Turns out she was full of keterist upgrades but constantly fought not to use them."
Max and Gus knew the story, but not the emotions behind it.
Bermoothes ring was a sailing paradise where a salt-water ocean current flowed continuously around the ring, and this movement was partly induced by magnetic fields. The storms and electromagnetic interference often caused telecom problems, and the hardy people of Bermoothes seemed to like it that way. Many sailors and fishermen from the Rendell seaports went there for endurance yacht races and so on. It was well known for being a dangerous ring, largely free of automation and emergency systems.
It took two days for Toney Alrami to get to the remote villa where SilverBirch was staying, by which time all her memory data had erased itself.
"Your mother was still a Keterist inside? Is it that difficult to come back down to human level?"
Max was absorbing electrolyte solution from a shallow dish, to be sociable.
"Have you ever met anybody, from any world, who did not have some kind of improvement or adaptation? If it is only the immunity phages in our blood, we need them to survive. No, she wasn't a Keterist inside, where it mattered." Lorca tapped his head gently. "Look at the Necklace, thirteen whole habitats turned to crystal and computronium. Those worlds are full of minds, just thinking and dreaming – some of us want to live in the real world for a bit longer. Perhaps forever."
"The Progress Alliance seem quite happy to let the ascensions continue, you know. They are making new rings all the time- there is even talk of building a couple of venusian rings for the To'uls to live on,“ Gus said.
Gus was quite keen to make a few full-size To'ul sculptures as a goodwill gesture- the alien quadropuses were interesting subjects and paid quite well too.
“In a lot of ways, the Alliance has got the balance right,” Lorca ruminated. “They allow for personal development, but they don’t push it- you can just carry on, trying everything out, for thousands of years with no obligations. As long as they can make their pretty worlds and megastructures like this ring. The other alliances and empires are more demanding- in the Free Zones you have to compete economically with each other, the Negentropists demand efficient behaviour, and if you have ever seen the people from the Objectivist worlds, you’ll know how dispassionate and cold they are.”
“I know, and the Solarists are just religious delusionists. You won’t see me ascending for a little while yet- I really don’t feel all that tempted to get away from the mundane world.” Gus sipped his geneered mango juice.
Lorca looked at him for a while, and then sent him a private message on the local net.
“No, ha, ha, no, thanks for the offer,” he said aloud, so that Max could hear. “But I’m afraid I am a bit boring in that respect, Lorca. I had myself phenotyped into a woman for several tenyears, and I got changed back just after the Cable Railway was completed, whenever that was-“
“9690, actually,” Max said, lights twinkling.
“And I’ve always been of the Hetero persuasion, if that makes any sense in the circumstances.”
“Ha! And if I’d known you when you were a woman I wouldn’t have been interested. Still,” Lorca said, “nothing ventured, etcetera.”
“Absolutely.”
Outside, it began to rain.
-----------------------
Gienah has obviously been in close contact with the Alrami family, and they are known anti-Keterists. When we obtain the full records from the information storage banks we will be able to test if the mysterious program was introduced at this time- you no doubt have a reference copy of each backup he has made over the last eight hundred years or so - yes?
Of course, but as you can imagine, the records build up over time, there are over thirty six billion incarnate people living in the Necklace…they back up several times a year, this means we have hundreds of trillions of records which are almost never referred to… data compression and comparison between versions allows a lot of savings of course. The Keterist habitats have many billions of virtuals, but they keep their own records, and it would be an imposition for us to ask them to store this rarely used information. So we keep the old stuff out in the Halo in a low energy environment, with the Deeper Covenant contracted to guard it.
We will have to consider Lorca Alrami as a suspect, then… perhaps he didn’t like being turned down.
Now, then, Cousin Librarian, have you found the brushbot yet?
Max Handy6754 was last seen entering the Underquarry system of caves in ArGartha with a femvec companion, twenty hours ago. For the last two hours seekerdrones have been scouring the tunnels, but nothing yet. I would say we will find him within the hour.
