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Arkady 2

Arkady 2 - Data Panel

PLANET:ARKADY 2
SYSTEM:Toke
REGION:Outer NoCoZo volume, on the long 'Carina Trade' of wormholes towards the Carina Rush
DIAMETER:32,000 km
GRAVITY:1.4 gee
LENGTH OF DAY43 standard hours
YEAR:544 standard days
TEMPERATURE RANGE:110 - 323 Kelvin
SURFACE GEOGRAPHY:32% Water, 45% Land, 33% Ice (H20)
AI OVERSEERS IDENTINAME:'Short But Sweet'
AI ETHOS:'Less work more play'

Arkady 2 is the only Terragen inhabited planet in the Toke system. Don't be fooled by it's name, it was reluctantly changed over 2000 years ago because of a regional Galactic Trade court order to do so. (This unusual situation came about because of a nearby and similar planet called Arkady, resulting in space-cargo being sent to the wrong planets. The original planet Arkady (Nepsis System) was first registered with the local 'galactic naming office' over 1034 years before.)

Although there are many planets accidentally given the same name, and few powers that can enforce any order on it, here we have an interesting exception. While the NoCoZo has no rules against confusing naming per se, there are sometimes rules against malicious namespace infringement (trademark rules). In this case Arkady Nepsis sued Arkady Toke for trade confusion, and Arkady Toke was reluctant to engage in a drawn out legal battle to show that the name was not intended to sabotage trade, but simply added the '2' (which bionts always forget anyway). The Institute of Galactography and the Union for Logical Naming, who had supported the suit, were reputedly happy about it.

Arkady 2 is famous for its strange Terragen dwellers known as the Khira, who 2544 planetary years ago decided that high-fashion was getting more and more elaborate exotic metal implants and bio-enhancers. Minor enhancements of course are commonplace but the Khira go to such extremes that some of the most fashionable people on the planet are only 0.001% Terragen now. Some of the inhabitants are now huge and weigh tens of thousands of kilos due to their oversized enhancements.

Khira have by now mostly done away with traditional cities, instead developing "congregation grounds" and various settlement parks. A few megastructure cities exist, but are mostly inhabited by the smaller Conservatives (max weight 10 tons).

The planet's AI god 'Short But Sweet' has done nothing to intervene since this fashion started, it recently admitted it was actually quite flattered buy the Khria's insistence on developing such extreme enhancements. The AI has strongly denied starting this fashion for its own amusement.

Some of these enhancements are fairly well known in the outskirts of the Middle Regions, probably due to their ridiculous nature. I have included an example Info-clip from the planets media while I was visiting Arkady2's capitol city Arkadia.

Clip from 'INFO CHANNEL 21 NEWS'...High Jump Association Stunned! Fusion powered jumping enhancements are to be finally banned by the world health council, after 25,945 of the 45,045 competitors for this years High jump record left Arkady's orbit! and had to be rescued by orbiting pods. Jules Holland from the extreme jumping club today said, "I'm very disappointed by the WHC's ban, If those [expletive deleted] had a bit of jumpin' juice in'em they would just get back to there nagging units and leave us alone...", he later added," I might just go to the supreme AI court on this one." (Authors amendment... Fr Jules Holland aired his views to AI Short But Sweet and was in fact about to get the ruling by the WHC overturned, when he failed to appear on-line for the final ruling. A mining team later found his space-frozen body in the system's nearby asteroid belt after he had secretly tried to break the World Highest Jump record to show how safe it was. Short But Sweet quoted afterwards...."It is very sad, Fr Jules Holland would have broken the record if he had only returned to the ground")

Other interesting features of the planet are its large speed-flite track (4500 km long), its relatively high gravity, and the preference of its inhabitants to walk backwards.

A booming business is robotic environment restoration, handling the inevitable wear and tear from the Khira. Some Khira have even acquired symbiotic robotic swarms following in their tracks, repairing damage and handling possible lawsuits.

Interesting facts about Arkady2:

Largest mountain (above sea-level): 23,043m
Largest Terragen-enhancement: Gr Ewizz's eye-grafted X-15b hyperfine(TM) telescopic image enhancers (these are 3.9 km long and apparently give the best view to any concert in the visible space sector immediately above Gr Ewizz)


Author- Nr Shush (Independent Interstellar Travel Authors Assoc.)

 
Appears in Topics
Non-Coercive Zone (NoCoZo)Outer VolumesSystems & Worlds A - B
 
Development Notes
Text by Jules H-G, additional notes by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 01 September 2001.

 
 
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