Category: Frontier

While the scientists of Human Unity have pushed the frontiers of science and innovation further than any of their ancestors, there are some areas which they have not dwelled heavily upon. About seventy years ago when the Experts were becoming relatively commonplace, there were two projects which, though opposite in their aim, were entirely complementary.… Continue reading Frontier: man and machine

Swarmtech is the application of robotics to nanotech principles. Nanotech is used extensively in molecular replicators – large immobile devices designed to replicate thousands of identical objects – often microscopic in scale which are then assembled by more mundate nanorobots into larger devices. The most advanced example of nanotech encountered by Human Unity lies within… Continue reading Frontier Swarmtech

Emotional Machines While they are not beings of pure logic, Experts cannot claim to have emotions. They do not get angry or resentful, they do not love, they do not show compassion: though they may appear to do so. There are, however, emotional machines. Some emotions come easier to machines than others (Fear, for instance)… Continue reading Frontier: other machine intelligences

Human Unity, though most pacifist by most standards, does construct weapons for use by natural humans and Experts. They build weapons for their own security and defense as Human Unity has yet to commit a pre-emptive aggressive action. Despite this apparent cultural reticence, they design and manufacture weapons that would terrify and delight 20th century… Continue reading Masters of War

“In teaching there should be no distinction of classes.” – Confucius, Analects XV. 39 Human Unity is a technocratic utopia made up of 85% of Earth’s previous nations and all but two human-founded colonies. As such, the vast majority of Human Unity is made up of natural humans and Experts from Africa, Asia and South… Continue reading Human Unity

The Internal Security Department manages all aspects of security aboard an Explorer. In a 24 hour period, a security officer is expected to juggle his duties between leisure time, passive duty and active duty. While on Passive Duty, the security officer is on standby, expected to be available for duty quickly. They will constantly receive… Continue reading Explorer ISD

This came in to the jabber channel from Aidan at an opportune moment. Religion survives in Frontier, writing about it now.

An Explorer ship can expect to be out of touch for more than two years at a stretch with only the most infrequent contact with other Explorers or with urgent messages delivered by fast-transfer Wormhole-capable ships. Due to the distances involved, direct EM transmission is simply not practical. Longer periods of time with no contact… Continue reading Life on the Frontier

Unknown to most, Wormholes are naturally occurring tunnels through space. They allow, through the use of sophisticated detection and navigation equipment, travel from one end of the wormhole to the other and may conceivably be of any length. The problem that they must be discovered not created lends a peculiar topology to the universe. Mapped… Continue reading Wormholes

There are various periods in Humanity’s history that can be legitimately called “The Dark Ages”. Any period where there is a lack of records represents the unknown. The period of Earth’s history two millennia ago was perhaps our darkest hour as records show that our advancement of knowledge not only slowed but crawled backwards and… Continue reading A Visit to Kumbu

We were startled by our uniqueness. The first Explorer craft took the time to catalog everything they encountered, well aware that it would be scratching the surface of the biosphere’s they encountered. Their samples, akin to descending on Luxembourg and taking that small nation as the representative sample of Earth, were recorded, preserved, ferried to… Continue reading Ajinabi

There is a world, twelve pipes from here, where the people are soft and covered in a very fine fur, from top to bottom. At first glance, they all look very alike except for pigmentation but some grow their fur longer or shorter in accordance with their religion. They are descended from animals who walked… Continue reading Trade Talk: Tales of Sol

Swarm Intelligences were prevalent on Earth in the form of social insect colonies long before we encountered the Ant Hill. We knew that a set of relatively primitive individual behaviors enhanced with communication will produce a large set of complex swarm behaviors. This observation was instrumental in producing NIPS (NanoIntelligent Protection Systems) and our understanding… Continue reading The Ant Hill

The planetary solar system around HO Librae (also known as Gliese 581) was discovered in CE 2007, several hundred years ago. At the time we knew very little about planet formation because we were limited to what we could observe within our own solar systems In 2214, during the wane of the Conquest era, a… Continue reading The Conquest Society