The Beginning The setting of Lungfish Alpha was originally devised as a starter for an improfanfic.

For readers who are not members of the otaku community, an improfanfic is a kind of group story writing, in which one person will write the first chapter of a story and those who like the first chapter will sign up to write subsequent chapters. So someone else writes the second chapter, another person writes the third, and so on. But not all impros are created equal, and only one other person ever wrote for Lungfish Alpha. However, I received a number of e-mails from people saying that though they didnt think Lungfish Alpha was a good improfanfic it would be excellent as something written solo. I considered it, but put the idea aside in favor of my major project at the time, a modern-horror setting called Conspiracy Practice. Then, several months later, I had an idea. I dont remember where it came from, but I decided that a good way to improve my writing would be to go to science fiction and fantasy art galleries on the Web and let the pictures inspire short paragraphs. I wanted to describe a instant in an imaginary universe where the picture actually happened. And as the months went by I found myself writing these brief instances in what can only be described as a shared setting, a setting that drew on the characters from the aborted Lungfish Alpha. I started writing the stories again, but as more time passed I began to switch more and more to writing pure setting to complement what was being written from the pictures. In fact, I continue even today to make writing from pictures a daily practice. Eventually, writing the universe took over completely. I plan to get back to writing stories someday, but have set myself no schedule on it. The next big shift in Lungfish Alphas development was when I came across Orions Arm. It was a grand SF setting organized via mailing list, so grand I decided to do the same. And so I went to what was then egroups, and started up the list that youve just joined and on which I hope you stay. I also began two other side projects at this point, both of which are still operating. The first was to gather together the boldest settings and stories on the net and collecting them together in the links section for readers. Not necessarily the best settings, in fact many of those on the list are just plain awful, but the boldest settings and the ones containing new ideas. The other project was to work to recruit the authors of these bold settings, sending them e-mails describing Lungfish Alpha in hopes of bringing them in. And I am proud to say that many of them said yes. On the whole the creation of the list was a great thing for the LAU, providing me with impetus for writing more things, with a sounding board to tell the good ideas from the bad ones, and it is a source of concepts Id never have created on my own. Then came 9/11. I grew up on Long Island and went to college at NYU. I actually knew people in the WTC, and I will state for a fact that not all of them got out. We all had different ways of coping, and my way was to write a version of Lungfish Alpha that reflected my feelings. What came out of that coffee-fueled and study-starved month was 159 pages of brutal polemic called Lungfish Alpha 2.0 Beta. While I wouldnt go through that emotional experience again if you paid me a million dollars, I wouldnt skip it for a million dollars either. It was then that Lungfish Alpha grew up, and

when I did as well. The release of 2.0 Beta was followed by other events which I will not speak of. Suffice it to say that I handled things badly, and when I realized I had made mistakes my response was to make more mistakes. In the end I had to take time off from almost everything for personal reasons, including the LAU. When I recovered, though, I didnt simply start writing immediately. I instead worked to classify and correlate all the published and unpublished material, to extract from it certain basic concepts which would be explicitly said to make it much easier to design things in the future. This would also make it possible for new members of the mailing list to make some sense out of whats going on, since otherwise the setting would be too hard to get into. And the results of that project is what youre reading right now. The Objective So whats the objective of all this work? To produce a science fiction setting that is to be qualitatively different from any that have gone before. This is an ambitious program, but I believe it is possible and necessary as well as being great fun. It is possible because its been done before, when all the current science fiction clichs were first made, and because were all smart people and were drawing on ourselves. And its necessary because, in my opinion, modern science fiction has gone downhill. I dont know why it happened, but to me almost all of modern science fiction seems to have been written by authors who see the world through mirrors darkly. There are exceptions, and I note these in the bibliography at the end of this intro, but as a general rule I find that modern science fiction is narcissistic, puerile, subliterate and racist. I do not claim that you should feel the same way, but that is how I feel. So Ive decided to do something about it. Lungfish Alpha intends to systematically wreck SF and replace it with something truly new, fixing stuff that needs some fixing and breaking stuff that needs some breaking. I cant do a thing for the writers, but the genre itself deserves a good firm shakeup. And were giving it one. This will not be an easy plan, or a simple plan, or a short plan. I expect it to be difficult, to be complex, and to be a longterm project. In fact, it already has become such. But I know of no easy things that can stir the soul. The Creation Something like this requires something different to handle it.. Most of the time when someone designs a setting they start at the top and never get to the bottom, they work out the strategy and not logistics. Thats like issuing a phone book and only including the last names. The LAU is being built from the ground up. What I mean is the technical, universal and societal details are being developed to see where that takes us on a larger scale. All the tasks that usually come first Great Powers, the scope of the history, huge wars, all of these things will come in time and when they do come they will feel like that are part of the universe rather than the other way around. This method of writing is going to take a lot longer than conventional world design, but its my firm

belief that the final rewards will be far greater as well. It has already borne fruit, as one can see from reviewing the sections that follow. Another big innovation is acceptance of new things. This setting will accept new ideas as they come in, and drop old ones at the drop of a hat when something better comes along. I designed Lungfish Alphas presentation to be modular, allowing one to make a change without mangling the entire structure. Everything must always be understood to be provisional, when a clearer concept or a better story comes along we have to be prepared to see it go. Otherwise wed eventually find ourselves bogged down in the sheer weight of detail and the past. And the end result would be that good ideas would be conceived, and then discarded because they dont fit the setting. Not in the LAU. This brings up the next factor of the LAU, that of combining ideas. Most SF these days goes to great lengths to avoid original thought, but there are still books and shows with original concepts. The problem become the reason detre of the story in the first place and rarely filter out into the wider genre. Lungfish Alpha contains all these ideas in a coherent format, with appropriate alterations to make it a tribute and not a steal. We have gone across genres, across decades, across formats of production to gain new concepts and integrate them in. We arent worried about preserving genre, because our specific intent is to destroy genre. Were just having some fun. And finally, a promise. Lungfish Alpha will not be published. Ever. We will never be concerned with accessibility to the common reader, nor with deadlines that require us to sell the book before we write it, nor will there be corporate pressure to cater to the lowest common denominator. This is a setting that will be written for joy and for fun, and not for profit. This has the effect of freeing us from the old limits, and youll find its a lot more interesting that way. But enough with the hype, why dont you read it? Milieu This section refers to things and phenomena that were not created but rather encountered by maniti in its explorations of the universe. Most science fiction, for all its claims to grandeur and ambition, is still stuck in the geocentric model of astronomy everything revolves around the human race and earth. In the LAU the emphasis is on the things that lie beyond the human race, indeed in this setting the human race has no role at all, and our descendants are of concern mainly to themselves. This does not mean that the stories are unimportant, but keep in mind who the stories are important too. Also the LAU postulates a few things about the nature of reality that are different from what we think today, those were included in this section as well. When: The date of the Lungfish Alpha setting is set far ahead of that of conventional SF, taking place in the year 30563. This is far enough ahead that we dont have to worry

about making predictions of today or seeming too extreme, and allows sufficient room for whatever we want all the while giving us an upper limit and forcing us to eventually work things out. Maniti: The actors and producers and directors of this play. In the 25th century the Version War ravaged the human race, leaving nothing behind but a few million survivors with too much genetic damage and hereditary modifications for the human race to continue to breed naturally. And so, as our last and greatest creation, humanity will produce the maniti. Artificial beings with DNA synthesized entirely from simple chemicals, by the time of the setting maniti has expanded in numbers and variety to the point where it is the dominant dynamic civilization of the Milky Way galaxy. Because they are artificial beings maniti have been modifying and enhancing themselves for millennia, the point where physically and mentally they are far beyond anything that could naturally evolve. And each one is unique in appearance, wondrous and terrible at the same time. Teknaku: Nor is maniti the end of evolution. It has created its own child race, the teknaku. The teknaku are sentient software, and they can edit and copy themselves at will to embrace any desired way and level of thinking the same way that maniti alter their own children to achieve any physical form the parents want. However with a few rare exceptions the teknaku are simply not interested in the physical world, devoting themselves entirely to contemplation of infinitely complex pseudouniverses that exist along with them in the moonlet-sized computer cores that they call home. Those who do deal with maniti are often alien in their actions and motivations, and an intelligent maniti will only deal with them on a simple and basic level where they are both evenly matched. Higher-level competition will surely end in failure. Gigerava: Manitis archenemies, the gigerava came to our galaxy from another that they had simply used up. Their civilization was not as dynamic and rapidly-advancing as manitis, but it was seventy million years old and possessed a mentality that maniti couldnt even begin to cope with. All gigerava were linked into a single overarching mind known as the Tyrophant, and this collective immediately saw that maniti was the only rival that could stop it in its plans to use the entire galaxy as construction material.. Maniti seemed to have no chance against them, and indeed the final victory was not military though the war lasted two hundred years. While the full details have never been determined, some group, somewhere, managed to penetrate the Tyrophant and upload into it faulty artificial intelligence programs with the result that every single gigerava in the universe instantly went mad. A civilization seventy million years old was destroyed in less than a day, and maniti was saved. What remains of the gigerava is but the shadow of a whisper of their quondam might, but a few million are left. But those who survived the collapse and manitis hunts afterwards and since are the most powerful members of a powerful race, and individually they are perhaps the most dangerous beings known to exist. Their goal is the destruction of maniti, and given their physical and mental capabilities that is not out of the range of possibility.

Wheel: The gigeravas native galactic cluster can only be reached through the gates they built to link our two galaxies, and it is known as Wheel because the stars have a noticeably ordered shape the result of tens of millions of years of gigerava construction projects. With the fall of the gigerava Wheel fell as well, and almost all of the wonders and horrors that had arisen from a civilization older than the dinosaurs were wiped out in the chaos. Even after thousands of years maniti has barely begun to survey what is left, much less reach the point where it can understand what was lost. Heroes and explorers are all throughout wheel, finding incredible things constantly and facing terrible dangers. Peripator: Maniti has friends as well, the peripator. They are a civilization just as old as manitis formed out of naturally occurring Bose matter that only occurs in extragalactic space. These life forms, and their entire civilization, are so biologically fragile that they can never physically meet with maniti because immense damage would spread all through their civilization. But informational and social contacts, from communications to scientific exchange to friendships and rivalries are rife, and countless relationships stretch between the two disparate races. Stabiles: However, almost all the advanced races that maniti has encountered in its explorations have been stabiles. These are civilizations that have perfectly stable cultures, neither seeking dangers or discoveries without nor producing them within. Such a society can last a long time, some of them are hundreds of millions of years old and they have generated nothing truly new in all those eons. They are not stupid by any means, and indeed many of them are above maniti in evolution and in technical development. What distinguishes a stabile civilizations mindset is the way that everything is connected. To them science, religion, heresy, politics, economics, laws, language, history, society, love, hate and everything are completely intertwined, and none can be understood without the others. And nothing about the civilization can be changed without changing literally everything else in the civilization, so no change ever occurs. Dealing with a stabile civilization is the work of experts who have studied them for centuries, and even the slightest wrong signal can result in disaster. The only exception to this is the few stabiles whom have willingly chosen to leave their static cultures and live among maniti, and even they have trouble adjusting. Preadamites: But a dynamic race like maniti will not last forever, and the universe is very old. The LAU is speckled with the remains of billions of years of previous civilizations, many of whom left behind remnants that still remain. This was on purpose, because these ancient civilizations knew just as maniti knows that they would one day fall. So they consciously chose to leave behind legacies for beings after them, perhaps defeating some threat or perhaps creating wonders or simply leaving behind evidence so future scholars would have something to study. Groups among maniti are doing the same thing, purposely leaving behind works that successor races will be able to make use of. Warpwork: This is the collective term for artificial installations constructed from permanently twisted time, a feat currently beyond manitis technical abilities. By their very nature such phenomena are truly eternal, so examples billions of years old are still functioning. They have been left behind by a number of preadamite races, and while

maniti has no idea how to create a warpwork it is fully skilled in making use of the ones it finds. Each warpwork is surrounded by a complex of installations and facilities intent on probing its secrets and making use of its properties to manage effects maniti could never achieve using just its own technology. Attraction: And yet, manitis own success may prove its end. Maniti has grown numerous and evolved enough to attract the attention of many beings in the universe that like to take advantage of young civilizations and many of them have found maniti to be excellent subjects for their games. These beings currently deal with maniti on an individual basis, and are actually mainly interested in protecting the species since maniti is so delicious, but as a whole they form a threat to overall stability no less great than the gigerava. Masterlords: But the universe as a whole is not ruled by maniti or even the strange things it attracts. And make no mistake, the universe is ruled. This is the scale of ships the size of galaxies, of empires older than suns, and of minds that can comprehend the entire universe. Maniti simply isnt on their radar. Not even the old gigerava qualified. This keeps maniti out of their targeting visors, but they would also wipe out our entire galactic cluster if it suited them. But they cant be bothered. Infinity Corps: There is one and only one exception to this rule of masterlords not caring, which is the Infinity Corps. This is the group which has been charged with banning all time travel technology everywhere in the universe because of the danger of paradoxes ruining everything. In the LAU you can not only go back in time and kill your grandfather, but you can even go back in time, use automatic weapons to wipe out Bronze Age mercenaries, and then return home with payroll. And time travel is very simple stuff, buildable once you have the steam engine. The Infinity Corps has only one member, but this member is allowed to use all the time travel he wants and as a result the number of separate bodies he can call on is beyond counting. There is no escaping him, period. Hell get you, later or sooner. Evolved Races: A mentality capable of being the Infinity Corps is a result of a feature of this universe. For sentient purposes design is simply better than blind evolution, so all the major powers like maniti and the gigerava -- are designed races. This is true not just in this galaxy, but all across the universe. Maniti in its explorations has encountered many evolved races, and the fate of these races largely depends on what faction of maniti first meets them. But as a general attitude evolved beings, all far behind maniti in terms of social, technological and even physical development, are treated with condescension and a belief among maniti that they simply arent important. The evolved races, however, take a great interest in what maniti does. Endrali: But all that aside, how has maniti been able to expand throughout the galaxy without any real native competition? The reason is the endrali, or more specifically the lack of them. Up until the 11th century BC most of the galaxy was dominated by the million-year-old civilization of the endrali who held most of it in bondage by suppressing any evolved civilization that reached the basics of technology, specifically radio waves.

These cultures were wiped out long before they reached the level of designing their own life, which is the answer to the fermi paradox and why SETI never found anything. And then one day the endrali simply abandoned their civilization. No one knows why, maniti is the first culture that arose to fill the gap and so far its met no real native challenges. The endrali have left ruins and infrastructures all over the galaxy, most of it in very bad shape from eons of not receiving maintenance. But this culture was ahead of even modern maniti in a number of respects. Survivors: But the endralis civilization didnt die, it was abandoned. That is to say, over the course of about a week the endrali simply stopped using their technology and began to start over again. Obviously almost all the entali are gone, but those that remain live among their ancestors technologies and cities. They have cultures best described as paleotechnic because while an evolved race has rocks around it to use for tools, the descendants of the entali have insanely advanced tech around them to use for tools even though they dont understand it. They are everywhere in the galaxy, and those that remember their great heights have usually hostile reactions when they see that maniti has itself risen to heights. Life and Vril: And now the alternate physics. In this setting there is a physical basis for life and evolution, the energy called vril. Thanks to the fact that vril is channeled by certain shapes life appears almost everywhere on every planet, but complex ecosystems are much, much rarer and normally require cooperation with some local mentergence. Evolution is also a good deal faster and weirder in the LAU than we currently believe. Over trillions of years many life forms have evolved truly amazing properties as well, making them sometimes wonderous and sometimes terrible and very often useful. Cosmostraphies: It can be a good thing that life evolves quickly, because stars and planets do the same. While our current models of astronomy are correct up to point, they fail in certain circumstances because we dont know enough physics. We shouldnt feel bad, maniti figured out the relevant areas of physics by studying the unexpected behavior of stars. Stars and planets coalesce quickly, or blow up, or two stars get too close and exchange a few planets, or radiation emitted changes or the planets environment twists, all kinds of things. Maniti can shelter and run from these effects but it cant truly stop them, and this makes things even more dangerous than otherwise. Mentergence: Whether or not the Cosmentalities are examples of this phenomena is unknown, but what cannot be denied in the LAU is that when a system reaches a certain level of complexity it will start exhibiting interactions with other similar systems as with systems and not simply as collections of discrete phenomena. So it is that enough molecules, when gathered together, form a cell. A mass of cells will become a living thing, and enough living things gathered together will become an ecosystem. The interactions of a planetary ecosystem form a gaiasphere, the power of a living planet to take actions. A star will interact with other stars to form a galaxy, and the galaxy will interact with other galaxies. Other examples include certain cultural ideas and legal systems, many old Ais in the Link, the megacities, and some say the very Link itself.

Any understanding of any of these systems will be superficial unless one takes into account that they have some volition and self-regulation, a fact which our scientists today are simply unaware of. However all these versions have certain similarities. They all have special locations where their existence is concentrated and disrupting or healing these points can have major effects on the whole system. And all of them react angrily to their integrity being violated, and this leaves aside the organizations of lawyers/scientists/priests who both worship and guide their chosen mentergents. Cosmentalities: The Cosmentalities are, simply put, the gods. In the LAU actual physical laws have volition and life, and in the first picosecond of the universe they fought out what the laws of nature would be in the universe to come. The Cosmentality that finally came out on top was Mind, and therefore sentience and mentality can reign supreme and manipulate other natural forces with varying levels of directness. Next on the list was Scale, so the universe is infinite and always expands. And so on and so forth, Thus was the hierarchy and structure of the universe defined, and the fight is still going on. There are countless Cosmentalities, each of which represents an aspect of the universe and it is also many-in-one, because each aspect has its own Cosmentality which is no less infinite for being a subset of another. These beings sometimes make themselves known to lesser minds, but thats a very rare thing indeed. Outstincts: These are the beings and effects and stuff that remain from the previous universe, when the Cosmentalities were arranged differently. Because they were here at the beginning they are not cast out like things from other alternals are (this is something described in the Technology section). However for them Mind is not dominant like it is for our universe, and so attempts to understand them using our own logical processes will inherently fail, and working to do so further will result in mental damage and insanity. Manaylem: And what do you think came between the creation of this universe and the destruction of the one before? Those are the wrong terms to use, because time didnt exist then, but it suffices for our purposes. There was nothing but sheer potential, called by manitis physicists manaylem. And while most of the manaylem was used to make this universe, there was still vast amounts left over. And when sentient life evolved, it learned to make use of manaylem to create any event that it could properly imagine. The problem is that by the time of the story almost all the manaylem has been used up and it is regenerating very slowly, so attempts to use it have a big stumbling block. But there are still many beings from this ancient time who still live and whom still possess some powers, as well as locations where there is more or less ylem and their powers are stronger or weaker. Contemplanes: There is also more to this universe than the physical plane, there are other levels of reality where mind is ruler. These planes of reality can be reached mentally or with special equipment, and also by some of the most common things that life does such as being born, dreaming and dying. These other planes, where Mind is even stronger than here, are the homes of certain beings whom when brought through to the physical universe can have great power.

Technology The technology available is very important in a science fiction setting, for obvious reasons. Machines monstrous wondrous and weird are the escutcheon of the genre, and while they are not the end of what sets sci-fi apart they are certainly the beginning. This makes their treatment in most SF all the more unpleasant. Because most of the ideas for technology were developed by the genres founders in the 1920s and 1930s, and whats been added since has been projections from real science. And everything comes complete with elaborate explanations on how nothings really shifted. Obviously Lungfish Alpha cannot fully rectify this issue yet, since to think up a totally new science or technology would take much more time and talent than any of us have. As a result this section draws on ideas in other sources more than Society or Milieu did. In addition to the technologies themselves I have also worked to describe aspects and uses of technology as a whole. Nanorganics: Manitis operations take place on a level where medicine, genetics, nanotechnology, chemistry, engineering, metabolics, molecular biology, and taxonomy have all become pretty much the same thing. Everything in the LAU is made not of blocks of materials like today but rather of countless nanomachines that work together to make an effect. This includes not just the technology but the maniti themselves. These designs are organized much like evolved beings, containing organs, genetic codes, organelles, and bodily distribution networks. All of these are millions of times more powerful and complex than anything that ever evolved naturally, however. Maniti also has the ability to manipulate its biological creations not mention natural biology, in incredible ways allowing them to do any imaginable medical or genetic feat. Ecostructures: On the other end of the size scale are the massive devices known as ecostructures. These are megacities, redesign of planetary surfaces, beanstalks, orbital defense and weather control networks, corebores, in short designs that are so large that they have a noticeable effect on the local or even planetary ecosystem simply by being built. Maniti deals with this by redesigning ecosystems to accommodate the new works rather than forbidding new designs, necessary because much of modern civilization relies on the properties of planetary ecostructures. Indeed, no maniti would even consider living on a world that did not already have massive amounts of ecostructure present, they are carefully managed and governed to ensure that they never fail. They are utterly off limits in all wars and combats, since no one will risk their destruction. Breeding: The reason that maniti bases its designs off of living things is simple it has no choice. Long ago technology became so complex that actually designing it was out of the question. It wasnt the concepts that were beyond the engineers and inventors, but the application of these principles required such attention to detail and study of interactions that actually inventing new machines took decades, and eventually centuries. So the same principle that was used to generate maniti themselves was turned to every item of technology. Instead of blueprints designers produced the genetic code of the living machinery and programmed this genetic these into artificial wombs for the new

lifeform to grow and serve its purpose. But there are problems with this approach. For one thing its not unknown for artifacts in the genetic designs to make machines take actions or have properties that were not intended. For another thing keeping designs and tech secret is almost impossible, since all a thief needs is a few cells from the original and the proper raw materials. Then the work can be reproduced even if the copier has no idea how stuff truly works. The longer and more complex a genetic code is the longer it takes for the growth to complete unless the wombs are specialized which is why large-scale production still exists. Over the millennia these firms and facilities have gradually diverged in their preferred genetic lines, meaning that various devices can do the same thing and yet look totally different from each other and even operate on different principles. Materials: But what is all this specially-bred machinery made out of? Unlike natural organisms, which build themselves up from basic elements and chemicals, manitis grown technology is designed to work off a base of preprocessed materials. This allows it to achieve far greater effects than basic forms ever could, but it also means that the materials have to be there in the precise location the genetic code desires. Much of what is required is mined as metal ores, then run through processing to get the exact composition and pattern and mixtures required. Other elements are also present, in all their forms. Some things can be produced and maintained only with scribers, and these things are always used in small amounts. Still other machines require transuranic elements or antimatter components, and these must be worked mechanically. And there are other substances that only occur naturally or are simply to expensive to synthesize, and it is to get these substances that most outposts are built. While most of the output comes from large-scale corporate operations, there are also plenty of individual prospectors who hope to strike it rich but usually manage to just pay their costs. Interface: The next issue that arises is how the technology is used, this depends on the interface. A maniti can leave a device operating entirely on automatic, he can operate it using manual or vocal controls, he can have somatic controls that operate on his controlled muscles or link with the machine mentally using various levels of immersion. In general the more total the linkage the better the work that can be done with it, indeed there are a great many devices and effects that will only work with the higher levels of interface. But with this comes a price, the fact that the more you interface the more training is needed to operate the machine properly, and the greater the risk of mental damage for an unprepared mind. The ultimate form of interface is to alter ones own body, producing maximum interface but also requiring maximum therapy and training. The decision of how deep the interface should be is a constant issue with deciding what to use and who to hire. Autons: And of course there are an immense number jobs where perfection of interface would be a total waste of societies resources. Any machine or process that doesnt require someone linking to get the job done will likely not have any controls at all, rather it will carry out the tasks of its own accord and doing whatever job maniti requests. Practically all repetitive, dangerous or simply unpleasant work is done by use of autons, automatic devices that can manage tasks on a very high level. This also means that

individuals in the LAU can have access to amazing personal physical resources by todays standards because autons do all the work. Upgrades: And then there is the issue of upgrading machines and the maniti themselves, because as stated before science and technology advance at a full stampede. Improvements to technology do not occur years or even months apart, but every few minutes. Every bit of technology, of any use, is designed from the start to be able to accept improvements and alterations as new ideas are invented. The problem is that upgrades make it necessary to learn some of the interface over again, and because no one has the time or resources to make every possible improvement. Instead individual maniti make their possessions more and more personalized as the time passes depending on what they feel is an important feature, and by the same token the requirement of interface means that machines with better operators linked to them can outdo more advanced machines with less skilled maniti linked to the controls. Easyware: But sometimes, indeed often, what simplest is best. Remember that maniti are mentally superior as well as technologically superior, and by our standards every maniti is mechanically brilliant and has received an education in science that would stagger us. They are perfectly capable of inventing from scratch almost any simple technology as needed. They can use simple elements to synthesize complex chemicals, and indeed for this purpose raw chemicals are commonly sold. They are able to invent complex mechanical devices and triggers to do many tasks, to program tulpae, to exploit natural features and temperature differentials to generate power, use spare mechanical parts to produce radios or even weapons, grinding glass, performing genetic engineering, and all kinds of other things. This capability is one of the main reasons life in the LAU is so uncontrolled, because no one can keep track of these manic beings. They can never match the modern developments with the huge infrastructure behind them, but nor do these maniti need to. Tiers: On the other hand of scientific progress is the fact that in the LAU science has become relegated to various tiers depending on how difficult the sciences are. There are currently eight tiers, and all the knowledge our race will ever gain will never leave the second tier. A tier is a general representation of the amount of intellect and training required to understand a concept, and most people simply dont have the mentality to go past the fourth tier. To reach the bleeding edge of science, the eighth tier, requires natural genius (by manitis standards) and centuries of personalized training. The fifth and sixth tiers have seen some technological uses, but the ideas of the seventh and eighth are currently purely theoretical since the ideas are so abstract they bear no resemblance to reality. The result of this is that truly new technologies are somewhat rare among maniti while new applications are constant, every phenomena that can be understood is already being used. Spectral Forces: Of all the powers manitis advanced knowledge of physics has gained it, one of the most significant is that of the spectral forces. What we consider the strong nuclear force is really a combination of seven other forces, which have been arbitrarily named after the colors of the rainbow (though the phenomena have nothing in common

other than nonclemature). But maniti knows how to break apart these forces and recombine them into other forms, thus producing energy beams and force fields of various types for various occasions. To get through them one must either have ones own spectral protections, or manipulate the opposing beam or field so that it has no resistance to your own fields. The ability to casual break apart the atom on demand also means that maniti has total-conversion energies to draw on, but even these powers can be exhausted if one is using them to power other spectral devices or for certain other technological puposes. Intrinsics: One of the things that maniti can do with the stunning energies it harnesses is to change properties of matter that we today consider intrinsic and unchangeable. This includes time rate, moment of inertia, frictional and gravitational constants, physical state at certain temperatures, and many others. Maniti can therefore construct things and machinery that would be impossible or just too expensive under normal laws of physics. But intrinsic alterations last only as long as the power is maintained, when it fails the effect does too. Physical Control: The spectral forces were the direct result of a single scientific revolution, but there are other forces and substances in the universe. For tens of thousands of years maniti has been advancing its knowledge incrementally, to the point where it can do anything it wants to lesser phenomena. These include electrical currents, magnetic fields, molecular bonds, plasmas, chemical reactions, fundamental particles, the weak force, quantum effects and every wavelength from the radio to gamma. Sensors, weapons, industrial processes, nanoscale devices and many other things are incredibly advanced for this reason. No Gravitics: But this control does not extend to all forces. Specifically, the issue is gravity control. That things like tractor and pressor beams, and reactionless drives, and artificial gravity, and inertial compensators, are certainly possible. This has been borne out from all the samples that have been found in Eldant ruins, and psychic visions and divinations have borne this out. But though preadamite races inferior in every other way have produced antigravity machinery, maniti cannot even when it copies the devices molecule by molecule. No reason that maniti cannot seem to reproduce such technologies has ever been uncovered, its simply this way and while this is a galling truth it is also one maniti has learned to live with. All the examples of gravity technology that one finds are either recovered from ruins or were traded for (or stolen from) stabile races. Needless to say this makes gravitic technology rather expensive stuff but often the capabilities are worth it. Subtletecture: The closest maniti has come to artificial gravity is subtletecture. Today, we believe gravity to be the weakest fundamental force. In reality it is the strongest member of a class of forces which are collectively known as the subtle forces, which permeate the universe and while their effects are weak they are also omnipresent. Maniti has never been able to generate its own subtle forces, but it does have the technology to manipulate subtle forces that are generated by celestial objects to produce many strange

effects. By the same token there are some entities and processes that only work where the subtle forces are right and require special locations to operate. Warpenings: Not to be confused with subtletecture is the power of warpenings the technology of manipulating the way the multiple dimensions of our universe interact and thus produce what we think of as three-dimensional reality. The effects of warpenings are often counter intuitive when viewed from a three dimensional perspective, and its usually best just to accept them as they come. This includes many operations using simultaneity and distance, Escher-like architecture and urban planning, dimensional pockets, as well as control of time and relativistic effects. The Godweb: The ultimate power known to technology is not any we know of today, however. The greatest power is that of the countless varieties of tachyons that permeate the universe, containing immense energies and informations but never interacting with normal matter. Under regular circumstances, that is. Using science stolen from the gigerava maniti is slowly building The Godweb -- a constantly growing network of massive installations that have the potential to manipulate the tachyons for anything desired if one can pay the price. Think of it as omnipotence and omniscience and youre charged by the nanosecond. The network is constructed based on interstellar relationships because of the almost incalculable speed of the forces involved, the gigerava had a complete network in their own galaxy but most of it was destroyed when they went mad. Maniti has barely even begun the full network, but already the real limit is the imagination of the users rather than the technology itself. The Godweb can make solar systems, spy on individual electrons, and anything in between. Scribing: Another technology stolen from the gigerava is the technology of scribing. As far as can be explained in normal language everything in the universe is defined by twenty-three properties no more, no less. A better analogy would be to think of the universe as a webpage, and scribing as the ability to fiddle with the source code. The powers of this technology can work great changes to matter, energy and life, but unless the chosen end is a stable combination of factors the effects will quickly break down. Think of the universe as having a debugging code. But maniti can do transmutation of matter and energy and life, so this technology still finds it has a whole lot of uses. Alternals: But everything that I have stated has been a result of properties of this universe properties that were decided in the very beginning when the Cosmentalities fought to determine the master. But there exist other realities, where different Cosmentalities won. Normally these alternals are blocked from our universe by The Veil Effect, but maniti has the technology to temporarily breach The Veil and thus the universes interact via gateways, overlaps or simply the affected item vanishing in one universe and appearing in another. Why do this? Because entities and phenomena that come through are, for a period of time, subject not to this universes rules but to those of the original universe. This means that things literally impossible in this universe can be extracted from another for temporary use, which has obvious technological implications. And there is sometimes life in these other universes, and many maniti make bargains and long-term contracts with these lifeforms for services in certain realities.

Carnatology: While alternals are entirely separate physical universes, the planes of existence of our universe are fully present. Maniti has a good, though by no means complete, understanding of how the interactions of the mind with these alternate planes is related to the existence of awareness itself. By using this knowledge maniti can access and summons beings from planes beyond reality, it can also bring life to normally inanimate objects as well as interfering with the natural cycling of death and dreams. The Link: Maniti did not create The Link, its allies the peripator did and allowed maniti access in exchange for materials and energy from the inner solar systems. Using the metaphysical planes of reality described before as a computing and communications medium, it has proved possible to produce a linked information network which can be accessed by any maniti to instantly know any available portion of knowledge that his brain can grasp. It also allows as well as to communicate almost instantaneously to anyone else that he wishes. On the other hand The Link contains so much information, moving so quickly, that the only way to directly perceive it is to use sensory metaphors that reflect the actual events with varying accuracy. Another concern is that both beings and phenomena from metaphysical planes and rogue artificial intelligence programs make their homes in the link, the former often disrupting it and the latter exhibiting a control over the Link that no normal programmer can match. Informatics: The Link is everywhere, allowing maniti to gather effectively infinite amounts of information and with its multi-dimensional computer technology it is able to store this information indefinitely and process this information with amazing speed. Maniti also has the mathematics to correlate this information, automatically deriving inferences and producing simulations of real events that embody amazing scope and accuracy. Nor must it limit itself to real events, maniti also produces simulated artificial universes for recreation and entertainment alike. Superstatistics: Not exactly a technology, and more of a lack of one. Long ago informatics made maniti aware of statistical connections between many things, but these connections seemed to have no discernible physical origin. No one has any what connection the price of hamsters teeth has to the winners at the racetracks, or why eating three grains of potassium salt a day helps marital prospects, or why the species of insect found in a particular cup of coffee shifts the outcome of casino gambling. Some coincidences were unsuspected physical processes, or vast conspiracies, but most have resisted even the most tenacious analytical attempts. But these connections are used, since by analyzing one thing maniti can learn about something else altogether. And moreover by performing certain acts maniti can increase the probability of certain events occurring, and these connections are an integral part of manitis technology and culture. Psymbolics: Closely allied with informatics but separate in use, psymbolics is the study of symbols that represent ideas. This includes literature, mathematics and language alike, indeed all these things are subsets of psymbolics. Maniti has made philosophy and sociology into hard sciences, while individuals must still make their own choices they can be told which choices will satisfy those choices. In fact, everyone makes full use of

it and so do conspiracies that work to realign society according to their whims. This is also the knowledge that gave maniti the ability to produce the tulpae, the artificial intelligences that run manitis society for it. And there are strange forms of expressing data that are incredibly efficient and useful, but only for those who know the secrets. Brainware: The brain of a maniti is a marvel of engineering, integrating all the best aspects of animal, sentient and technological intelligence taken from countless worlds. Maniti routinely analyze and record all sensory data as it comes in, and they can directly alter the brain to have different properties and modes of perception than normal intelligence. The way brains are made also makes it possible to program the subconscious for specific tasks or to hold certain information, and of course there are probes to get this information out. But do not underestimate the power of the conscious mind, which has been known to break free of even the strongest mental shackles when it needed to. Conceptualics: But the ultimate power of the mind lies in what is called conceptualics the fact that a sufficiently advanced mind can manipulate the universe simply by willing things to happen. The ability is the result of the fact that mind is the dominant Cosmentality, but there is a price. To use the power of conceptualics is to work against other Cosmentalities, and they strike back at the offending individual by sending misfortunes and bodily disruptions against hir. Even those only indirectly connected feel the consequences, though not as severely. The only way out is to inflict the damage oneself instead of waiting for it to happen, reality will then be satisfied and the scales balanced. So technologies to harness conceptualics usually involves suffering of the maniti involved. While once this power found frequent use, as material technology has advanced conceptualics has become less and less useful on an economic scale. Today most maniti who follow conceptualics do so for personal development, not to make money off it. Miractech: So far all these descriptions of technology have ignored a very important fact of the LAU, the idea of how minds and volition can spontaneously emerge from a complex system. Such an emergent mind is just as much a feature of nature as a waterfall or a mountain, and maniti has the general scientific knowledge required to make devices that rely on the presence of a particular mentergence to achieve effects that would be otherwise impossible either physically or monetarily. These devices are driven as much by belief of their users than by the skill of the operators, and may only work in rigidly defined circumstances or in specific locations. But they can also keep on operating practically forever, existing as long as do the mentergences they draw upon. Organe: The final fact of life, quite literally, is organe. Remember from the milieu how evolution of life, of society, of systems and even of events is all influenced by the power of vril. So by augmenting and altering the vril present, the flow of events can be shifted in one direction or another. In a very real sense this is the ultimate technology, because using organe technology one can make things go your way. It also allows maniti to direct evolution of any system it wants to very specific ends and in a very short amount of time, and to maintain otherwise impossible societal and physical structures, but the

true potential is the power to change destiny. Only free will or more organe manipulations can resist this power, every other attempt is doomed to fail. Fortunately there isnt enough organe to go around. Applications: And long ago maniti integrated all its knowledge of the universe and continues to do the same as new developments occur, and maniti controls and calculates events with a precision barely understandable. Many of the magical effects of the LAU are the result not of some great advance but simply of understanding the basic principles so totally that almost anything can be done. And this applies to everything, no matter how insignificant, they are all devices so the items can do their job with ultimate efficiency. Society The societies of conventional SF tend to be very similar to modern day America (or whatever was modern at the time). The changes that are made are there to satisfy the authors personal political sensibilities, most of these changes have the effect of making me very glad science fiction writers dont make good political candidates. I have seen racism, puerile views of history, military wet dreams, feminist utopias, libertarian and authoritarian ideals alike. To get away from these abortions I used the common memes of SF only as starting off points, and very carefully kept my real-world politics out of all the ideas in this section. At least I tried to, its surprisingly hard to consciously not believe something. What Ive aimed for here is a culture that is very alien to our own, and one that rather than being in a single state is constantly dealing with conflicting aspects and impulses which result in some very strange factors strange by our standards, that is. Things Work: In the time of the LAU, almost all of todays social problems have been solved including the ones that we class as part of human nature and therefore dont bother to even try to do anything about. This list includes, but isnt limited to, war, famine, bigotry, ignorance, corporate accounting fraud, military atrocities, religious extremism, executives who view the extinction of perfectly good species as collateral damage, environmentalists who consider the destruction of perfectly good industries as collateral damage, banality of new car designs and that really annoying two minute wait while computers turn on. This doesnt mean that these things never occur, but it does mean that theyre incredibly rare and that any one of them raises major attention. But this doesnt mean that society doesnt have problems it simply means that the problems which do exist are so removed from anything we have today that we cant really grasp them. Barbarisms: And the fact that social problems have largely been dealt with does not mean that every decision is nice by our standards. Manitis society is sometimes almost barbarically blunt, dealing with class and resource shortages and dangers in ways that would shock even the most cruel regime today. This is not evil, rather it the choice to

follow political calculations (literally calculations) to utterly abominable results whose only positive aspect is that theyre better than the alternative. Theyre People: And another fundamental fact that must be remembered is that maniti are people. While they deal with issues like naming, friendships, inheritance, marriage, children, possessions and so forth in ways that would puzzle us they still deal with the same issues. Often the availability of supertechnology and immortality means that these procedures are downright weird by our standards, but theyre still genuine concerns even among maniti. The Legendera: We will start out this section with a basic outline of manitis history, though theres emphasis on the basic part. The millennia after manitis creation are commonly called the Legendera, because it was a time tailor made for legends. A small population, shock over the end of the parent race, and a hunger for heroes made things so that the first few maniti who stepped forwards as leaders in any field were looked up to by others, almost worshipped. This continued for a long time, with every area of accomplishment being dominated by individuals who achieved incredible heights. If they were ever surpassed, the victors became the legends in turn but even now, every single legend is remembered and is the subject of much speculation and tales. Conflict Age: The Legendera was followed by the conflict age, as maniti settled down into an interstellar civilization and various groups began to plot to gain more power than they had by taking it away from others. Various groups fought subtle wars for the future of maniti, motivated by everything from religion to greed to desire to cause death. The group that finally won out was the one that slowly but surely revealed to the public the truth of society, and how so many of the events that affected the common person were really the result of self-obsessed conspiracies. This victorious group was called the Golden Mean, and over the course of millennia they fought in the places where the shadows had shadows and defeated all the evil. The Overgovernment: What replaced the corrupt and venal morass that was society and economics in the Conflict Era was the Overgovernment. The Golden Mean disbanded itself when it had won, but this was largely because its component parts had only been united by morality and not by plans for the society theyd saved. Society almost collapsed before the Golden Mean reconstituted itself as the Overgovernment, which sort of managed maniti for eons. This was not a perfect time, but most agree that proportional to the maximum potential there was more social justice and economic growth in this period than ever before. It discovered the peripator and gained The Link from them, and some say this started off the end.

Epocalypse: This gilded age was ended by the most terrible event in manitis history, The Epocalypse. It was the result of a shifting in the galactic mentergence, one that over the course of several years sent all of manitis elaborately terraformed and managed planets haywire and turned what survived actively against maniti. The governments fell, and what took their place was the gigacities, giant conurbations holding at first hundreds of millions and then billions. This was manitis darkest time, when it was ruled by bickering fascist dictatorships concerned only with survival. The gigacities made many cold and cruel decisions, the consequences of which still echo today since this was a time when changes didnt have to overcome societal inertia there was no society left. Many of these results are still being dealt with or enjoyed. This was also when the scientific research of The Overgovernment was pushed into practical uses by ruthless leaders searching for some, indeed any, way to let their subjects gain advantage. It was also now that maniti learned the true large-scale nature of the universe, and the massive powers described in the milieu section. Aeonomics: After the immediate danger was past, the philosophy of aeonomics spread across society. Economics was a discipline that couldnt properly deal with an immortal and interstellar and post-industrial civilization, so aeonomics was developed and took sway. It showed how to reorganize society so it could recover, how to prevent the messes from happening again, and how to make a culture that could truly last. Very gradually society and the economy recovered, but the governments were still brutal and bickering and dictatorial. Aeonomics is the cause of many of manitis odd social features, since they are based on a fundamentally different view on how things are valued in society. Renaissance II: What ended this dark time was the coming and the eventual defeat of the gigerava. After maniti had saved itself, the citizens and returning solders took the time to look around and ask whether their dictated and harshly-ruled life was worth living at all. And then came manitis finest hour, when all across Known Space governments and rulers realized that history had turned against them, and instead of fighting their ending they accepted it. Democracy and beauty and freedom was returned to the universe, and all the chaos that those bring, and that is the situation which exists today. Numbers: Just so we get it out of the way, here are some demographics. Maniti fully exploits 72,608 systems, which each hold an average of eleven trillion maniti. This does not count the maniti speckled across the galaxy in less exploited systems, however, from outposts to planets being fully prepared for exploitation to everything in between. Capabilities: And what of these maniti themselves? A very important fact to remember is that maniti did not evolve, each new individual is created. And over the millennia maniti have been making themselves stronger, faster, hardier, smarter, all to the point where as a matter of course they have abilities that would amaze us and alterations, specific for their society, that are in them from birth. They deal with physical needs and problems in ways that are fundamentally different from our own, and thats something that must never be forgotten.

Generations: And maniti are immortal, so the older generations have to sit around and watch as their children supplant them especially hard on the soul since the new generations dont have the skills the old ones do but do have superior capabilities. Its a fight between the new strengths and the old skills, and it applies to machines as well as people as old versions compete with new. Both old and young form conspiracies and cabals to promote the interests of their generations, and these groups can let their beliefs and enthusiasms get the better of them. Environments: Closely allied with the issue of generational variances is that of environmental variance. Maniti can come in any shape desired, but various forms like different air pressures and compositions, different gravities, variant temperatures, different foods and drinks and trace chemicals, and so on. Not all maniti even share the same basic chemical reactions theyre artificially generated, and theres no need for them to. For millennia the result was a sort of physical segregation, but in the past few thousand years technology has advanced to the point where generalist bodies capable of managing anywhere under any conditions have become practical and this factor is gradually fading away in manitis culture. The Big Deal: One of the few things that does limit manitis expansion and growth and spread is The Big Deal. This was the agreement reached with the peripator by the Overgovernment, outlining the obligations of both races. Maniti agreed to never leave the galaxy because doing so would mean going straight through the peripator and inflicting incomprehensible damage on their civilization, and to send out materials and energy the peripator could never gather themselves, and in return the peripator gave maniti the knowledge it needed to create the Link. Both sides benefited infinitely from this deal in every way, but because of The Big Deal maniti has never sent anything out of the galaxy. This is not really a concern since it cant even handle the one it already has, but the day will come, one day, when it does rise up. Organizations: Maniti has countless organizations, which are very different than today. Futuristic administration techniques and communications technology let groups scan the stars, and every organization large or small consciously cultivates a collective loyalty and traditions that are taken very seriously by those inside them. It is this loyalty and scale that lets maniti carry out its massive projects and plans, but it can also lead to maniti doing strange and decadent things in the name of what to an outsider seems a minor matter. Organizations are generally categorized by what their general motivation is: money, power, honor, knowledge, helping others, and so forth. Freelancers: On the other end of the utter devotion many organizations demand is the phenomena of freelancers, individuals and even organizations with particular skills who will work for literally anyone who can pay the price. This system started out long ago as a means to produce deniable black operations, but since then has spread to every area of endeavor. The freelancers are expected to have no loyalties beyond their pay and their oaths of confidentiality, though this ideal can be hard to achieve.

Neofeudalism: The number of maniti in the LAU is in the quadrillions, and growing all the time. Even with manitis intelligence, administrative procedures and information technology, managing any organization across the entire culture would be impossible. But only if one makes an organization of individuals. An organization composed of other organizations can be handled, as can an organization of organizations of organizations, and so on. The higher up the hierarchy one goes the more power one finds, but by the sake token the harder it is to focus that power on anything in particular. The right hand barely knows that the left one exists, let alone what its doing. These decisions never concern individuals, only grand sweeps of power and control. And ordinary maniti return the favor, mistrusting those groups that are high on the scale of power and control. Centrates: The exception to this rule is the organizations known as centrates, which have a focus of a sort that allows them to spread across truly vast amounts of territory and still function as groups of individuals. These groups combine the infinite resources of a higher-level feudal with the focus of a group of individuals, and the combination makes the centrates the major powers of the LAU. The interstellar empires are all centrates, they work by usually ignoring detail work but coming down hard when someone interferes with them. Even so the centrates are almost too big to work, and they use every trick to keep their vast size from dragging them down. Gigacities: Where do all these maniti live? Most make their homes in the gigacities, vast conurbations that house billions. Each gigacity is beautiful beyond words, and each is incredibly efficient and manages to provide all its citizens with a strandard of living nothing else could match. Each is self-sufficient, and each one in principle is an independent state. But while statistically a gigacity is a the best social structure in all of history they are so vast that even statistically low rates of crime, pollution and accidents all total up to stunningly dangerous numbers. Tribalics: Life in the megacities is almost a paradise, but it is a paradise under martial law. And with manitis level of technology and their physical forms, living in a large megacity is a personal choice if you want it to be. Tribalics are those groups, large or small, who have chosen to leave the megacities and their luxuries and pleasures and instead make their homes in small communities. While they have less disasters and problems the ones they do have can be far more severe thanks to their small size, and the tiny number of people in a tribalic has been known to lead to truly strange and complicated social interactions which no outsider can understand. Outposts: While the population is far smaller than the gigacities, maniti also has countless outposts in pivotal locations across the galaxy. The sites are chosen for scientific information that can be gathered, or for strategic locations, or in order to extract specific materials, or to spread religions, or simply out of genuine goodwill for those nearby. As long as the outposts send back enough to their parent organizations to meet their quotas they are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want, and so the galaxy is a somewhat out-of-control place in that regard where everything goes, somewhere.

Buildworlds: There is another step beyond gigacities, a plan that failed. After the Epocalypse it was predicted that one day even the megacities wouldnt be enough to hold all the maniti required (this was before aeonomics came along). So the plan was hatched to create the buildworlds, planets the entire crust of which would be cities. Each one could theoretically hold a quadrillion maniti, and the plan was physically a success. But all the buildworlds created suffered unimaginable social and moral collapse, and theyve become terrible and corrupt places, terrible ones where few willingly go and that make the gigacitys worst historical sins look pleasant. Compactuals: I say that the gigacities are independent in principle because of compactuals organizations of megacities on the same planet. There will be a number of these on any world, grouped not only by various criteria that include not only geographically but historically, sexually, religiously, economically, culturally, and by threats that they have faced together in the past. The compactuals of a world usually compete to see who gets contracts to manage the worlds ecostructure, and to find out wholl represent the planet to the centrate that rules them. The Ecocracy: And above even the centrates lies the power that supposedly rules all of maniti The Ecocracy. The Ecocracys agents are what represent maniti in the decisions of the masterlords and dealing with other civilizations, but they have little other power. As stated before, society is too complex for The Ecocracy to manage anything else. And yet, because it is outside the insane struggles for publicity and power The Ecocracy is perhaps the only group that is able to look at maniti as a whole and actually see, in broad, what the hell is going on. Pastimes: And what do those countless quadrillions of megacity residents do with their immortal lives? They have fun. All desires for material goods and pleasures are trivially satisfied in the LAU, rather the economy is driven by individuals doing things for the sheer enjoyment of them and for reasons of faith. Competitions, artworks, meditations, religions, everything is possible.. These are all taken very seriously indeed by all participants, who will react angrily to any attempt to interfere with them. Wonderworks: In addition to the normal individual pastimes, and the large-scale infrastructure development, one of the other major factors driving manitis economy is wonderworks. These are projects only immortals with an infinite population can ever do, artwork and scientific studies that takes billions of maniti thousands of years to complete. The trickle-down effects of these things are the most powerful driver of manitis economy and indeed one of the most important reasons for government in the LAU is to coordinate these projects. Tellus: The greatest wonderwork of them all is what has been done to manitis home. The entire solar system, as well as several others that happened to be conveniently nearby, has been disassembled and formed into a Dyson sphere. The sphere generates gravity by rotation, and is designed to produce every known environment on its infinite interior surface area. The environments gradually shift to one another as one travels, though as yet only an infinitesimal percentage of the total area is used for life. Whenever

maniti displaces an evolved ecosystem in its callingizations it transplants the ecosystem to Tellus where it is let loose on an region as large as its own home planet, designed to simulate that world as closely as can be reasonably done. Threats: In additional to coordinating their projects, governments on all levels protect their citizens against the threats which constantly plague maniti. The most terrible and prevalent threat is the remaining gigerava, but there are others. There are madmen, monster attacks, ancient things better left buried, results of scientific or artistic projects gone terribly wrong, natural disasters, economic fluctuations, terrorist plots, hostile spiritual beings, street crime, things that are simply accidents, and almost everything else imaginable. While life in the LAU is often a paradise, it only stays that way because of the immense resources that go into limiting the side effects. Conflict Rulings: And maniti also has to deal with the harsh reality of its own technical and societal achievements. Weapons can crack worlds in half, dangers constantly threaten all, and there are organizations with effectively unlimited power that gladly smite any attempt by the young to interfere. As a result, there are incredibly complex strategies for how one is supposed to handle any form of conflict because otherwise culture wouldnt be able to handle it. In some cases these rules have never been written down, simply because no one wants to handicap themselves or face the need to call on legalisms in order to deala with some offender. When conflict management procedures are written down they can sometimes lead to very odd results that everyone finds themselves obliged to follow. Fighting: While were on the subject of conflict, this is a good time to bring up the normal means of ground combat among maniti up close and personal. Weapons of incredible power can be so precisely aimed that the only safe place for an army is to be mixed in with the enemy so that such heavy artillery will blow away the shooters side as well. And in the corridors and caverns of the megacities, air support and artillery simply cant be used. The result is that ground combat involves individuals battling each other with personal weapons, and sometimes larger vehicles smashing at each other head on, but by and large its skill and personal enhancements that determine who wins battles rather than sheer numbers. Space Battles: Space battles in the LAU can get weird. The immense number and variety of technological traditions, and the fact that these traditions have been brought to high levels of achievement, means that all kinds of odd weapons find themselves a place. And since the vacuum of space theres nothing around except more nothing, limiting ones powers to keep from wiping out all life on the planet is hardly a concern. It is not unknown for truly large fleets to leave behind strange traces which can become dangerous later on, and for those on defeated ships to die some very exotic deaths. Enforcement: There has been no legitimate government among maniti since the Epocalypse destroyed all the governments, and that was thousands of years ago. Power and regulations in the LAU are dictated by who has the weaponry, and the governments of the gigacities are simply those with the biggest guns whom dictate all the terms.

Theyre genuinely working for the good of all those in the city, and the citizens understand and support them, and there are elections and such, but fundamentally everything depends on who has more weapons and more willingness to use them. And if the other side has more willpower and troops, perhaps mercenaries, they can ignore your demands. While conflict resolution ensures that maniti doesnt have too much conflict, enforcement ensures it doesnt have too little. Spintrigue: Just as enforcement involves physical conflicts, there also exists the phenomena of spintrigue. By the time of the LAU the boundaries between media and politics, and tourism and guerilla warfare, and industry and public emotions, have become more and more blurred. Its an open secret that to a large extent the flow of politics depends on highly charged emotions, or that any organization will have constant infighting as everyone works to take those above and defend himself from those below. Complexity: Another important feature, the one that limits The Ecocracy and all the centrates, is complexity. No one, not even a maniti, can manage in the culture of the LAU. They simply arent smart enough and fast enough to get even a small fraction of everything done. Even the simplest action requires millions of forms to be filled out, for example. And logistics for armies measured in the billions are beyond help. These are just a few examples, but there is a solution to this problem. Dont do anything. Long ago all the details of society were turned over to artificial intelligences called tulpae, designed specifically for certain tasks. Every maniti has thousands of personal tulpae which flicker invisibly and handle all the complexities perfectly, without anyone ever being aware of it. All a maniti does is make general decisions, tulpae handle all the gritty details. Large organizations dont so much have expertise as they have specialized tulpae, and its not unknown for relationships to form between the maniti and tulpae. Subcultures: A cause and consequence of all this complexity is the formation of subcultures around every possible activity. With The Link, these maniti can find each other across the universe and coordinate their activities without being formally organized. Sometimes subcultures can come into conflict over their private ideals, and then real trouble can result, but most of the time the issue doesnt come up since the various subcultures arent talking to one another in the first place. Stress: One of the results of this constantly changing and incomprehensible civilization, full of wonders and horrors, where everything is both too specialized and vast to understand, is stress. Some people run from the strangeness and become futsies, some ignore it and stay themselves, some worship it and become cultists, some embrace it and go unsane, and a rare few manage to transcend it and become excellsors. Stability: Balancing out stress is stability, and this can be a major issue when decisions are being made in the LAU. What a person can be trusted to do without breaking down is perhaps the single most important personal quality a maniti has, one that is constantly shown to the whole world through the tattoos known as facemarks.

Origins: Part of the reason for the complexity of manitis civilization is that it isnt totally manitis civilization. Certainly most of the actors are maniti, made from synthetic DNA. But there are also supernatural beings, parallel universe doubles, tulpae that managed to acquire sapience, renegade stabiles, preadmites found in suspended animation, and many other beings that are capable of dealing with maniti on its own weird and extreme terms. Psychonormal: The sheer strangeness isnt helped by the presence of psychonormal events. Remember that in this setting, Mind is supreme. And all those quadrillions of maniti have very powerful minds, so even their collective unconscious has an effect on the universe and also when they feel truly intense emotions there are side effects. The result is that many things that we today consider supernatural are in the LAU a good deal more common and more powerful but they are also fully understood as scientific phenomena, and everyone believes them. But it also means that in the LAU extreme deeds have a way of making themselves known in some very strange ways. Inclonations: With manitis technology, cloning is literally babys play. However, there is an aspect of cloning we are not yet aware of. Much of the mind and personality is shaped by genetics, so two beings with identical genetics will have somewhat similar minds, enough so that a connection will form between them as a psychonormal phenomena. Now, imagine there are a hundred or a thousand clones of someone, or millions. The connection becomes stronger, and while the clones all remain individuals the main influence on their actions becomes not their own decisions but the opinions of the collective. Some of the groups have followed their inclonations and set up organizations in which everyone reacts to the same events in the same way, and another effect is that mass-cloned devices will be more reliable but also harder to change, since the inclonation collective resists modifications being made to its members. As a general rule inclonations make their collective decisions by pooling their thoughts, but this can be less bucolic than it seems because those who get a majority will mentally dominate the minority into going along with the idea. Godswar: Another vaguely supernatural feature of the LAU is the fact that the gods are at war with each other. More accurately, races and organizations devoted to, and so possessing something of a link to, various Cosmentalities have been fighting each other. While various sides (eleven so far definitely identified as separate) tend to be fighting against each other more than for a specific outcome, the stakes are very high. Because this war, spread out across the universe in low intensity conflicts, seems to influence or at least reflect the long-term evolution of the laws of physics. Maniti as a race has no active part in the Godswar. But individuals, though ambition or inclination, have made some contact with various sides and fight for that side in manitis society. The sides make demands in return for the help that they give, and will destroy or simply abandon any who attempt to use their gifts for personal advancement without putting sufficient efforts into winning the Godswar. Godders: Nor is maniti totally neutral in the Godswar. It has its own private little civil war going on between followers of various aspects of the Mind cosmentality. These

individuals have accepted specific personality traits, and they have a bureaucratic, legal and memetic battle going on for control of manitis future culture. While this is hardly a secret its also something youre not going to find out about unless you are involved or get specifically involved in it. Nextmen: Also very strange are the nextmen. As stated before, there is a force vril that promotes and causes evolution. The vril of maniti as a whole decided some time ago it was time for maniti to do some evolving. The problem is that maniti is so diverse its still experimenting with various enhancements. Sometimes it works with individuals in desperate straights, other times it simply alters them before birth, still other times it grants itself to those who have steeped themselves deep enough in their own souls. The result of the choosing is genetic alteration resulting in some new power but this usually doesnt mean that much, since manitis technology and society are so evolved and advanced the powers the nextmen get arent special enough. What nextmen do get are urges to fight each other and ordinary maniti, so the vril can determine what changes are best for future evolution. The subjects often hide their identities, and try to channel their urges into socially constructive channels, but obviously this doesnt always work. Gigerware: When maniti fought the gigerava, it got the chance to analyze devices and question researchers who were millions of years more advanced than they were. The technologies and sciences stolen are collectively known as gigerware, and qualitively exceed manitis native tech. But they come at a terrible cost, specifically a terrible economic cost. To manipulate the principles tapped by gigerava technology requires the reconstruction of whole planets for specific purposes, and for items built up from the subatomic level with almost infinite precision. Items of gigerware take centuries to produce and only the richest of organizations can pay for them and only the most motivated of organizations can sustain the investment for the time required. So items of gigerware are always made for a purpose that is found very valuable, and each one can be the focal point for intense battle and social maneuverings. Making the issue even more problematic is that often the full ramifications of the principles being tapped arent fully understood, and so gigerware has been known to do strange things that most certainly were not in the original design programs. Research: With this danger and expense it is no wonder maniti continues its own scientific research. While limitations on intellect cause great problems with truly theoretical research applied research is going on constantly some might say too constantly. Technology moves faster than design can possibly keep up with, and most organizations that build stuff focus on only a small area of research to integrate into their designs since thats all they are able to handle. So various machines can have very different operational parameters even if they do the same thing. Another concern is that scientific research involves probing the most extreme situations imaginable, and when these get out of control great destruction can result. Underwater: There arent that many places in the LAU where society cant find you, one of them is beneath oceans. Mineral-rich water blocks many forms of detecting radiation that do fine in air or space, and that moving a craft through water is much more difficult

than doing so elsewhere. To reach the bottom of the ocean requires more money and time than to get to the outer reaches of a star system, and things worth traveling to are much harder to locate. As a result many groups and individuals have hidden themselves or their treasures at the bottom of the oceans, and not everyone can find them again. Wilderness: Another place to go is in the gigacities themselves, the wilderness. High levels of mutagens, presence of countless microenvironments and the fact that genetic engineering is literally childs play, have put life and ecosystems literally everywhere. The average block has as much more biodiversity than the Amazon rain forest as the rain forest does over the Galapagos islands. Its not unknown for beings to arise from this brew that can have effects on the main civilization, and they are often the source for new genetic material for manitis biological technology. Some of them have even produced sentient species, races that normally worship the maniti around them. Bannedlands: And finally there are the bannedlands. Sometimes these are wildernesses themselves, but more commonly they are slums and waste dumps. These are places that have gone so far downhill that enforcement doesnt even bother to protect inhabitants anymore, and when some truly outrageous action does result in them going in theyre fully armored for war. While a bannedland can be cured its a very long and expensive process. But a necessary one, all the same. Sunfleets: Still another major division of maniti is the Sunfleets, the ships that are exploring the entire universe. They long ago stopped listening to planetary authorities, and Sunfleet ships can be found all throughout the local group of galaxies and even beyond. They have found many wonders and many horrors, and another concern is that when a new stabile or evolved race or possibly another dynamic race first encounters maniti, they will do so through a Sunfleet ship and that will form the first impressions. It also covers those who take trips through unexploited space for extra profits. Farbases: To supply and amuse themselves through their travels the Sunfleets have left behind them many farbases, installations far out in space where the widely-spread ships can meet together. The farbases often see conflict between rival Sunfleets, and visits by alien races who dont want to deal with maniti in the powerful main civilization. The staff of the farbases are generally unhappy with their lot, desiring to be exploring the universe instead of hearing about how others do so. Arkologies: But most space travel is simply traveling between established markets, and this is what the arkologies do. Totally modular, every component of any arkology ship is capable of functioning as a spaceship itself. Whenever something needs to be done the locals simply gather together enough components to complete the job, and then everyone splits up and goes their separate ways to reach other markets. Stateships: Outside all these concerns are the stateships, the largest spacefaring vessels ever created. Made by reconstructing the largest asteroids, stateships travel between the stars at STL speeds to see how things will have changed when they arrive. The coming of a stateship is always a cause of great interest among maniti not least because the

stateships take an almost sadistic delight in causing trouble wherever they appear before departing once again. The stateships are also incredibly well-armed, for the aforementioned reason. Pollution: It should also be added, in passing, that maniti is a very dirty race. They have the physical bodies to live where they do, but nobody else does. A modern maniti, simply by existing, represents such a huge radioactive, chemical, astral, biological and dimensional contaminant that he would wipe out a planet in a month. But the point would be moot, since by the time the spaceship landed all life would be wiped out anyway. Callingization: Now, about manitis constant expansion. Maniti makes no use of naturally biotic planets, it would destroy them. So to get a new planet it must build the worlds ecosystem literally from the ground up to accommodate manitis needs, and while they are at it maniti make the worlds incredibly beautiful and conducive to heavy populations. And unlike most SF maniti makes full use of orbital habitats, asteroidal colonies, and comets. Patrosophies: These are among the driving forces of culture, systems of ideals that embrace economics, politics, government, religion and every other aspect of social life. These philosophies are not meant to be debated, they are meant to be put into action and any organization has at least a few groups within it that are trying, by fair means or foul, to make sure their patrosophies replace the current ones. Often gigacity governments get rid of annoying rebels by giving them their own gigacity, on a newly ecolonized planet, to try their system out. Rules for posting This isnt a moderated list, but it is a list with a purpose and there are rules to keep us from getting sidetracked. All of these rules were created to deal with real abuses of the list rather than simply conversation, so feel free to write whatever you want. As long as you maintain the same standards of decency and honesty here as you do in normal conversation youll be all right. For enforcement, I will rely upon the list as a whole. If you feel that any other list member has broken a rule, please send me his name as well as the message number where you found a violation. I will review the message, and if I believe that further action is required I will contact that author offlist to get his side of the story. Only then will a final decision be made. This system is to ensure that neither the feelings of individual list members, nor my own passions and prejudices, will be responsible for sending someone off. 1: Insults are strictly forbidden. This includes insulting an author, insulting his work, or insulting something in the real world you just dont like. I fully encourage sarcasm and honest criticism, and I understand that sometimes people are angry and they write nasty

things. Ive done that myself. However there is a distinction between a disagreement and derision and the latter shall not be allowed 2: Plagiarism is strictly forbidden. Inspiration from other works of fiction is encouraged, indeed exhorted, but direct copying from any other website or from any published work will be treated harshly. The sole exception is if the website being copied is your own. 3: No offerings, spam mail, chain e-mails, or anything of the sort is permitted on this list. The sole exception is if an author contacts me beforehand with what he or she intends to post if I decide that it is worthwhile, an exception will be permitted. The only real way to get this exception is if you want to invite people to your own website or worldbuilding lists. 4: One thing that is not forbidden is contradiction of others works. The LAU will never let itself be chained by memories, and is willing to undergo some surgery to make more stories. New ideas will be judged on their own life and not on fear of others deaths. So dont be afraid

Bibliography The LAU was inspired by countless sources. First on the list is of course the science fiction art that inspired the selections, but theres too much of that to list or for that matter remember. Other, major sources of inspiration were: Authors: E.E. Doc Smith H.G. Wells Ursula Le Guin A.E. Van Vogt H.P. Lovecraft J.R.R. Tolkien Simon R. Green RPGs Torg Dark Space for Spacemaster GURPS books beyond counting Stardrive Trinity Everlasting Conspiracy X Planescape

Comics Transmetropolitan Judge Dredd Top Ten Metabarons Dirty Pair Ninja High School TV Star Trek: TOS Farscape Lexx Tenchi Muyo Babylon 5 Real Stuff Time Magazine New Yorker Harvard Classics