Disenfrancised
Beep Beep
A Day in the Life: FaVa Construction Engineer
...I squeezed my way into the operations nook and licked the updater for the optic feeds of the assembly yard. The low annotation came through first; a sketch of a lattice in a box, with a one-fifth completion tag from the Foreman. I waited a few degree-minutes [1] for the full scene to coalesce, my graphics stem-brains working overtime to parse the information into an internal model. Eventually it was there; low granularity map of light, heat and average noise with a few voids where the bays sensors couldn't see. Tens of thousands of components floated weightless on the end of elegant threads, quiet and cold in their conversion jackets like a snapshot of an explosion, whilst at one end of the bay brooded a hot dark sphere with a few vacuum proofed workers hovering around it. Tiny against the shipseeds bulk a motion blur of probes and rods plucked its surface as they concluded the final tests.
It seems I had arrived just it time for the show, and had a tendril draw the feed into my core. A rougher version of the model now dominated my attention as it updated in real time, I fogged all my eyes and down-graded the noise part of the feed to increase the quality of the visuals. Switching on my internal heaters would have been ideal but alas I had left those cumbersome implants in my respite block. Suddenly the linear[2] of the Foreman impinged on the model and I became aware of the dozen or so other gawkers drawing on the display in nooks across the station.
[serious]All right lets get this thing started[/serious][jovial]You spawnings better get out of there if you don't want to become part of the show[/jovial] he said, and the next dozen or so updates showed the workers jetting for an access shaft after receiving the same on their radios. The great sphere increased its temperature and volume by a quarter, eventually reaching 134C and fifty metres across, and then began to deform elongating in the direction of the component cloud.
The leading edge of the now ovoid shipseed was soon rippling and heaving like a puddle in a rainstorm and the observers began applying tags of attention and worry to the part that was just about to intersect with one of the components jackets. The shipseed, essentially a heavily modified organism, was the result of billions of credits and millions of work-hours by the polis, but should it fail to bond to the components interface skein we'll have to break her down and start all over again. Luckily that would not be the case today as as soon as the leading edge brushed the component (which appeared to be some sort of mass sensor) the shipseed surged forward with a prong of amoeboid pseudopods to engulf it. As the tide of hull material washed over the component the stalk that had previously been holding it in place broke off and smoothly retracted into the wall of bay. Some ship construction stations, like those slapdash Fast Mooners, just hold their shipseeds in a containment pool and toss the components into them and let the ship sort out where they should go, but that always struck me as lazy and messy. Far better to sketch out the right shape for the seed to follow, and not have to pack it so full of manipulator strands in favour of communication and shielding. That's probably why my crew had been assigned the contract for the delicate interstellar explorers.
The rate of flow increased momentarily then settled down to a rate of a few components a minute as the shipseed slowly adjusted from a spherical egg to its eventual fat bottomed cylinder. As each component got amalgamated a ripple of movement flowed out into the bulk as the network of communication channels gets driven to all the other parts of the ship according to the organic dictates of the sheath. Each component from the tiniest sensor to the bulky fat capacitors was assembled atom by atom in the internal mass of a skilled craftsmen, assembly of such fine nature not being something that could be trusted to unconscious systems. Hellishly expensive, but it makes the ship operational right down to the molecular level with no wasted mass or errors. There might be some aliens out there who make ships like a primitive makes a spear; a million ungainly vessels chipped and cast from dumb external matter, but I personally doubt it. One of the most common components are the spiked balls of the field generators, though all the components exert some energy on the gestalt fields. Each one integrating with a pulse of low radiation. I generate a second model in my mind, this one of the magnetic fields of the craft; only a millionth of the power they'll have when fully operational, when the ship is the centre of its vast rainbow sail, but its important the first feedbacks go right. I note some trivial knots and ill formed hoops, and annotate the group model for post-awakening surgery on the shipseed by the Foreman, but for the most part the crews collective child shimmers in her protective sheath of flux[3].
A maintenance stem-brain, primed days ago, fogs the model out of my conscious thoughts its been eighteen hours since I flushed my core of toxins[4] or ate something, and unlike those whose specific jobs it was to oversee the seeds awaking my nook didn't have any respite tubes. I retreat into the corridor and set my locomotors to liaise with the map-brain and skim me home whilst I reconsidered a copy of the magnetic field model for more imperfections and planed what to have for dinner...
[1] With minds based on molecular interaction the rate of FaVa subjective experience strictly correlates with temperature. The mapping onto human time is done for the optimal temperature (109 degrees C) of the baseline Coalition citizen.
[2] A temporally separated string of thoughts, designed for output via some aural or visual inter-person communication band.
[3] Basic FaVa technology looks schizophrenic to human eyes, as asymmetric nodules and lattices of hard turtle-like matter and wet kiwi fruit furry interface patches appear repulsive, but the shimmering iridescent rainbows that spill off and cloak them in points of light are entrancing. Humans also dislike that the vast majority of FaVa artefacts look unique, with craftsmen not bothering with standard shapes for things designed for the same task. A FaVa can of course just sample the interface patches or lick the outside of the shell to get a molecular manual about the device downloaded
[4] An analogue for both sleep and excretion, takes a few hours and on a planet is done in the latter half of a night.
...I squeezed my way into the operations nook and licked the updater for the optic feeds of the assembly yard. The low annotation came through first; a sketch of a lattice in a box, with a one-fifth completion tag from the Foreman. I waited a few degree-minutes [1] for the full scene to coalesce, my graphics stem-brains working overtime to parse the information into an internal model. Eventually it was there; low granularity map of light, heat and average noise with a few voids where the bays sensors couldn't see. Tens of thousands of components floated weightless on the end of elegant threads, quiet and cold in their conversion jackets like a snapshot of an explosion, whilst at one end of the bay brooded a hot dark sphere with a few vacuum proofed workers hovering around it. Tiny against the shipseeds bulk a motion blur of probes and rods plucked its surface as they concluded the final tests.
It seems I had arrived just it time for the show, and had a tendril draw the feed into my core. A rougher version of the model now dominated my attention as it updated in real time, I fogged all my eyes and down-graded the noise part of the feed to increase the quality of the visuals. Switching on my internal heaters would have been ideal but alas I had left those cumbersome implants in my respite block. Suddenly the linear[2] of the Foreman impinged on the model and I became aware of the dozen or so other gawkers drawing on the display in nooks across the station.
[serious]All right lets get this thing started[/serious][jovial]You spawnings better get out of there if you don't want to become part of the show[/jovial] he said, and the next dozen or so updates showed the workers jetting for an access shaft after receiving the same on their radios. The great sphere increased its temperature and volume by a quarter, eventually reaching 134C and fifty metres across, and then began to deform elongating in the direction of the component cloud.
The leading edge of the now ovoid shipseed was soon rippling and heaving like a puddle in a rainstorm and the observers began applying tags of attention and worry to the part that was just about to intersect with one of the components jackets. The shipseed, essentially a heavily modified organism, was the result of billions of credits and millions of work-hours by the polis, but should it fail to bond to the components interface skein we'll have to break her down and start all over again. Luckily that would not be the case today as as soon as the leading edge brushed the component (which appeared to be some sort of mass sensor) the shipseed surged forward with a prong of amoeboid pseudopods to engulf it. As the tide of hull material washed over the component the stalk that had previously been holding it in place broke off and smoothly retracted into the wall of bay. Some ship construction stations, like those slapdash Fast Mooners, just hold their shipseeds in a containment pool and toss the components into them and let the ship sort out where they should go, but that always struck me as lazy and messy. Far better to sketch out the right shape for the seed to follow, and not have to pack it so full of manipulator strands in favour of communication and shielding. That's probably why my crew had been assigned the contract for the delicate interstellar explorers.
The rate of flow increased momentarily then settled down to a rate of a few components a minute as the shipseed slowly adjusted from a spherical egg to its eventual fat bottomed cylinder. As each component got amalgamated a ripple of movement flowed out into the bulk as the network of communication channels gets driven to all the other parts of the ship according to the organic dictates of the sheath. Each component from the tiniest sensor to the bulky fat capacitors was assembled atom by atom in the internal mass of a skilled craftsmen, assembly of such fine nature not being something that could be trusted to unconscious systems. Hellishly expensive, but it makes the ship operational right down to the molecular level with no wasted mass or errors. There might be some aliens out there who make ships like a primitive makes a spear; a million ungainly vessels chipped and cast from dumb external matter, but I personally doubt it. One of the most common components are the spiked balls of the field generators, though all the components exert some energy on the gestalt fields. Each one integrating with a pulse of low radiation. I generate a second model in my mind, this one of the magnetic fields of the craft; only a millionth of the power they'll have when fully operational, when the ship is the centre of its vast rainbow sail, but its important the first feedbacks go right. I note some trivial knots and ill formed hoops, and annotate the group model for post-awakening surgery on the shipseed by the Foreman, but for the most part the crews collective child shimmers in her protective sheath of flux[3].
A maintenance stem-brain, primed days ago, fogs the model out of my conscious thoughts its been eighteen hours since I flushed my core of toxins[4] or ate something, and unlike those whose specific jobs it was to oversee the seeds awaking my nook didn't have any respite tubes. I retreat into the corridor and set my locomotors to liaise with the map-brain and skim me home whilst I reconsidered a copy of the magnetic field model for more imperfections and planed what to have for dinner...
[1] With minds based on molecular interaction the rate of FaVa subjective experience strictly correlates with temperature. The mapping onto human time is done for the optimal temperature (109 degrees C) of the baseline Coalition citizen.
[2] A temporally separated string of thoughts, designed for output via some aural or visual inter-person communication band.
[3] Basic FaVa technology looks schizophrenic to human eyes, as asymmetric nodules and lattices of hard turtle-like matter and wet kiwi fruit furry interface patches appear repulsive, but the shimmering iridescent rainbows that spill off and cloak them in points of light are entrancing. Humans also dislike that the vast majority of FaVa artefacts look unique, with craftsmen not bothering with standard shapes for things designed for the same task. A FaVa can of course just sample the interface patches or lick the outside of the shell to get a molecular manual about the device downloaded
[4] An analogue for both sleep and excretion, takes a few hours and on a planet is done in the latter half of a night.
But seriously such a NES would be an awesome idea.
