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Black Magic Project The Story of Human Exploration and Discovery Beyond the Orion Arm The materials contained herein unless otherwise noted are the copyright of J. Austin Wilde, 1991 to 2009, all rights reserved. |
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Navigation Home Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Ahriman (HM+31 0938 B) Amethyst (HB+32 3331 B) Angelique (HM-50 2602 B) Apollonia/Phyrigia (HD+35 2475 A) Aquilla (SAG+56 0107) Arkhangelsk (HM+41 2746) Atlantis (HM+52 0225) Aurora (HM+47 2620 A) Avignon (HM+31 3323) Baker's End (SAG-36 0528) Bellarmine (HM+36 1662 A) Bellissimo (HM+40 2827) Beowulf (HM+39 5516 A) Bounty (HB+38 0524 A) Buran (HD+32 1678) Cauldron (SAG+47 1522) Charybdis (HB+56 0404 B) Concordia (HM+00 2422 A) Cora's World (HM-40 2634) Daedelus (SAG+45 4907 A) Demeter (HM+31 3563) Destiny (HD+47 0309) Dustbowl/New Deseret (SAG-42 4503 B) Frontiera (HD+40 1336) Frostpile (SAG+43 2208) Fury (HM+53 0102 A) Gateway (HM+00 0000) Goldrush (SAG+33 2643) Gulag (HD+40 4019) Hecate's Hate (HM+32 3972) Hyperborea (SAG+44 1855 B) Ice Station Mike (HD+42 3267) Ice Station Oscar (HD+42 5807) Inshallah (HM+53 0608) Jena (HB-33 4139 A) Jewel/Sulfur Flats (HM+41 0955 A & B) Jin Xian (HM-45 4415) Jove/Fuzhou (SAG+49 2911 A & B) Libertad (HD-46 2312) Marino (HD-31 4687) Midgard/Muspellheim (HD+54 1018) Mirabilis (HM-45 1718) Neu Bavaria (HM+31 7329) New Anchorage (HD+35 3455 A) New Ares (HM+57 0405 A) New Havana (HM+55 1217) New Tanstaafl (HM+43 3626 A) New Taranto (HB+31 2685 A) New Zion (HD+47 0954) Paydirt (HM+36 2309) Porto Fria (HM-52 2716 A) Pu'uhuonua (HM+35 2017) Research Station Victor (HB+55 1522) Sakura (HM-31 0629) Sandovar (HM+34 0139 A) Santa Clara (SAG+31 0179 B) Scherzo (SAG+55 2007 B) Sheba's World/Neu Bayer (HD-51 1306 A) Tanner's World (HB-32 1052) Tartarus (HM+31 5806) The Alamo (HM+34 0552 B) Tortuga (HD-37 4529) Toulon (SAG+55 0823 A) Valhalla (HD+31 1168) Viracocha (HM+31 1175 A) Waypoint November (HM+31 1969 A) Waypoint Omega (HM-06 1121 A) Waypoint Tango (HD+41 4528 A) Waypoint X-Ray (HD-66 1619) Waypoint Yankee (HD+10 1721) Waystation Alfa (HM+34 1207) Xiamen (HM+48 2891 B) Zhengzhou (HM-27 9791 B) Encyclopedia Spacecraft Technology Classification Designs AMC Registry of Vessels |
ENCYCLOPEDIA
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The Encyclopedia contains information
regarding the Sagittarius Arm and its inhabitants as well as relevant
historical knowledge of people, places, and events that led to its
colonization. Entries are cross-referenced as much as practical
to allow free-form browsing of the databanks so that visitors may
explore the spiral arm at their own pace. Users may begin their
search by clicking on the letters below corresponding to their items of
interest.
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Upload The Upload is the ultimate post-human racial type. Taking a step beyond even the full-conversion cyborg, the upload is purely mechanical, a zettaflop speed digital photonic computer running a sophisticated emulation of a massively parallel analog brain recorded from a once-living human being. While experiments had been taking place under great secrecy through several transhumanist foundations, the first 'successful' example of this process was known to have occured in 2307, when a wealthy heir to a vast mercantile fortune (and publically notorious daredevil), Paul-Henri Rondelet was nearly killed in a wingsuit skydiving accident from a position high up in the atmosphere on the Libreville beanstalk. His body damaged beyond hope, his brain was preserved in hibernation and flown to a clinic in the Paris suburbs. Paul-Henri had prepared for the day when his dangerous lifestyle would fail him, and his living will provided for instructions to the Next Self corporation to perform the Upload procedure on him if he should be killed or crippled beyond repair. Next Self conducted the scan within hours of receiving his brain, and the next day Paul-Henri's emulation, housed in an android body simulacrum of his original form, made a dramatic announcement at a press conference claiming that he had taken the first step into a new world of human evolution. The emulation, also known as a Personality Construct, is a pico-scale neural map of the donor brain’s synaptic and biochemical states that in theory perfectly copies the neural processes and memories of the original brain. The concept of uploading a human brain into a machine has always been controversial, and at the present it remains unresolved from an academic standpoint as to whether the Personality Construct really is the person being emulated, or merely a clever imitation. Some argue that the level of fidelity to the original is high enough that there is no practical difference, and that continuity of self is therefore maintained. Opinions on the matter vary wildly depending on the philosophical and cultural norms of the individual, though several major religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam consider the practice of Uploading an abomination, and the Personality Construct nothing more than a sophisticated simulation of the deceased. Most sects of Buddhism and Hinduism also condemn Uploading, as it represents a willful rejection of the karmic cycle and the ultimate end of escaping from the wheel of birth, life, death, and rebirth. As might be expected, Uploading is more acceptable to atheists and agnostics, and particularly those who pursue the ideals of transhumanism. The controversy over Uploading is further aggravated by the fact that the very process by which the brain is mapped at the proper resolution and accuracy for successful Uploading is inherently destructive, resulting in the death of the subject within moments of completion, and has thus been outlawed in every nation. At the present no government, not even the Carib League, recognizes a Personality Construct as a legal entity of any kind, much less the legitimate reincarnation of the original pattern donor brain. In Paul-Henri Rondelet's case, both he and Next Self endured decades of unsuccessful legal battles attempting to prove that he was the same being brought to the brink of death in Gabon and residing currently in an artificial body. His original body was cremated without a funeral to avoid any acknowledgement of his death, but in spite of some popular support, both he and Next Self lost in the courts. Paul-Henri lost his inheritance to another surviving member of the Rondelet family, while Next Self was driven off-planet facing murder charges in the deliberately caused death of Paul-Henri. Since then, individuals who choose to Upload themselves do so in the knowledge that they will be legally dead thereafter, and post and transhumanist foundations have sprung up to act as legal guardians for their Personality Constructs and any robot bodies they may inhabit, as well as administer their estates for the maintenance of same. In this way, an Upload and his current physical body are protected as the private property of whatever foundation they have selected as their sponsor, and any and all legal rights they enjoy are through this arrangement. Naturally, transhumanist foundations that sponsor Uploads are very aggressive with lawsuits and threats of same in order to protect their charges. At the same time, while an Upload is not considered a legal entity, its actions can be held against the foundation that “owns” it, and so typically candidates for Uploads are thoroughly screened for psychological and sociological problems before acceptance. In the event an Upload commits a criminal act, in some jurisdictions no matter how petty, the Personality Construct and all copies are to be destroyed. In light of this and a general fear and prejudice against them throughout human space, some who choose to Upload will attempt to pass themselves off as full conversion cyborgs, complete with a cloned but non-sophont copy of their brain and spinal cord, and whatever of those original organs they still need in a Biopod to complete the illusion. The Upload, being an entity of pure data, has achieved a kind of immortality, as the Personality Construct, if regularly backed up, can always be loaded into a new host body in the event of the destruction of the old host body. Normal backups can be performed with any computer system using a compatible interface and software, and possessing the required memory space. A backup copy of the Personality Construct can be loaded into a prepared host body in about 30 minutes. There is no reason (other than being highly illegal in every human jurisdiction and subject to immediate destruction if caught!) as to why an Upload could not run multiple copies of himself in different host bodies simultaneously, other than the potential for conflicts between the copies as to who is actually the prime copy and other ego related matters as well as eventual personality divergence for copies that run for extended periods of time and separation from the original. Most Upload host bodies even have the ability to take an emergency “snapshot” of their present emulated neural state, which is either loaded into a hardened storage medium present within the host body or else is “squirted” via wireless modem to an off-site host system if a wireless network and host system are available at the time, and the host body is functional long enough to transmit the entire snapshot. Such snapshots can then be recombined with the last good backup to restore all memory and neural functionality with 80% accuracy. Though there is significant data loss, continuity of self is never lost in this manner. |
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