The Cygnus Pentad

[Xhin]

- What are the options for Oneflesh who want to leave their wonderfully dystopian society, but are still weirded out by Dreamflesh, Newflesh and other transhuman antics?

First of all, good questions! They do definitely help with the creative process.

You'd be surprised at how normal transhumanism is during that time period. I think a lot of it has to do with how much different space/planetary/etc environments are -- for a spacefarer, having transhuman components is a bit like wearing clothing in a cold climate. Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part those concepts are seen as a normal part of human survival.

For Oneflesh who don't want to be transhuman and don't want to live in a dystopian society either, there are a few options:

* They could join or start Post-Peacock movements, which reject various dystopian ideals. Revisionist movements are particularly good options -- they're basically Oneflesh that aren't trying to compete with other races so they have some kind of basic human life in their areas. The downside to this is most of the rest of the Cygnus Pentad (including other Oneflesh!) hating you and wanting your territory.

* They could join the USLP, which is very accepting of Oneflesh and in fact has more Oneflesh than anything else. Plus they have really fair laws and a technological edge.

* They could join other societies, including those of other races. This doesn't usually work well in practice for non-transhuman Oneflesh since they can't interact with the technology and can't really do anything useful either.

* They could try to go their own way and kind of "live off the land" on their own or in small groups. This rarely works in the Cygnus Pentad, as it tends to be a very inhospitable place, and the few places that are kind of okay are claimed and heavily contested. You might be able to manage it if you find a colony of Isomorphs that are otherwise unclaimed, as they can help you with resource gathering/refinement/manufacturing. However, the moment some other group wants that set of Isomorphs you're going to be in trouble because non-transhumans genuinely can't compete with transhumans 99% of the time.

Imagine a paleolithic tribe trying to fight off an elite modern military unit that wants their resources -- it can't compete technologically or tactically. They don't have the support of a larger society. They don't have good surveillance tools. Transhuman vs non-transhuman wars are like that, but a lot worse -- imagine that difference in technology and tactics mixed with beings that can think thousands of times faster, or communicate instantaneously, or read your intent before you act on it.

By sheer numbers, most Oneflesh of that persuasion become Revisionists. After all they still follow a lot of the rules of Oneflesh society but just disagree on the dystopian tenets of it. The second highest group become USLP, though a lot of regular Oneflesh will become USLP as well. After that you have people that are really atypical so they might be going off on their own or trying to join different societies, or starting new P-PM movements or whatever.

- If I understand the Cybcyg correctly, shoudan't they take into account, too, the real possibility of a fractal civil war and the danger it poses to both purpose fulfillment and self-preservation? Wouldn't that create a third side everytime the population splits in two?

The simple answer is that they don't think that far ahead. A pretty core part of Cybcyg programming is the concept that the future is unpredictable and the more steps that are taken, the more unpredictable the outcome becomes. Fractal civil wars, while they do seem to observationally happen most of the time from a human perspective, can only be figured out by thinking in broader terms, forming theories and tracing logical conclusions based on them. In fact it took me like ten paragraphs to explain why they happen.

Cybcyg intelligence isn't really set up like that -- their minds are geared towards the extreme short-term with maximally predictable results. They don't think about fractal civil wars because they can't really perceive them -- what they instead perceive are probability meshes formed from aggregating isolated actions. They also perceive all of those actions individually simultaneously, though they're not necessarily relevant. So they see a war, and they see whatever they've been doing and the reductionist results of that, and they also see their own internal worlds of course, and from that they determine what their next course of action should be. "Internal world" isn't a good phrase, by the way -- it's more a vast collection of memories and their significance to whatever the current thought pattern is.

Another problem here is that they can't form theories because they can't form opinions -- the closest they have to that is something known as Aspect, which I'll cover in my next post.

As humans we're capable of looking at Cybcyg wars overall and their individual actions and from that information we can come up with an intuitive idea to cover the things we don't see and also to help predict the future. This kind of thing is pretty useful to our survival because our conscious senses are extremely limited, and minor bits of information that aren't consciously observed form impulses that due to our intelligence and pre-existing filters lead to these theories. Cybcygs, however, have very very precise senses, which are also heavily redundant. All of this information is also available consciously, and its aggregation is also done consciously. Instead of having single impulses for some unique idea, they have access to the entire web of possibilities and unformed "ideas" all at once. This mesh never becomes a theory, as theories eliminate possibilities and are used to cover the gap left by a lack of information. In a Cybcyg's mind, no possibility can be eliminated and a lack of information implies a lack of relevance.

[evmdbm]

Probably humanity's biggest achievement of the time though was the exploration of a place known as the Dodecaverse -- a 12-dimensional region of closed spaces and pocket universes. Of particular interest were spaces that had both parabolic/flat geometry and self-illumination since they'd be able to support life pretty much indefinitely.

Any chance of expanding on the dodecaverse? How do you access different universes? Are these 12 dimensions like the umpteen of string theory all scrumpled up so small that you don't notice them?

[Xhin]

Any chance of expanding on the dodecaverse? How do you access different universes? Are these 12 dimensions like the umpteen of string theory all scrumpled up so small that you don't notice them?

The Dodecaverse is a large collection of universes "arranged" along twelve axises (or in twelve-dimensional space if you prefer). So it's an extra twelve dimensions outside of our existing 3 or 4 or whatever string theory is doing. Moving "down" or "up" on one of the axises brings you to a new universe with its own set of physical laws, history, etc. The original universe (also known as the one we're currently living in) is also in the dodecaverse and was fittingly marked as [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0] in that coordinate system. It's along something known as a "Cadaceal Thread" which contains hyperbolic or flat universes with very large void-to-matter ratios. There's also good evidence that it's a thread attractor (basically something that twists the threads of similar universes through different axises), unfortunately since it can no longer be accessed outside of causal pockets like the Cygnus Pentad these theories cant be tested.

Every universe in the dodecaverse is weird. Some are completely uninhabitable for one reason or another. Some can't even be explored by automatons of any variety because the physics or geometry is too different -- if they're lucky they'll be ripped apart into elementary particles, if not they'll encounter eternal versions of themselves that have always existed right before causally and spatially merging with them.

The ones the 3-galaxy human civilization (who am I kidding, it was mostly an automaton civilization) was interested in exploring were those with flat or parabolic geometry because of the stability of casuality and the intrinsic access parabolic universes had to other universes. Hyperbolic universes made sense as places to gather large quantities of matter because of their size and the relative stability of their physics, but weren't good places for permanent habitation because of the possibility of causal breaking. Usually the physics wasn't ideal either -- wild changes in energy levels due to totally unknown forces, a lack of predictable cyclicality, and incompatible particle models. The old supergalactic civilization never really got its footing again, but did at least manage to spread way out into stable and livable universes.

I'll answer your second question in my next post, it's a bit more complicated and this one's probably too long as is (also coming two years late).

[bradrn]

I'll answer your second question in my next post, it's a bit more complicated and this one's probably too long as is (also coming two years late).

Better late than never! I look forward to hearing more about this.

[Xhin]

How do you access different universes?

To answer that it's kind of important to delve into the original civilization's understanding of physics. Bear in mind that most of it has been obsoleted by modern Cygnus Pentad science (and also science in other parts of the Dodecaverse, but that's irrelevant here).

According to those ideas, Universes aren't fixed collections of particles operating according to physical laws. They're instead composed of something they called "energy consensus waves" -- possibilities for action or inaction that take on a particular form through "consensus" of the forms around it.

Energy moves through a kind of "fabric" that represents spatiality and causality (I mean according to their primitive theories anyway, causal fabric doesn't make a bit of sense since that creates Sentience rather than matter) with the tips of the waves being the energy's form and the overall crest being its effect on other forms. These waves overlap a lot since they're not really in anything that can be understood as "space" but can affect one another with increasing confidence the closer you get to the tip.

The properties of the fabric itself determine absolutely everything about the universe -- the types of forms it makes, the range/scope of consensus effects, how causally certain or uncertain any particular form is, how much the different forms affect each other by existing, etc.

The fabric itself seems to be an actual real thing that operates according to its own set of laws in some kind of extraspatial space. It was an open question whether this extraspatial space and the laws that govern the fabric are themselves some other kind of extra-extra-spatial fabric or how many levels deep this went. What *was* known is how useful this model is for spaceflight and Dodecaverse traversal.

Uncertain forms have no problems occupying the same spatial or causal space -- all possibilities can happen simultaneously, light can move through other light, etc. However Certain forms resist one another. Push them against each other with enough force though and they'll collapse into the same thing, creating a weird distortion in the fabric as their Uncertain forms interfere with each other repeatedly. Given enough time this will straighten itself out, but if you push additional forms into it the distortion will widen in a fast-growing recursive way.

The technology for this (known as Nanosingularities) is pretty primitive by Cygnus Pentad standards, and laughably it's just a continuation of Microring technology which itself maybe just traces back to grain mills as that old joke goes, but at the time it was absolutely revolutionary and turned a weak spacefaring human civilization into a gigantic empire.

Over time the technology for making Nanosingularities became more and more advanced, leading to an arrangement called the "Harmonic Modulator" -- basically a Microring that self-adjusted each part according to the effects on adjacent parts and some amount of consensus from the Microring as a whole. This led eventually to the technique of harmonizing quantum fluctuations (aka Uncertainty Wave Alignment) for extremely fast and efficient spaceflight.

However it was also possible to instead disharmonize (or Cacophanize) local Uncertainty fields. This involved expanding the distortion effects of a Naosingularity to wrap and object and then oscillating each piece of it extremely fast with a period that was determined by the position of adjacent pieces and some consensus from the whole. The result of this was the matter losing its Certainty and entering a state called Chimera (not to be confused with the Cygnus Pentad use of the word to describe an alien substance that does something similar).

In Chimera, a physical actual object becomes one of the many nonphysical possibilities that it could have been. The object basically disappears from existence and enters a separate universe where all universe possibilities exist simultaneously, or at least all possibilities at that strength of chimera.

At around 60% chimeric strength, different universes in the Dodecaverse bleed into one another, along one of the twelve axises. By navigating the Uncertainty fields it's possible to move into a different universe and then lessen the Chimeric Strength to enter it.

The whole while you're entering some level of chimera, your Harmonic Modulator and the spaceship as a whole is still a physical object obeying consensus physical laws. It occupies the same space as alternate versions of itself but doesn't overlap them. It's possible to turn the chimeric strength up or down to increase or decrease that connection to other universes. It's possible also to move through 3D space, though any exhaust passes out of the distortion field and turns weird.

Actually navigating 12-dimensional space while navigating 3-dimensional space is highly convoluted. Universes bleed through according to a pretty periodic wave - you move from 0 to 1 to 0 to -1 and the cycle repeats. However this is happening on all twelve axises simultaneously. Your chimeric strength determines the different periods of the waves, which are accompanied by repeating color changes called Chimeric Shimmer. So yeah you do have some control over the process and some visual indication of what's happening, but the sheer convolution of dealing with all 12 at once makes the process very difficult.

When you're in another universe and start to decrease chimeric strength, you run into additional problems. Around 22%, your physical shape and laws start to reconfigure into the new universe's, which as mentioned might lead to atomization if you're incompatible. At 9%, whatever entanglements/pairing you had with the previous universe gets severed and you can no longer communicate with it.

Even worse though, those entanglement breaks are *permanent* so it's very unwise to switch universes by yourself unless you like exclusively using light speed communication when you get back. Going into chimera while near matter is a very bad idea, as the oscillations will create absurd amounts of friction, so yeah you definitely need to be around other ships but not too close.

All these issues aside, that one original civilization was able to spread out into thousands of habitable universes. One of their techniques was blowing apart small planets into cone-like shapes known as Conical Arks, heavily terraforming and then transporting the entire thing into a different universe.

The technological progress and engineering of the move was astounding, especially compared to the degeneration of their technology and knowledge in subsequent universes, but I guess it does make sense that they were driven by sheer survival and being able to exist in a stable universe without that pressure but with new unique physical challenges would fundamentally transform their offspring societies.

[keenir]

wow. I read through this - forwards and backwards as needed - and enjoyed it. some parts bent and warped/wefted my brain a bit, but it was a nice read.

one question...

Extra-ordinary Types

These types are not recognized by other races, who will instead call them different names (which I'll mention), but in Cybcyg society the distinctions are important.

* Type III -- Within Cybcyg society, this is a general classification system for Cybcygs with the equivalent of mental disorders. Below are a couple of the more common types:

* Type III-a -- Other races call these "Apathetic Type I Cybcygs". These are Type I Cybcygs that lack Purpose, so while they have functioning minds they lack motivation to do anything, and due to their lack of recursion they're unable to change this. Type III-a Cybcygs occasionally appear from faulty reproduction -- the alterations to the Purpose hardware aren't yet perfectly redundant, so sometimes they're born with the "serve humans" circuit removed but the replacement not installed. I'll cover more about this in the Reproduction section.

Interesting. So, I assume that the Type III-a are not counted in, say, the chefwar's 80% vs 20%...or are they a part of the 80% and 20%, but not taking up arms or doing anything to advance either side in the war?

...which begs the question (at least in my brain), of this: would it be possible for a chefwar or other Cybcyg conflict, to have one side's percentages be encompassed entirely by Type III-a, and thus conflict does not arise because one side can't be bothered to do anything about it? (or would the other side seize the opportunity to be rid of the opposition?)

(though that seizing would spark a fractal/civil war within that one side, if i read correctly)


keep up the great work!

[Xhin]

So, I assume that the Type III-a are not counted in, say, the chefwar's 80% vs 20%...or are they a part of the 80% and 20%, but not taking up arms or doing anything to advance either side in the war?

Type III-a cybcygs do literally nothing, including interacting with the statistical probability mesh. They're therefore counted as neither side nor the humans that are being targeted; they're basically just another colony of cybcygs entirely which in this particular case has a Purpose of doing nothing. This can lead to them being left alone or possibly them being killed if the cybcygs are looking for traitors to their various fractal causes.

Cybcygs attempt to fix Type III Cybcygs in general (including type III-a) if they have utility to their particular Function's society, or will fix them more generally if the fixer's Function is related to repair. Fixing III-a is rarely successful and tends to instead lead to their death, because of how motivation circuits are hooked up to autonomous functions.

[Xhin]

Since I haven't posted in a couple years I'm going to skip over the remainder of Cybcyg society for now, and start talking about the two alien races (Kingslaves and Speccons).

Known Alien History

Both Kingslaves and Speccons are descendants of the mysterious aliens who disappeared (though not in the way you'd think - will cover in this section), leaving behind gigantic deposits of exotic materials, useful technology, and a permanent shield known as the Shufflecross. Kingslaves and Speccons had some access to their society and thus have been able to piece together a good bit about them, though not what they looked like or how they disappeared.

The original aliens were able to transport large planetary bodies to the Pentad, make their orbits stable and not in conflict with one another, and then make them habitable (at least in a loose sense -- liquid water was a requirement but anything where it wasn't frozen and wasn't boiling due to atmospheric pressure was acceptable). The original human civilization was also able to move planetary objects around, but not with this level of precision, and definitely not without using a significant amount of mass on fuel and propulsion. To make the planets habitable, the aliens installed gigantic tubes that went from space to the planet's core known as Earthnails and then seeded both sides of it (along with the planetary surface) with semi-omniscient biological liquid-water-based constructs that could self-alter, reproduce, and change the surface and atmosphere to their liking. These biological automatons eventually became the Kingslaves, or at least their ancestors.

The aliens seemed to be capable of generating very very large amounts of force and constructing enormous homogeneous objects very easily, but had great difficulty in sculpting finer details, so they used biological constructs for this task. These constructs were fitted with Anachronium, which allowed them a type of local omniscience (as they were able to sense conditions around themselves) but also made them susceptible to being controlled remotely by the aliens. Rather than controlling them directly, the aliens created a kind of gigantic decentralized computer made out of light that had been forced into feedback loops. These computers could communicate with each other instantaneously, and by beaming some of their light into biological constructs' anachronium, could control them. The aliens were also able to put inputs into this overall computer, or into individual sections of it to control these largescale projects more closely. These computers eventually became the Speccons, or again, their ancestors.

The aliens also created exotic materials such as Anachronium, Chimera, Xorite, God-knows-what-ium, etc. Rather than matter, these appear to be forms of energy that are stuck in feedback loops, giving them both physical properties and a kind of quasi-sentience. When fed additional energy, the Quantum Baubles they're wrapped around will mess with nearby energy vectors in various ways.

Given all this, there's some evidence that the original aliens were non-corporeal in some way, though why they needed large amounts of habitable planets or why they're no longer acting is still mysterious. Additionally them being non-corporeal doesn't explain why there still exist alien spacecraft, deserted alien cities (well, reclaimed for sure by newer races), and physical infrastructure that would have supported a physical race. Neither speccons nor Kingslaves can help with that since neither of them interacted with the aliens directly -- their ancestors organized information for them or built things for them but were seen as non-sentient (and may have not been at the time) so they didn't respond to questions they sent back.

[keenir]

So, I assume that the Type III-a are not counted in, say, the chefwar's 80% vs 20%...or are they a part of the 80% and 20%, but not taking up arms or doing anything to advance either side in the war?

Type III-a cybcygs do literally nothing, including interacting with the statistical probability mesh.

oh. so its possible - if not deliberate in their particular case - to opt out of the mesh?

They're therefore counted as neither side nor the humans that are being targeted; they're basically just another colony of cybcygs entirely which in this particular case has a Purpose of doing nothing. This can lead to them being left alone or possibly them being killed if the cybcygs are looking for traitors to their various fractal causes.

When I read through the posts, I thought that cybcygs only killed traitors that were part of the mesh...mostly because at the time, I thought all cybcygs were part of the mesh.

So, does that mean that cybcygs can't tell who is part of their mesh & who is not?

Cybcygs attempt to fix Type III Cybcygs in general (including type III-a) if they have utility to their particular Function's society, or will fix them more generally if the fixer's Function is related to repair. Fixing III-a is rarely successful and tends to instead lead to their death, because of how motivation circuits are hooked up to autonomous functions.

But the Fixers don't take that risk of death into account, because thats a level of thought/?/consideration thats a step beyond them, right?

[Xhin]

Kingslaves

Kingslave Biology

As mentioned, Kingslaves descend from the biological constructs that the mysterious aliens used to terraform and sculpt planets to their liking. Like their ancestors, Kingslaves are composed almost entirely out of liquid water, lattices made from Pandus Aquus that hold water pressure and temperature pockets, and pockets of Anachronium and Chimera (may be visible chunks or may be microscopic and distributed) that keep their bodies and minds intact.

Kingslaves have helix-shaped tentacles that they use to interact with things - they're capable of generating enormous amounts of heat and/or pressure by moving water through them at high speeds. If a kingslave wants to kill you it can shoot a jet of water at you at pressures high enough to cause your body to sublimate. Rather than going everywhere, this water will then arc and return to the Kingslave's body. They thus seem to not require even taking in water in order to live - they're entirely self-contained unless damaged. More on that in that section.

Beyond the necessity of tentacles for interaction, they're capable of taking on a wide variety of forms, by bending or recreating the Pandus Aquus lattices and moving water around. Pandus Aquus itself is just an exotic form of water - a kind where its energy arcs around quantum baubles to some angle. This creates a physical barrier that acts somewhat like a dense solid except is composed entirely of liquid and also creates the building blocks of their intelligence and sentience. Pandus Aquus can be created by altering regular water by bombarding Anachronium with energy, followed by Chimera -- it's a bit complicated so I might explain this in its own section at some point. With their existing lattices they can move water with enough speed to transfer enormous amounts of energy into Anachronium and Chimera, so as a result of all of this they're essentially capable of recreating themselves into whatever they want, provided they maintain Pandus Aquus lattices that can move energy into the exotic materials.

Pandus Aquus slowly turns back into regular water, releasing its trapped energy, so in the absence of exotic materials, a Kingslave will slowly turn back into water and evaporate into the environment. They'll probably suffer from mental issues as well -- Pandus Aquus forms the basis of their "neurons" so without it they'll slowly become brain-dead.

Kingslave Senses, Brains and Sentience

Kingslaves have two senses:

* Their tentacles can sense things that they're touching by changes in water pressure. They also tend to have specialized lattices that can detect more minute changes, but they're not strictly required.

* With anachronium, they're capable of decoupling their consciousness from themselves and sensing things around them in a broader way.

They're capable of detecting light and sound with very specialized lattices, but rarely do because that kind of information isn't very useful. They will sometimes do it to interface with *flesh tech, however, which is based on sound and light. They also definitely will if they lack anachronium so they're not completely blind.

Kingslaves are unique for storing their Sentience and memory in one of the water molecules itself, so even if they dissipate completely, turn into rain, become drinking water, etc, if they ever return to another Kingslave they're capable of existing again with their memories intact. Their ability to actually process anything is tied to their Pandus Aquus lattices however, so without them they slowly go more and more into stasis.

Kingslave Repair

As mentioned, removing their exotic materials will cause a Kingslave to become damaged. In the past, they had big chunks of them at very specific points, which made it very easy to alter their entire body and environment, however this gave them the appearance of being clear sacs that had chunks of valuable exotic materials in them which just encouraged exploitation/murder, so they've switched to a more distributed approach. That said, there are still ways of extracting their exotic materials which unfortunately happens all too often in resource-poor areas.

Once damaged this way, they'll slowly lose water into the environment as their lattices decay. There are also ways to damage a Kingslave more directly (by turning parts of its water into things that aren't water, like hydrogen gas for example). In either case they now need additional water to be able to fully complete their structure.

To do that, they'll slowly absorb water from the air, submerge themselves in water, or "drink" pockets of water that can slowly turn into more of themselves. Each of their water molecules' energy is minutely curved to make it more easily manipulable by exotic materials, so they can't just take in large amounts of water without first converting it. Additionally, they lack digestive systems so are unable to chemically extract water from watery compounds. A desperate kingslave might try to boil/extract water from organic compounds, but they're not particularly good at doing this, and the chance of having permanent biological defects is high.

If the water they absorb contains another kingslave sentience, they'll both kind of share the same body until the Kingslave decides to Reproduce. Kingslaves seem to be incapable of creating new Kingslave sentiences, so "reproduce" really isn't the right word for it. It's instead more of a resurrection. I'll cover this a bit more in the next post, since it goes into their history more.

[Xhin]

oh. so its possible - if not deliberate in their particular case - to opt out of the mesh?

When I read through the posts, I thought that cybcygs only killed traitors that were part of the mesh...mostly because at the time, I thought all cybcygs were part of the mesh.

"Meshes" are formed for Cybcygs that all have a common goal. In the "War of the Chefmechs" example, the original one million chefmechs are a very small subset of Cybcyg society as a whole, who have the particular goal of serving gourmet meals forever (based on their Chef Function). As the war continues, their short-term goals change and new meshes happen as needed. Eventually those goals are fulfilled or become irrelevant, and they all return to the original shared Purpose of serving gourmet meals forever.

Larger Cybcyg society works somewhat in reverse -- their Function takes eventual precedence, but Cybcygs are capable of joining higher goals (like "go to war with the entirety of humanity") in order to support their Function. With this they form absurdly large meshes which devolve into fractal infighting but they do at least accomplish some things in the process. Joining Cybcyg society is not recommended if you value your sanity.

Meshes can be "opted out" in the sense of Cybcygs having different goals so not belonging to that particular mesh, however they don't really think the way humans do -- "opting out" isn't a thing that enters their minds because they're incapable of forming opinions outside of a statistical analysis of their environment. The closest thing they have is "Aspect" which determines which way they swing when probabilities get distributed and which kinds of ideas they propose to the mesh.

In the case of Type III-a Cybcygs, they lack goals so are incapable of belonging to a mesh, and even if they somehow got in one, they lack the motivation to do what the mesh determines they should do. Meshes aren't direct commands but rather ways of distributing out who does what according to Aspect. Cybcygs do what their mesh tells them to do (even if it makes no sense) because their statistical analysis of following their mesh distribution has been hardcoded to always lead to 100% success.

So, does that mean that cybcygs can't tell who is part of their mesh & who is not?

Cybcygs are definitely aware of who's in their current mesh, as well as all past meshes. When they decide to do something like kill the 800,000 chefmechs who are fighting the humans, they know exactly who all 800,000 are so they know who to kill.

What Cybcygs lack is an awareness of race -- in their mind anything that's part of their society is a Cybcyg, probably with some kind of Purpose or Function defects. They sometimes even class fauna as cybcygs depending on how closely their ties are to the local society - some places are extremely agrarian despite the high-tech backdrop for one reason or another (usually degenerated leisure domes, but that's neither here nor there). They see their inability to join meshes as a physical defect (though societies close to cybcygs will have some way of doing that) and their unwillingness to do what the mesh says to do as another physical defect that they'd fix if they could.

But the Fixers don't take that risk of death into account, because thats a level of thought/?/consideration thats a step beyond them, right?

Well, this ties somewhat into the alien nature of Cybcyg Virtue - they lack a clear set of ethics or morality and are instead extremely utilitarian and serve whatever their particular Function is. Cybcygs whose function is repair or who think a fixed III-a would be useful to their society will attempt to fix III-a cybcygs even if it's very likely to lead to their death, the same way they'll willingly kill or enslave a population in order to feed them gourmet meals. The only reason they're not polymorphing other races is because of the threat of the USLP and their near-omniscience -- genomorph is one of the things they actually enforce.

[Ares Land]

I like the idea of alien biology being essentially based on water memory

[Xhin]

Cygnus Pentad Physics

It's been a while (again), so I'm going to go off-topic again and talk about the Cygnus Pentad understanding of physics.

All dodecaverse societies that didn't degrade technologically have a more advanced physics than the one the original Civilization used (which is itself light years ahead of our own). These theoretical sciences vary pretty wildly from each other because of the unique universes they interact with, but they all have better understandings of dodecaverse and sentience mechanics.

The role of Infinity

Universes don't use mathematical infinity, they instead have finite points that when reached behave like mathematical infinity. For example, matter in the parent universe that reaches a density of more than one below the Planck length will turn into a Singularity that behaves as having infinite density, despite that mathematically being false. Similarly, the speed of light behaves as an infinity point despite being a finite velocity.

Universes in the dodecaverse have varying values for Infinity for different phenomenal systems, with the ones in the Shatterloop universe being a particularly egregious example. (I'll be making a post about that universe soon).

Despite physical laws not being mathematically infinite, universes can express energy in other ways, for example the parent universe's size is infinite, and in fact since it's hyperbolic, uncountably infinite.

Understanding of Matter in the Cygnus Pentad

Rather than discrete particles or waves, matter is seen as a form of energy that is trapped in a loop around a Quantum Bauble. Quantum baubles are poorly understood, but they're basically spheres that attract and warp energy and whose size can change depending on the amount of energy in them -- lower energy levels will have larger Quantum baubles, while high amounts will have smaller sizes, up to a point where the bauble will disappear completely, releasing the energy as a pure vector (or classical "energy" as we understand it).

Energy movement around a bauble is not instantaneous, it's fixed based on the speed of light in the universe (known as its Speed Infinity Index). There are therefore occasional gaps where energy is not maximized, which creates the basis for all physical phenomena. Energy will flow freely from bauble A to bauble B, making bauble A larger, which then gives it more access to bauble B's energy, which will flow back and compress bauble A but around a different part of the sphere, effectively moving the "particle" closer without actually moving the bauble. It's a bit complicated to explain without pictures.

Quantum baubles form naturally when pure energy vectors are shattered (by energy moving into gaps in other Quantum baubles). Thus high levels of energy will spontaneously turn into matter in the presence of low-energy matter. With most interactions this is extremely subtle and not really observable, but with high-end interactions (like a pulsar beaming into a cosmological void) it's more noticeable.

Causality

So far I've explained the way these baubles work in physical space, however there are also causal baubles that work similarly. To explain that though, causality has to first be understood.

Any universe can be understood as a set of static, discrete states. Positions and matter constitution aren't the only thing that's important, energy vectors also are, though this really only applies to pure energy as bauble composition is enough to tell you the vector of everything else.

These discrete states proceed from one another in a fixed way according to the laws of that universe. However this isn't as simple as you'd think -- these laws allow for statistically different probabilities which will connect one discrete state with several others. The underpinning of this are "causal baubles", which work the same as spatial ones but exist between any two temporal states.

In parabolic universes (based on my definition above, not the standard model one), Each temporal state will have exactly one causal bauble with any other. This forms a closed loop after some lengthy period of time, meaning causality doubles back and the same events repeat themselves eternally.

Usually these universes don't allow sentience because of the relationship between causal baubles and sentience (I'm getting to that), but if the time period is long enough the bleed-through of other universes is enough to support it and even bizarre events around the same temporal context that are distinct from one another but produce the same result in the end.

Parabolic universes with a low time limit (that don't support sentience) are known as Eternal universes -- they're essentially universes where anything you send into them will have always been there and will be observed and then merged with by the thing you sent in.

Flat universes will have a low number of causal threads from any particular point. They can also be cyclic but they'll move according to different cycles. It's supposed (but not proven) that these cycles all have the same length.

Hyperbolic universes have a gigantic amount of causal threads, which are very definitely not all the same cyclical length. There's a particular event in Earth's history that happens 90% of the time in all timelines but happens at different points in that timeline's history and then also diverges again. Pre-dodecaverse societies had a very poor grasp of timeline navigation (with some exceptions) so really the only takeaway here is that they had some proven understanding of causality that underpinned the rest of their technology.

Back to causal baubles

Causal baubles tend to transfer energy from one universe to another, essentially changing the state of that particular particle to another across the entirety of the universe. You can thus think of reality as a mesh of static particles that flow energy between each other, or a mesh that flows energy into another mesh.

Occasionally, instead of just transferring energy between states, causal baubles will instead loop the energy transferred to them (up until the bauble hits maximum energy and the bauble disappears). This happens exclusively when there's a bauble in the position of time A and a pure energy vector in the position of time B -- the bauble can't transfer the energy because the energy is already maximized on the other end, so it instead loops back around.

These kinds of baubles are like particles but expressed temporally rather than spatially. They will interact with temporal flows of energy and other causal baubles the way spatial particles would, in fact identically.

Sentience

Temporal particles form the basis of sentience and ultimately the hard problem of consciousness (which the Cygnus pentad people understand very well). The hard problem of consciousness is thus explained by a secondary universe that exists in a dualistic sense but has a two-way relationship with spatial universes and also follows purely deterministic laws which match that of the spatial universe. Therefore it doesn't really fit into any of the existing ideas of it.

Temporal particles tend to swing wildly between temporal states -- this is a state known as Nonlinear Time when events can be observed in the wrong order, simultaneously (with a large temporal bauble), or eternally (with a zero-sized temporal bauble when the energy is maximized).

Life and Death

CErtain configurations can instead produce temporal baubles that will move through sequential temporal states with a kind of vector, creating a flow of time known as Linear Time. All sentient beings experience this (provided they're alive).

At some point, the spatial/temporal conditions that produce Linear Time will end and the temporal particles will enter back into Nonlinear Time.

Exotic Materials

Each universe is composed of a fixed number of particles of varying sizes and energy thresholds. The flows between spatial and temporal particles are surprisingly very stable, and so each universe has a pretty limited amount of forms -- exotic forms would instead collapse into stable forms based on the matter around it flowing into and from it.

The aliens that built the Cygnus Pentad, however, managed to create stable forms of exotic particles that can have energy flow into and out of them without altering their exotic arrangement. These are composed of both exotic spatial particles and exotic temporal particles, so these materials have a kind of sentience of their own (since temporal particles are a description of sentience).

Energy transferred into these exotic materials will push energy back out in novel ways -- these will interact with ordinary spatial or temporal particles and alter the way they work briefly until the matter around them collapses back into a normal state.

Anachronium for example will push energy into temporal particles in such a way that they become somewhat decoupled from their spatial reality and can be moved elsewhere while still having some relationship with the old particles. This is what underpins both its use in USLP punishments and Kingslave semi-omniscience.

Other exotic materials will bend matter around space in weird ways, split matter into two identical (but temporary) copies, or other strange stuff.

The shufflecross

The shufflecross is very clearly a spatial and temporal barrier. Any energy pushed into it will get spit right back out at a 180 angle. With matter, this means you bounce off it. With sentience it's a bit odd -- basically you experience time backwards briefly. However the end state is distinct from the starting state, so you don't get caught in a causal loop. You could theoretically use this with a large amount of energy to move back in time into a different timeline, but the states are only very slightly different, and somehow predisposed to preserve memory.

Whatever exotic materials the shufflecross is composed of isn't fixed -- it has a slight chimeric sheen to it outside the visual spectrum that doesn't fit with ordinary light or particle interactions.

Dodecaverse understanding

The way the modern physics here describe the dodecaverse is as very altered temporal states that are linked to this one by exotic temporal particles. In most states, they act similar to the shufflecross and will reject entry, but under the right spatial conditions will push energy through. Oddly, exotic temporal configurations can't seem to pierce it.

The fact that the dodecaverse is underpinned by temporal particles, and 100% stable temporal particles at that that only interact with each other or pass things through completely unchanged implies that the dodecaverse has a sentient component to it, though what exactly that entails is hard to say.

It's also irrelevant, as there appears to be a temporal shufflecross in the Cygnus Pentad that prevents it from interacting with other universes in any capacity. It's ironic and a shame, but the Cygnus Pentad residents have a great understanding of the dodecaverse and absolutely no way to interact with it.

[keenir]

Cygnus Pentad Physics
but the Cygnus Pentad residents have a great understanding of the dodecaverse and absolutely no way to interact with it.

Better than the other way around, right?



another great addition to the Pentad information. kudos!