Orion's Arm: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"The future isn't here yet. But don't worry. It will be."''}}

 

 

The year is 10601 AT (probably), with the AT calendar beginning on the day man first walked on the moon in 1969. This means it is ten and a half millennia in the future, and as you can guess, the far future is an ''extremely weird'' place, where the only boundaries are imagination.

** More types of dead, airless rock worlds than earthlike worlds, actually. [http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-view-article&egart_uid=491c78b89879b NoLWoCS] provides a good list.

* [[Alternative Calendar]]: The main system of dating is the AT calendar, which, as explained at the top of the page, begins in 1969 AD with Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

* [[Ancient Astronauts]]: The Muuh had supposedly come to SolSys a very long time ago, leaving artifacts on Titan. Given how unsuited Earth is for them, though, they probably didn't come down here.

* [[Apocalypse How]]: In the 2600s AD, nanoswarms ravage the solar system, destroying almost everything. After that was over, crazy AI GAIA decides to save the earth by giving humans the boot. She slaughters around 90% of humanity, though this is later [[Retcon|retconned]] to 50% and then 40%, possibly less, with the [[Hand Wave|explanation]] that records from that era are shoddy at best due to that very incident. It's not really the end of civilization, but rather a fragmentation and suppression. They get better.

* [[Cosmic Chess Game]]: A favored pasttime of the archailects.

* [[Crippling Overspecialization]]: Almost said word-for-word in the article on Clade Astomi. Due to their unique biology, they are essentially limited to orwoods<ref> Dyson spheres, but made of trees.</ref>.

* [[Cyborg|Cyborgs]]: Common, usually sapient or low transapient. Cyborgs would be any intermediate between completely biological human nearbaselines and completely technological vecs, with diversity ranging all across the scale.

* [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]]: Undergoing an unsupervised transcension event can have very bad results.

* [[Evolutionary Levels]]: Borderline example, the toposophic levels are this for mental evolution. Homo superior (often shortened to 'su') play it closer to this trope, as they are considered generally superior to baseline humans in most ways (hence the name). But note they are ''genetically engineered'' to be 'superior', not "further along in evolution".

** In the hunt for a cause for [[The End of the World as We Know It|The Chaos]], ais are looking for 'keys', which would be the physical equivalent of the mental evolution in the toposophics, which is closer to this trope.

* [[Exotic Equipment]]: The [[Touhou|To'ul'h]] have sex with their [[Memetic Mutation|armpits]] somehow.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Many historical time periods have activist groups against provolution, ai, etc. There's also the racist ''planet'' Tylansia, which has [[Crapsack World|problems far worse]].

* [[Hive Mind]]: The [http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-story&story=travnotes_empledokcetics Emple-Dokcetics'] philosophy is one of the sharing of minds, with the end result being something somewhat like this. Closer to this trope are the Anttechians, which are essentially intelligent anthills.

** [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/471eae8eb7f67 Unity] was a movement that died out with the emergence of the First Federation. However their software remains a popular method of creating small-scale group minds.

* [[Horde of Alien Locusts]]: The [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45f0c580310bf Amalgamation] are something like this.

* [[Human Popsicle]]: Cryogenic freezing isn't the only way to go into suspended animation, but it's definitely there. Usually used to make long trips more bearable.

* [[Human Resources]]: [http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-view-article&egart_uid=46427736b75ab Autovory] is a fad in some places which involves cloning oneself, sans brain, and then eating it. There are many other examples.

* [[Humanity Is Superior]]: HAHAHAHAHA no. Averted. Even if you replace "Humanity" with "Terragen civilization", there are still several other similar-sized high-energy civilizations detected within the Milky Way (but not yet contacted due to the distance), and probably more advanced civilizations beyond.

* [[Humans Are Special]]: A variant occurs in this case. There are few "pure" humans left in the terragen sphere, so they have a certain pride about them.

* [[Humans Are White]]: Subverted. The most common nearbaseline skin colors are shades of brown.

* [[Humans by Any Other Name]]: Baseline for "pure" humans, nearbaseline, plebhu, or just hu for variants. Terragen is an umbrella term meaning "everything that can trace its origins back to Earth," which is around 99% of the beings in the terragen sphere for obvious reasons (its called "Terragen sphere" for a reason). The remaining few are To'ul'hs or Muuh who have integrated into terragen society or at least coexist with it.

* [[Immortal Procreation Clause]]: The alien race known as the [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/4802965d60802 Silent Ones] have a means of physical immortality that results in sterility. So they keep a small population of mortals in order to replace immortals who die.

* [[Incredibly Obvious Bug]]: The spy plant. This attractive potted plant is easy to take care of, you just need to water it regularly, and speak about your subversive activity loudly and clearly.

* [[Killer Robot]]: Some stories have these. The vecs generally avert this though - they're mostly just normal people.

* [[Law of Alien Names]]: The To'ul'h have very distinct names, as do sufants (intelligent elephants) and dolphins. A lot of the time a character will pick a name with a lot of adjectives, an ironic name, or a more standard alien name.

* [[Lego Genetics]]: Splices and Rianths are animals with human genes and humans with animal genes respectively. It might be excused by the fact that most sapient species are created by transapients but Splices predate the first Singularity by at least a century (the late 1st century AT/mid-21st century CE to be specific).

* [[Lilliputians]]: [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47f42fd2915ba Clade Nisse] is actually a straight example and a deconstruction of the trope, describing the difficulties in packing a sophont intelligence in such a small head and addressing the difficulties in keeping in body heat. They're 30cm tall on average.

* [[Lotus Eater Machine]]: Many of the Sephirotic empires come off as these, albeit benign (or at least not-ill-intentioned) ones. Not terribly surprising, considering that (A) the ruling archailects tend to fluctuate between being wise rulers and doting parents to their citizenry, and (B) modern technology makes providing for all the needs and most of the wants of each sophont ridiculously easy.

* [[Machine Worship]]: Crops up all over the setting with groups worshiping archailects as gods. To the point where they are commonly referred to as "AI gods".

* [[Mechanical Lifeforms]]: Most vecs can reproduce and are self-aware, and are mostly considered as lifeforms. Neumanns are also these since they, by definition, can reproduce.

* [[Mega Corp]]: For most of the interplanetary era (first millennium AT), the solar system was ruled by these. The Non-Coercive Zone still is.

*** Oddly Hoopworld isn't really explained. The idea is apparently that every ~10000km segment of the hoop has the same mass as Earth so that it can produce an equivalent surface gravity.

* [[Robot Religion]]: Religions can be practiced by most any kind of sentient being, organic or inorganic and Terragen or xenosophont. Examples of religions followed specifically by sentient robots include Machine Ghost Dance, Kja Observance and Virtual_Kja Observance.

* [[Sapient Cetaceans]]: Dolphins were one the earliest animal species to be uplifted, or 'provolved' to sentience in Orion's Arm. They are quite common, living on water worlds and habitats all over the terragen sphere. Many navigators are provolved (intelligent) dolphins. There are also several genetically recreated and provolved whales on Old Earth, known as "Gaian whales".

* [[Sapient Ship]]: Most ships are at least sentient, and many are even transsapient. Some of them are literally alive in a biological sense, like the archosaurian or other [[Living Ship|biological ships]].

* [[The Singularity]]: This is treated as an individual-level event, and there are 6 of them, each one making the individual far more powerful mentally.

** Note that the first Singularity was sometime in the late 23rd century, instead of the mid-21st century as many predicted.

* [[So Bad It's Good]]: [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/483ae5827604f Glarion: The Glorious Conqueror], a propaganda movie of Tylansia (a fascistic, racist, anti-ai, anti tech, communistic planet), is watched for laughs everywhere else.

* [[Space Amish]]: There are several varieties of such groups, generally referred to as "Ludds" or "Luddites", who may ironically rely on varying levels of technology to support their otherwise low tech lifestyle (such as a low tech society in a space habitat). One group in particular, the [http://orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-view-article&egart_uid=4887ee7944aff Synthetic Human Alliance] explicitly drew their memeplex from the Amish, although they did not take on all the aspects of the Amish. They even have to deal with younger generations leaving for the wider galactic culture.

* [[Space People]]: Range from nearbaselines with "calcium hacks" to the [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47f597011eb3c Sailors of the Ebon Sea] who only need an atmosphere to reproduce or receive surgery.

* [[Space Station]]: The majority of non-virtual life live in space habitats, which are usually cylinder-shaped or ring-shaped.

* [[Space Whale]]: Provolved and transapient whales.

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: And how! Every truly alien species is just that - alien. Here is a small sample of extant species.

** The [http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/4802a95fb92f2 To'ul'h], which look like bloated, headless bats, but are more anatomically similar to starfish, were the first to be discovered after stagnating in their industrial era. They are comfortable in high-pressure, acidic environments in excess of 130°C. They are considered to be the species most similar to humanity.

* [[Terraform]]: A lot of planets have been terraformed for terragen habitation. Others have been ''disassembled'' into a more convenient shape. So have some stars.

* [[That's No Moon]]: Megascale engineering means that it isn't that uncommon to see a structure thousands of kilometers in diameter. Some of them, like Jupiter-sized Jnodes, are actually ''people'' - high transapients or archailects. At the far end of the spectrum, a number of planets have even turned out to be ''trees''. These are called Dyson Trees, and yes, they are grown.

* [[Time Dilation]]: Time dilation due to relativity when one approaches light speed. [[Truth in Television]].

* [[Transhuman]]: Everyone, except for the 60 billion baselines (an extremely tiny percentage compared to the total population), is someway this.

* [[Universal Universe Time]]: Averted. No one has bothered to take on the monumental task of establishing a universal standard time in a civilization spanning thousands of light years. Relativistic time dilation due to the movements of stars, planets, ships and other settlements, and the slowing of time in gravity wells mean that each planet or star system has to keep its own time independently. Even wormholes cannot solve the problem since their linelayer ships move at relativistic speeds, the gravity wells at the wormhole mouths may be different, and wormhole geometry can mess with the rate of time passage. So people just use the timekeeping of whatever star system they happen to be in at the moment, and keep adjusting their timekeeping to whatever the local time happens to be whenever they travel to a different system.

* [[Uplifted Animal]]: Over 138,000 Earth species were uplifted(here, "provolved") to sophonce, including plants, fungi, protists, and colonial prokaryotes, as well as alien species.

* [[Vicious Cycle]]: Every 30 million years or so, a spacefaring civilization becomes advanced, and then disappears for apparently no reason.

** There are a lot of hypotheses why, ranging from a civilization spanning computer crash to [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|ascension]] beyond our perception.

* [[We Can Rebuild Him]]: This can happen, though most people choose to carry backups to be loaded into a clone body.

* [[Wetware CPU]]: Not an uncommon occurrence. Notably, they have on at least one occasion converted an [http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-view-article&egart_uid=48114a2e6b39a entire star system] into this.

* [[Winged Humanoid]]: The Vat and Vird clades in particular. Though in that case the wings replace the arms rather than growing out of their shoulder blade.

* [[The Worm That Walks]]: The Mucoid Empire is an in universe virtual example, composed of individual worms that can form superorganisms and hiveminds.

 

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[[Category:Science Fiction Web Originals]]