Technology in the Third Horizon

The Third Horizon is full of technological marvels, from the primitive shepherds’ flutes found on Zamusa to the advanced grav belts the Miran dancers use. The most basic technology is called primitive, found generally on the fringes of civilized space, in the lost colonies or with certain planetside nomads. The technology that came with the Zenith is called ordinary, and the same goes for most of the Firstcome tech. Spaceships, exo shells, and grav crafts are ordinary technology. The technology necessary for portal jumps, such as stasis beds and com-plex ship computers, is called advanced technology. The advanced tier also includes the different life lengthening inventions, such as bio sculpting, body part cloning, and certain cybernetics.

EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGY

Inhabitants of the Third Horizon interact with ordinary tech-nology every day, using devices such as tags, transactors, communicators, and tabulas. Only primitive tribes and back-water colonies lack this sort of tech.

Items everybody owns

Some items can be found everywhere in the civi-lized parts of the Horizon. Beggars and slummers aside, most people have somewhere to live and food on their plates, plus common items like tags, transactors, and whatever gear they need for their profession. Transactors and tags are common meth-ods of payment on Coriolis, on space stations, and in larger cities. The difference between the two is that a transactor is locked to its owner’s biocode while a tag is anonymous, only protected by a numeric code. Direct transfers between bank accounts are of course available in hubs like Coriolis, but other methods are required when one is out traveling. If an even higher level of anonymity is required, one can use physical birr, printed by the company banks, the factions and some of the royal courts. Birr are used for small purchases – using large sums of cash will look suspicious, and some systems have outlawed it all together. To gather information, take notes, or just to read the Bulletin’s news, merchants and other wealthy people use tabulas instead of actual paper. A tabula is a tablet in mimetic glass that can be oper-ated by hand or using a fancy stylus pen.

Birr and Birr

Birr is the currency of the Horizon, but is actually several different currencies mixed together. Electronic transac-tions are equal everywhere, but physical money – bills, Miran Icon coins, Algolan gem spheres – vary in worth depending on where you are. Locally, cash money is gen-erally equivalent to tag-based birr, but this may not be true when you travel to another system. The peddler Erbulas learned this the hard way when he tried to purchase Kuan lumber using Algolan gem spheres – in the end he lost his ship, and the spheres became ballast on a river barge.

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The Arrca Stellar Archaeology and Weapons Division – commonly just “Arrca” – is an offshoot of the Foundation’s regular science divisions. The Arrca institute’s origins are somewhat mysterious, possibly indicating that the Special Branch might have been involved in its founding. Exactly what research they conduct and who their clients are is also unclear, but the corporate emir, Davo par-Allalti, is often seen in the company of Consortium factionaries, and the new Arrca base in Awadhi is under the protection of the Legion fleet. Arrca is generally considered the source of much of the Horizon’s advanced technology.

The faction technology is even more complex and usually kept secret. Examples of this tech are the antimatter rockets of the Order of the Pariah, the Draconites’ meson weapons, and the experimental giant exos being developed by the Consortium. The last technology tier is the glyphs and artifacts left behind by the Portal Builders – everything from sugar globes and healing scarabs to the soletta in Menkar or the fusion spheres of Anaspora. Some Portal Builder technology is entirely incomprehen-sible and hints at an alien physiognomy.

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TRAVEL AND SPACESHIPS

Travel, once reserved for a select few, is now blooming across all the systems. Planetside transportation varies between the worlds – people use river barges on Kua, shuttles on Dabaran, and trains on Sadaal, for example. Before the Zenithians opened up the Horizon again, there were only a handful of spaceships in operational condition, and they belonged to larger powers such as the Order, royal courts in the fringe systems, or to ruthless corsairs. Interplanetary trade was rare and existed in only a few systems. The new era is boiling with free traders. The most heavily trafficked route is that between Mira and Dabaran, a trip the bulk haulers make regularly each segment. Big cruise liners with thousands of stasis beds follow the same route, but not as often, maybe once per triad. Yachts, pleasure sloops, and emirs’ cruisers carry rich passengers between safaris and exotic shopping on distant worlds, but the masses travel for business or for their faith. Pilgrims make up a large portion of the Horizon’s travelers.

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COMMUNICATION

To communicate in a city or on a station, most people use messengers, or communicators if they can afford them. Space stations have relay transmitters onboard that make sure all communicators can reach each other, as long as their users have the identification codes necessary to find the intended receiver. Newer cities usually have enough relays to make communicators fairly reliable, although the variation between cities or systems can be big. Supposedly, Lord Yionid pas-Dasmaku had to wait three whole days to get an audience with the matriarch of Mira because his communicator was unable to reach the guard towers in the Icon City.

TERMINALS AND THE NET

On Coriolis and in cities with a strong Consortium pres-ence, you will find the Bulletin’s terminals, connected through the encrypted infonet. Notable exceptions include Karrmerruk on Zalos, the City of Prophets in Alburz, and some of the more conservative dars on Dabaran. The infonet can also be used by computers, tabulas, and advanced transactors for information sharing, data storage or birr transactions. The Syndicate has just started to realize that the infonet is a new arena for profit making. Apart from the infonet, smaller networks using power lines or relay towers exist in the modern districts of Algol, Mira, and Dabaran, as well as on larger space stations such as Djachroum. These networks are usually less reliable than the Bulletin’s infonet. The Algolan Zou bank was declared bankrupt a few cycles ago after an overload in the AYM network fried the intelligence that administered all of the bank’s transactions.

Intelligences and the net

Scientists from the Foundation, the Daddah insti-tute, and other elite academies have developed advanced intelligences that can control ships, drones, and other complex systems. Their inven-tions are based on old ship intelligences from Firstcome ships and from the Zenith. According to a hypothesis presented by the mathematician Ibrahim Hadrogas, these intelligences will spontaneously evolve into true intelligences equal to humans and humanites. This will also, Hadrogas argues, result in them getting a ghost or soul, which is the essence of being human according to the Church of the Icons. Networks such as the infonet are what will act as a catalyst for the intelligences, says Hadrogas. This worries some orthodox believers and several info terminals on Algol, among other places, have been vandalized.

The Bulletin's com base

So, how does a communicator work? Personal communicators have specific codes that the caller must know in order to reach you. Some communicators are linked to the bio code of their owners, and newer ones may even be voice operated, like computers. Com codes are usually delivered in person or on tags via messengers. On Coriolis, the Bulletin sup-plies a registry on its infonet where com codes may be stored through any info terminal. Similar code bases can be found in most larger cities or stations where the Bulletin has a network of terminals in place, such as AYM, the main districts of the Conglomerate, the Icon City, Dar Bahri, and Alburz, to name a few. The wealthy have personal couriers to send messages in cities or on stations, sometimes even off world. This type of courier services can usually be bought from freelancers as well. Dignitaries and the very rich can also afford the powerful planetary or system communi-cators, with the latter working even in systems without satellite relays.

NEWS AND COURIERS

News has always been distributed by word of mouth in the Horizon. Nomads, merchants, or tarrabs all spread the news on their travels, albeit for different reasons. The larger cities have newspapers, either in printed form or on tabulas. When the systems began communicating again, the free traders were the first to start spreading news and rumors between systems, but it was the Bulletin which really organized interstellar communication when it started supplying the portal stations with their probes. Their ownership of the probes also means that they are the ones who determine which news to spread. The probes go through the portals, and relays on the other side transmit the data to new probes by the next portal, and so on. This way, the news is spread through roughly one system per day, at least along the route between Mira and Dabaran. Farther out, where the portal stations are less secure, information is usually recorded on tags and carried by free traders or the Ermes Courier, the Bulletin’s own courier service. Sending mail is generally a slow affair. With a chain of free traders eventually getting from sender to receiver, a package usually takes a week, sometimes a whole seg-ment, to arrive at its destination. For speedy deliveries, one must hire a fast courier vessel, an Ermes ship perhaps, or one of the many other players on the courier market. Couriers are costly but fast, usually making it through a system in two days.