.. disclaimer..: this is my personal observance.. not only, did they directly involve the imperial,, they directly contacted the “Wolf Pack”.! Aaron only has to say “something” to Blue (dragonfly) and Kathy and Teresa will become directly involved.. (since Blue is Dagger and Flower’s offspring.)..
so.. any thing you say or do , “can be used against you in imperial court.”
Woodman, I don’t know how much time you spent in the Far East but “round eyes” is, from my experience, sorta the general way Asians refer to us. I could be wrong (frequently am LOL) but I always looked at those over sized round eyes in anime as being just a stylized way of depicting foreigners like us. I’m more concerned about some company in the empire manufacturing sex bots controlled by strong AIs.
heh,, in anime, the “round eye” was used as (originally) a way to denote the main character (‘s) ,. not nationality .. also see ‘hair color’,, tho hair color was more of a how to act,.. so,,
the blond hair Blue eyed ‘Sailor Moon’ was 100% Japanese , but to stand out in the crowd they had to change something…
IIRC, our eyes don’t change size (much) as we grow up/older. From toddler to teen to adult, the eyes stay the same size. They appear larger in proportion to head & body size when younger.
If you notice many cartoons (especially Disney as well as anime) give teens and young adults the large eyes more proportional to a toddler. Again, IIRC, this is supposed to engender “awwwww” for these characters.
(once you see it, you can’t un-see it, and it gets irritating after awhile)
Look at Aaron’s eyes vs little-miss-sex-toy. Her eyes are WAAAAY to large in proportion to head size, even scaling up a toddler’s head to adult size. Aaron’s eyes are scaled proportional to his age and his head, much more pleasing to look at.
i expect the Catians to be triggered by this. And as Rob said, theywent right to the Wolf Pack. (Aaron was the one that spotted the kids from over the mountains to the north.) This is all so on the nose I am highly suspicious of a setup.
“Setup”, Jochi? How so? Not arguing with you, I just do not see something like that here. Who do you suspect is being set up? To what end? Linear thinker that I am I don’t see anything except a couple of mistreated beings crying for help. Please elaborate.
reminder,. Aaron is a computer genius,. as per the ‘character page’ , TGW-025,. an a few other places,, then don’t forget “well known.” so , him being there, would be a logical choice to send em to him..
as to “triggered”,, how so.?? the AI’s are new, almost all see them as smart machines.. (look at Caskoti..)..
Why ‘trigger’? These are beings that are either evincing sapience or have a very thorough pre-programmed set of responses ready, and they are saying they were created for the same reason the Cats’ ancestors were (at least in many of their own minds). (I personally suspect that while the chief creator was a monster with a furry fetish, his patrons were far more interested in their application as convenient transplant tissue repositories, and also monsters.) The Cats basically have two choices, accept these are People, and therefore the latest victims they all too recently were, their replacements in fact, or dismiss them as non-entities, just sophisticated sex dolls. I am inclined to think PC is going for the first, but I concede the second is still possible, they are not thinking beings but mechanical toys specifically programmed to worm their way into the consciences of the Empire’s rulers. Slavery is anathema to them, as it should be, and so they may too quickly jump to the not-yet-proven conclusion that these are thinking beings. We know there is a shadowy figure with non-negligible resources plotting against them, this may be where he rears his head again.
That’s where the setup fear comes from, Bill. The ultimate motive could be anything, discredit the Empire’s ruling class, gain intelligence conduits within their circle of confidants, even prepare for a coup. We just have to see. Any of that would be a great story, but so is the one I think PC is going for, even the Empire having to revise and expand its concept of what it is to be a person. (And I would not be surprised if the dragonflies were able to ‘read’ enough of even a non-organic sapient’s mind to know if they were being duplicitious or not. Or, for that matter, if they couldn’t read such a mind any more than they could a non-sapient computer program. I’m happy to see what happens, because the world is about to get a lot deeper and richer, whichever way our author takes it.)
More explanation later in the story. But the Android slaves would naturally pick a place frequented by
freed slaves as the best place to seek refuge. Aaron being there was pure serendipity.
(They are aware of the world around them, picking up information while with their customers).
I am a tad conflicted at the turn of the top story. It has already been established that Esmay is a strong A.I. – i.e. fully sentient and sapient. That would imply that somebody in the Empire is purpose building strong AIs. That disturbs me. It smacks.of “playing god”. It is too close – for my blood – to creating slaves. Every process in the universe is subject to uncertainty and thus can go awry in various ways. What if an AI module designed to run a spacecraft came into existence with an innate fear of open spaces? Would it not be cruel to force that ” person” to live out their lives in a spacecraft? Strong AI scares the hell outta me.
Regarding the “androids”: physical origin aside – biological vs artificial – how is manufacturing conscious, fully-aware constructs (whatever the intended purpose) materially and morally different from what that Lamian scientist did so long ago when he made Cats? Taking the androids at face value, if they are sentient/sapient enough to want to cry for help then it would appear that they are sufficiently sentient/sapient to qualify as ” persons” and thus being property become morally and ethically problematic. I find myself having difficulty articulating my concerns thin morning. I have to admit that from the moment the character of Esmay was introduced I have had a nagging sense of unease. The androids merely strengthens that feeling. The androids are clearly not “alive” in any usual sense. They, like Esmay and her “kin”, are unquestionably machines. But they are also conscious and self-aware entities purpose built to perform certain specified tasks. The whole manufactured strong AI thing bothers me.
I fully agree with you, Bill, but I also agree that this is a thing that will have to be realized by the organic sapients. They are predisposed to think of machines as machines, but like Shiva and Storm, most of them will believe when shown that these are thinking beings. I admit that it wasn’t until I read this that Aaron’s statement about AI units and Navy fighters sounded dismissive. I -then- wondered how Esmay and her sibs felt about being ‘drafted’ into military service. I think this is the direction PC is taking the story, and I for one am enjoying it.
As to your question about the origins of androids, I’m waiting to see that too. I’m used to the definitions that pervaded SF before Star Wars, robots were mechanical and androids were synthetic ‘flesh’ or analogous materials, and the degree of sapience in either depended on the author’s wishes. But I understand when we look at where the words come from, the first things called ‘robots’ were biological and the first things called ‘androids’ were mechanical. Then came George Lucas. Now, android or ‘droid’ is used for pretty much everything in this area and you hardly ever hear ‘robot’ unless the thing has a body but doesn’t look humanoid at all.
ok,, reply to both,.. the “Sentient” AI is new.! and not everybody knows it .. (smart or thinking programs already exists. but are just machine..) and along that thought,, we don’t ask each “smart” missile if it is sentient , BEfore we fire it.. (in DS. i saw a missile do something outside it’s program, but could not ask cuz it blew up.!) .. and NOBODY knew the AI’s are sentient, till Roxxy asked..
i have encountered smart programs that seemed alive,, but were still operating inside the “program”..
Annie and Andrew might still be operating within program, (something about not going into harms way.) ..but i would like to think otherwise..
so,, until sapience is recognized , “most” will still see them as a machine (look at ‘The Bicentennial Man’.)..
Great story, and it was on my mind too when reading the above and writing what I did. Especially the judge’s ruling that summed up Asimov’s moral, which I can’t recall well enough to do better than paraphrase:
Any creature that can understand what it is to be a slave, and to be free, and desires freedom, deserves it. (Problem is, taken literally that would apply to a lot of horses and hogs.)
A couple of quibbles, Catman.
1. Unless the horned folk’s craft are currently under acceleration, I do not believe their engines would be lit up. Unless you are modifying your current vector your propulsion system would be inactive. That has always been something which bothered me when vehicles are shown maneuvering in space in movies and on TV. I see lit engines and I figure the vehicles are under acceleration and wonder why.
Projectile weapons on the attack craft: just remember that Sir Isaac’s 3rd law would obtain. However much momentum you wish to inject into your projectile you also inject into yourself. Since they are throwing projectiles at significant percentages of C, the recoil from the guns would be major. That is why I would shoot some sort of grav powered projectile accelerating at similar accelerations to a bullet in a rifle barrel at the target. No recoil in that instance and massive kinetic energy delivered to the target. But I am somewhat of an outlier on this topic. As always it is the Catman’s universe so it is his story to tell.
Bill, to answer your second paragraph, the fighters have gravity engines, so they lock one onto their target
when firing their rail guns to counteract recoil. The small missiles that they carry are unguided, so while they
can target a ship, they can not target a specific part of the ship. Hence the use of the rail guns to take out
the engines without destroying the ships. They want to capture those ships intact for reasons that
will be spelled out later.
The gravity locks on the targets help, but aren’t sufficient alone. They add a third force to the force of the projectile’s recoil and the thrust of the target’s engines. They aren’t a chain or tow bar with a fixed length. However, they COULD be used to transfer the momentum loss (or some of it) to the target by timing a quick “surge” of attraction force to coincide with the firing. This would be felt by the target as a jerk backwards, softer but kind of similar to the jerk the target would feel if the gravity lock WAS a fixed-length chain.
Many universes cannot seem to make up their minds about those big glowing engines. They are not simple rockets, throwing away reaction mass. Does not seem like more subtle ion thrusters would have the specific impulse to maneuver those giant piles of iron. Perhaps heat sinks for the reactors which are powering some more esoteric means of grabbing onto the fabric of space to push/pull yourself around. The visual shortcuts of large naval vessels and aircraft fighters still inform many design cues that are not really optimized for ships that will never touch an atmosphere.
For me comes down to suspension of disbelief in sufficiently advanced technology might as well be magic, and enjoy the rest of story. While I do like my Science Fiction with the rivets showing; the deeper the explanation, the deeper pit to climb out of (midi-chlorians anyone?). Unless needed for a plot point later, Rule Of Cool works quite often :}
My major complaint with depictions of space craft in most modern fiction is with the exterior design.
Too much surface area for the interior volume and way too many shot traps. All that surface area
increases the weight and the chances of leaky seams. It takes much more armor to cover a stack of
cubes than it would take to cover a sphere. Which is why Imperial ships are more rounded, unless
they are designed for a specific purpose, like the Catia’s Pride.
A sphere can only be so large and still fit through a wormhole, which is why Imperial combat ships
are more lozenge-shaped.
You would be pleased to hear, then, that someone actually thought of that, decades ago.
The original Time Tunnel story was in book form, before the TV series. At one point those traveling back and forth in time encounter an invasion force…. the ship which landed, had a Fabric hull, to reduce the weight of the ship. Some portions of the story could have been written better, but that was a neat point for something written over 50 years ago.
i have to ask.! WHY does everybody go off on “shot traps.” ??? they pretty much became irrelevant after 1975.. in WWII the slow moving rounds could still do damage when deflected.. modern rounds dont.!
IE: the “Armor Piercing” round only works if direct hit, IF deflected or off by a couple degrees it is useless..
in the story ,, the railgun round will not deflect.. it vaporizes what it hits.. hyperkinetic is the same.. missiles don’t detonate on contact (unless AP) …
Well, the poor guy who has to go EVA to clean space debris out of all the nooks and crannies might have an opinion…
And the leftover bits and pieces after a battle…
Any unexploded munition removal might be a problem.
And the Germans learned with the Panzer V Aus A gun mantle, non-AP rounds that wouldn’t normally harm
the tank (HE) could peel the turret off if caught in that shot trap.
Not to mention that armoring a non-uniform surface adds mass that cuts fuel efficiency and could be better used
to either thicken the existing armor or to build more units.
Don’t get me started on designs of sci-fi tanks! Really, hydraulic cylinders for gun elevation outside the turret???
.. disclaimer..: this is my personal observance.. not only, did they directly involve the imperial,, they directly contacted the “Wolf Pack”.! Aaron only has to say “something” to Blue (dragonfly) and Kathy and Teresa will become directly involved.. (since Blue is Dagger and Flower’s offspring.)..
so.. any thing you say or do , “can be used against you in imperial court.”
Big eyed anime is cute…..in anime. Doesn’t look so cute in this.
Woodman, I don’t know how much time you spent in the Far East but “round eyes” is, from my experience, sorta the general way Asians refer to us. I could be wrong (frequently am LOL) but I always looked at those over sized round eyes in anime as being just a stylized way of depicting foreigners like us. I’m more concerned about some company in the empire manufacturing sex bots controlled by strong AIs.
heh,, in anime, the “round eye” was used as (originally) a way to denote the main character (‘s) ,. not nationality .. also see ‘hair color’,, tho hair color was more of a how to act,.. so,,
the blond hair Blue eyed ‘Sailor Moon’ was 100% Japanese , but to stand out in the crowd they had to change something…
Okay. Never was into anime so I did know that. Still living so still learning..
IIRC, our eyes don’t change size (much) as we grow up/older. From toddler to teen to adult, the eyes stay the same size. They appear larger in proportion to head & body size when younger.
If you notice many cartoons (especially Disney as well as anime) give teens and young adults the large eyes more proportional to a toddler. Again, IIRC, this is supposed to engender “awwwww” for these characters.
(once you see it, you can’t un-see it, and it gets irritating after awhile)
Look at Aaron’s eyes vs little-miss-sex-toy. Her eyes are WAAAAY to large in proportion to head size, even scaling up a toddler’s head to adult size. Aaron’s eyes are scaled proportional to his age and his head, much more pleasing to look at.
The joy of saying “NO.”
Both stories.
i expect the Catians to be triggered by this. And as Rob said, theywent right to the Wolf Pack. (Aaron was the one that spotted the kids from over the mountains to the north.) This is all so on the nose I am highly suspicious of a setup.
“Setup”, Jochi? How so? Not arguing with you, I just do not see something like that here. Who do you suspect is being set up? To what end? Linear thinker that I am I don’t see anything except a couple of mistreated beings crying for help. Please elaborate.
reminder,. Aaron is a computer genius,. as per the ‘character page’ , TGW-025,. an a few other places,, then don’t forget “well known.” so , him being there, would be a logical choice to send em to him..
as to “triggered”,, how so.?? the AI’s are new, almost all see them as smart machines.. (look at Caskoti..)..
Why ‘trigger’? These are beings that are either evincing sapience or have a very thorough pre-programmed set of responses ready, and they are saying they were created for the same reason the Cats’ ancestors were (at least in many of their own minds). (I personally suspect that while the chief creator was a monster with a furry fetish, his patrons were far more interested in their application as convenient transplant tissue repositories, and also monsters.) The Cats basically have two choices, accept these are People, and therefore the latest victims they all too recently were, their replacements in fact, or dismiss them as non-entities, just sophisticated sex dolls. I am inclined to think PC is going for the first, but I concede the second is still possible, they are not thinking beings but mechanical toys specifically programmed to worm their way into the consciences of the Empire’s rulers. Slavery is anathema to them, as it should be, and so they may too quickly jump to the not-yet-proven conclusion that these are thinking beings. We know there is a shadowy figure with non-negligible resources plotting against them, this may be where he rears his head again.
That’s where the setup fear comes from, Bill. The ultimate motive could be anything, discredit the Empire’s ruling class, gain intelligence conduits within their circle of confidants, even prepare for a coup. We just have to see. Any of that would be a great story, but so is the one I think PC is going for, even the Empire having to revise and expand its concept of what it is to be a person. (And I would not be surprised if the dragonflies were able to ‘read’ enough of even a non-organic sapient’s mind to know if they were being duplicitious or not. Or, for that matter, if they couldn’t read such a mind any more than they could a non-sapient computer program. I’m happy to see what happens, because the world is about to get a lot deeper and richer, whichever way our author takes it.)
More explanation later in the story. But the Android slaves would naturally pick a place frequented by
freed slaves as the best place to seek refuge. Aaron being there was pure serendipity.
(They are aware of the world around them, picking up information while with their customers).
I am a tad conflicted at the turn of the top story. It has already been established that Esmay is a strong A.I. – i.e. fully sentient and sapient. That would imply that somebody in the Empire is purpose building strong AIs. That disturbs me. It smacks.of “playing god”. It is too close – for my blood – to creating slaves. Every process in the universe is subject to uncertainty and thus can go awry in various ways. What if an AI module designed to run a spacecraft came into existence with an innate fear of open spaces? Would it not be cruel to force that ” person” to live out their lives in a spacecraft? Strong AI scares the hell outta me.
Regarding the “androids”: physical origin aside – biological vs artificial – how is manufacturing conscious, fully-aware constructs (whatever the intended purpose) materially and morally different from what that Lamian scientist did so long ago when he made Cats? Taking the androids at face value, if they are sentient/sapient enough to want to cry for help then it would appear that they are sufficiently sentient/sapient to qualify as ” persons” and thus being property become morally and ethically problematic. I find myself having difficulty articulating my concerns thin morning. I have to admit that from the moment the character of Esmay was introduced I have had a nagging sense of unease. The androids merely strengthens that feeling. The androids are clearly not “alive” in any usual sense. They, like Esmay and her “kin”, are unquestionably machines. But they are also conscious and self-aware entities purpose built to perform certain specified tasks. The whole manufactured strong AI thing bothers me.
Patience, Bill, patience.
Always, PC, always.
I fully agree with you, Bill, but I also agree that this is a thing that will have to be realized by the organic sapients. They are predisposed to think of machines as machines, but like Shiva and Storm, most of them will believe when shown that these are thinking beings. I admit that it wasn’t until I read this that Aaron’s statement about AI units and Navy fighters sounded dismissive. I -then- wondered how Esmay and her sibs felt about being ‘drafted’ into military service. I think this is the direction PC is taking the story, and I for one am enjoying it.
As to your question about the origins of androids, I’m waiting to see that too. I’m used to the definitions that pervaded SF before Star Wars, robots were mechanical and androids were synthetic ‘flesh’ or analogous materials, and the degree of sapience in either depended on the author’s wishes. But I understand when we look at where the words come from, the first things called ‘robots’ were biological and the first things called ‘androids’ were mechanical. Then came George Lucas. Now, android or ‘droid’ is used for pretty much everything in this area and you hardly ever hear ‘robot’ unless the thing has a body but doesn’t look humanoid at all.
ok,, reply to both,.. the “Sentient” AI is new.! and not everybody knows it .. (smart or thinking programs already exists. but are just machine..) and along that thought,, we don’t ask each “smart” missile if it is sentient , BEfore we fire it.. (in DS. i saw a missile do something outside it’s program, but could not ask cuz it blew up.!) .. and NOBODY knew the AI’s are sentient, till Roxxy asked..
i have encountered smart programs that seemed alive,, but were still operating inside the “program”..
Annie and Andrew might still be operating within program, (something about not going into harms way.) ..but i would like to think otherwise..
so,, until sapience is recognized , “most” will still see them as a machine (look at ‘The Bicentennial Man’.)..
Great story, and it was on my mind too when reading the above and writing what I did. Especially the judge’s ruling that summed up Asimov’s moral, which I can’t recall well enough to do better than paraphrase:
Any creature that can understand what it is to be a slave, and to be free, and desires freedom, deserves it. (Problem is, taken literally that would apply to a lot of horses and hogs.)
A couple of quibbles, Catman.
1. Unless the horned folk’s craft are currently under acceleration, I do not believe their engines would be lit up. Unless you are modifying your current vector your propulsion system would be inactive. That has always been something which bothered me when vehicles are shown maneuvering in space in movies and on TV. I see lit engines and I figure the vehicles are under acceleration and wonder why.
Projectile weapons on the attack craft: just remember that Sir Isaac’s 3rd law would obtain. However much momentum you wish to inject into your projectile you also inject into yourself. Since they are throwing projectiles at significant percentages of C, the recoil from the guns would be major. That is why I would shoot some sort of grav powered projectile accelerating at similar accelerations to a bullet in a rifle barrel at the target. No recoil in that instance and massive kinetic energy delivered to the target. But I am somewhat of an outlier on this topic. As always it is the Catman’s universe so it is his story to tell.
they are currently under acceleration.. they are chasing the ‘Pride’,.
Bill, to answer your second paragraph, the fighters have gravity engines, so they lock one onto their target
when firing their rail guns to counteract recoil. The small missiles that they carry are unguided, so while they
can target a ship, they can not target a specific part of the ship. Hence the use of the rail guns to take out
the engines without destroying the ships. They want to capture those ships intact for reasons that
will be spelled out later.
The gravity locks on the targets help, but aren’t sufficient alone. They add a third force to the force of the projectile’s recoil and the thrust of the target’s engines. They aren’t a chain or tow bar with a fixed length. However, they COULD be used to transfer the momentum loss (or some of it) to the target by timing a quick “surge” of attraction force to coincide with the firing. This would be felt by the target as a jerk backwards, softer but kind of similar to the jerk the target would feel if the gravity lock WAS a fixed-length chain.
Many universes cannot seem to make up their minds about those big glowing engines. They are not simple rockets, throwing away reaction mass. Does not seem like more subtle ion thrusters would have the specific impulse to maneuver those giant piles of iron. Perhaps heat sinks for the reactors which are powering some more esoteric means of grabbing onto the fabric of space to push/pull yourself around. The visual shortcuts of large naval vessels and aircraft fighters still inform many design cues that are not really optimized for ships that will never touch an atmosphere.
For me comes down to suspension of disbelief in sufficiently advanced technology might as well be magic, and enjoy the rest of story. While I do like my Science Fiction with the rivets showing; the deeper the explanation, the deeper pit to climb out of (midi-chlorians anyone?). Unless needed for a plot point later, Rule Of Cool works quite often :}
My major complaint with depictions of space craft in most modern fiction is with the exterior design.
Too much surface area for the interior volume and way too many shot traps. All that surface area
increases the weight and the chances of leaky seams. It takes much more armor to cover a stack of
cubes than it would take to cover a sphere. Which is why Imperial ships are more rounded, unless
they are designed for a specific purpose, like the Catia’s Pride.
A sphere can only be so large and still fit through a wormhole, which is why Imperial combat ships
are more lozenge-shaped.
You would be pleased to hear, then, that someone actually thought of that, decades ago.
The original Time Tunnel story was in book form, before the TV series. At one point those traveling back and forth in time encounter an invasion force…. the ship which landed, had a Fabric hull, to reduce the weight of the ship. Some portions of the story could have been written better, but that was a neat point for something written over 50 years ago.
i have to ask.! WHY does everybody go off on “shot traps.” ??? they pretty much became irrelevant after 1975.. in WWII the slow moving rounds could still do damage when deflected.. modern rounds dont.!
IE: the “Armor Piercing” round only works if direct hit, IF deflected or off by a couple degrees it is useless..
in the story ,, the railgun round will not deflect.. it vaporizes what it hits.. hyperkinetic is the same.. missiles don’t detonate on contact (unless AP) …
Well, the poor guy who has to go EVA to clean space debris out of all the nooks and crannies might have an opinion…
And the leftover bits and pieces after a battle…
Any unexploded munition removal might be a problem.
And the Germans learned with the Panzer V Aus A gun mantle, non-AP rounds that wouldn’t normally harm
the tank (HE) could peel the turret off if caught in that shot trap.
Not to mention that armoring a non-uniform surface adds mass that cuts fuel efficiency and could be better used
to either thicken the existing armor or to build more units.
Don’t get me started on designs of sci-fi tanks! Really, hydraulic cylinders for gun elevation outside the turret???
First time we’ve seen an open-carry sidearm on someone who wasn’t in uniform in a while. Or are those her ‘working clothes’?
Dan’s keeping her trenchcoat under the bar for her.