Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[Trenacker]

When facing the external unknown, the mind falls back on the internal known. We cling to the familiar. In this way, many battles are lost. - Rebuilding Man

Militia were the first line of colonial defense. Their care and feeding was a government's top priority. Hive Security was at first organized and led by one-time contractors of the UCB Corporation--United Constabularies of Britain--members of which are seen here returning to camp after morning calisthenics.

The public architecture of Morganite cities was a distinctive merging of the Paleologan Byzantine and Brutalist traditions, leaving no confusion about the precise places where power was wielded, nor to what purpose. The meeting spaces projecting from the Markan Building were improbable in their size. Morgan governed without reference to his showpiece board, which never sat more than fourteen directors, most of whom were drawn from the upper echelons of his own firms, and meetings were closed even to stockholders, obviating any need for audience accommodations. In disregard of these realities, he commissioned council chambers with seating for five thousand.

The face mask might be required, but that didn't mean it couldn't reflect the distinctive personality of its wearer. A minority preferred nose-and-mouth designs that left the eyes free to assist in clear communication.

This Pilgrim house pilot has undergone significant cybernetic enhancement. Her position is not an exalted one, suggesting that the expensive prosthetics were installed following grievous injury rather than on her own initiative. Still, she is making the most of the possibilities opened to her through mind-machine interface.

Pilots faced considerable pressure to receive the Jack. This expedient translated thought to machine language. Benefits included increased reaction time and an almost preternatural ability to rapidly diagnose malfunctions of both hardware and software, experiences as either muscle spasms, indicative of electrical faults, or confused thought, which suggested errors in code.

Sources:
First image is "Boarding spaceship" by Alvaro Wagner Rodríguez-Navas, who used purchased art.

Morganite city is "Sci Fi City Explorations" by Kevin Jick.

Jacks installed at the base of the skull were a distinctive feature of Exo-Frame pilots in Exosquad.

Third picture is "Pilot" by Tom Garden.

[Trenacker]

...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand. - History of the Peloponnesian War, Datalinks

The exact fate of their captain preoccupied the expedition's survivors long after the ashes of vengeance were cold upon their grate.

Dr. Najewa Kumrandi's two-year course on analytic methods took Chiron's most infamous cold case as a framing device to demonstrate for young Memorialists the various logical fallacies. Commander Kleisel Mercator, energetic to a fault, slightly bug-eyed, his shock of white hair rarely combed, certainly gave the impression of a man let loose from the lunatic's asylum, but even he felt that a Spartan was the most likely culprit.


Here, students speak to Dr. Ruprecht Graff, a doctor of the Peacekeeping Forces available to them on Datalinks Exchange, regarding the autopsy he conducted within an hour of finding the Captain's body. Graff named the cause of death as a sucking chest wound caused by flechettes fired at extreme close range.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf believed that Morgan's people, not Santiago's, killed the captain he had once called "a leader about as inspiring as a tomato." In keeping with this theory, Morganite prisoners taken by the Pilgrims received summary courts martial and speed executions for their part in the mutiny. Van de Graaf's accusation, true or otherwise, at least answered the open question of how Morgan had made it down to Planet a free man, much less at the head of a large body of contractors and crew exclaiming his virtues.

So-called "earnest dreams" arose from the meeting between knowledge and desire. The characters behaved essentially as the sleeper thought they would have in real life, and were therefore accurate first approximations for understanding personalities and value structures, but the scenarios were contrived. Dreamer librarians searched for consistency in portrayals across different sleepers to build psychological profiles for the benefit of their Probe Teams.


The problem with Garland was that, like all faction leaders, he featured in a very high number of dreams, including in the dreams of people he had never met. For those with a direct knowledge of the origin, "False Garland" was easy to spot.

The False Garland was the father we all wanted. He stopped what he was doing when you approached. If the dream involved his death, it was unintended: you were the assassin's real target, and he intervened without hesitation. Other people failed Garland, and he forgave them. On waking, the tragedy of his loss was for a moment unbearable because you felt an overwhelming sense of opportunity lost. The real Garland was actually none of these things. They held him apart during training to prevent charges of politicization, but it was just as well: he was distracted by the yawning gap between the magnitude of his task and the inadequacy of the resources provided. Hours of deep conversation with the U.N. Intelligence Cell robbed him of the ability to engage in the retail politics that would be essential in a crisis. On the bridge, he found it difficult to feign respect for certain subordinates--people he held in moral contempt, but who had ready-made constituencies among the crew and far more tangible agendas. Since he was accustomed to command in a context where all present shared the same purpose, Garland's first thought was almost never for diplomacy. The father-child relationship is between superior and subordinate. But Prokhor Zakharov and Nwabudike Morgan saw themselves as Garland's betters. - O Father, my Captain: A Biography of Jonathan Garland

Five Shift bridge crew struggled to colate damage reports into something resembling a common operating picture. They were first to realize that resources were not flowing as they should: too many crew were still assembling in the reactor spaces. Garland attempted to confront Zakharov on the shipboard intercom, but the Soviet polymath, who left the bridge after only four hours to assemble his own makeshift incident command in a shielded supply closet, was beyond the lures of argument. To avoid giving full vent to the spat, Garland retreated to an en suite office where he met successively with his Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal; the enigmatic stowaway Nwabudike Morgan, theoretically in possession of knowledge regarding "off-program" additions to the ship's complement, design, and load-out; Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân, a systems engineer spearheading efforts to save the all-important Data Core; and Colonel Flavio Jilani, to whom shipwide security duties had devolved in the absence of Rachael Winzenried. Five Shift personnel were the last to see Garland or Jilani alive as they rose from their stations to meet Spartan attackers who had overwhelmed the Marine guard posted at the main entrance to the bridge. A half hour passed, and several Spartans pushed past the defenders. When at last mission loyalists secured the room, Garland's office door was open, he and Jilani had been shot to death, and Morgan was missing entirely.

Sources:
First image is a still from Ender's Game (2013).


Second image is Stephen Lang in Avatar (2009).


Third image is Meta Lab of ZeiferZ, found on Pinterest.


Fourth image is David Corwin, a character from the series Babylon 5.

[Trenacker]

You cannot be king from a throne; only from the saddle. - Peregrinations of Planet

A Hunter finds her prize: remnants of an orbital cargo tender. Good for emergency supplies, fissile materials, and and rare earths if undisturbed.

Hunters of Chiron reckoned themselves to enjoy a fine living, and in a certain manner of speaking this was indeed true.

The industrial pioneers, dry land ecologists, and associated trades represented on the Forward Contact Teams (FCTs) were well-provisioned for a months-long mission of exploration and exploitation far "beyond the wire" of the main colony. At his disposal, the Warden had forest harvesters, combine seeders, tanker sprayers, rock drillers, armored low-loaders, and a host of other machinery that would later make his people targets of renown.

Launched weeks ahead of the main body as Unity first crossed into the Alpha Centauri star system, future Hunters grew wise to the themes and moods of Chiron whilst their comrades lay yet entombed in glass cylinders. By the time they got the hard news that all was lost in the sky above, they had less to fear in the dark. The mines, wells, and outposts dug for a landing that would never come became their coin in trade. Brother Camroe Horus of the Conclave siphoned the Brethren their first fresh water from an FCT pump jack. Though in later years she would imply the Stepdaughters had found it unassisted, Hunters led Deirdre Skye, her head still bandaged and ringing, to the Place of the White Pines where she first claimed to hear the Song of Planet.

Followers of the Warden's personal credo lived in fully or seasonally-nomadic caravans taking work where they found it. Cumbersome devices that seldom lasted out the day held little appeal by comparison with the animated (and often well-lubricated) delivery of a skilled raconteur who acted all parts and sang for his mates' entertainment. At fire camps across the southwestern slopes of the Shamash Divide, loggers boiled tea in billy tins over flameless heaters and remembered the mad dash of Rawcanth Hines to the sea, Spartan rockets falling all around. They were miners, too, and bush pilots, rescuers, and scalar engineers. Some were courageous firefighters, not too stingy with their skins to help dig the brakes that saved the Hive at Deepscour, Yang's scrub-garlanded toehold beyond the edge of the Uranium Flats, the closest he would ever get to green grass.

As civilization spread its indelible stain across the face of Chiron, Hunters were increasingly wont to explore the upsides of domestication. Here, a vintage Baserunner is restored in a Morganite repair bay.

Time turned them from their brothers' keepers to simple laborers, leading Institute Hunter-Killers in search of enemy Probe Teams, guiding the first caravans down what would become Peacekeeper magrails, pursuing the bounties paid out on the Morganite exchanges, or perhaps running high-value cargoes through fungal blooms for the likes of Colonel Santiago herself.

In all their forms, Hunters were risk-takers. Their preferred sport, full-contact racing, resulted in dramatic sacrifices of men and machines that sent other factions into apoplexy. Who would dare sacrifice so much to the gods of vanity? They defied the certainty of war with more territorial neighbors, refusing to speak terms with Governor Oscar van de Graaf despite the savage mauling administered by him at Terra Nova. For the Spartans, they were the last, best defense against Gaian treachery, summoned to do battle with the mindworm menace when even Myrmydons would no longer stand firm.

Sources:
Both images are from Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

[Trenacker]

Clouds obscure the son. - Chaos Theories

Struan's traditionalist General Artagan John "Joiner" Banes, formerly a National Security Council back-bencher, seethed over Roshann Cobb's leadership shortcomings. Unlike the cowed set of aides and minders that had been with him since the beginning aboard Unity and knew full well the depravities he so easily commissioned against enemies real and imagined, Banes spent another decade asleep in the belly of a submerged Hab Pod. Hunters fished him out along with four hundred others and traded the full lot to Oscar van de Graaf as the ransom for outriders taken in the Sensorfield Fight. Van de Graaf, who regarded most general officers as intellectual inferiors, made a gift of Banes and his various retainers to Roshann Cobb at the General's own suggestion.

Later, Banes recalled their "uncoiling horror at the awful stench that coiled like some visible serpent" a full two kilometers from the rust-streaked walls of White Rabbit's Refuge. Banes owed nothing to Ian Dunross's heir and refused to be impressed by the MI5 connection. Based on personal knowledge of the Old Man, Banes was prepared to believe that Cobb would receive the quick axe whenever the auditors arrived, and warned his peers that the skinflint would not thank them for their obsequious loyalty to a sociopathic failure.

No fool, Banes kept his opinions to himself even while forming the makings of a splinter element. With so many new charter colonists in tow, Banes was immediately a power to be reckoned with. Cobb had little choice but to accept the General's suggestion that his fighters take on the vital long-range objective raids that Cobb's dwindling cohort of Sabre Corporation mercenaries could no longer handle.

Banes's men were Mara'Toan Martians, descendants of hydraulic bureaucrats who have gone down in the history of two solar systems as members of "post-modern cargo cult." On Earth and Mars, the Mara'Toans, who originated in the IOEZ, built a distinctive identity around the feast-and-famine cycle of supply barge deliveries, becoming experts in the field of recycling and metabolic self-regulation. They were quick studies in their first few years on Chiron, and studies of their behavior inspired doctrinal advances in water discipline later adopted by the majority of mission survivors. Mara'Toans in Bane's service wore distinctive red ranging gear to distinguish themselves from the yellow-orange color favored by the Saber Corporation.

At the height of the faction struggle within Dreamer society, the Saber Corporation struggled to protect its principal. They were short of everything, including warm bodies. Although 150 had embarked with Cobb, just 42 of the original contingent remained in service. To rebuild their strength, the unit had taken in volunteers from among the healthy prisoners, such as this one-time Spartan fugitive from the Fall of Xerxion.

Although he appears still to receive regular hemoglobin injections to counteract oxygen narcosis, the rest of his kit is reflective of the chronic supply problems and serious indiscipline that otherwise plagued his new employers. The helmet, a steel pot purchased by Struan's from French Indochina stocks, is painted in reflective coating suitable for laser combat, whereas most of his adversaries will use hand weapons. A pair of bomb switches clipped to the rubber hatband await counterpart explosives. Also carried on the helmet are a rangeviewer (left side) and a collapsible baton.

The dressing pouch worn over this soldier's heart is mildewed to the point that the contents could endanger a patient. His marksman's rifle is the unholy union of Belgian stock and British barrel, probably dangerous to discharge. Most alarming of all, an anti-stab vest (with the baton, indicative of this man's primary concerns) is worn in place of a flak vest.

Sources:

Late actor Powers Boothe is our Artagan John "Joiner" Banes.

Second picture is from Star Wars. I think it's a still from The Mandalorian.

Objective raids are a concept in Battletech.

Water discipline is a concept from Frank Herbert's Dune.

The final image is "Scarif Rebel" by Caleb James.

[Trenacker]

Victory through knowledge. - Datalinks

Treachery could take a faction far. After triggering a radiation alarm in a secondary armory held by Salan's Marines, Tribals gained access by donning radiation suits and organizing a frantic evacuation. The Marines could already taste ionizing radiation from the damaged main reactor and took the newcomers at their word. They left their rescuers, who were already well-armed, in possession of a second full arsenal.

The Tribals evacuated in those same suits and used them again on patrol around their encampments at Keller City and Rock Island Refuge. The thick quilting was proof against shredder flechettes and the hip-mounted portable air supply was more comfortable than most.

Survivors obsessively recycled whatever they could. Colonists knew better than to abandon their oxygen bottles without good reason. This SMACER, seen on the battlefields below Xerxion during a per-arranged ceasefire known as a casualty pick, will earn a week's gruel for returning Spartan gas to Tribal depots.

He has learned to put safety first. His cloth smock, stained with the blood of the dead and wounded, is sewn from anti-spall liner. On his right wrist he wears the same dosimeter he took into cold sleep.

A child of the Second Generation negotiates a bog somewhere in the Kordoshel Forest, a temperate analogue to the Monsoon Jungle where ambient oxygen levels were high enough to support breathing unassisted. She is accompanied by a personalized Omnibox Companion.

Omnibox cornered the market for household tutors during the rise of corporate arcologies when problems of law and order put most of the elite behind gates and guns. The learning software packaged with an Omnibox adapted to its owner's individual learning style and cultural preferences. Most faction data libraries were large enough that parents or officials could arrange for lessons in practically any knowledge domain or professional field. An Omnibox used organic tissue to store and retrieve information far more efficiently than on datatapes, and it was not uncommon for Omnibox owners to report unexpected bursts of activity when they exposed the machines to new circumstances.

The autonomous, self-contained Omnibox was always preferable to any devices that a traveler had to carry themselves, and a well-curated disk invariably included information on prevailing weather conditions; biome-specific plant, animal, and soil features; faction etiquette; and wound care. All Omniboxes could confound predators with directional noise and strobes. A few were loaded with liquid irritant as a last resort.

Sources:
First picture is Weyland-Yutani Commandos, action figures posed by DarthRick3rd. The image comes from the NECA Reddit threat.

Rock Island Refuge was my first LEGO set as a child. It spawned a life-long love affair with the building toy.

The second picture is apparently a production still from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I found it on Pinterest.

The third picture is from the film Vesper.

[Trenacker]

In the year 5555 / Your arms are hanging limp at your sides / Your legs got nothing to do / Some machine's doing that for you. - Datalinks, Traditional

Medtechs prepare a Dreaming Chamber. Full enclosure of the recumbent sleeper in a sensory deprivation shroud reduced autonomic interference with lucidity. Technician-led dreaming was another innovation considered indispensable by veterans who wanted to explore specific questions held in their mind just prior to falling asleep. The technician applied electrical stimuli to reinforce the firing of specific neuron bundles and magnets to redirect unwanted activity.

Some factions hewed devotedly to the idea that the future society must be strictly segregated. In Sparta, the powerful would be served by the meek. In the Ascendancy, the pure by the impure. Among the Conclave after the martyrdom of Sister Godwinson, the elect and the non-elect. Roshann Cobb imagined a world divided between those who could escape the confines of their physical bodies and those who could not.

On Earth, lucid dreaming shared certain hallmarks with corrective surgery. For example, skilled professionals trained in the techniques of neurophysiological crisis management worked with the patient to manifest specific memories for excision. Dr. Claudius Diller's Theory of Chemical Memory likened each recollection to a fingerprint comprised of the 147 neurotransmitters used by the human brain. When the surgical team was satisfied that the fingerprint was known, they installed a small inhibitor, about the size of mite, to detect and suppress that combination by initiating a chemical counteraction. The point of this arrangement was to free the victim from unwelcome thoughts, allowing them to reengage fully in the routines of daily life outside the safe space of the home.

Even "safe-cracking" (Extraction) was supposed to yield information with real-world applications. Learning an enemy's secrets available you nothing if they could not be turned to advantage in subsequent negotiations or used as the justification for a full-spectrum investigation to locate proof of a crime previously concealed. This sword, John "Joiner" Banes would eventually wield against the actors he considered evil, on behalf of those he labeled good. His thinking was that reality could be edited by public servants equipped with the right tools.

Cobb's original intentions for Dreaming were not much different. He proposed to revolutionize the therapeutic applications of dreaming by redirecting the scalpel from memory to impulse. Why blot out the unpleasant when it might be possible to correct our very nature before mistakes were made or misdeeds committed? What if decision-makers could freed from susceptibility of logical shortcuts? What if bias could be cut away like a growth of cancer? Cobb wanted to edit the brain in the same way that Cinder Roze edited code, and for the same reasons.

But that was before his addiction became so utterly unmanageable he was past saving. In his final urgency, lucid dreaming became an end unto itself--the sublimest state of existence. Like a cyborg waiting to cross the mind-machine barrier, a dedicated dreamer anticipated something experiential. Dreamers would leave behind no monuments. No genuine relationship between two people, obeying laws beyond figuring, could approach the perfection of a story about those same two written by one, for one. A heart fed on sweet lies never beats stronger, and the man who is content never travels.

Thus Cobb's ultimate desire was the creation of an infrastructure to enable perpetual Dreaming. The problem, of course, was that the sleeper in this mode produced nothing of value to anyone but himself.

Source:
Still is from the move Intersteller.

[MysticWind]

Tell me what you know about dreamin', dreamin'?
You don't really know about nothin', nothin'
Tell me what you know about the night terrors every night
5 AM, cold sweats, waking up to the sky
Tell me what you know about dreams, dreams?
Tell me what you know about night terrors? Nothing
You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow
Rather lay awake in the bed full of sorrow
- “Pursuit of Happiness”, Datalinks

University students enter into a hypnopædiac study session administered by a subject matter expert system. Spinal lances in the learning chairs administer Somnacin to the dreaming pupils

The introduction of Academic Hypnopædia upended the University of Planet’s stratified meritocracy. Within mission years, the examinations were flooded by applicants from the faction’s drone population, eager for societal mobility. That in of itself did not displease the rectors and regents; curves could be shifted, tests made even more rigorous, and mundane tasks automated out. More bright minds were always welcome, as were raised bars. But then accelerated sleep-learning became a fixture among career academics. Desperate to stay competitive, they imported hundreds of thousands worth of hypnopædia lessons on datatape and toiled in their slumber. This led to an ever-expanding arms race as both low-performing students and those who had flunked out of academia vied against straight-S students via underground hypnopædiac courses. Even more worrying, many existing stellar students became hopelessly dependent upon hypnopædia sessions in order to quickly brush up on and absorb course material in order to outdo these upstarts.

The Morganite-Dreamer sleep-learning products, once heralded as the dawning of a new age of learning, became tools for endless competition, driving burnout to all-time highs. Record increases in psychiatric disorders plagued the University. Illicit nootropic and recreational drug use exploded among underclassmen. Unofficial sleep-learning datatapes appeared in the grey market from dubious sources, some of them malevolently spliced so as to teach incorrect information to potential rivals. Irrational memeplexes proliferated with desperate students, like their forebears in imperial China, turned to divination and patronage from scholarly spirits for study success and succor. And most worrying, defections increased as students fled to rival research factions. These were those who refused to use hypnopædia and were consigned to standings on the left side of the bell curve, doomed to dronedom or worse, eternal teaching assistant positions. Departures sharply dipped tuition and alumni donations, threatening the very economy of the University. Zakharov was called to action by his angry regents.

The introduction of learning accelerants had caught University society by surprise. The existence of only limited roles meant competition intensified. Attempts to staunch the flood of embiggened intellects by introducing new positions, new chairs, even new departments only led to organizational confusion and administrative in-fighting. Clearly, the system was running into the problem of involution, seen in late Golden China and past dynasties. As the population of graduates grew, so did the race to fill limited bureaucratic quotas. Stalling growth meant hyper-competition was increasingly fruitless, leading to mass unemployment, youths dropping out entirely from the pursuit of the Chinese dream instead of succumbing to relentless grind culture. A perpetual feedback loop of futility. It seemed here that a similar mass stagnation and hopelessness would be in store without drastic action undertaken.

You have already firmly absorbed the abstract and general parts in your minds, but can you also let the examiner know how you have applied this in practice? If not, you would be studying here not because you have your minds set on the path of morality, but only because of self-interest; this is not what I expect from you. - Datalinks

Zakharov was not greatly perturbed by the social turmoil. The brighter the flame of knowledge, the greater the host of seekers, the better his University would be, in his view. But this crisis caused by hypnopædia had pushed his administrators and faculty to the brink of revolt. Yet he was unwilling to ban a useful tool. Hypnopædiac materials continued to be purchased from MorganDreams. Even as students attacked each other mid-session in attempts to sabotage their competitors, the grand academician declined to rein in its use. He decided what was needed was a new form of hypnopædia to fix the byproducts of Academic Hypnopædia abuse.

The problem was not competition in the college, nor the instrument that fostered it. It was the lack of prosocial behavior. Meritocracy was being subverted through underhanded, malicious behavior. Students were missing the point of the entire examination system. The tests were to filter and sort the academic body into their proper designations, so that efficient research and learning can be accomplished. Malefactors were attempting to fly too close to the sun, when they should be content to glide at a safe distance. One should give a hundred percent and not conspire to break boundaries for the sake of selfish personal advancement. These were core lessons that had been forgotten. To preach these virtues, Zakharov turned back to hypnopædia itself.

Under protest, University librarian Adam Gieseler was tasked by the Provost to create a new hypnopædiac curriculum

Professor Librarian Adam Gieseler, formerly of the United States Library of Congress, prior to that the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Education, was appointed to the Unity mission as a xenoarchaeologist. While the prospect of finding alien civilizations was unknown, his background as academic historian and sociologist deemed him suitable to be a potential latter-day Heinrich Schliemann; his philosophical integrity, not an Erich von Däniken. Drifting between Thân’s Data Services and Zakharov’s scientific corps thanks to his experience managing cross-disciplinary research teams, he had found himself embedded with the latter when the data core was forcibly ejected from the ship, thus sparing him the fate that killed so many of the former.

Gieseler, like those whose specialty was apart from the hard sciences, was a square peg in the University of Planet. Though soft-spoken and with a tendency to venture into otherworldly topics, the University’s neglect for other disciplines rankled him into public activism. He volunteered for student groups dedicated to lobbying for greater care for social science and humanities, leading half a dozen, and became a known critic of the Provost’s biases. Gieseler headlined the Humanitas Universalis campaign, calling for more investment in the cultural life of the faction, arguing that it would produce a salutary effect for the citizenry. While allocation within Psych spending was jealously guarded by program officers and administrators, each grant subject to veto by the jealous hand of Zakharov himself, the regents tossed the starving artists a bone with the formation of a Leisure Studies department. The student productions of Shakespeare, Wharfinger, and Mamet at the parks of Zarya-Sunrise was a nice start, but Gieseler asked for more, believing that the faction’s civic spirit was sorely lacking without direct support from the top.

For his irritating agitation, the xenoarcheologist was demoted from his professorship and assigned to a project to identity and catalog corrupted modules in the Unity Data Core. Other societies wooed him. Secretary of Cultural Life Élodie of the New State sought Gieseler for her Canoneers to assist in the continued study of artifacts her Calliope Squadron had cavalierly acquired from the rest of humanity’s remnants. She promised him a full research team for a great commission to prove her hypothesis linking the prehistoric Indo-European societies into one cohesive civilization. Commissioner Pravin Lal of the Peacekeeping Forces offered Gieseler a directorship at the U.N. Digital Services Agency, bolstering the United Nations on Planet’s abilities to conduct vast censuses and assemble precise statistics for the sake of the betterment of mankind. Controller Sathieu Metrion of the Tomorrow Institute gifted him a state-of-the-art encounter suit to join him in the hunt for the Data Core. And Minister Librarian Gennaro da Gama of the Memory of Earth begged Gieseler to come work on the Cassandra Almanac, explaining that the latter’s priority of remembering the past could only be realized by applying those lessons towards predicting the future to achieve reunification.

Despite these temptations, Gieseler stuck to the University, reluctant to abandon an institution so dedicated to knowledge. Even as he considered Zakharov a latter-day Bronze Age shaman seeking to create a priestly caste of scientific miracle workers to rule over everyone else, he did concede that they were unparalleled in education and matriculation. And his mistrust in Élodie’s - narrow focus, the Peacekeepers’ bureaucratic slowness, Metrion’s quixotic Grail Quest, and da Gama’s willingness to work with techno-superstitious conspiracy theorists, ruled them out. And lo, his tepid loyalty was unexpectedly rewarded by his Provost.

Casting

Adam Gieseler is portrayed by Jason Sudeikis as Andrew McCabe from Tumbledown.

Notes:

The concept of involution in contemporary China is covered in Sixth Tone article “​​How One Obscure Word Captures Urban China’s Unhappiness.”

A very informative and fascinating article about the imperial Chinese civil examination system and the ecosystem of test-taking by Prof. Hilde De Weerdt can be found at the Inference: International Review of Science.

In Outpost, research into Psychology and Humanities improves colonist morale. In Outpost 2, Leisure Studies is the research that leads to the production of Recreation Facilities that improve colony morale.

[Trenacker]

Vengeance is a season. - Iron Law the Mara'Toa, Traditional

Morgan Industries CEO Nwabudike Morgan was identified for capture and rendition in Executive Order 920099, "Justice for the Victims of Extremism and Insurrection." This latter-day blood hunt took the American military around the world and across the inner solar system, leaving thousands dead or maimed in its wake. Accountability for those who had directly facilitated Hypersurvivalism was a potent, albeit controversial, strain in postwar North American politics. The 2056 Conservative Party platform headed by Oscar van de Graaf had justice--not reconconciliation--for its central plank, a distinction that helped fuel its impressive performance at the polls. Other voices, also on the political Right, insisted that avoidance was the best medicine, reasoning that the political cancer had been so widespread, an attempted incision of the offending mass must prove fatal.  Social reformers made common cause, if only because they viewed E.O. 920099 as a bill of attainder incompatible with the Constitution, long suspended and much-missed.

United States Africa Command was particularly active in the search. Commanding officer General Vincent Robichaux had his pick of decorated veterans and surplus military equipment left over from decades of war against the Holnists and their ilk. The Central Intelligence Agency assessed with very high confidence that Morgan had secured refuge in Chad, which entrusted all public services to Yfantís Worldwide, a Morganite consultancy, and huddled under the French North African defensive umbrella. In November 2060, the United States Space Force inserted a Brigade Combat Team into the Lake Chad flooded savanna outside Massakory, where they clashed with elements of the Chadian Presidential Guard and three companies of French Colonial Artillery of the Force d'Intervention. During a nine-hour fight, the attackers advanced successfully on the Hotel Sarif, wrecking much of the city's new Garden District, only to capture a mere consolation prize: Morgan Industries Chief Public Experience Officer, Jayceon Kalloe, who was  released after serving only two years of a life sentence. His freedom was the asking price for use of Morgan Industries' good offices in facilitating the successful release of certain American prisoners from the Soviet Gulag, an exchange many considered to be unequal.


Morgan's disappearance in early 2071 after boarding the Kuiper Shuttle was widely accepted as the work of the American national intelligence services.

Joralemon Hardacre welcomed guests and supplicants in an enlarged vestibule of the nine-million-gallon Grand Tank that had been fitted into the hull of the Chrion Probe. Introduction (some called it invasion) of Terran marine organisms into Chiron's waters was an unqualified success, so long as one agreed that the new planet was merelyso much growth medium for relatively short-term commercial and industrial endeavors.

Sources:
Top picture is "Warzone" on ArtStation by Akkarapon Veeravisan.

Second picture is a still from "Give them back the light, short movie Part II" on ArtStation by Victor Anceaume.

[Trenacker]

Good evening, everyone! I hope the holiday season is treating you all well.

Thanks for a terrific first year of Racing the Darkness. Looking forward to another.

I'll be heading out tomorrow morning to join my family on vacation. You can anticipate a resumption to this story just before the New Year.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed, especially Strategos' Risk; those who have been here from the beginning; and the new readers who have joined us along the way. We had a huge jump in views recently, and I'm very grateful for that engagement. It really motivates me to continue developing and sharing new content.

I have begun a parallel treatment of this same story over on another forum, which you can access here. Most of the content is the same, but I do try occasionally to put exclusive content in one or the other location.

[Trenacker]

The flavor is here. - Digital Billboard on the Garland Road near Morgan A-Tron

Though survivors were never issued the dreaded meal pills teased in the science fiction periodicals of the 1960s, alimentary options on Chiron were nobody's idea of good eating.

Pathfinder experience had confirmed that Chiron's atmosphere and soils were, on the whole, hospitable to Terran crops. Both the Probe and Unity expeditions carried seed banks and stock pens. But food production was problematic in the extreme.

First, the biological feed stock of both expeditions was poor from both the qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Most of the animals brought by the Probe had perished from lack of care at the height of the Red Flu epidemic, insects included. Unity's animals were killed by fire or loss of life support 'ere they made Planetfall. Unity's seed was severely irradiated. According to dosimetry gathered by the Tomorrow Initiative, about 78% of all seed lines had to be written off immediately as unsuitable for consumption. Second, Planet did not have the native insect population necessary to supplement human farming techniques, limiting the hardiness and spread of crops planted in native soil. If a single faction compromised a seed line, as the Believers did when Corn Variant L19 Bravo failed twice due to cold during the short M.Y. 2-3 growing season, it was probably a permanent loss. Third, Planet mounted a vigorous natural immunological reaction to Terran lifeforms. Xenofungal growth increased by rates up to 400% per day on the margins of human settlements and had to be fought back by vigilant work parties to protect the viability of the soils.

Early attempts to safeguard Terran crops often triggered the Crichton effect familiar to anyone who had witnessed the handiwork of the European colonial powers in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Game Warden J.T. Marsh long regretted an attempt to introduce phosphate solubilizing bacteria into the water table at Matilda's Waltz. The Hunters hoped to stimulate nutrient retention in their plants even as fungal roots competed for the same spoils, but their hardier stalks of golden wheat were soon buried by six feet of mucilaginous spores. The fallout accumulated so rapidly that all of the workers on-premises were trapped before they realized the threat. When the air recyclers seized up, the thirty-seven residents suffocated.

Planet did not always win the struggle between native and non-native life forms. Safari ants played havoc on the ecosystems of the Monsoon Jungle and Wet Coast, rapidly annihilating the subrid colonies that thrived in the moisture-laden lowlands. Their reign was so brutally complete that Peacekeeper and Pilgrim ranchers organized to make joint drives three or four times each year to repopulate the crustaceoid spawning beds from their own excess broods once the hungry ants had gone through.

To avoid ecological retaliation, colonies often practiced small-scale hermetic, or greenhouse agriculture, a practice that was labor, space, and energy-intensive. The Lord's Conclave stood firm against Hive spoiling attacks to operate a prominent example of such a station on the northern ridge of Balian's Depression. What Yang learned about Planet's water table through his national sponsors, Miriam deduced through observation. Reasoning that Yang could not have come with his own water, she arranged for a Hunter drilling rig to take soundings until they found the aquifer.

Some factions never grew their own food. Aside from captured meals, Spartans ate irradiated M and R-rations until their faction's final battlefield defeat. Santiago's holdouts were thereafter known to trade with SMACERs their non-perishables for fresh food, but there is no record even of garden farms among those who survived to carry on the legacy of armed self-reliance. Spartans preferred to seize or steal, not to sow.

Those willing to forsake flavor could find their way to a new dispensation. The Hive literally ate their own, casting all organic refuse into great rendering vats from which their scientists extracted a "nutritionally optimal" paste distributed in silvered-foil squeeze packs remade from the weather-proof packaging of Unity survival rations.

Nowhere is the fruitless obsession with comfort better showcased than in the quest for more flavorful food. Why should food have flavor in this era when we already know it is safe to eat? Flavor has outlived its primary function. - Essays on Mind and Matter

Yang left behind hundreds of memos in which he refused to accept the broad unpopularity of his feeding methods. To hear his official position, Paste was necessary not just to overcome shortages, but as a physical rejection of biological determinism. To do only what was necessary and sufficient, but not pleasant, embodied the living that Yang propounded to every one of his hapless minions.

Nwabudike Morgan took great delight in other factions' obsession with efficiency. The Chairman mobilized armies of text-bots to ridicule the misery of life in other factions. Tragically, fugitives from other societies often ended up at the mercy of corporate recruiters who enrolled them into truck systems so unsparing that they received the same ration as Hivemen.

Some factions took turns at ranching the native wildlife or grafting hybrid crops. Led by Deirdre's old lab-mates, the Gaians spent decades bringing forth a melon known as the mercantelope, which wags claimed so resembled the head of Commander Kleisel. The canary yellow pulp oxidized almost as soon as the rind was cut and stank like refuse but was sweet to the taste and reasonably nutritious, with very high water and Vitamins C and D content.

Sources:
Top image is from the May 1960 edition of If magazine.

Second image is from Scientific American.

Third image is from the video game Star Citizen.

[Trenacker]

A student asks: "Is it possible one can be too curious?" Let us remember that even Folgier has been canonized. - Records of the Symposia

Chiron's winters were short and its poles very small, but for a few weeks each year, the surf would freeze and Folger's Floes would pass between the Straights of Tokaj. These icebergs and the slow-growing crystalline spires that thrust up from the heart of them were both named for a doomed explorer of that region--the man whose battle-damaged, storm-tossed foil had been first to spot them both. To make the most of a sour journey, he went ashore with a geologist and a rock hammer. Together, the two men made their final discovery: the new matter was wildly unstable, exploding with the force of two tons of TNT.

In M.Y. 31, the Human Ascendancy announced a practical cure for blood cancers. Their solution: blood-scrubbing (haemodialysis) via a matrix of fungal antigens to promote a more aggressive immunological response. Similar technology was later employed to combat nitrogen narcosis and heat loss during abyssal dives. The rigidity of the diving bell was legendary, as one would expect for a cramped but effective escape pod. Many were recovered intact in the stomachs of surgan whales decades after being lost.

The ram prow had a long and glorious service life with the Spartan Federation. It served them best when fitted to hovercraft, which could reach sustained speeds of more than 209km/h. The Spartans used them to "crack" the stockades that were an inevitable feature of every enemy base. A squadron of ram-equipped Kites made possible the destruction of the settlement at U.N. Catalogues even after the defenders' mobile close-in weapons system (CIWS) countered the Spartans' tube artillery. The rotary cannon exhausted all its remaining ammunition on the first of the seven Kites present that day, creating favorable conditions for a traditional infantry assault.

Variable-yield grenades, complete with biometric safeguards, cut deeply (and, one might presume, fatally) against the fundamentals of mindworm suppression as taught since the beginning of human colonization on Planet. Yet Spartan commanders agreed to a one that merely to be entrusted with a weapon demanding such deliberate and skillful use seemed to imbue event the lowliest sentry with a sense of self such as could face down the utterest nightmare. An M106 shock payload disrupted synaptic activity in the blast zone, rendering both the planetary hive mind and human targets inert. Spartans took glee in crushing juvenile worms so indisposed beneath their boot heels.

Sources:
First image is "Mountain climbing," a 2015 work by Art Station user whinbek.

Second image is "Sci-fi armor" by Robert Navarrete Moreno on Art Station.

Third image is "Snow Flyer" by Scott Robertson on Art Station.

Fourth image is "Sci-fi Grenade" by Dmitriy Gvozdev on Art Station.

[Trenacker]

The difference between compass and computer is no more than a few billion switches. - Building a Lighthouse

Less-celebrated among the the Academician's private projects was the Portable Cognition Unit, an attempt at lab-grown "neuronal matter" designed in cooperation with legacy staff of Johann Anhaldt's Atomic Computing Lab. Awkward questions about the origins of the devices' innards discouraged widespread commercial adoption, foiling Morgan Industries' initial high hopes. (Surplus PCUs were all liquidated to the Children of the Atomic, who used them as benchmarks.) The brains, if very inferior in computational speed or accuracy to electronic processors, showed marked superiority to artificial intelligences in creative tasks and during Turing Tests. They also intrigued their creators by stubbornly repeating some errors despite accepting correction of others, leading to the consensus conclusion that they were exhibiting self-awareness.

The basic essentials for successful travel on Chiron: extended-range UHF antenna to stay in touch with faction security; heavy-duty suspension; at least two spare tyres in case of rupture; sturdy crash bar; enhanced light package; and plenty of armor plating to protect crew. Soft-shelled vehicles were close-to-homers, useful for conducting perimeter safety sweeps or running technicians out to stranded 'Formers. This example wouldn't have been sent into battle without modification, but somebody had the thought. Note the front passenger-side firing port and roof hatch.

After Kalumetra, both the Nauvoo Legion and University Security limped back to their starting lines in disarray. Hive patrols were startled to discover water-fat corpses and vehicles in good working order but for fuel. The retrofitted turret of K-Car A16 was a fearsome menace to under-defended Pilgrim settlements on the Grit Frontier, holing as many as six Impact Rovers in a single afternoon with its 30mm smart cannon. A16's height afforded its gunner good visibility but the car was very prone to tipping despite an independent front suspension. No wonder mechanics disfigured its exterior hull with external winching anchors. Her thirst for gasoline was no problem on a carbon-rich planet.

A16 mounted a camera-operated reconnaissance drone, a boon for the loot-starved Hivemen. The guidance package is mounted at the base of the traversable commander's stack.

Sources:
First picture, "Portable Cognition Unit," and key terminology (PCU, neuronal matter) are the work of Patrick Sutton, lead artist at C77 Entertainment, on ArtStation.

Second picture, "Military buggy" is by 3D artist Gregory Trusov on ArtStation.

The third picture, from "Oversize Military ATV explorations," belongs to Christian Bravery on ArtStation.

[Trenacker]

Here, shed the burden of who and what you once were. Be renewed and remade by God's Eden. - Letter to the Gaians

Chiron quickly reclaimed that which Man did not maintain. Roriton Station, situated only eight hours from Gaian, Tribal, and Data Angel outposts, made an ideal roost for SMACERS selling "protection" and supplies.

To save their concept for a slow-moving patrol hovercraft from early rejection, Cadillac-Gage added a cast-armored pilothouse, sensitive early-warning systems, and a triad of countermeasures both active and passive: an electro-static "skirt" to confuse heat-seeking warheads; three banks of smoke dischargers (officially, Light Vehicle Obscuration Smoke Systems), and a decoy system. All three failed during trials and the project was scrapped, but not before a quick-thinking executive offered their sixteen prototypes to the United Nations.

Marsh took four of the craft to the surface, leaving ten divided between Kleisel Mercator's Chiron Guard and Land Architect Nagao's Liquidator militia. Unhampered by the threat of anti-aircraft missiles, the hovercraft gave excellent service as mobile watch stations and usually accompanied 'Formers or Colony Pods as close escorts.

Mercator made special use of his half-squadron of AVRO-IMVs to police boglands and river deltas made placid but treacherous by unstable xenofungal lillypads. These environments were considered prime targets for water collection and the introduction of Terran wildlife. Few intruders stood their ground when an AVRO disgorged a squad of riflemen.

Uniform of a Pilgrim Regulator militiaman, c. M.Y. 10. It is a stark reminder of how badly off the early colonies were, either because they used century-old surplus or because their level of material culture was so primitive. Much of the kit seen here is at least fire-retardant and lightweight for tropical environments, though none was state-of-the-art. It certainly could have been sturdier, although leather strapping and metal bucklers were easier to reproduce under primitive conditions than nylon and plastic. Arm gaiters were essential to protect bare skin from xenofungal spines.

Attitudes toward service varied by faction and time period. Failure to participate in the colony project was unthinkable to the earliest Unity survivors, and all stood their posts "on the walls." Raids, especially for plunder and slaves, were another matter. Armed struggle was at the heart of what it meant to be Spartan or Kellerite, while paramilitary service was the privilege of both New Stater and Hiveman, but full-hearted pacifists and half-hearted shirkers abounded in (and bedeviled) the Believer, Gaian, University, Atomic, Morganite, Digital Preserver (Tomorrow Institute), and Dreamer factions, leading ultimately to heavy reliance on fanatics or mercenaries. The latter, though widely respected at first for their very high professionalism, were judged harshly in posterity as most found that contract warfare on Chiron was nowhere near as lucrative or sensible as on Earth.

Errata:
Reflagged Nagao's title to Land Architect.

Sources:
Roriton Station picture is Jean-Pascal Mouton's "Remnants of Sci-Fi Locomotives in a Jungle" on ArtStation.

"Avrotank design" is by Maarten Hermans on ArtStation.

Third picture is Toby Burnside's "NCR Trooper (F4NV)" from the Fallout 5 franchise, found on ArtStation.

[Trenacker]

Brevity is the soul of wit and of warfare. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

Deep losses in M.Y. 40 and 42 made it impossible for the Children of the Atom to fully garrison settlements on their frontier with the Ascendancy. The Atomics' top commanders, Colonel-General Brian Ronson and Fieldmonitor Babar de Torre, recommended the faction withdraw to a more defensible line, abandoning key positions astride the River Sarpidon. Programmers fed the same information into one of their mainframes. This was the origin of Planet's first Quick Reaction Force. Launching from deep within friendly territory, Hoppers carried fresh companies of Defenders to relieve beleaguered militia, then returned to central holding positions. Upon learning of the great Atomic victory at Piers's Canticle, CEO Nwabudike Morgan quipped to his board that "Johann Anhaldt could teach us a thing or two about economizing."

[

Comparing the relative population size, resource yield, industrial and military potential, research output, or even youth of each faction was an obsession of all leaders and a permanent source of job security for faction Librarians and Thinkers. The Children of the Atom resolved to make the most of the "advantages of lateness" by basing future decisions on what they had already observed other factions attempt.

This graph compares colonial expansion in the first ten years after Planetfall, showing known ventures by the University of Planet, Human Ascendancy, Dynamic Enterprise, and Lord's Believers. What it does not show is the success rate of those expeditions. Most of Miriam's were costly failures, leading to the death or capture of more than a thousand of her flock. Many ended up Spartan prizes, driving pickaxes and chisels into the face of Mt. Xerxion before it fell.

Unity's flight coordinator, Luftwaffe commander Kleisel Mercator, scrambled seventy Single-Occupancy Repair Craft to evaluate and help seal Unity's wounds, but repeated Spartan attacks forced mission loyalists to evacuate the Flight Deck. Returning "eggs" were then shot up by Holnists as they came in for refueling. None of their courageous pilots survived. Their efforts bought the starship's crew another ninety-six hours to complete evacuation, a sacrifice later acknowledged by an obelisk erected in Watchpoint's Staunton Park Domes.

Sources:
First picture is in "In-A.22 Nikto-ega - Very Fast Stripes" by Eluqqa on DeviantArt.

Second image is from Star Trek: Enterprise via the "Space Warship Design" page on Atomic Rockets.

Third image is by Pierre Mion via the "Spacesuits" page on Atomic Rockets.

[Trenacker]

Chassis: Crawler

Crossing an environment means changing it, but that doesn't mean you have to destroy it beyond healing. - Peregrinations of Planet

Call me old-fashioned, but there is still something about arriving on the battlefield in a tank! - Promotional watchvid, Morgan Military Machines

The U.N. wanted for vehicles, and it could hardly refuse charity, even the backhanded kind. To meet their obligations, donors gave what they could or would no longer use: post-war surplus, items in liquidation after radiological clean-up, and whatever else had been worn out or refused by their own forces. Thus, the greater proportion of Unity's motor pool was tracked.

The survivors' small inheritance of rotary aircraft, experimental hovercraft, and under-powered hoppers might point to a better tomorrow, but for more than two centuries, wheeled or tracked vehicles were the only scalable mobility options accessible to all colonies. Even the New State was forced to keep a significant portion of its operations "sandside" because it could not turn out enough pressure hulls.

Wheeled vehicles were faster, better over rocky ground, and easier to repair and maintain. Because of their greater surface area, however, tracked vehicles could take substantially heavier payloads despite also requiring much larger engines. Early vehicle-scale lasers in particular demanded power supplies to heavy for wheeled transport. Tracked vehicles could also (usually) keep lower profiles becaue tyres were oversized to provide the ground clearance that lent them their off-road advantage. Pilots of unarmed cargo Crawlers and tracked gun platforms crashed with practical impunity through all but the mightiest fungus and brush. They also had better luck on the many saturated and sandy surfaces of Chiron.


To get the most out of their investment of precious vehicle power plants, most factions put even tracked military vehicles to work as tractors when they were not needed in combat.

A short-lived attempt to design a mobile EMP by the U.S.S.R.'s Design Group 12 was conveniently swept under the rug and aboard a Unity cargo bay. Zakharov, who leaked word of the project to the Western press, absorbed the project's staff into his rocket program. The next time he saw the tank was when mechanics coaxed it into the lower garage of a landing pod.

The угорь, or eel, lived two lives, first as an impervious mobile machine gun platform in defense of the Tsiolkovsky Institute, then, with the armatures fully restored, as an experimental electro-static weapon turned against Mindworm boils.​​​​

Tank destroyers were a popular vehicle type on Chiron since the object of warfare was usually to cripple the enemy's forces while leaving their infrastructure intact. This Spartan Companion is powered by rear-mounted cylinders of nuclear fuel and displays hallmarks of Centauri adaptation: a laser warning detection system, rear-mounted countermeasures launchers, and bolt-on fire suppression bottles.

After a decade or two of continuous service, tanks were works of art and artifice as much as they were complex killing machines. This example, serving with the Chironian Guard, is literally held together with bungee cord and duct tape. Exposed wiring shows where techs have added a radio modem and improved imaging as well as early-warning devices. Because the main threat is infantry, there are two turret-mounted weapons stations, both protected by gun-shields. Side-mounted mantlets have been added, and the barrel of at least one of those mounts has been ported.

As a reminder of its "day job," an amber hazard light and external cooler remain mounted during patrol.

The Hunters of Chiron provided mobile power to projects and bases on-demand. Despite his problems with the Pilgrims--in which Marsh was hardly alone--the Warden had many more friends among the other faction leaders than he did enemies since Hunter caravans provided critical labor and emergency response for which other factions simply lacked the equipment and expertise.

Many factions build seasonal outposts that they could operate only with the assistance of Hunter personnel.

Unity Crawlers like this one could be freighted with any of 780 unique mission modules. Marsh paid top price for salvaged examples, knowing he would recoup his investment by only the fourth or fifth engagement. Godwinson, Lal, Anhaldt, Mercator, Zakharov, Cobb, Roze, Aki-Zeta-5, Morgan, St. Germaine, and even Landers were almost always willing to sell. Yang and Skye could not as a result of their isolation. Nagao and Van de Graaf were the consistent exceptions.

In Game Terms:
May cross light or medium xenofungus without penalty.

The Crawler chassis may carry up to 2 mission modules.

Sources:​​
Soviet tank is "Tesla's Tank" by Lennard Claussen on ArtStation.

Second tank is "tank_heavy" by Colie Wertz on ArtStation.

Third tank is "Post-Apocalyptic Tank" by Yakolev Art on ArtStation.

Fourth vehicle is "Arctic Communication Module / Tracked Vehicle Concept" from Alex Advuevsky on ArtStation.