#Tech Evolutionary

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Inside Hyperloop: The $20 Billion Tech Set to Revolutionize Transportation Forever

Tired of traffic, flight delays, and outdated transport systems? The future is gliding closer—literally. Hyperloop, the $20 billion tech marvel, promises to take you from city to city at airline speeds on the ground. It’s quiet, clean, and insanely fast. In this article, we take a deep dive into how this mind-blowing transport system works, what it means for our daily lives, and when we can…

[slimynematode]

THE ELECTRONIC YET PALEOLITHIC GARDEN OF EDEN BEARING FRUIT UNTOUCHED BY OVERGROWN MEGAFAUNA OF FUTURES PAST

[josies-not-suicidal-now]

being so unbelievably attracted to transfemme butches sometimes feels like being one of those orchids that can only be polinated by a single species of hummingbird that is slowly going into extinction because of how impractical that is

[shironezuninja]

I demand closure.

[poon-nropay]

More "Nothing Out Of Ordinary AU" art, but this time we got purely the adults in the '80s! or the "Golden" Age, as I take to call it.

...and also INTRODUCING;

Emma-May Dixon: The Evolutionary, another mad scientist in town. She specialized in mutation, genetic modification, and beast-control tech. Fiddleford's beloved (on-again, off-again) wife, and one of the Spectator's villains (their third divorce argument completely destroyed the downtown area. They will remarry later.)

Bronzemoon and I had so much fun coming up with their details. The lore goes deep and I can't wait to draw them more!

[transmutationisms]

i love when people are Very invested in transhistorically excluding something like astrology or phrenology from the noble and enlightening category of ‘science’ but won’t extend this to things like nutrition and weight science, or evolutionary psychology, or like 90% of tech startups, or anything else with the current imprimatur of academic institutions and state-funded research orgs. the correct answer here is that science is not & never has been morally or intellectually infallible, and has been & still can be used to propagate falsehoods, harm people, & reinforce & justify existing inequities

[pricegotmedickmatized]

welp polar bear!nikolai won the poll (by a landslide, btw, y'all wanna see him in the snow and i can't say i blame you) so here you go, have a polar bear!nikolai hybrid/shifter (idk the difference and at this point i'm too scared to ask sorry) with a fox!reader

polar bear!nikolai who's settled into his form as a hybrid. sometimes the hybrid point half between human and animal can look ill-fitting, even uncomfortable, but you'd swear that hybrids came to be just so Nikolai could be one. the build that's bigger than all other bear hybrids, uncomfortably so for the prey hybrids who spot him, thick muscle and a layer of fat to keep warm in the frigid Siberian winters he frequents for hibernation. the white fur on his jaw at his temples and the backs of his arms even the tops of his shoulders, the dark and steady gaze, the black tipped claws and the thick, sharp row of teeth. he doesn't move as quick as some bear hybrids do, and you count yourself fucking grateful for that, because he's by far the strongest

polar bear!nikolai who borders the bridge between traditional solitary hybrids (some big cats, other bears, etc) and the traditional group based hybrids (birds, wolves, even deer) because he truly likes it both ways. some solitary hybrids are forced to join large groups (Nik once had a pangolin bomb tech) and some pack minded hybrids are forced to solitary lives, and it can wreak absolute and undeniable havoc on their psyche. but not Nikolai. he's happy when he's been at his work, alone for days, not even technically interacting with anyone just by flying his plane or collecting quiet intelligence through dead drops from his network. he's just as happy with the 141 comes along and Soap and Gaz run circles around him for an hour, yipping and barking and wanting to play, and Ghost pretends to be put out that he has to scent the bear, and he and Price butt heads and growl a greeting like the brothers they are, as if they'd been raised on the same teat, and now they mother the same cubs

polar bear!nikolai who's felt a drive to mate, of course, it's an intrinsic evolutionary drive. it's natural, normal, healthy. he's just never thought that it went deeper than 'just instinct' for him. until he he gets an assistant. a fox hybrid, all fire bright red hair and fluffy tail, huge brown eyes, large ears constantly on a swivel, and far too fucking clever and inquisitive for her own goddamn good. he's spanked her before for sticking that cute nose into his business where he didn't want it, and at the time only held back from taking her up on her squirmy, teary-eyed pleas to make her feel better (cunt sopping wet, could smell her slick a mile away and in that tiny room with her it was a fucking bioweapon) by insisting she was too young for him. and that was still true, but maybe that's not a bad thing. maybe they can both get what they want, if he just gives in

polar bear!nikolai who, once decided that he wants a mate, knows immediately it could only ever be her. he doesn't believe in settling or compromising, not for this, he wants something as close to perfect as it can get while still being real, and he honestly wouldn't mind if they fought back just a little. he wants an equal who can challenge him as he grows older and more stubborn and harder to sway. which is exactly what his little vixen offers. he's borne her teasing and flirting and attempts at mating behavior (bringing him her hunts was a good fucking touch, though) with nothing but a rumble of appreciation, a kiss to the top of her head and praise down her ear for her cleverness or cunning, the same way he reacted to her actual work for him (when she earned it, though to be fair, she always ensured that she earned it), and then gone to his den to fist his cock. alone. but not any longer

polar bear!nikolai who calls her into his office, smirking appreciatively as he takes in her newest seductive tactic: a tight skirt barely covering her ass and the thinnest blouse he's ever seen in his life, thin enough to see the dark circles of her nipples, pert and straining for touch. he beckons her closer, watches with pride how her head spins, cunning eyes wide and bright when he yanks her into his lap and ties her hands together behind her back with a necktie. "If you can escape the knot without leaving my lap, you can have my cock as reward." "And if I don't? If I just get up and walk away?" he chuckles, the sound rolling like rock and he drinks in her whimper as he starts pawing her body like he owns it. because he does. (his money pays her bills. his money paid for her clothing, for the roof over her head, for her manicured nails, her italian shoes, everything. he owns her) "Then you will take my cock all the same, but you won't be allowed to cum, naughty vixen." she dangles the tie, hands free, smirking at him victoriously right after he finishes speaking "Give me my prize then."

polar bear!nikolai who's claws rip right through her clothes, leaving her startled and naked in his lap, and still trying to ride his cock through his pants, lust glazing over dark eyes as she starts to burn like a fire in his lap. he has her ride his cock in his chair, ignores the flash of surprise and doubt in her face when she sees it for the first time, and just yanks her down on it, forcing her to take him, growling through gritted teeth, clawing up the expensive arms of his tooled leather chair when it makes her cum, eyes tearing up. he doesn't go easy on her, but fools her into thinking she's the one in charge. lets her bounce on it to her hearts content, purring at her how good his clever fox looks, his perfect little vixen so tight and wet around him, she can cum whenever she wants. and she does, she does, so quick and so hot he begins to doubt if she's ever found real release before. but when she tires, it's his turn

polar bear!nikolai who puts her on her back on his desk when she's fucked out and cockdrunk, pouting because he hasn't cum yet, and he leans down, laughing softly, "You didn't think that I would be content with only a few measly little orgasms? I want my clever vixen to drown in pleasure." she trembles, finally starting to realize that she's been the prey all along, not he, as his heavy hands settle on her waist, gripping tight enough to bruise, cock throbbing as he forces her to take him balls deep, bullying her cervix, flirting heavily with causing her pain even as it gives him nothing but true fucking heaven. "My little wife will cum for me until I decide she has had enough. So lay back and take it as I breed you, won't you clever thing?" she tries to speak and he snaps his hips, making her eyes roll back, making him groan loud enough to rattle the windows in his office. "That's a good little wife. Just lay there and take your breeding, pretty vixen."

[nowimjustastranger]

StCMO Lore | Part 2

I changed Watchdog Ford's motivation for going into the multiverse and I think this narrative is far more fitting, with the added benefit of being angsty as all hell.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Stanford Pines began his obsessive search for a solution soon after, determined to undo what had been done. But Death could not be reversed, nor could it be threatened or bribed. So Stanley Pines remained in Death’s tender embrace and, in his growing desperation, Stanford Pines began to explore other means of getting his brother back.

He left no stone unturned and eventually stumbled across the multiverse theory. A theory which suggests that our universe is not the only one, and that there may be countless other universes existing alongside it, each potentially with its own laws of physics and properties, essentially creating a "multiverse" where our universe is just one part of a much larger cosmic structure.

An idea began to form.

After getting his first PhD in evolutionary biology, Stanford Pines immediately pursued a degree in physics. In the meantime, Fiddleford found a job and bought an apartment near campus so he could look after Ford, who had begun to neglect both his health and hygiene in favor of pouring all his time and attention into turning his idea into reality.

When Stanford graduated early yet again, they moved to Gravity Falls together, where the barrier between Dimensions was weaker, and began to build a portal that could tear a hole between the two. Fiddleford was reluctant, suspecting that Stanford’s intentions were far from innocent or scientific in nature. But Stanford would do it with or without him, so Fiddleford assisted in order to keep him from working himself to death.

Ford also had a side project that he had started working on in college, his premonitions and sensitivity to changes in the universe leading him to experiment with harnessing those frequencies and applying them to his ability to see glimpses of the future in an unconscious state, increasing their strength with an amplifier so he could see into the future whenever and wherever he pleased.

He very nearly rendered himself braindead on multiple occasions.

When Fiddleford found out about Project Prescience, by quite literally walking in on one of Stanford’s tests, he aided Stanford in repurposing a biker helmet in order to implant the amplifier and external neural connectors into the frame. Once activated with a press of a discrete button on the side of the helmet, the system amplified Stanford’s premonitions to visions of future pathways.

Refining the tech takes Stanford and Fiddleford four years, but it’s ready by the time the portal is finished. They test it before Stanford gears up to go through, successfully entering the multiverse in an alternate dimension identical to his own except Gravity Fall was never founded. He stands in the middle of a forest where the Shack would’ve been, using the built-in communication device in his helmet to keep Fiddleford updated.

Stanford returns to his dimension and they shut down the portal, working on a way to shield their dimension from outside forces. Stanford designs a strong spell using unicorn hair to erect a barrier around their dimension, as well as performing a ritual on himself so he can come and go from his dimension as he pleases.

Also, Stanford convinces Fiddleford to build the memory gun by arguing that he could remain anonymous by using it on anyone who discovered his true identity. Unfortunately, Stanford intends to go behind Fiddleford’s back and use it to steal a Stanley from another Dimension. The memory gun still has an addictive quality, but only when it's used on the same person several times, but Stanford usually only has to use it on someone once.

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Meet Mr Sylvain Zyssman, a Tech Expert

Sylvain, from France, is the technical brain behind the Illumination Substack Mastery Boost Dear Subscribers,  As an editor, content curator, and now a founding member of the Illumination Substack Mastery community I started introducing my editor and writer colleagues. It is a great pleasure for me to do so.  My latest one was about David Mokotoff, MD. If you missed it, you can read from this…

[marlynnofmany]

Singing the Return

(A followup to Singing the Approach)

Our ship touched down like usual, with the captain in the cockpit along with a pilot (it was Kavlae’s shift), talking to the locals about where to park. In a slight departure from usual, this landing pad wasn’t anywhere near the ground. It was on top of a cactus-tree-thing that thankfully (very thankfully) didn’t sway in the wind.

I waited in the cargo bay with Zhee. He was a little twitchy, flicking his antenna and shuffling his legs and generally not holding still. I wasn’t about to say anything about it, but I suspected Zhee wasn’t a fan of heights.

Luckily for him, the landing pad was broad enough that he didn’t need to get close to the edge. Unluckily for him, Captain Sunlight had suggested that he be part of the delivery crew today because he’d been there when we met the clients before, and they would be expecting him.

With the amount he was flexing his pinchers, you’d think he was the one the clients had offered to give a tour of their skyscraper cactus city.

As the bay door started to open, Zhee asked me, “Did you check if that belt has a full charge?”

“Yes I did,” I told him, pushing the button on my gravity belt to display a full line of power lights. “And Mimi even looked it over for loose wires or whatever. I’m all set.”

“Good,” Zhee said, angling his torso so that his front half was higher — the Mesmer equivalent of standing up straight. I was continually amused by how much praying mantises resembled centaurs, and how much this particular alien species resembled Earth bugs. This wasn’t the time to bring it up, though.

The door was open all the way now, and there was Captain Sunlight, come to lead the way out. I could see a cluster of many-limbed locals waiting outside in the bright sun. The landing surface looked like it was made of red rocks mined nearby. Hopefully they were stable on top of this cactus-tree. The captain waved us forward: Zhee with the crates on a hoversled and me singing my best approximation of the local greeting song.

I’d practiced it on the way here. It was high-pitched but slow, like a songbird in slow motion. Or, more accurately, like a songbird trying to sing like a whale. This particular culture interacted regularly with their ground-bound evolutionary cousins, who wouldn’t have made it past the first climbing spike on these cactus towers.

The Tree-grabber in front stepped forward, chirping a reply song, then switching to the more recognizable trade language. “Greetings! We are delighted to smell you.” He waved his mousy ears happily, all four arms folded in front of him.

“And we you,” replied Captain Sunlight, whose people actually said that kind of greeting themselves. Her yellow scales were extra bright in this sun. “Would you like to inspect the merchandise?”

They would. Zhee did his part by prying open the crates with his mighty mantis arms — I don’t know why the supplier of these fruits insisted on packaging them this way, but it was good we had him along — and the Tree-grabbers all made a big deal of sniffing the fruits. The antigrav belts in the other crate got sniffed too, though thankfully they didn’t stink.

I could smell the fruits from where I was standing; that sour smell made my eyes water even at a distance. But no one was paying attention to me, busy as they were with signing for the delivery on the tablet that Captain Sunlight held out. Zhee put the lids back on. I wiped my eyes and admired the view. It was a nice scenic desert scrubland out there, with only the other cactus-trees in the way. I could see the entire sprawling city where the Ground-grabbers lived, and just barely make out the buildings on the distant Air-grabber mesa.

“Are you still interested in a tour?” someone asked.

I turned back and smiled without baring teeth. “Yes please!”

The lead Tree-grabber was returning the tablet to Captain Sunlight while the others moved the crates onto their own low-tech wheeled cart. Behind them, a hatch slid open in the red stones of the landing pad. Zhee towed the hoversled back toward our ship as soon as it was empty.

Captain Sunlight looked up at me. “Travel with care,” she said, which was a polite way of urging me not to trip and fall off the cactus.

“I will,” I told her. “And I have my phone if anything comes up.” That covered a lot of ground. We’d already discussed keeping an eye out for possible delivery needs: offworld items that I might tactfully suggest to the locals. They wouldn’t have thought to ask about the antigrav belts if the subject hadn’t come up in conversation the last time we were here.

“Then kindly follow me to the handpath,” said the many-limbed monkey-mouse. Dang, what was his name? I thought. He had a name. It translated as just a sound. Chirp, right, that’s what it was. I knew that. Totally professional over here. I kindly followed Chirp in the direction of the handpath.

Which was over the edge, because of course it was. Metal handrails like the kind I usually saw at swimming pools waited next to the steps. Chirp led the way.

I set the gravity belt to “catch me if I suddenly plunge downward,” and followed.

I like climbing, right? Big fan. I was all over the playground as a kid, and I never really stopped. It’s particularly fun when I get to be “the one who can reach things high up,” or otherwise be appreciated for climbing a tree or a spaceship or what have you. Occasionally I’ll meet someone else who enjoys being above the ground. Most species seem to prefer being on a safe, level surface.

Not these guys. Wow. I was glad that Captain Sunlight had insisted on the gravity belt, because this was intense. The entire city street system were basically ladders on the outside of skyscrapers.

“This handpath is designed with elders and the occasional visitor in mind,” Chirp called up to me. “Artificial steps and platforms placed regularly.” When I looked down, I saw that he was indeed standing on a platform already, which even had a railing around it. There were more ladders on either side, and other platforms that could be reached with the help of metal handholds.

“That’s very considerate,” I said. Other cactus-trees were close enough that I could watch the agile citizens scurry along the surfaces, using only the natural cactus spikes and small branches. Wild. “Do you have any handpaths inside?” I managed to make it sound casual as I stepped down onto the platform with a perfectly normal heart rate. There was a door here that I hadn’t seen from above.

“There are some,” he said. “Mostly for emergencies.”

I had to laugh. “That’s the opposite of where I’m from.”

“Really?” He perked up in curiosity. “How so?”

“We have tall buildings like this that we made,” I said with a wave toward the towering plants. “Nothing on Earth grows this big, but we can build it. And we do all our travel between levels inside, except for emergency escape ladders on the outside.”

“Fascinating!” Chirp said. “I suppose if you make the whole things yourselves, you can make sure the inside is strong enough to support as many rooms as you need.”

“Yeah, definitely,” I agreed, laying a palm against the smooth cactus wall. “These are pretty soft at the core, huh?”

“Oh yes, that’s why the rooms are kept strictly to the outer layer,” Chirp said. “Come in; let me show you.”

He opened the door and I got ready to duck, since it was just under human height, then a rapid succession of shadows passed over us.

Chirp made an irritated click. “Air-grabbers, come to get in the way again!”

I looked, curious to see what they actually looked like. Both the Tree-grabbers and the Ground-grabbers had complained about them last time.

They looked a lot like I expected: bats with skinny arms held close while they flew. Everybody seemed to have six limbs on this planet.

And varying opinions about personal space. The Air-grabbers fluttered around the cactus towers, inspecting anything that caught their interest. They circled people carrying groceries. They poked their heads into open doors, only to get shooed back out. They arrowed in on the spaceship parked above. And they flew past me repeatedly, almost enough of them to run into each other. High-pitched voices floated on the breeze, but none of them addressed us directly.

“Inside,” Chirp said, opening the door. I followed him in. He shut it firmly, leaving the squeaking cloud of bats outside.

The ceiling was a bit low here, but at least this was a proper civilized room, not something carved directly from the wet cactus innards. Multiple desks, counters, and couches made it look like an info center, or some other kind of “just arrived from above” hub. I wondered if there was a lot of travel between cactus cities here. Several locals waited in line.

Then someone else rushed in after us, complaining in her own chittering language, and she pulled up short when she saw the tall alien bent over by the door.

“Hello,” I said.

“My greetings,” she said, edging sideways. “Pardon.” With a quick arm gesture that was probably polite — one to her chest and three outward — she hurried off to stand in line. Everyone else was staring.

I’ve been stared at plenty in my time, so this was only a little awkward. I waved. Small windows that I hadn’t noticed in the walls flickered with passing shadows.

Chirp said, “I apologize for the Air-grabbers. They hardly make a visit pleasant.”

“Is there any way to ask them nicely to leave?” I asked. “I assume you’re tried discussing it with their leaders?”

“Many times.” Chirp looked tired. “They don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, the air is their territory, and it’s our poor luck that we have to breathe it.”

“How rude,” I murmured, not wanting to cast judgement on an alien culture. But my present audience more than agreed.

“Yes, they are very rude,” Chirp said, working up to a proper rant. “Shouting at them does no good, since they just find it funny. Bad weather will make them leave, but that’s a problem for us too, and hardly something we can conjure up on a whim. Though they did seem to dislike the sound of the wind through the observatory when half the windows were left open; that we could probably do on purpose. Not very helpful here, though.”

“What kind of sound was it?” I asked, half an idea forming.

“A very high shriek,” he told me. “Almost too high to hear. The wind did some strange things with those windows.”

“I wonder if you could ward them off with noise,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said, not sounding terribly optimistic. “Like I said, yelling doesn’t help, and that’s loud too.”

Somebody else scrambled through the door, complaining. This guy didn’t even see me, just slamming the door and hurrying forward like he was ready to have words with whoever was in charge here. Maybe he was. More shadows passed over the windows.

“Can I try something?” I asked. “A quick loud noise? I’ll do it outside.”

He looked curious at that. “Go ahead. Just make sure not to startle anyone on the handpaths nearby.”

“Of course,” I said. Then I turned my back on the staring eyes, opened the door, and stepped out to where I could stand up to my full height.

No Tree-grabbers nearby. Perfect. I put two fingers in my mouth and let loose with the most ear-piercing whistle I could muster.

Startled bats changed course in midair, flapping and diving to get away, a cloud of chattering alarm and confusion. Judging by the shadows, some of the ones from above had lifted off as well.

I watched for a moment to see that they kept their distance, then I ducked back inside.

“That seemed to work,” I told Chirp.

Chirp was rubbing his ear. “I’m not surprised. Very loud. How well did it work?”

I waved him outside to take a look for himself. He perked up when he saw how far the Air-grabbers had moved back. “That’s the best result I’ve seen yet! I’m sure some of it might be from the surprise of it all, but even so.”

“You said the wind shriek was almost too high to hear,” I said. “Do you think the Air-grabbers can hear sounds that you can’t quite pick up?” Their ears were bigger, but what did I know?

“Now that,” Chirp said decisively, “Is an idea worth pursuing.”

“So there’s this animal on my planet called a dog,” I said. “And a certain kind of whistle that only they can hear…”

By the time my tour was over, I had a representative of the city very interested in having us deliver some offworld noise-makers that might help them keep the peace.

(The rest of the tour was nice; they had some impressive architecture inside those cactuses, and everyone greeted me politely. I didn’t fall off the side once.)

When I climbed back up the ladder to the landing pad, taking care not to focus on the long drop behind me, I was surprised to find a handful of Air-grabbers perched there in conversation with the captain.

Chirp made a disapproving grunt, but said nothing as we walked over.

“Ah, welcome back!” Captain Sunlight said to me. “It looks like our next visit will involve a delivery of fruit to the other above-ground city in these parts.”

The Air-grabber in front smiled with sharp teeth. “Ours is the best.”

“As you say,” Captain Sunlight agreed politely.

“We will need the items delivered directly to an entrance,” said the Air-grabber. “Not to the high ground. Is that something you can do?”

Chirp muttered something that sounded like “Knew it.”

“I’m sure we can manage that,” Captain Sunlight said. “Our ship has some very stable thrusters, and talented pilots. And, failing that—” She looked at me. “Someone experienced with antigrav belts and high places.”

I chuckled and turned off the safety. “That you do.”

~~~

There's an exciting mini-project coming out next week! Details here!

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 18 - Zinovians

Right, let’s talk another major species! The Zinovians are the other really ‘big’ species in Torchship on the level of the Aquillians, the folks you’ll be dealing with often. They’re not as widespread or numerous as the Aquillians, but they’re a powerful and highly present political force in multiple astrostates, and the shared history they have with humanity have set us on a collision course.

The most important thing to know about the Zinovians is that they got exiled from their own homeworld by the Aquillian Empire about four hundred years prior to the events of the game and scattered across the stars. This has created several very distinct groups of Zinovians to encounter or play as, with sizable cultural, political, and even genetic differences between them. The majority settled in a single state which humanity allied with during their war against the Aquillians; the Zinovians are the reason we caught up to Local Space’s tech level so quickly. 

We promptly paid them back by making peace with the Empire instead of helping them take their homeworld back. They’re still not over it.

Oh, also; all the alien species names in Torchship are exonyms. The Zinovians weren’t originally called that by humans; it’s a (derogatory) descriptive name that emerged after the war to describe the structure of their government by unflatteringly comparing it to the guy whose bureaucratic decisions laid the groundwork for Stalin’s rise to power, and it stuck where the competing approximations of their endonyms failed. As is a general theme with the Zinovians, this is a mutual kind of awful; their name for us is, literally, “The Little Traitors”.

Biology

The Zinovians are another of the local humanoid species, though they’re a little more alien looking than the Aquillians, who could pass for human with a hat on. They’re one of the most diverse species in Local Space; like Humans, they have no taboo on genetic engineering and have used it to adapt themselves to a variety of physical and social environments. But there’s still some commonalities across groups.

Zinovians are cat-people, though this is less ‘cute kittycat girl’ and more ‘oh god, there’s a panther on the loose!’. Think the Puma Sisters from Dominion Tank Police. They have tall tufted ears, retractable claws on their hands and feet for both climbing and hunting, and a lot of subgroups have vestigial tails. They’re descended from apex ambush predators with a similar hunting strategy to leopards, complete with hauling kills up trees, which gradually developed complex social structures in response to changing environmental pressures. 

As the only major sapient species of obligate carnivores in Local Space, their transition to sapience was largely driven by the complex competitive politics of reproductive suppression to avoid overhunting, which gradually shifted toward tool use for reshaping the environment to increase hunting yields. Their version of the agricultural revolution was the invention of the fishing net and nomadic groups settling along coastlines.

That gives us our first trait, the aptly named Ambush Predator Evolutionary Outlier trait. This gives some pretty meaty bonuses to short bursts of physical activity, but means you take Fatigue more quickly in return.

Zinovians have distinct structures of long hair and short fur; their fur and skin share pigmentation, which can make it hard to tell which is which at a glance. The amount, lengths, and colouration of fur has a dizzying degree of variance (with colours mostly clustered in the red/yellow/green range) thanks to their ancestors having some pretty cool camo fur patterns; those largely became solid colours in the transition to sapience, but you get deliberate or accidental genetic throwbacks. 

The claws give you the Built-In Weapons Trait; these are serious business, about as dangerous as walking around with iron daggers on hand at all times. This is connected to the somewhat-muted Zinovian pain response; with sociability being a relatively recent evolutionary development, pain’s signalling function of ‘stop and get help’ is less neurologically developed, meaning that Stiff Upper Lip here represents quite literally feeling less pain.

Finally, Zinovian sexual dimorphism and gender politics are a fascinatingly complex subject. Their crash evolutionary development of sociability has left rather significant holdovers from when their ancestors were highly hierarchical matrilineal fission-fusion societies resembling something between spotted hyena clans and lion prides. The psychological developments are no more present than in humans, of course (though, like in humans, pop science evolutionary psychology does crop up socially), but some of the physiological aspects have stuck around.

So, first off, baseline Zinovian sexual dimorphism is a bit exaggerated compared to humans, with females being larger. This is a bit more than the relatively small differences between human sexes; their evolutionary adaptation trait suggests you can take Efficient Metabolism over Ambush Predator if you want to play the far end of baseliner male dimorphism, more optimised for wandering off to find groups with gaps in the hierarchy than challenging it. This dimorphism has been genetically reduced in some Zinovian groups and exaggerated in others.

The other big thing is that Zinovians have two sets of sex expression, termed ‘major’ and ‘minor’ sexes, which is a holdover from alternative reproductive strategies that developed around the strict hierarchies of their presapient ancestors. Essentially, about 3-5% of Zinovians naturally develop what we might term inverted secondary sexual characteristics, with no way to tell before they hit puberty. Like, naturally occurring transgender hormone balances, sorta kinda. And then you layer socially constructed gender on top of that, and it gets complicated, with different cultures having vastly different answers to the social status of sex expressions, transgender people, etc…

Yeah, it’s an excuse to roll up your sleeves and get on some next-level gender stuff with these cat people. Don’t let it be said we don’t know our audience.

In the Zinovian Sphere

Okay, first off, they don’t call it that. We call it that, because it makes them sound like an evil hegemony. They call themselves the Universal Republic, and call us the Human Star Empire. See? This is a whole thing.

The Zinovian Universal Sphere Republic is the largest political body the Zinovians have and are in many ways the ‘second power’ of Local Space, being the largest unified group after the Star Union in the aftermath of the Aquillian Empire shattering like a pane of glass. Unified is being kind of generous, though; the Zinovian Sphere is more like a loose federation of eight semi-independent ministries which once had specific duties in the unified government, but who have gradually developed into messy mini-states within the larger whole. 

The logos of the Ministries. Resources, Loyalty, Labour, Peace, Space, Life, Sanitation, and Security. Once specialized, all now form mini-governments in their own right, complete with their own militaries.

They symbolize a borehole mine, a watchful eye, a churning vat, an interstellar transmission, a rocket launch, cell division, water purification, and a watchtower.

The Universal Republic began with the ragged survivors of their homeworld’s uprising against the Aquillians being directed to a group of marginally-habitable high-gravity worlds in a star cluster near the Aquillian border with one of their distant rivals, to be used as a buffer state and early warning system. Their founding ideology of hopeful liberation was one of the many victims of starvation, decompression, dehydration, and radiation poisoning that characterised this exodus and the crash terraforming projects that followed.

As a direct result, the Universal Republic adheres to an apocalyptic socialism the Union calls Social Triage; resources must be held in common to be distributed to maximise return. In accordance with ability, disregarding need.  It’s the cold logic of a mass casualty event, applied to entire societies and lingering long after the emergency is over. It’s a relic of the days when a community leader had to stand up in the shelter and tell a thousand people they will only have calories for eight hundred, when neighbouring communities would exchange rosters of their population so unbiased choices could be made as to who gets to live. 

They’re past the days of anyone actually starving, but that, uh, is going to leave a bit of a psychological mark. It’s the reason why their government can be eight Ministries in a trenchcoat and yet survive; for all their squabbling, the Ministries are dedicated with absolute zeal to not rocking the boat too much, in case it means somebody somewhere doesn’t get fed, and are equally dedicated to the dream of one day getting Lost Homeworld back and making the fucking elves pay for it.

Republican Zinovians are divided into three Identities for gameplay purposes. The first two represent the civilian population of the Republic, and share a bunch of interesting Traits. You get Heavyworlder, because the 12 worlds the Zinovians were forced to settle on were largely hovering around 1g. You get Radiation Hardened (Lesser type, with Radiation Absorbing Structures) and/or Built-In Armour, which represents the subdermal steel plates which are affected by most of the population; these plates are largely cultural now, but at one time these were there to keep major bones from absorbing too much radiation on worlds with marginal magnetic fields. You’re encouraged to take Psychrophile/Thermophile, or any other trait which reflects the harsh nature of whichever world you ended up on.

You also lose some traits. In the Republic, genetic engineering efforts have at times been directed to reducing sexual dimorphism as part of various (largely unsuccessful) efforts to combat matriarchal social structures. Republican citizens also get their claws removed as a public health and safety measure at a young age; this is largely seen as a kind of sad-but-necessary reality of modernity, and a lot of defectors to the Star Union go get them regrown or have mechanical replacements installed.

The first of the identities is the Citizens; these are the regular people of the Republic, the politically disenfranchised common folk with no overt loyalties to any one Ministry. As with all the major powers in Local Space, the Republic is dealing with an overabundance of labour; in the Republic this manifests as waiting. You don’t want for anything vital, the local Ministries work together to ensure you have food, shelter, education, and distraction, but what you’re issued is what you get, and what you’re issued is decided by a bureaucrat somewhere. If you want more, you sign up for a waiting list for job openings in the Ministries, and you wait.

Which is why there’s a wild black market among the common citizens, hence a recommendation for the Entrepreneur trait. Polyglot represents how these colonies were haphazard multicultural endeavours which maintain enclaves carrying on the traditions of Lost Homeworld, and War Veteran represents how the only widespread employment available to common citizens was the recruitment drive during the war.

The second group are the Ministry Families. The Ministries operate as densely entangled networks of nepotistic family groups, with entire departments run by extended clans. The definition of ‘family’ is pretty loose; Zinovian norms about adoption are extremely flexible. Ministry families live marginally better lives than the regular Citizens in material terms, but do so under constant scrutiny and the intense expectations of their families, creating an intense political thunderdome of inter- and intra-family competition.

This gets so serious that it's reflected in the main Ministry trait, Augment. If you’re a ministry couple expecting a kid, it’s not uncommon for the clan matriarch to drop by and talk about the job they have lined up for them when they grow up, so wouldn’t it be a good idea to make sure they’re well-suited for the role? This dovetails well with just about any other trait; you’re encouraged to think about what you were destined for and how your family tried to achieve that.

The final recommended trait is Foreign Connections, a Trait which gives you both friends and enemies in another state. Maybe those friends are family who still have your back… or maybe they’re the department you betrayed your family to in order to smuggle yourself out of the Sphere.

A fun detail about the Republic is that they’re intensely maltheistic; organised religion was one of the main tools of the Aquillian occupation, and a lot of them were very devout people. Given the subsequent traumatic Everything, the natural cultural conclusion was that their gods had sold them out to the occupiers, and when Lost Homeworld is taken back they’re going to make a point to lock their deities inside the temples and light a match. In the meantime, they practise with effigies. Their kids make them out of paper mache. It’s great fun for the whole family.

There’s one last Identity within the Republic, and they’re very different from the other two. The Republican Marines are a cultural group inside the state descended from a seafaring culture who had been given a position as warrior nobility under the Aquillian hierarchy; the uprising largely kicked off because they got sick of getting increasingly sidelined for foreign mercenaries and defected to the rebels. The Marines are essentially a separate nation bound by treaty to the Republic to serve as an apolitical military arm; though in theory they’re all soldiers, in practice the majority of them work the logistics that allow a small handful of them to be the scariest power-armoured infantrymen in the history of the galaxy.

Seriously. The main narrative purpose of Zinovian Marines is to act as a thing the GM can put in a scene to say to the players “nope, you need to talk your way out of this one, because you aren’t winning this fight”. They have rotary chainguns with sufficient armour penetration to shoot up your reactor from the top deck of your spacecraft, and their armour has articulating ERA shields that double as deck-clearing fragmentation mines. Your redshirts going up against them is going to look like that sick Astartes animation on youtube. Just don’t.

Marines get to keep their claws, and obviously get recommended the War Veteran trait. It’s also noted that you are extremely visually distinct and it's impossible to hide it; Marines get elaborate facial tattoos and piercings specifically so they cannot shirk their duties to the Republic and try to become a civilian. 

In the CNFT

The Zinovian Marines are one offshoot of the seafaring warrior culture, one that ended up in the Republic. But a lot of them ended up elsewhere, either through surrendering to Aquillian forces during the war and being repurposed, or fleeing reprisals. Like most refugees in Local Space before the Star Union became a thing, those people ended up in the CNFT, alongside some other Zinovians who quickly became culturally integrated.

So what do a bunch of soldiers do when they arrive somewhere with combat experience but no money? They offered their services as mercenaries within the cutthroat anarcho-capitalist nightmare of the Territories, and they were good at it.

The modern SEA-WARRIORS OF ZINOVIA! are what happens when an entire culture’s financial security depends on being able to sell themselves as the best mercenaries in the entire galaxy, playing up their foreign heritage and biological quirks as an intergenerational advertising scheme. According to the marketing, the Sea-Warriors are a barely-civilised society of bloodthirsty warrior women whose rigid codes of honour demand they seek out war and conquest, and they can be yours for the low low price of $29.99! They wear the furs of exotic animals and get cool tattoos and carry four-foot long cultasses around in public and pick fights in bars with the hope of getting cool scars. Where the Republicans downplayed their sexual dimorphism with genetic engineering, the Sea-Warriors exaggerated it (mostly in that the ladies got even taller). They even gene-modded their tails back in and made them fuzzier to look more animalistic.

And it worked. Every politician has a Zinovian bodyguard, every criminal kingpin has Zinovian enforcers, and when you turn on the TV you’ll see Zinovian athletes playing full-contact sports, chasing perps in cop shows, and selling gene-therapy treatments at the commercial break. The CNFT’s image of physical prowess is a six-foot-five cat woman with tattooed abs and a massive machete leading a platoon in the conflict zone of the week.

The thing is… it’s not entirely an act. It started as one, sure, and the ones pushing the envelope will wink and nod and admit to exaggerating, but a culture can’t perform a persona this long without becoming true believers. Yes, they put the furs and swords away and fight in power armour under a swarm of autonomous drones like everyone else when it comes down to it, their mercenary corporations have slick PR operations and genetic modification programs and R&D departments, there’s Zinovians in suits negotiating with the government over protection contracts, but at the end of the day this still is a culture growing up with a self-image that the coolest thing they can possibly be is a barbarian warlord with a laser pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.

The first recommended Trait from all this is Augment, because you don’t keep your edge in a market like this without a bit of help. Imposing reflects the brand, obviously, and you still have your Built-In Weapons (getting declawed is seen as a fate worse than death). You have the fun Cultural Tool trait to represent the exaggerated cutlasses that your honour demands you carry in public, and War Veteran is an obvious pick for a culture where the Territorial Army and then subsequent mercenary work is the only real career path for most. 

Finally, you’re encouraged to take Redundant Vitals, because a lot of Sea Warriors opt into a series of genetic and surgical procedures to duplicate a few of their vital organs, just in case. It makes getting life insurance so much cheaper that it’s always worth it. 

The Greater Diaspora

The final set of identities is a bit of a catch-all for everyone else, and is more a high-level summary than the detailed Trait lists for other identities by its nature. There’s a ton of Zinovians living spread out in Local Space; descendents of refugees, migrant workers, and ancient settler projects. Like with the Aquillians (or the human wildcat colonies), it's an excuse to take the basic archetype and make it your own. One part of this characterisation is the fact that the Universal Republic wants very badly to use this diaspora as an arm of state power, and its various Ministries attempt to do so, with various levels of influence and success. There’s also a fair number integrated into the Star Union, many of them advisors who came over during the war and decided they liked it better.

Finally, there’s a note that the Zinovian Sphere is, well, not just a Universal Republic in name; they actually do have a number of alien species among their ranks as well, who will be culturally integrated at various levels using the above Identities. There’s a fair number of humans who have jumped ship to the Universal Republic in the same way, mostly people who think the Star Union is too pacifist or forgiving for its own good, or advisors horrified by the voters back home leaving their allies in the lurch. Said humans are largely integrating into Ministry families at this point.

[artbyblastweave]

When did Luthor shift between his 80s Corrupt Amoral Business guy to his more modern Tech-Genius-Supersuit-Amoral-Business-Guy persona?

I'm not actually entirely sure. I'm not even entirely sure that this has decisively happened or finished happening. I remember that when I first watched BvS, the silicon valley whiz-kid take on his character felt novel- it felt, to teenaged me, like the same kind of idiom update for the present day as when Byrne turned him into a corrupt businessman in the first place. But I didn't have my finger on the pulse of his 2012-2015 characterization in mainline comics because that was the height of New-52 induced editorial flailing and I'd kind of given up actively following anything they were doing, so for all I know they'd been tinkering with that direction for a minute. I think that My Adventures With Superman shows that that particular direction for the character is a recognizable thing now, a version of his characterization that they can deploy without fan outcry.

I think that you can maybe point to the "President Lex" era, the stuff that was going on in 52 where he was playing the cool respectable philanthropist (before murdering all those people) as a plausible evolutionary link between the two stages. And dogging the whole thing are the versions of Lex's character from the 40s through the 60s where he was just an insane mad scientist totally on the outs from polite society, no corporate enterprise to speak of whatsoever even when he was personally moving and shaking with the supervillianously accrued resources of a small nation. No fleshed out depiction of the guy that I've seen has ever totally abandoned all of the elements from the other, somewhat mutually exclusive depictions; even My Adventures With Superman, the second big take on the Eisenberg style for the character, is doing the wink-and-nod to his silver-age origin as a one-time respectable boy genius whose jealousy of Superman/hair loss ultimately drove him insane. I'm not sure there's a straight line to draw.

[self-loving-vampire]

the ideological leaders of the transhumanist movement are generally eugenicists or soft eugenicists. you can define "true" transhumanism however you like, but the loudest voices and major historical precedents are all tied to eugenic beliefs. this is embodied inherently in the term "transhumanism". if we hold the transcendance of human limitations as an instrumental value, that neccesarily implies some hierarchy of ranking people by ability that is seen as desireable. imo transhumanism in this form rather than decentering the human enshrines the worst aspects of it. for these reasons i prefer "posthumanism" and think people who identify with transhumanist as a label should reconsider if they don't already agree with that stuff

Eugenics doesn't even make sense as a vehicle for transhumanism if you know the first thing about evolutionary biology, not to mention that it doesn't align with transhumanist values. Even if you somehow got it to work it would take ages, would not help you individually, and would not enable most people to do body modifications.

Even in a best case scenario where you mainstreamed consensual genetic modifications of fetuses so no one gets clinical depression anymore or something rather than doing what most people usually associate with the word that would still leave already-living transhumanists out.

The closest thing to actual transhumanism would be medicine in general, especially given that the top human limitation that people want to overcome is aging.

The second closest thing would be radical and consensual body modifications such as transition.

Not to mention the fact that conservatives, TERFs, neo-nazis, and etc. use transhumanism as a sort of bogeyman that shows up in their conspiracy theories.

That's Jennifer Bilek citing a neo-nazi as a source on how trans people are part of a jewish transhumanist plot. Bilek's ideas are laundered and mainstreamed into TERF worldviews, being referenced by many high-profile radfems like Julie Bindel, Helen Joyce, LGB Alliance, Allison Bailey, Sheila Jeffreys, and Transgender Trend.

Obviously not all reactionaries think the same (and neither do all transhumanists) but it doesn't look as if transhumanism has anything close to mainstream acceptance among them. In fact, anti-transhumanism stems from a lot of the same bioessentialist impulses appeals to nature that motivate transphobia.

Furthermore I think you may be mistaking "rich and famous people" for "ideological leaders". As if the anarchist catgirls are loyal disciples of Peter "Trump 2024" Thiel or something.

When you think about transhumanism the first thing to come to mind probably should not even be rich normie cis men in suits who want to control other people's bodies. They're generally not the ones actually embodying or even advocating for these values and rights. You would unironically get more transhumanist thought out of Touhou.

It's not even a "you can define transhumanism however you want" thing. That's a term that actually has a definition that is not even difficult to grasp.

Some of us don't want to be human or subject to all the horrible things that come with human forms. Some of us don't want people to get sick and die and reject bioconservative arguments that "nature knows best" or that modifying your body is automatically bad.

The central idea is that you have a body that belongs to you that you should be able to customize to your liking even in ways that are not "natural" or "normal". Arguably all kinds of assistive technology, and even things like clothing and cooking, are transhumanist tech. We are not born wearing shoes after all.

[eightyonekilograms]

I went to the Apple Store yesterday to try the scripted demo of their VR headset. My overall impression is that it's the best possible execution of what might be a fundamentally flawed idea.

The passthrough video is pretty incredible. It's somewhat dimmer than reality, and the color accuracy is just OK, but it's more than good enough to feel like you're looking through clear displays at the real world. I'm told the passthrough on the Quest 3 is even better, but haven't tried that and can't comment. One thing is that there is a weird motion blur effect when you turn your head, I'm not sure if that's a display tech limitation or introduced deliberately by the software as a workaround for a different display tech limitation.

The resolution is 4K per eye, which, as mentioned, is more than enough for a powerful sense of presence in the real world. One of the nifty bits of the demo was when you turn the dial to tune out the world and suddenly you're sitting by a mountain lake, and the feeling of actually being there is overwhelming. The dystopian implications of needing a VR headset to sit at a mountain lake aside, it would be cool to have one just to have your office be anywhere you can imagine. Not $3500-before-tax cool, but cool.

Wow sports leagues are going to love this thing. I don't give a shit about sports and even I was thinking, "If the NBA put a stereoscopic camera courtside and sold you games for $50 a pop, I'd absolutely buy that"

But 4K per eye is not enough to do work, not even close. The experience of using normal computer-y applications on this was not unlike plugging your laptop in to a TV that's at the normal TV distance. You can do it, it works, but it's not anyone's preferred way of working. Text is amazingly legible, but only at sizes that are equivalent to having a single webpage take up your entire 4K monitor at normal monitor distance.

It is not particularly comfortable. Part of this might be that the store demo makes you use the "catcher's mitt" strap, which only goes around the back of your head and so gravity has to be countered only by the pressure of the thing against your face. Reviewers have said that if you use the other band that goes over your head the situation is better, but still.

A lot of early comments were making fun of Apple for having the battery be an external thing you put in your pocket and attach with a wire, but I think that's just fine: we all walk around with giant batteries in our pockets anyway, and anything you can do to have less weight on your head is a Good Thing. But then Apple took all those weight savings and spent them on making the stupid thing out of metal and glass instead of polycarbonate. It's nuts! It's like if you made a car that was 500kg lighter because you invented magical tech for keeping the engine somewhere else, and then went "great! with all the weight savings now we can build the body out of lead". Apple, you don't need to fear plastic. Plastic is good! Plastic built modern civilization.

You control it with a combination of eye tracking and pinch gestures. This is the main piece of evidence of my "best version of a bad idea" thesis: it works really, really well; so well that I can tell this is probably an evolutionary dead end. It's just fine— miraculous, even— for dragging windows around and doing the basic stuff the in-store demo has you do. It's amazing that you can more or less have your hands anywhere, including on your lap, and the recognition works perfectly (by contrast with the HoloLens I tried 5 or so years ago where the gesture recognition was total crap). But it's immediately obvious that you can never do serious manipulation of your computing environment with this.

The takeaway is that it's incredible for passive consumption of specifically-made media, assuming that ever exists at scale. But it will be a long time before we're gogged in like Hiro Protagonist to do our office jobs this way.

[the-catch-center]

SPATIOTEMPORAL CATCH CENTER (SCC) DOSSIER: INTERCEPTION REPORT 77-Ω4-Δ13

SUBJECT FILE: Temporal Deviant Class-IX (Unauthorized Identity Ascension & Market Path Manipulation) INTERCEPT ID: TD-922-5x | CODE NAME: “Cicada Orchid” APPREHENSION STATUS: Successful Temporal Arrest, Mid-Jump Interception REASSIGNMENT PHASE: Stage 3 Conversion Complete — FULL IDENTITY LOCK DATE OF INTERCEPTION: March 2nd, 2025 (Gregorian), during Transition Protocol Execution to 2076 FORCED TEMPORAL REINTEGRATION DATE: June 17th, 1956

I. ORIGINAL IDENTITY – [PRIME SELF]

Full Name (Original, Earth-2025 Reality): Landon Creed Marlowe Chronological Age at Apprehension: 29 years Nationality: Neo-Continental (Post-Treaty North America) Biological Condition: Augmented Homo Sapiens – Class 2 Physical Stats at Intercept:

Height: 6’4”

Weight: 243 lbs

Body Fat: 2.1%

Neural Rewiring Index: 87%

Emotional Dampening Threshold: Fully Suppressed

Verbal Influence Score: 97/100 (Simulated Charisma Layer active)

Psychological Profile: Landon Marlowe was a prototype of hypercapitalist self-creation. Having abandoned all conventional morality by age 17, he immersed himself in data markets, psycho-linguistic mimicry, and somatic enhancement routines. A hybrid of postmodern narcissism and cybernetic ambition, he believed history should be rewritten not through war, but through wealth recursion—self-generating economic monopolies that spanned both physical and meta-market layers. By 2025, Marlowe had begun the Vaultframe Project: a forbidden consciousness routing protocol allowing a subject to leap across timelines and self-modify to fit ideal environmental conditions.

He had already initiated Stage 1 of the Phase Ascension:

Target Year: 2076 Final Form Name: Cael Axiom Dominion

II. TARGET FORM – [PROHIBITED FUTURE IDENTITY]

Designated Name: Cael Axiom Dominion Temporal Anchor Year: 2076–2120 (Planned) Occupation/Status: Centralized Financial Apex Authority (Unofficial title: “God of the Grid”) Intended Specifications:

Height: 6’8”

Skin: Synthetic/Epidermech Weave (Reflective, Gleaming Finish)

Mind: Hybridized Neuro-Organic Substrate, 3-layered Consciousness Stack

Vision: Perfect (Microscopic + Ultraviolet Layer)

Muscle: Fully Synthetic Carbon-Tension Architecture

Voice: Dynamically Modeled for Maximum Compliance Induction

Personality: Pure calculated utility — no empathy, full response modulation

Psychological Construction: Modeled on a fusion of 21st-century crypto barons, colonial magnates, and AI-governance ethic loopholes. His projected behavior matrix would’ve allowed him to overwrite traditional economic cycles, insert himself into every transaction on the New Continental Grid, and displace global markets into dependence loops. He would have achieved Immortality via Economic Indispensability by 2085.

[OPERATOR'S NOTE – TECHNICIAN LYDIA VOLSTROM, FILE LEAD]

"He thought he was the evolutionary end of capital. We've seen dozens like him — grim-faced tech prophets dreaming of godhood, all forged in the same factory-line delusion that intelligence and optimization should rewrite morality. His 'Cael Dominion' persona was practically masturbatory — gleaming muscle, perfect diction, deathless control. The problem with arrogance across time is that we always arrive faster. We waited at his jumpgate exit vector like hounds in a vineyard. Now he will die quietly, shelving dusty books in wool slacks while children giggle at his shoes."

III. REWRITTEN FORM – [REASSIGNED TIMELINE IDENTITY]

Permanent Designation (1956 Reality): Harlan Joseph Whittemore Date of Birth (Backwritten): March 19th, 1885 Current Age: 71 years (Biological and Perceived) Location: Greystone Hollow, Indiana – Population 812 Occupation: Head Librarian, Greystone Municipal Library Known As: “Old Mr. Whittemore” / “Library Santa” / “Harlan the Historian”

Biological Recomposition Report:

Height: 6’2” (slightly stooped)

Weight: 224 lbs

Body Type: Large-framed, soft-muscled, slightly arthritic

Beard: Full, white, flowing to chest length — maintained with gentle cedar oil

Hair: Long, silver-white, brushed back, unkempt at the sides

Skin: Tanned, deeply lined, blotched by sun exposure and age

Eyebrows: Dense, low, expressive

Feet: Size 28EE – institutionally branded biometrics for deviant tracking

Shoes: Custom brown orthotic leather shoes with stretch bulging

Hands: Broad, aged, veined, arthritic knuckles

Glasses: Oversized horn-rimmed, 1950s prescription style

Wardrobe:

High-waisted wool trousers (charcoal gray)

Thick brown suspenders

Faded plaid flannel shirt, tucked in neatly

Scuffed leather shoes (notable bulge around toes due to foot size)

IV. MENTAL & SOCIETAL RE-IMPRINT

Primary Personality Traits (Post-Warp):

Kind-hearted, emotionally patient

Gentle-voiced, soft-spoken, slightly slow in speech

Deeply enjoys classical literature, gardening, and children’s laughter

Feels “he’s always been this way”

Occasionally hums jazz under his breath while shelving books

Writes slow, thoughtful letters to estranged family (fabricated)

Routine:

Opens library at 8AM sharp

Catalogues local donations

Reads to children every Wednesday

Tends a small rose garden behind the building

Engages in local history discussions with town elders

Walks home slowly with a leather satchel and a cane

[OPERATOR’S NOTE – FIELD ADJUSTER INGRID PAZE]

"Watching Marlowe become Harlan was like watching a lion remember it's a housecat. I’ve never seen a posture break so beautifully. He twitched at first — his back still tried to square itself like the predator he was. But the warp wore him down. The spine bent. The voice thickened. By the time his hands were fumbling the spines of leather-bound encyclopedias, he was gone. I almost felt bad when the first child ran up and said, ‘Santa?’ He smiled. Like it made sense. Like it was the right name."

V. DEATH RECORD

Date of Death: October 21, 1961 Cause: Heart failure while trimming rose bushes behind Greystone Library

He was buried in a town he never technically existed in, beside a wife who never lived. His obituary described him as “a man of kindness, wisdom, and humility — who asked for nothing and gave more than most ever know.” No one will remember that he once sought to become Cael Axiom Dominion.

[FINAL NOTE – SENIOR INTERCEPTOR V. CALDER]

"Marlowe played the long game, but his crime was arrogance. You can stack capital, sculpt the body, and forge a god’s name — but time always wins. He wanted to be immortal. Now he’ll live only in the margins of children’s drawings, mistaken for Santa, fading like a dog-eared library card. Perfect."

[danbensen]

I’m trying something new here, which is to write off the cuff, with little editing, and press the “post” button without much thought. I’m doing so because this is the first spare moment I’ve had to respond to 

Bassoe’s response to my review of C.M. Kosemen’s soon-to-be published book All Tomorrows, and I don't want to let this interesting conversation wither on the vine.

If you had trouble following that last sentence, it’s enough that you know this: we’re talking about the evolutionary future of humanity.

The Machine-God Scenario

Bassoe talks about “machine-gods...obsessed with tending to the well-being of an inferior species” where “the only remaining selection pressure is desire to reproduce.”

Another selective pressure would be to make ourselves adorable to the machine-gods. Perhaps the gods have a template for what they consider to be human, in which case we'll only be able to evolve in ways that don't deviate from that template. I'm reminded of a Stephen Baxter story (Mayflower II) in which humans on a generation ship turn into sub-sapient animals, but they still press buttons on the control panel because that behavior is rewarded by the ship's AI.

The Super-Tech Scenario

But I agree that even without a super-tech future where all our material needs are met, the availability of contraception means that there's a selective advantage to people who don't use contraception. There are many ways for evolution to make that happen. An instinctive desire for babies or an instinctive aversion to contraception are two such ways. I remember a Zach Weinersmith cartoon where he jokes about future humans with horns on their penises that poke holes in condoms, but of course any such physical adaptation won't be able to keep up with technological innovation. We will have to *want* babies.

Another option is (ala Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos) that future humans aren't smart enough to use contraception.

The Artificial Womb Scenario

In this case, I think the most selected-for humans are the ones that are most efficiently produced by the artificial wombs. Maybe it's easier to pump out limbless grubs, which are fitted with cyborg arms (see John C. Wright's Myrmidons in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence). The form they take will depend on the parameters of the machines' programming. (see also Vanga-Vangog's The Endpoint)

The Collapse Scenario

I think this scenario is unlikely. If "life, uh, finds a way," then intelligence finds even more ways. When one resource runs out, we find another. The mere fact that you don’t know what the next resource is just means we haven’t found it yet.

But say for the sake of argument that there's a hard limit to technological progress (ala Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky) or science really is like mining, and it takes infinitely increasing resources to make the next marginal gain in technology. In both cases, you'd expect the graph of human advancement to look like a population when it hits carrying capacity. Exponential growth (we're doing that now) followed by a cycle of die-offs and re-growths, converging to a horizontal mean.

With no ability to innovate, natural selection would take over from technological progress. Once we’ve eaten all the meat and potatoes, there will be strong selection for people who can digest grass. I would expect humans in this case to diversify until our descendants occupy nearly every niche, absorbing most of the matter and energy available on Earth (at least). Whether these people are intelligent or not...probably not. @simon-roy seems to be hinting in this direction with his masterful comic series Men of Earth.

But I don't actually think collapse is likely. I bet that our population (and technological advancement) will not hit an asymptote, but will instead as progress according to a power law, as with the bacteria in Lenski's Long-Term Evolution Experiment.

The Mogul Scenario

Bessoe asks about a future in which “our cultural norms stick around indefinitely, those who generate more profit reproduce,” which I very much doubt.

In 20th century America, the more money you made, the fewer children you had. Now, it seems there's a saddle-shaped distribution, with the very poorest and the very richest women having the most children per woman. This is sure to change again, and faster than evolution can keep up. Perhaps you could say that if contraception pushes us to evolve an instinctive desire to have more children, and rich or powerful people will be in positions to gratify these instincts, then whatever traits make someone rich and powerful will be selected for.

Maybe, but now's a good time to go back to the Reich Lab's "Pervasive findings of directional selection," summarized here by the illustrious Razib Khan.

In comparing ancient to modern DNA, the Reich Lab found evidence for selective pressure in humans in Europe since the end of the Ice Age: increased intelligence, increased height, decreased organ fat, increased walking speed, decreased susceptibility to schizophrenia, increased immunity to many diseases, and, funnily, increased tendency to home-ownership and university education.

Obviously people weren't going to college in the Chalkolithic, but whatever traits make someone likely to go to college now have been selected for since the arrival of agriculture in Europe. You can paint a plausible picture of the sort of people who were most reproductively successful in the past six thousand years, and there is even some evidence for selection in the range of 1-2 thousand years. Aside from obvious things like immunity to smallpox and Bubonic plague, Europeans have gotten paler and blonder, and more of us are able to digest lactose than in Roman times.

But the 21st century is very different from the 1st, which in turn was very different from the pre-agricultural -70th. Maybe you can say that being smart, strong, and disease resistant have always been good, and being tall and baby-faced gets you some sexual selection (almost everyone seems to have evolved shorter jaws and lost their robust brow-ridges in parallel). So we can imagine future humans who just all look gorgeous.

read on (and see the pictures)