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Siris Habitat
Culture and Society > Technology Levels in Society > Godtech Societies
Galactography > Minor Polities
Sophonts > Modosophonts > Sapient Structures
Galactography > Minor Polities
Sophonts > Modosophonts > Sapient Structures
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Siris Habitat in the current era | |
The Siris Habitat - Data Panel | |
| Definition | subversive peripatetic relativistic fractal habitat / museum-ship |
|---|---|
| Symbol | Wreathed O'Neill habitat against starfield with name 'Siris' written in ancient proto-anglic. |
| Founded | 417 AT (Original O'Neill Habitat) |
| Psyche, Art, Culture | Metapsychology: Nano-based, staunchly immortalist, knowledge preserver. Religion or Ideology: Militant Atheism. Religious faith is considered a form of insanity and treated. Archailects are respected as intellectually superior but not considered 'divine' (see Buddhism, Hinayana). Ideology is reminiscent of TRHN, Cyberia; rather eclectic mix of academic, GPL and others, combined with surprising disdain for virtual reality. Culture and Art: Virtual and low-mass. Nanodesign is a popular artform and Siria has produced some of the more innovative templates. Holography is also popular but virches less so. Language: CACC, Douh, Old Anglic. Daily discourse is done in CACC and Old Anglic is used for ceremonial situations. Douh is generally used for external trade. |
| Territory and Population | Current Territory: None outside Siris Habitat itself. Capital: Siris Habitat itself. Other Important Systems: None Current non-copy Population: approx. 300,000 (Constant immigration and emigration) Population Breakdown: 82% nanocyborg; 7% virtual, 6% vec; 5% other (Mainly Baselines. Genetically Sirians are and remain more or less pure human baselines.) |
| Government and Administration | Government: AI-mediated cyberdemocracy. Administrative divisions: Military, Internal Security, Resource Management, Astrogation, Education, Research. National holidays: 16 per solar year, determined by consensus and varies. Constitution: Siris Habitat Charter v21.4 Legal System: Trial by Peers. No official judicial corps. Legislation is quite loose by O'Neill standards. |
| Economics, Local Infrastructure | Currency: Internal, virtual, cryptographic. Recognized and exchangeable. Major Industries: Nanodesign, tech consulting, information trade, ultratech Compuforming. Note: This polity possesses advanced godtech computer capabilities including several large godtech computronium cores. Major Stargate Plexi: none (permanent microgate datalink to Known Net via Merrion at NoCoZo) Military Expenditures: 15% of GDP (Note that this figure is inflated by inclusion of many multiple-use installations.) |
| Interstellar Trade and Treaty Relations | Interstellar treaty organization participation: NoCoZo Tier II, Amalgamation Containment Initiative, Perseus Arm Defense Organization, Institute of Survival Associate Membership, Encyclopaedia Galactica Institute Associate Membership Exports: Technological data, nanotech templates, photonano drexborging (See SNARE), bodymods, consultation services, ascension services, Data Storage Services, ultratech computronium. Export Partners: Non-Coercive Zone, Keter Domain, Terragen Federation, Technorapture Hypernation, any Imports: Exotic matter, ultratech products, raw elements, non-nanofactured ('natural' or 'original') luxuries. Imports Partners: any |
| Longrunning Interstellar Disputes: | Indiscriminate technological sales have been disapproved by Solar Dominion and Negentropy Zone. Library access policies have been investigated by NoCoZo market authorities for 'unfair trade practices'. |
Extract from Journals of an Interstellar Wanderer Nejeane Bolvait
As the shuttle approached on trajectory designed to get the passengers a good look of their destination, I finally partially understood the desire of these people to tread the new and unknown while simultaneously retaining knowledge and touch of their roots. Ultratech and its use was evident in the halo drive and fractal-matter skin of the habitat itself, but the evidence of maintaining ancient connections equally strong with the habitat logo straight out of Earth's interplanetary age embossed on the smart-matter structure, just outside the docking hangar.
...
The reception is cordial, (obvious) security bots just standing against the wall like armored soldiers of old, waiting with eternal patience. Proper checkup has been already done in corridor via half-dozen different scans my internal systems had detected. They were being thorough, evidenced by the fact that they had used even neutrino-CAT. Surroundings themselves were quite tasteful, melding old-style synthwood and biolume-lighting with sharp diamond windows and bare metal to bring together biological and technological approach. Usually small communities like this go for one extreme or another, but Siris seemed to have maintained a remarkably balanced approach in their culture. The roots of this culture as Cislunar habitants and cyborgs was plain for anyone with eyes to see, though it took long time for me to recall history that ancient....
Location
Siris Habitat is a peripatetic wandering polity in the Outer Volumes. It moves around relativistically, stopping for a few weeks or decades depending on the situation. It is currently cruising around the Perseus Arm, showing an interest in the Amalgamation and anti-Amalgamation forces. As one of the mobile habitats that can reconfigure to pass through wormholes, it has been to many, many places.History
The story of Siris Habitat began with the Siris Foundation in 2386 c.e. (417 AT) when a group of entrepreneurs, including several AIs from Luna university, nanofactured an O'Neill habitat and started to recruit colonists. Given the nature of the times, they used stringent criteria to select these from the population of human baselines available at the time: intelligent individuals with good genetics, willing to learn and work and adopt new technologies, and otherwise compatible on a number of points. The Foundation managed to fill their habitat within 2 years.The Foundation charter was to create a society compatible with widespread and integral nanotech, and to develop new nanotechologies. In the events leading up to the Technocalypse, the foundation realized that Sol system was going to be inhospitable place for beings with their ideology, worldview and technology. So they decided to leave towards Barnard's Star.
The O'Neill cylinder was reconfigured and instead of amat propulsion, He-3 fusion was chosen because it was inexpensive. Siris Habitat was launched in 524 AT, not long before the Technocalypse hit. At a speed of 0.0125c, the journey took 477 years. By the time they reached their goal in 1001 AT, Barnard's Star had already been colonised by the First Federation.
However, given the poor resources available in Barnard's system, Siris decided to move further. The refurbishing of habitat would take time and there was much to do. Given their expertise in nanotech and related business, they managed to do great business in the Barnard's Star system, raising the level of local technology. The technology for nanotech rejuvenation had been perfected during the voyage and helped to buy goodwill despite their dependence and wide usage of nanotech. Still, Siris was kept ready to leave with very little warning.
For the next 600 years Siris Habitat expanded only slightly, creating the daughter habitats Coronis and Crystal Beach. Most of the effort was spent to evolve nanotechnology further. It is generally agreed that it had a large part in developing mature photonanotech. (This is still a traditional source of pride and reason Siris still maintains excellence in photonanotechnology.)Eventually the habitat was completely reconfigured, with a conversion drive system, and became capable of relativistic flight.
The culture of Siris has evolved during the centuries of near-c flight and remained in a form of dynamic stability typical for closed system consciously avoiding stagnation. During this period the habitat has evolved a system for defining new goals which is in use even today and memetic structure supporting constant learning and newness.
During the Version War, Siris Habitat was a minor player on the Standardization side and participated in many stealthed guerrilla actions and operated a smuggling fleet base providing materials to various NoCoZo guerrilla forces. In exchange they got samples of various Solarian and Negentropist systems that had been damaged in combat or specifically hijacked, technology to be reverse-engineered and developed upon. This kind of profiteering activity was widely lauded later in the NoCoZo.
The only AI who has managed to maintain eir identity through all this long history is Black Calliope, who retained eir identity and purpose in a manner compatible with the rest of Siris. E stopped eir rise in the ascension chain due to concerns about loss of individuality and self, and has stood in its place for millennia as a mature entity. Still, there have been increasing signs that Black Calliope might be getting tired of eir current existence. This implies interesting future times for Siris in the ancient Chinese sense.
Aesthetics
Siris is very traditional in its evolution, running fashions in ever-evolving cycles though ancient external appearances are always maintained in parallel. It is the latter form which is intriguing to outsiders, maintaining a perfect external appearance of millennia-dead cislunar culture, deliberately using (for example) slightly unnatural-looking eyes mimicking imperfect implants trying to look like genuine. The original cyborg culture of Siris emphasized the hidden nature of cybernetic augmentations, a trait that is maintained even today. Even local aioids and vecs maintain human-looking avatars or appearances for social intercourse.Library
One of the touchstones of Siris ideology is information and free access to it. It is justly famous for its free-for-all public domain database with fixed non-profit access fees (to cover the storage-media and associated costs), available for anyone. While small when compared to Ken Ferjik or Alexandria, Siris Library maintains quality comparable to those institutions. It focuses mainly on technological data and "hard" sciences.Note that this access doesn't necessarily guarantee comprehension (though translation service is available), especially given situations concerning technical databases. Trying to understand advanced recipes is a popular game for Sirians; some of the simpler ultra-tech that could never have been developed by low-toposophic entities can be (barely) understood, operated and even manufactured (given proper blueprints and/or nanorecipe) with difficulty.
System is operated by Cybrarian, sentient expert-system AI. Cybrarian takes care of the core accesses and at same time monitors monitors usage. Access is confidential there has been no known instances of user identities or accesses leaking. Most of the access is done via Merrion microgate.
Note that liberal library access policies are a minor source of irritation for more controlled regimes like Solar Dominion or Negentropy Alliance.
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Development Notes
Text by Tapio Erola
Initially published on 28 July 2002.
Expanded 17 August 2011
Initially published on 28 July 2002.
Expanded 17 August 2011
