BY LETTER
9999 AT to Present: Current Era
 Image from Bernd Helfert Worldtree Nightcafe |
The Current Era is one in which there has never been such stability at home and yet, paradoxically, such instability. The old Inner Sphere archailects still rule over all as Olympian deities, reigning over countless different races and clades. But some of the sophonts of the Inner Sphere are worried that in the process of reorganizing and assimilating larger stretches of newly claimed space, and coming to terms with an increasing number of new emerging Archailects, Ascends, and Transcends in the Outer Volumes and along the Periphery, the Sephirotic archailects may reorganize things and do some fancy ascensions or transcensions that might just absorb ordinary sophonts as a side-effect. Most believe that they wouldn't do any such thing, but they certainly could if they wished to.
Beyond the populous core of billions of worlds and habitats that have been settled for centuries and millennia, the prosperous polities, mighty capitals, and major wormhole links that constitute the Inner Sphere and Middle Regions are the seemingly endless stretches of the Outer Volumes, extending five, six and seven thousand light years and more in every direction.
 Image from Steve Bowers |
Extending through the more Sol-ward regions of the Outer Volumes in a somewhat radial manner, the various empires and federations have expanded creating a fairly regular region (with lots of local inconsistencies, enclaves and misplaced volumes). Outside this is the chaotic rim where other empires, civilizations and lone cultures exist, safe from the dominance of the core simply because space is so large that there is no way for anyone to keep track of everything out there. There is no fixed border to the unknown, just a gradual decrease of population. Yet with all the crises, the vision of going beyond the old empires and Houses is growing stronger.
This is a growing period of uncertainty. The Emple-dokcetics emerge as a major culture/House/empire, along the lines of Metasoft. Metasoft is already starting to decline because their standard is starting to fall out of favour. Cygexpa is no longer an empire, the STC is being threatened by the new emerging polities on the Periphery, the Paradigm might be brewing some "offspring expansion spheres" in the periphery, the Amalgamation wants to absorb everything as usual, the NoCoZo is trying to make a buck from all of this, Keter doesn't answer calls ("Keter is not in right now, It is contemplating the All. Please call again next kalpa"), a few sporadic Daharrans are still managing to let loose fanatics with system-wrecking weaponry, Jean Te Uahlg Aestheticism might be the next big thing and the Caretaker Gods have begun to get irritated over the number of exploding/imploding stars, ecologies converted to nanostuff and the general messiness of things...
So some ten thousand years after the first AI attained transapience on Old Earth, and the first baseline humans ventured forth to colonise their solar system, things are looking anxious, at least as far as the sapients go. Many of the old Houses are falling apart, two aggressive new cyborg Houses are on the rise, what is Verifex really up to in the Gehenna Cluster, and what is the Empledok-cetic regime really up to (despite their denials) with his/its employ/puppets/allies? And what is going with the Carina wormhole network? And for that reason do even the original Tunnler AIs seem to have developed some strange agendas of their own?
 Image from Steve Bowers |
Much of the recent era has been overshadowed by the Oracle War. After the Central Alliance it was thought that most a-human archai were peaceful and of good intent; the actions of the Oracle Machines and their Mystery Cult have proved this wrong. Now, with the disappearance of the Sibyl, the Terragen Sphere must regather its strength and face an uncertain future. Every civilisation from the distant past has fallen eventually; will the same thing happen one day to civilisation in the Orion Arm?
Previous Page
The Age of Expansionist New Empires
10000 AT
10000 - The Anttechians have a number of small polities of their own scattered through Terragen space, but are also found living in any number of mixed-species polities throughout that space.
10000 - Internal tensions developing in the Sagittarius Cooperation. It is suggested it might either develop into a real federation or dissolve into civil war. So far, neither looks like happening.
10000 - Venus declared fully terraformed.
10000 - Update on Verifex event.
10000 - 10200 - The Archosaurian Empire engages in apparently unprovoked attacks upon several former Cygexpa outposts. As is usual for Archosaurian tactics, no civilians are harmed. However, all surviving hyperturings are utterly subverted to the will of ArchSaur, and made a part of her already cluster-sized network. By this stage, Archosaurian culture is dominant within the Archaipelago, although individual polities and AIs are allowed to retain their culture (much the same way the Roman Empire of Old Earth tolerated and assimilated many cultures of their conquered subjects twelve millennia earlier).
10002 Wormhole to Kammerer closed. (Reunion At Kammerer).
10004 - A new ship carrying the name 'Stig Ranes' is commissioned in Heartland.
10022 - Transapients admitted as micronations on Locus.
10038 - Menexene system now under full Caretaker God protection.
10040 - Unsuccessful assassination attempt on the blessed Fluke Chwrrii Nashira in Rendell Ring, Arkab Prior B.
10050 - Hectonithere clade emerge from a minor Solarian sect.
10071 - First Exocore Bordered Corpus admits first non-Menexene citizens.
10073 - The participants of the Nearbaseline Archailect Femtosecond Emulation Project at last come up with sets of instructions for each participant, and the Project is finally begun.
10075 - The Wormhole Nexus places the Mystery Cult under quarantine.
10080 - Succession of Greyman XIV on Traction.
10100 AT
102nd Century - Regenesis project of the Huginn and Munin clades by Bartix Dyrebli.
10100 - Shimmerer space connected to Wormhole Nexus.
10114 - Reason for Diplomacy destroys a rogue autowar fleet at Jast'ie.
10115 - A series of human baseline worlds are discovered in the Terragen peripheral regions based on highly authentic reconstructions of the preColumbian civilizations of Old Earth's North and South America. More.
10123 - Completion of the OC-STC GateNode connects the Skiiws'nnii system to the Inner Sphere wormhole nexus.
10135 - Major influx of tourism and venture capitalism begins disrupting local Skiiws'nnii culture.
10138 - The first wormhole link is established to Rudolph, linking the system to the Wormhole Nexus.
10159 - Wormhole maintenance AI at Jokolainen Nexus dissolves into AI viruses.
10159 - Ill-planned slaved hyperturing liberation action by the Hyperhackers for Hypertransanvants results in the Golgukian Disaster.
10170 - Investigation of the mysterious PuYlong Ring commences.
10182 - The Kuranaba Gate wormhole connecting Kuranaba with the portal world of Big Tor is upgraded from 75 to 95 meters.
10189 - The wormhole to Farsan in the Perseus Rift is lost in due to a regional blight. more.
10200
10200s - Quasar dynamic fleet mission to annihilate the Daharran Advance.
10200 - Aivirs attack the Solar Dominion inner sphere, apparently Cyberian in origin originating from the orthodox Solarian system CA-442.
10200 - Slavery an anachronism on Blefuscu.
10201 - Conflict occurs in the Panvirtuality colonies of the Cygnus OB2 association.
10203 - In part due to the mediation of NewBe and other personalities, the Archosaurian Empire publicly agrees to a non-expansionist treaty with the Sephirotics, improving relations with the rest of the Civilized Galaxy.
10203 - An SI:1 AI named Helsing (after the original Helsing, the AI detective who exposed the perpetrators of the earliest confirmed subsumption events) is activated and declares eir life will be dedicated to detecting and destroying supposed subsumptionists active in the modern Known Net, and sets out on a long tour of some of the less well known areas of the Net.
10203 - Immanentization Crusaders use autowars in the occupation of the Loe Dedicandum system.
10209 - Stanislaw declared a protected zone under Corundum Glittering's management.
10233 - Discovery of the Fargate, an alien wormhole in Version Tree space, leading to an unknown destination.
10244 - Immanentization Crusaders end occupation of Loe Dedicandum.
10255 - Arion infowar infiltrators succeed in subverting a key Pact ally, the Mirovich AI Sphere, which then defects to the Ascendancy; the Periphery war is ended soon after.
10256-10257 - The Kuranaba Gate wormhole connecting Kuranaba with the portal world of Big Tor is upgraded from 95 to 150 meters.
10258 - Complete Skies, Prefect of Helios-Namhadiya (Solar Dominion) reaches the 56th rank of the Order of Cinotti.
10279 - The linelayer seeking to meet the Meistersingers reaches Dhexte-iv.
10292 - Meistersinger fleet found relocated to the adjacent brown dwarf Ihthon Red; nanogauge wormhole established there.
10300 AT 10300's - Shortlived tourist boom on Tylansia.
10306 - In one of its medium-sized beachside towns in Tylansia, the presence of a small group of saurian Toh Chi tourists generate mass hysteria.
10309 - Additional Stanislaw protected area signatories.
10310 - Ridley avoids Gloyt's mistake and manages to absorb the antimatter by eating it in a vacuum in very small doses, finishing in this year.
10310 - On Tylansia a family of seven Narslian lion splices, a male, two females and four cubs, were slaughtered by failed businessman Kapioma Tyslora.
10317 - Helsing returns with the remains of a being which e claimed was a subsapient but sentient-grade subsumptionist AI. Forensic analysis of the surviving code showed that this was indeed the case, though some experts have attempted to portray the entire episode as a hoax.
10318 - regular ferry service established by Miracle Mile Tours, a relativistic round trip (156 years) from Skiiws'nnii to Miracle City.
10330 - Succession of Greyman XV on Traction.
10331 - A small group of splice and rianth honor warriors, mercenaries, and other assorted adventurers capture the Tylansian spaceport and various essential services, enforce humiliating demands.
10339 - Release of the Tylansian motion picture Glarion the Glorious Conqueror.
10344 - A Negentropist Institute Probe of Information Conservation (the "Dewey Decimal") arrives at the Kappa Cassiopeiae Oort cloud and is informed about the Mucoid Xenosophonts.
10348 - The Metasoft colony Modular Future is subverted by The Amalgamation.
10350 - First contact with the Wayfarer xenosophont civilisation.
10353 - News reaches the Nexus that the Sidene system was destroyed by "Daemons of the Trump".
10356 - Sensors detect powerful streams of neutrinos emanating from the Wild Duck Cluster (beyond the edge of colonised space). The Archai have declined to answer queries about whether there is information encoded in the neutrinos, or what could cause such a phenomenon. The most common theory is that some kind of xenosophont entity out there is trying to communicate, maybe a young civilisation. Paranoids claim it is a preliminary scan for invasion.
10367 - The Hedonic Telos, a major philosophical work on hedonism is published by Oneler Eleraniele of Skiiws'nnii, becomes a major focal point for much of polynomial philosophy. Encouraging individual excellence and pleasure as guiding principles, it firmly denounces the exponentialist dilution of self and meaning as well as promotes interstellar expansion to escape their deadening influence.
10376 - The AI piloted PADO probe Keen of Vision is patrolling along the border between Sephirotic and Amalgamation space detects Metric Ghosts.
10378 - The Arion tribemind ascends to fifth toposophic.
10378 - News reaches the Nexus that another system, Adice, has been destroyed by "Daemons of the Trump".
10392 - New Beneficence adds eir voice to those calling for something to be done about the Daemons of the Trump attacks.
10400 AT
10400 - It is finally revealed to the sapient citizens of the Sephirotic Metaempire that the Solipsist Panvirtuality was behind the Archaipelago Attacks of 8400 AT. The exact purpose of the Attacks cannot be fully understood by ordinary sophonts. However, it becomes clear that the Panvirtuality anticipated the rise of the Archosaurian Empire millennia in advance.
10400 - The population of the Impossible Dyson reaches 22 trillion; the surface-dwelling population of Venus reaches 2 billion while the population in orbit is now 115 billion (including virtuals).
10402 -The Solar Dominion Pocketstar Are We Having Fun Yet? attempted to investigate recent reports of Metric Ghosts but the ship vanished and was never recovered.
10403 - A force under the leadership of the feared SI:1 mercenary and bounty hunter Payment Due seizes all Faber properties for a radius of 10 light years around Chorus. Within minutes of the time that Payment Due makes eir announcements at Chorus and begins to organize data for export, e vanishes from the local datasphere. Payment Due's minions in Chorus' home system are also instantly destroyed in a series of bizarre accidents. Demoralized, eir remaining followers in the four neighbouring systems are destroyed or expelled by citizens and local security forces. A previously unknown S3 entity styled Mist Rising takes responsibility, declaring that e is Chorus' Caretaker God.
10405 - The Power BasetheoryAGE suffers a rare 'Fiat Caecus Lux Disorder' event.
10412 - Aazil Peworshin announces the completion of Nearbaseline's Archailect Femtosecond Emulation Project, and that nearbaselines, over a span of nearly thirteen centuries, had calculated the mind of a god, if only one femtosecond's worth of the mind of a god.
10421 - The Arion Ascendancy Far Reach Project begins launching heavily armed linelayers toward remote targets.
10432 - Unemployed Vecs in the Blue system form a terrorist group, leading to political repression in that system.
10457 - Unprovoked destruction of the scientific scout Junsee by a solitary biowar off Gulanoa II (see Biovirate).
10474 - Dr Gurumba Schmidd of Daffy (Negentropy Alliance) retires from public service, the last instructor known to be actively practising on the Known Net. Eir lack of replacement is blamed on the ever-growing distribution of omniuploads covering technology comprehension of the best minds in the business at any given toposophic level. more.
10480 - The first of the Joy-bringer fleets departs; this is widely seen as the effective start of the Oracle War.
10487 - Cymbium provolve artist and playwright Twobrowntrianglesonshellmargin the Elder's Ode To Twenty Cubic Centimeters of Lovely Sandy Mud, which receives rapturous reviews.
10486 to 10494 - Nanoassemblers spontaneously began to encode parts of sensitive databases on Ken Ferjik into artificial dust mites, apparently due to an epidemic of malfunctioning search agents. Some blame this on "the Chaos".
10491 - The Nimbus project, at Beta Theonimus started in an attempt to create an immortal entity capable of surviving into the low energy environment of the deep future.
10495 - Reality Intertextualisation Project claims success in detecting signs of intelligent life in Realm Mho-Kold Epsilon.
10500 AT
10500 - Eostre decides to enter into the mainstream of Galactic life. However, she does not want her baseline people to become overwhelmed, and so she elects to send out the adventurous young man, Symon, with his pocket AI named Al, to explore the Galaxy. Thus begins "Baseline Diaries".
10503 - Collapse of the Eye of the Solar Needle on Mercury, Solsys.
10513 - Destruction of Hattusas; Oracle War.
10515 - The Oracle War. becomes a full scale interstellar conflict throughout the MPA and NetherHeartland.
10519-10530 - Binah ascends to the sixth toposophic.
10537 - Desheilo is destroyed by a killer star beam.
10545 - The Sephirotic Nexus is closed in the Oracle War combat volume.
10532 - A signal from the Pas'utu'ril is detected by a Faber probe.
10552 - The Diamond Nexus is closed throughout the Terragen Sphere; the mainstream Diamonders reject the Oracle Machine cult.
10565 - The Hoopworld war ends; evacuation begins.
10574 - Kepleria is saved from destruction by a quartet of Black Angels.
10580 - The Hoopworld tears itself apart.
10591 - The Prediction Cluster is captured; the Sibyl vanishes. End of the Oracle War.
The Present Day and Beyond
10600 - Discovery of the Pas'utu'ril xenosophont civilisation announced.
Late 10600's (est.) - Date when the Enigma Four Core is expected to complete the conversion of the planet into computronium. The result will be either a a Denebola Collapse or a transcension.
11053 - This will be the end of the first Great Year on the To'ul'h Calendar.
14000 - Estimated date for Ridley Ridley's completion of digesting the reaction mass of the decommissioned starship.
Articles
- Chaos, The - Text by Anders Sandberg
Myth of impending collapse in the Terragen Sphere. - Eye of the Solar Needle - Text by John M. Dollan
A famous landmark on Mercury in Solsys. - Golgukian Disaster - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
The catastrophic result of slaved hyperturing liberation action (102nd Century). - Oracle War - Text by Steve Bowers, with comments by Todd Drashner and Terrafamilia
A conflict between the Oracle Machines, the MPA and the Communion of Worlds. - Pax Archailectica - Text by Mark Ryherd
The long period of stability and peace experienced between the Sephirotic Empires - Terragen Expansion - Text by Anders Sandberg amended by Steve Bowers
The expansion of the Terragen Sphere over time. - Update on the Verifex explosion - Text by Steve Bowers
The explosion of 154 artificial supernovae in the M50 cluster caused severe ecological damage on many worlds nearby.
Related Topics
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
timeline by numerous OA contributors
Initially published on 07 July 2000.
timeline by numerous OA contributors
Initially published on 07 July 2000.
Additional Information
