OVERMAN 2335

Human Technology


This page is divided into the following sections:

Click on the section headings to return to the top of the page


Energy

Energy sources consist mainly of cold fusion power plants for civil and small-scale military use, which vary in size from huge ones capable of powering whole settlements (although few do, since they are too vulnerable to attack - instead a grid of smaller power plants is used) right down to man-portable units.

It is also possible to genetically engineer organisms (including humans) with cold fusion metabolisms. Total Conversion power plants which turn matter to energy directly, without the use of anti-matter are mainly used by the UN and the military where their incredibly high energy output makes them indispensable.


Computers/Robotics

These technologies are very advanced - self-repairing and reproduction-capable artificially intelligent robots live in societies across the Solar System as part of humanity, and have made significant contributions to the development of humanity as a whole. Many AI's run entire settlements or control whole areas of defence or research. It is also possible for AI's to install devices which give them psionic powers (although these are much rarer since the Hounds came). On a smaller scale non-sentient computers are integrated into almost every piece of equipment produced by humanity where they optimise the devices performance. Every computer system not dedicated to a specific task includes a full encuclopedia/library containing all the publically-known knowledge of humanity at the time of its construction (including nano-machine programs for most non-copyright items of technology). Most computers interact with the real world using their intrinsic sensors linked to manipulator and display systems.

Microscopic nano-machines are also used in many areas of life, including inside human beings as defenders against disease and poisons (although most humans are immune to disease anyway). They also render most machines self-repairing, except in cases of extreme damage when even the nano-machines are destroyed. All artefacts (and living things) now carry protective anti-nano weapon nanomachines. Before the coming of the Hounds, almost every home had nano-construction facilities to provide whatever the inhabitants wanted. Now these facilities tend to be much more centrally located and controlled. Through nano-machines, the UN can guarantee food, shelter and clothing for everyone in the Solar System (although the quality of these can vary locally due to the effects of the War). Nano-machines which operate in low-energy environments often consist of a cell-sized cold fusion cell with mobility and limited processing power which acts as a 'mother ship' to the builder nanos, providing them with instructions and energy.

The vast majority of settlements (those with sense!) broadcast gravitic/telekinetic inhibitor fields which interfere with the ability of nanos to construct certain essential components of the items they are set to stop within their radius of effect. This usually covers the settlement and a radius around it. However, because they depend on knowledge of the item whose construction they are stopping, they only work on known types of devices - ones which the system does not know about will be unaffected.

In general inhibitor fields are used to prevent nano-assembly of weapons of mass destruction within a settlement, but they can be 'tuned' to prevent any particular aspect of nano-assembly, or to prevent it altogether. These fields, can, however, be stopped by military-grade force shielding, but that is generally easy to detect in a settlement. Because of the inhibitor fields, military assembly facilities are often some distance from the nearest settlement, or are settlements in their own right, so as to avoid their effects.

As well as more normal forms of communication, humans and AI's are capable of interacting (for both business and pleasure) through what is known as cyberspace, a computer-generated artificial reality. Before the Hounds arrived all the Earth (apart from the Chilean Empire) was covered with a single cyberspace, with other cyberspaces in each of the various settlements, separated from the one on Earth by the constraints of lightspeed. With the destruction of the Earth, most of the separate cyberspaces still exist, but in many cases they have been damaged or rendered inoperable by damage to the settlements which house them. There are rumours that virtual monsters capable of killing users lurk in some cyberspaces.


Communications/Entertainment

The most common forms of communication are radio and laser links, often scrambled in some way to avoid Hound interference. Focused gravity beams are also used as means of communication. However, most genetically engineered superhumans also possess the ability to link their minds with others for communications purposes, although this is generally limited to a range of about 50000 kilometres. More powerful versions, often installed in computers and AI's, can form secure links across the Solar System and even over interstellar distances. Although these psionic links, like other forms of communication, operate only at the speed of light and no faster, they are far harder to block or intercept.

Advances in entertainment technology has led to entirely new instruments such as the Synthar and Orchestron, combining music and multi-sensory stimulation to the level of an entire 20th century orchestra.

In the Solar System of 2335, the most common entertainments tend to be escapist ones.


Sensors

All kinds of sensors are highly developed, especially gravitational mass sensors, as these are almost the only things which are capable of seeing through the Hound cloaking devices. Some AI's and humans also have a variety of psionic senses, which can also prove useful. These are capable of a variety of tasks, ranging from simple life-form identification to identifying specific individuals, including such things as their superhuman powers (if any) and emotional state. Security systems often contain psionic life detection sensors, which are capable of identifying unauthorised people who attempt to pass. Emergency doors usually contain sensors which will not open the doors if there is vacuum or other hostile environment on the other side without an over-ride code, and which also warn of what is present on the other side (including Hounds).

Multi-field sensors are generally the most common sensor systems on space vessels, after electromagnetic radiation detectors. In most vehicles all sensor systems are integrated together into a single package with built-in overload protection.

No space vehicle has windows; displays of information from intrinsic sensor arrays built into the hull are far more flexible and useful.


Medical

Medical technology is very highly advanced. Although some techniques (such as post-birth genetic engineering) have been lost in many places since the arrival of the Hounds, it is still possible to have ones children engineered to be superhuman, in accordance with the UN's stated policy. Techniques such as limb and organ re-growth (including central nervous system tissue) and cloning are well developed and quite fast, so as long as there is anything left of a person (in particular, as long as the brain is largely intact) it is almost always possible to rebuild them in one way or another.

An important complement to this is Mind-State Recorder (MSR, or, to their detractors, 'Miser') technology. These are small devices which painlessly self-implant at the base of the skull, and which record a persons mind in the event of their death, preserving it so that they can be reincarnated in a new or cloned body. Of course, given the effectiveness of the weapons used in 2335, often the MSR is destroyed along with the person, but even so, they save lives. In part because of these devices most large space vehicles usually carry a few 'empty' cloned superhuman bodies into which any saved minds can be placed, allowing them to continue their lives as soon as possible.

These MSR devices are available to all UN citizens, and are mandatory for all UN employees, though there are a few who object, claiming they abridge a persons right to die. Ever since the development of mind-transference technology, in 1964, it has been known that although a persons mind can be recorded and move from one body to another, it cannot be duplicated; this continues to be the case, for reasons which are still not entirely clear.

All UN genetically engineered superhumans, and their descendants, are immune to all hostile environments, and have no need to breathe. Many of them also have no need to eat or sleep. Freedom from having to eat is due to these superhumans having a metabolism which, as well as being able to digest normal food if necessary, is also able to extract hydrogen from gases, liquids and solids for use in internal cold-fusion reactions ('exhaling' tiny amounts of helium) and absorb energy from the environment for sustenance as well. The senses and vocal cords of these superhumans are adapted so as to operate fully and normally in all environments the person can survive in where there is a medium to carry sound. This has the side effect that they cannot shed tears.

Most humans are genetically engineered in some fashion, if only in minor ways. The most common modification, possessed by most of Humanity, even those otherwise unmodified, is the ability to consciously control ones own fertility. Most humans have also had their genes modified to re-grow (slowly) lost limbs and organs without assistance, and to adapt their metabolisms to modern life rather than that of life on the African veldt where humanity evolved. New genetic modifications are planned using highly detailed computer simulations of human development from the fertilised egg, which allow the results of any modification to be run through to adulthood and any defects optimised away (and the same thing to be done with post-birth genetic modifications). These are continuously updated from every modification made, but even so are very rarely perfect first time. The same process is also used when altering other life forms.

Genetic modification has allowed the creation of human societies consisting of entirely women or men who can reproduce with one another by various means, as well as more bizarre variations.

As mentioned above, all life forms have assorted nanotech 'antibodies' inside them to protect them against biological diseases, and offensive nano-machines.


Psychological and Sociological

These are two of the most important but little seen aspects of technology in 2335, descended from the techniques developed by the telepath Charity Ravenwood (Greymalkin) in the early 20th century.

Accurate, scientific psychology, used on individuals, keeps members of society functioning in the highly stressed environment of the war against the Hounds. It also finds a great deal of use in removing despair and suicidal states of mind. At its most extreme, traumatic memories can simply be removed and trauma blurred into harmlessness.

Social engineering techniques, derived from the same psychological revolution and first applied in the nation of Minerva, keep societies from fragmenting under the dislocations and stresses of the war, and do their best to keep despair and disheartenment under control.

Both of these technologies are heavily used by the social arm of the UN, and local governments trying to maintain order.


Environment

Techniques for surviving in hostile environments have been steadily developed over several hundred years, so that now it is possible for a normal human to survive indefinitely, given the right equipment, anywhere from Mercury to the cometary halo. For most UN superhumans (rather than natural born ones) environment technology is not a major problem, as their genetically engineered bodies are capable of surviving almost any extreme of temperature, pressure or radiation, and most of them do not have to eat, sleep or breathe.

Most settlements in the Solar System are built underground in tunnels, although these are usually decorated so as to be as pleasant an environment as possible. However, abandoned levels usually deteriorate fairly rapidly, especially in more hostile environments.

Genetically engineered plants or ecosystems, and nano-machines, provide atmosphere and foodstuff recycling in many settlements, but in many more heavily damaged areas where these systems have been destroyed, many settlements have reverted to primitive mechanical air recycling systems, with hydroponic food production. Genetically engineered environmental technology includes the floating islands which proved the most successful of the many ways used to colonise the atmospheres of the gas giant planets. These were usually derived from trees, and formed the centres of entire ecosystems; the 'trees' float by biological gravitic systems or gasbags; most gain energy from electromagnetic radiation (via long black leaves which make types using them look more like huge leafy jellyfish than trees), chemosynthesis or biological fusion cells.

In those areas which still retain high technology, doors and the like are solid parts of the wall which are rendered invisible and/or desolid in order to allow passage.

Many of the genetic engineering techniques used on superhumans are also used to adapt plants and animals for life in hostile environments. The most notable examples of this are the ecosystems on Titan and Pluto and the terraforming attempts on Europa, Mars and Venus.


Military

Although the Solar System was a peaceful place before the coming of the Hounds, the continual threat of the Chilean Empire, and normal international tensions, and the war since then, provided plenty of stimulus for weapons development. Many superhumans have in-built offensive capabilities, but hand-held weapons, such as lasers, slugthrowers of various kinds (some of them using projectiles which infect the target with hostile nano-machines), lightening throwers and gravitational weapons also allow normal humans to fight effectively.

On a larger scale strategic weapons follow similar lines to the weapons above with the following kinds forming the main human offensive weapons and thus being most widely used :

Defensive weapons include :

Several types of experimental psionic weaponry also exist and unusual weaponry such as nano-machine injectors are also used. Several research teams are attempting to create energy weapons and other systems which use the strong nuclear force in the same way a rattler uses gravity; as the strong nuclear force is vastly stronger (though of much shorter range) these could be highly effective.

It has been found that one of the more effective weapons against the Hounds is simply the effectiveness of a ship in which all the crew are mind-linked together, allowing them to act and react almost as fast as they can think, as a single unit, at one with the ship, seeing with its sensors and operating in a much more co-ordinated fashion than they otherwise would.

However, hand-held weapons which kill people are nowhere near as well developed as vehicle-mounted or emplaced weapons. This is a side-effect of the general improvements in society before the coming of the Hounds, which, however, did not eliminate the need for strategic-level weaponry.

UN military ships are divided into two categories : first, there is the Monitor Arm. The ships of the Monitor arm are very heavily-armed and defended, but not especially suited for stealthy or long-duration missions. They are used as close-in settlement defenders. The second category is the Strike Arm. Their ships are not quite as heavily armed or defended, but they are very fast, very stealthy, and capable of very long-duration missions. They are used to actually take the war to the Hounds. All settlements also tend to have large numbers of fixed weapon emplacements for their own defence. Most ship systems are fully integrated with and are part of the fabric of the fabric of the ship, built of linked smaller (often microscopic) sub-assemblies rather than discrete modules, making them much more flexible and resistant to harm. Gravitic and laser weapons systems are usually made up from phased arrays of small distributed systems across a ships entire hull (this allows lasers to also be used as spotlights and the like).

All UN large warships are spherical, octahedral or shaped like three mutually perpendicular cylinders. This is because they use three mutually perpendicular grav-thrust drives for maximum manoeuvrability.

Because of the way in which ships defensive systems function, normal ship-to-ship tactics consist of (where possible) saturation attacks to overload its anti-missile and anti-energy beam systems to the point where attacks can penetrate to the ship itself.


Plans have been put forward suggesting the Hounds should be disposed of by detonating Jupiter somehow, but no-one is really sure how this could be done.

As a last-ditch attack on the Hounds, should it become obvious that Humanity will soon fall, plans have also been considered to send the Sun supernova. Although this could be done without too much difficulty using powerful gamma-ray lasers, the situation is not dire enough for this to have been given serious consideration. Yet.


Transportation

Nano-machines allow existing vehicle designs to be built almost anywhere, though corporations retain their expertise in vehicle design.

Grav-thrust space vehicles allow fast passage to anywhere in the Solar System within reasonably short times, using continuous thrust, very high acceleration ships. Because of the way in which grav-thrust units give acceleration most effectively along their axis, and how this becomes more and more so the larger the drive unit becomes, all military ships above roughly 25000 tons in mass have three drive systems, at right angles to each other, allowing manoeuvring thrust to be applied in all directions simultaneously, giving maximum manoeuvrability. Smaller vessels have one major (usually axial) drive unit and smaller secondary ones to give full three-axis manoeuvrability.

A secondary effect of the grav thrust drives is their acceleration of the whole ship, rather than applying acceleration to the ship through the motors. This effectively protects it from the effects of acceleration, allowing ships to accelerate at rates which would be instantly fatal to unprotected normal humans (usually the drives are also used to provide artifical gravity throughout the ship). However, most ships do not travel at constant boost; lower speeds give them more manoeuvrability in case of ambush. Civilian vessels usually travel in convoys with military escorts for protection from the Hounds. Even so, in 2335 all civilian vessels are armed.

All vehicles have nanotech self-repair facilities. These also allow vehicles to be tailored relatively quickly for individual missions (leading to little standardisation across the UN fleets), and allow badly damaged vessels which have lost significant fractions of their mass (in battle or whatever) to rebuild themselves into new configurations or designs until they can obtain sufficient mass to rebuild themselves into their original form.


Current classes of military vessel used within the Solar System include:

Military vessels of all kinds are generally named by their first crews, in line with the overall class name. For this reason ships names can be more than a little eccentric.

Although 'normal'crew numbers are given above, these are really nominal numbers. In 2335, given the shortage of people, ships can be, and usually are, operated with much smaller crews.


Civilian vessel types include:


It is possible to build vehicles from coherent self-sustaining energy fields, but these are considered too vulnerable to attack to be used since the coming of the Hounds (though some experimental missile systems use the same systems to create projectiles instead of carrying real matter to build missiles from). However, since shortly after the coming of the Hounds, all ship hulls incorporate self-sustaining re-inforcing force fields to bolster their material strength. These force fields include elements which prevent most forms of (super-powered) teleportation through them, which prevent insubstantial things passing through them, and which also protect the crew from mental and other non-physical forms of attack.

Although outmoded by technological advances, a few living, and sometimes sentient, ships survive.

Because of the continuous personnel shortage, in general ships have only a little more than the minimum crew, and luxurious and spacious accommodations - the UN can produce ships much more easily than it can effective crews.

All ships of over roughly two thousand tons carry smaller sub-craft for use as shuttles and the like. These vary widely depending on their intended use; some are aerodynamic wedge, arrowhead or spearhead configurations; others are simple geometric forms - spheres, cylinders or cones. Larger ships in particular have the capability to rapidly nano-construct and disassemble sub-craft for different purposes as they are needed and become redundant.

All ships are capable of changing their skin colour and pattern as needed (for camouflage or recognition); however the UN insists that they all display at least their name, owner, and nationality, at all times. These systems also allow ships to generate and re-configure running lights and the like as necessary (although running lights are outmoded by modern sensors, most vessels still use them from tradition when around docking facilities; in general a flashing red light on the forward-travelling end, a flashing green light opposite that, and one or more rings of white lights around the mid-point of the vessel are used; obviously these can change as the ships motion changes). They also allow ships to simply light themselves up.

In several places around the Solar System (such as StarHolme and the 101 AI society) teleport transport systems have also survived, and although they only work within settlements they do allow rapid internal transit. More common are industrial teleportation systems, which teleport matter, but with an un-avoidable degree of structural disruption which makes them fatal to living things and other complex constructs. They are generally used to move things which will not be affected by such disruption, such as mineral ores and the like, and possess safety interlocks which prevent their transporting living things and other such complex systems.

Most vehicles also mount tractor beams, allowing them to manipulate objects around them. These are not classified as weapons, although obviously they can be used as such if necessary. Tractor beams can also be used to carry mass from the ground to space, and vice versa, acting as a propulsion system. In the same way they can be used to assist vessels whose drives have failed for whatever reason. This is not used in combat if it can be avoided, as it leads to the ship being moved reacting more slowly than if it were being controlled from on board - the tractor controls are not where the vessel is.


All interplanetary spaceships within the Solar System, military ones especially, are essentially 'holographic seeds' of the UN - the UN in microcosm. As their on-board libraries are constantly updated by the UN, so they all contain the sum total of human knowledge, it is theoretically possible for a single ship to effectively re-create the entire UN civilisation of 2335 using the data in its library systems and its nano-machine construction devices.


Back to the Overman 2335 Page.