Lost in Transmission (38 page)

Instantiate (also print)
—(v) To produce a single instance of a person or object; to fax from a stored or received pattern.

Instelnet
—(prop n) The low-bandwidth lightspeed data network connecting the Queendom of Sol and its thirteen colony systems.

Judder
—(v, n) To vibrate energetically. As a noun, a motion artifact produced when stored images are played back incorrectly. Judder can be employed deliberately as part of an error correction scheme in defective fax machine print plates.

Juke
—(v) To move unexpectedly out of position. Colloquially, to cheat or deceive.

Juris Doctor
—(n) A formal law degree conferred by Queendom authorities or their proxies.

Kataki hau o kai
—Traditional Tongan encouragement to begin a meal. Literally: “For your patience, come and eat.”

kps
—(abbrev) Kilometers per second, a measure of velocity for celestial bodies and interplanetary/interstellar vehicles. The speed of light is 300,000 kps. (Also kips, kiss.)

Kuiper Belt
—(n) A ring-shaped region in the ecliptic plane of any solar system in which gravitational perturbations have amplified the concentration of large, icy bodies or “comets.” Sol's Kuiper Belt extends from 40 AU at its lower boundary to 1000 AU at its upper and has approximately one-fourth the overall density of the much smaller Asteroid Belt. The total mass of the Kuiper Belt exceeds that of Earth.

Light-minute
—(n) The distance traveled by light through a standard vacuum in one minute: 17,987,547.6 kilometers or 0.12 AU.

Light-second
—(n) The distance traveled by light through a standard vacuum in one second: 299, 792.46 kilometers.

Light-year
—(n) The distance traveled by light through a standard vacuum in one year: 9.4607 trillion kilometers or 63,238 AU.

Lipofuscin
—(n) An inert pigment whose buildup within the cells of a multicellular organism is both a marker and a determinant of geriatry. Lipofuscin levels in excess of 3% of cell volume are generally considered fatal in the long term.

Luddite
—(n) A follower, adherent, or admirer of the principles of Ned Ludd, an organizer of nineteenth-century English craftsmen who rioted for the destruction of industrial technologies seen as displacing or dehumanizing.

Luna
—(prop n) Original name of Earth's moon.

Lune
(also
the Squozen Moon, the Half Moon
)—(prop n) Name attaching to Earth's moon following the terraforming operations which reduced its diameter from 3500 to 1400 kilometers.

Maglev
—(n) Any vehicle, device, or system employing levitation by means of magnetic fields.

Malo e lelei
—Traditional Tongan greeting widely used within the Queendom. Literally: “Thank you for coming.”

Matter programming
—(n) The discipline of arranging, sequencing, and utilizing pseudomaterials in a wellstone or other programmable-matter matrix, often including the in situ management of energy and computing resources.

Megaklick
—(n) A near-planetary measure of distance: one million kilometers, or 3.33564 light-seconds.

Megayear
—(n) One million years.

Meritocratic
—(adj) Of or pertaining to meritocracy. A state in which effort and talent are presumed to yield social or monetary advancement.

Microgee
—(n) A measure of gravitational acceleration: one-millionth of a gee, or 9.8 micrometers per second squared.

Millibar
—(n) A measure of atmospheric pressure equivalent to one-thousandth of an Earth atmosphere at sea level. Partial pressures of oxygen in the 70-millibar range are generally considered breathable.

Monospecific
—(adj) Composed of a single species.

Mutagen
—(n) Any agent that tends to increase the extent or frequency of genetic mutation.

Nanobe
—(n) Any living or self-replicating system smaller than 500 nanometers in linear dimension. Most often used in reference to implantable medical devices.

Narrowband
—(adj) Describes any signal, carrier, or network with a bandwidth less than 100 MHz or an effective data rate less than 100 Mbit/sec.

Nasen
—(n) An acronym: Neutrino Amplification through Stimulated EmissioN. A monochromatic beam of high-energy neutrinos sometimes employed for interplanetary communication thanks to its extremely small divergence angle. However, the difficulty of generating such a beam, plus its ready interactions with matter, limit its usefulness except as a weapon.

Nescog, the
—(prop n) NEw Systemwide COllapsiter Grid. Sol system's successor to the Inner System Collapsiter Grid or Iscog; an ultra-high-bandwidth telecommunications network employing numerous supraluminal signal shunts.

Neuble
—(n) A diamond-clad neutronium sphere, explosively formed, usually incorporating one or more layers of wellstone for added strength and versatility. A standard industrial neuble masses one billion metric tons, with a radius of 2.67 centimeters.

Neutronium
—(n) Matter which has been supercondensed, crushing nuclear protons and orbital electron shells together into a continuous mass of neutrons. Unstable except at very high pressures. Any quantity of neutronium may be considered a single atomic nucleus; however, under most conditions the substance will behave as a superfluid.

Neutronium barge
(also
Neutronium dredge
)—(n) A space vessel, typically one billion cubic meters (1000 ¥ 1000 ¥ 1000 m) or larger, whose primary function is to gather mass, supercompress it into neutronium, and transport it to a depot or work site. Although less numerous, smaller neutronium barges also existed for transport only.

Nubia
—(prop n) Subtropical Luner nation of the southern hemisphere, on the former Nearside, with a population of approximately 100 million.

Older
—(prop n) Informal title or ethnic slur applied to immorbid Queendom residents by the morbid, mortal peoples of Lune.

Oort cloud
—(n) A roughly spherical shell surrounding any solar system, in which gravitational perturbations have amplified the concentration of large, icy bodies or “comets.” Sol's Oort cloud extends from 30,000 AU at its lower boundary to 100,000 AU at its upper, and has approximately 300,000 times the mass and one-billionth the overall density of the much smaller Asteroid Belt. The orbits of Oort bodies can have periods of millions of years, and may be inclined in any direction. The total mass of Sol's Oort cloud exceeds that of Jupiter.

Ophiuchus
—(prop n) A large, dim, nonzodiacal constellation, “The Snake Holder,” beginning between Scorpius and Sagittarius near the Sol ecliptic plane and extending some 50 degrees northward.

Oxygen candle
—(n) A mixture of sodium chlorate and iron, typically enclosed in a metal housing, which smolders at 600°C, producing iron oxide, sodium chloride, and approximately 6.5 man-hours of oxygen gas per kilogram of candle. Widely used in spacecraft, submarines, caves, and mines where breathable atmosphere may be intermittently unavailable.

Palasa
—(n) Barnardean term for aristocrats or other privileged individuals, often considered derogatory.

Pantrope
—(n) Any organism whose morphology or genome has been altered for the purposes of pantropy. Applied especially to human and human-descended beings.

Pantropy
—(n) Literally: complete change. The practice of altering the genome or morphology of an organism to enable its survival in a new environment. From the English “pantropic,” or “found everywhere,” and/or the Greek “pan” (completely) and “tropos” (turning or changing in response to a stimulus). Attributed to James Blish.

Passfax
—(n) Any fax machine including both an input and output plate operating simultaneously. Such devices are employed where presorted buffer mass is unavailable or where mass buffers are smaller than the objects being produced.

Periapsis
—(n) The point along an orbit at which gravitational potential is minimized and kinetic energy is maximized. The point of “minimum altitude” above the orbit's focus or centroid.

Petabyte
—(n) A measure of data storage equal to 10
¹⁵
bytes or 8 quadrillion digital bits.

Pharyngitis
—(n) Inflammation of the pharynx. A sore throat.

Philander
—(n) A title granted to formal consorts of the Queen of Sol. Only four Philanders were ever named.

Photobraking
—(n) The gross reduction of velocity by means of a photosail.

Photosail
—(n) Any nearly two-dimensional device whose primary function is to derive mechanical energy from the pressure of reflected light, including sunlight, starlight, and radiation from artificial sources. The term “solar sail” is sometimes applied colloquially, but in fact solar sails are a subset of photosails.

Photosphere
—(n) The hot, opaque, convectively stable plasma layer of a star beginning at the photopause, responsible for most thermal and visible emissions. Usually less than 1000 kilometers deep, with temperatures of several thousand kelvins and the approximate pressure of Earth's stratosphere. The photosphere floats atop the deep hydrogen convection zones of the stellar interior.

Photospinnaker
—(n) A photosail anchored and/or controlled by guylines, with no direct physical attachment to its parent vehicle. In practice, most photosails other than mill sails are photospinnakers.

Photovoltaics
—(n) Materials or devices capable of generating an electrical voltage with the input of light energy, through the liberation of bound electrons in a preferred direction. In many isolated devices, wellstone pseudomaterials
must
be photovoltaic in order to maintain their other properties using ambient radiation.

Picometer
—(n) A measure of distance equal to 10
^-12
meters or one-billionth of a millimeter.

Picosecond
—(n) A measure of time equal to 10
^-12
seconds or one-billionth of a millisecond.

Pid
—(n) Possibly an abbreviation of “period.” A measure of time equal to 20 Barnardean hours or 71,875 standard seconds. There are 23 pids in a Barnardean day. Attributed to Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui.

Piezoelectric
—(adj) Decribes a substance, often crystalline, which produces a voltage when pressure is applied to it, or which experiences mechanical deformation in response to a voltage.

Pilinisi Sola
—(prop n) Formal title of the Prince of Sol.

Pilinisi Tonga
—(prop n) Formal title of the Prince of Tonga.

Pion
—(n) An unstable, spin-zero meson possessing one-ninth the mass and +1, 0, or -1 times the charge of a proton, and a half-life of 2.6 ¥ 10
^-8
seconds.

Planette
—(n) Any artificial celestial body consisting of a stony or earthy lithosphere surrounding a core or shell of supercondensed (neutronic) matter. The vast majority of planettes are designed for human habitation and include Earthlike surface gravity and breathable atmospheres.

Plibbles
—(n) Fruits of the plibble tree. Colloquially: deranged or misinformed.

Podship
—(n) Any vehicle designed to operate both in space and on the tuberail system of a planetary surface. Employed extensively in the Barnard, Wolf, and Lalande colonies.

Positronium
—(n) A material consisting of “atoms” made from one electron and one positron orbiting their mutual center of attraction. Unstable in free space, positronium is generally stored in magnetic nanobottles between the fibers of bulk wellstone.

Print plate
—(n) The largest single component of a fax machine, responsible for assembling and disassembling finished goods at the atomic level. Print plates are generally flat and most typically rectangular, although with effort they can be fashioned as cylinders or other three-dimensional forms.

Prokaryote
—(n) Any member of a domain of single-celled organisms lacking intracellular organelles and an organized nucleus. Some prokaryotic cells are capable of forming systematized colonies, with minor details of cellular morphology and activity varying as a function of position within the colony. However, no true multicellular prokaryotic organisms have been identified in any star system. Prokaryotes are thought to be descended from archaea.

Pseudoatom
—(n) The organization of electrons into Schrödinger orbitals and pseudo-orbitals, made possible with great precision in a designer quantum dot. The properties of pseudoatoms do not necessarily mimic those of natural atoms.

Quantum dot
—(n) A device for constraining the position of one or more charge carriers (e.g., electrons) in all three spatial dimensions, such that quantum (“wavelike”) effects dominate over classical (“particle-like”) effects. Charge carriers trapped in a quantum dot will arrange themselves into standing waveforms analogous to the electron orbitals of an atom. Thus, the waveforms inside a quantum dot may be referred to collectively as a pseudoatom.

Reportant
—(n) Any person or mechanism gathering information for public distribution.

Rodenbeck, Wenders
—(prop n) Playwright and Poet Laureate of the Queendom of Sol.

Sensorium, neural
—(n) Any system for channeling synthetic neural inputs into the brain. Sometimes employed as a form of torture, but generally considered a medium for education and entertainment, especially in remote environments.