Intergalactic Summit

They aren't vulnerable in the same way, Elmund. More vulnerable due to economies of scale, but way less vulnerable in that the 'longevity champions' who are touted in this thread have pretty much lost all their space and started again elsewhere - something that few nation states can do. The State is probably the entity that came closest to it - but even they retreated from their official homeworld to colonies they already had established and held the line there. If the State was thrown out of it's territory they would not be able to move to Deklein or Providence and establish new territory there and pretend to be the same entity.

There's a reason we're called infomorphs - and that reason is that our 'kingdoms' are ideas, not nationstates. They cannot be killed through war, only through will.

Confirmed.

We're forwarding what intel we can via this Galnet source.

Interesting to note that, according to the logs, the station received an anonymous call telling them about the infection.

If someone wanted it to spread, they certainly wouldn't have given the staff warning so they could quarantine themselves.

This raises a lot more questions than it answers.

Lots of unsettling developments so far. More later, if I think I understand what's going on enough not to just spread confusion.

Proposal to compel tests of a vaccine on plague victims passed, narrowly.

Edit:

Ms. Arrendis, I'm going to need to wait on discussing this stuff with you. Things here are ...

... complicated.

Is there a centralized place where the information gathered today is being discussed? I´ve seen a lot of information prior to the voting, but i have no idea what the voting was, or the tendency of the voters.

It seems I have a little time before the next phase of the Inquest opens, so, I'll try to answer your remarks, Arrendis.



My first memories are of being decanted from a cloning tube about two years ago. I had sockets at the base of my skull and all down my back.

Never be again? Subjectively, I never was.

There are people who say, as my predecessor did, that we're not human. It's an idea that upsets me kind of a lot.

If we'll never be normal again, what am I, that can't even remember what it was like? ... although, also, you're of course correct.

I was born into this life, the broken echo of an awful person. My sense of self is maybe a little ... little. So I built a framework for myself: "who I am." My name is Aria Jenneth. (No, it's not. It's Vesper, or Riane-- "Aria" mixed up and wrong.) I'm a capsuleer and a human being. (Like the two are compatible. Little lost fool.) I dress in black. (She dressed in black, for a reason. Mimic. Mockery.) I'm a creature of integrity; my word is binding, though rarely given. (As though any echo of that fickle traitor could claim to be any less a betrayer.)

Even if I face coercion from no one, I still wake up daily to see a kinslayer's face in the mirror. But I don't have her pain or fear (the formative traits that made her human in a way this empty broken marionette can never hope to be). All I have is (nothing of worth) the person I try to be.

I try to be her better self. (And fail.)

If I couldn't see myself that way, what would be left of me? (Power, wealth, the joy of the hunt, the rush of the kill, things denied out of fear of becoming what we already are, "Falcon.")

Neither the Praefecta nor I are quite what her society calls us. In a way, we're both playing roles we can't possibly really fit. Me more than her, though. Maybe I'm fooling myself, that we, and especially I, are still human beings at all.

This much is true: my loyalty is personal. I fill the part because it fits my intentions, not out of any dedication to the society that establishes it.

The Praefecta is my friend, and, more than that, someone I trust more than I trust myself, past or present. That's really what this is about, for me. Because however highly I value my integrity, my judgment is definitely questionable.

Maybe humanity doesn't need strong authorities, but me? At best, I'm a ridiculously overeducated, deadly child; at worst ... I'm my predecessor without her pain or fear. So, maybe something far worse.

I don't trust myself very far, so....

For the most part, Aria, that's all background information, much of which I've gleaned from our interactions or your posting here, so don't think I'm dismissive of it. I didn't know your previous self, and I don't think, at this point, that she matters at all. But right at the end there, you get to the meat of things:



Humanity craves strong authorities. If they didn't, it wouldn't keep happening, again and again and again. Humanity also craves the ability to gorge themselves silly and engage in all sorts of other forms of self-destructive pursuits. Just because the reptile brain wants it doesn't make it good for us, as individuals or as societies.

You say that at best, you're an uneducated, deadly child, and so you place your faith in someone else's judgment. That's fine. That's one person, Aria, and you can know one person, you can hold them to account by questioning them when you don't understand their reasoning, by expression disapproval when their judgment fails. You can watch them for signs that they're becoming the kind of person you shouldn't be listening to.

That is accountability.

You can't do that on the larger scale. You can't do that for the faceless authority that builds bureaucracies specifically to mitigate and deflect responsibility, that hides behind procedure and 'doing my job'. You can't get to know all of them. You can't be there to ask them all to think about what they're doing, to be aware of things when they start, individually, acting a little 'off'.

You can't bring that level of personal accountability to billions of functionaries and 'elites' who are no less likely than the mobs in the streets to be looking to satisfy those reptile brain urges. Education doesn't change that. Privilege doesn't change that. They're still animals, and they'll still act like it. Just like the rest of us.

Courage, then. Make it a good branch.

Thank you, Ms. Arrendis. It might be a little late for that, though..