Minds and AIs in the Gzilt dominion were regarded either as mere tools, without rights, or as housing for the uploaded personalities of ex-humans. The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions – if they could even be described as such – within the Sublime.

One of the Mistake Not … ’s multitudinous sub-routines – this one charged with deep analysis of recent HS sensor data by opportunistic triangulation following significant movement within any given real space reference frame – flagged the tiniest of oddities. It’s a Culture ship but we don’t know what sort.” “In a pebbleshell, yes, sir.” This meant they were Low Level Involved, and – like many at that level – Strivationist energetically seeking to better themselves and shift their civilisation further along its own Main Sequence of technological and societal development. They were at the five going-on six stage of development according to the pretty much universally accepted table of Recognised Civilisationary Levels. The Liseiden were fluidics: metre-scale eel-like creatures originally evolved beneath the ice of a wandering extra-stellar planet. Compacted, it looked like a piece of sculpture. It remained motionless, seemed to think about this, then without another word folded itself back into its resting sphere-shape with a sort of metallically oiled grace. It had eighteen different types of weather, not one.Ī guard arbite near the locked school gates unfolded itself from its resting ball shape and drew itself up to its full three-metre height, an exaggerated human shape all glittering angles and obvious weapon pods. Of all the things she’d heard about the Sublime, throughout all the attempts people had made to explain what it was like in any meaningful way, that was the one detail she could remember. Parcelled, rolled, compressed and enfolded into the dimensions beyond the dimensions beyond the ones you could see and understand that was where the Sublime was, and it was a maze-like series of right-angle turns away from this, from normal, three-dimensional realityĮighteen kinds of weather.

This vessel is four point six centuries old and yet has never fired a shot in anger. The Gzilt ship dwarfed the alien one it looked like a thousand dark broadswords gathered into a god’s fist and brandished at the skies. The alien ship was an irregular, fuzzy-looking bubble of dark spheres, measuring barely a hundred metres along its principal axis. You should make a copy of this document before you edit it.Ĭreated by Nic de Vera – Last synced October 16, 2020 This document is overwritten when you make changes in Play Books.

The hydrogen sonata review