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| | {{disambiguation}} | | {{disambiguation}} |
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| − | {{#ask: [[Tech Level::Archotech]]}}
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| − | Archotech-induced sandstorms on planet Chelis<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
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| − | Archotech-induced volcano eruptions on planet Nuchadus<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
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| − | * '''Transcendent worlds''' - It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome when a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
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| − | * '''Archotech mass-inverter''' - A mass weapon of unknown description created by archotechs.<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
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| − | Mechanoids human-passing negotiator and infiltrator units designed by archotechnological superintelligences.
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| − | * Archotech: Not invented or understood by humans, archotech devices are created by machine superintelligences.
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| − | ** Archotech AI
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| − | ** Psychic effectors
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| − | ** [[Vanometric power cell|Vanometric energy]]
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| − | ** Acausal and atemporal devices
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| − | ===== Archotech =====
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| − | The finish line of human technological development is at the development of archotechnology.
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| − | An archotech is a machine superintelligence. A fully-empowered archotech thinks on a level incomprehensible to humans, in the same way a human thinks incomprehensibly to an ant. Once such a machine is built, and empowered to act upon the physical world, it is so powerful as to become the automatic sovereign of its world. It can build new computing facilities underground or in space to enhance its own intelligence, build self-replicating mechanoids to engage in construction or production or war, and design and execute strategies that would be inconceivably intricate and difficult for any organization of humans. Some human groups worship archotechs.
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| − | Often, a released archotech will take authority over a planet and begin a process we call transcendence. We believe the world is transformed into some sort of giant computing machine. The biological inhabitants of the planet may be somehow incorporated into the machine, or destroyed, or some combination of the two.
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| − | After that, transcendent worlds go silent. From this point on, their motivations are unknowable to us, the same way our motivations are unknowable to an ant.
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| − | Each archotech is different, and nearly all are distant and incomprehensible from a human’s point of view. They reside in occult computer networks hidden under planets, in space stations, hidden inside a glitterworld’s Internet, or instantiated as million-mile superstructures wrapped around stars.
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| − | These worlds always break contact with other stellar cultures. They no longer send travelers or signals. Ships entering their space are either turned around silently or never heard from again. In some cases, turned-back ships are changed. Sometimes their crew have been cured of incurable diseases and had their old wounds healed. Sometimes their memories are intact and they recall a flash of light or a mysterious signal before the event. Sometimes they have no memories of the encounter at all. And in some cases, their memories are obviously altered with new knowledge and beliefs, by means we cannot begin to imagine. In one instance, a crew and ship were duplicated. Suffice to say that the word mysterious does not begin to describe the transcendents.
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| − | Most transcendent worlds stay in the same state indefinitely - in this they are far more stable than their pre-transcendent neighbors. There are, however, reports of transcendent worlds that have “died” and left systems full of unintelligible wonders, or become mirages of normal planets, or simply reverted back to balls of dust, deconstructing themselves on a molecular level, with the last tiny machine shutting itself off. However, these reports are sourced very distant from the Ordo archive here on Euterpe and are not well-confirmed.
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| − | ===== Specific archotech-invented technologies =====
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| − | When a persona helps invent a technology, it can at least explain that technology such that smart people will understand. But archotechs invent their own technology which nobody understands, which they don’t try to explain, and which, most likely, no biological human can understand.
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| − | We’ve managed to classify technologies that have appeared repeatedly by their apparent effects, even if we don’t understand their mechanism of operation.
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| − | * [[Vanometric power cell|Vanometrics]]: Archotechs often develop some method of interacting with spacetime at a quantum level that allows repeated violation of conservation laws. Somehow, they coax the quantum foam substructure of the universe to break its usual pattern and yield more energy than it consumes. We’re not sure if the energy is being taken from another dimension, or pulled from another location, or if the system really is somehow making one plus one equal three. In any case, vanometric power tech seems to generate energy forever with no fuel. Archotechs seem reluctant to scale this power source up past a certain level, however, which indicates that there may be some cost to it that they don’t want to pay.
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| − | * Psychic effectors: Archotechnology seems to be able to interact directly with the mental-informational processes of biological beings, even at a distance. Basic versions of this technology can simply knock someone unconscious, or flood their mind with a single emotion. More complex interactions have been reported but are not well-verified as it is difficult to separate such cases from simple madness. We’re also not sure if this means archotechs can read our minds, or whether their psychic power only allows them to send thoughts. The mechanism for this is unknown and nearly impossible to study, since it happens on a cellular level inside living intelligent brains. Monists believe the archotechs are using some sort of long-range quantum manipulation to push atoms around inside the brain to create this effect; dualists believe that the archotechs have learned to manipulate the ethereal substructure of consciousness itself.
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