Project Executive

They took several sectors. Almost all the floors in a slice of a habitat ring a couple million kilometres wide. A lot of space.

However, populational density in Sealine is very low at the moment. For several reasons. Theirs is higher than average, but still far bellow average for space-stations everywhere.

By long negotiations, all sorts of shady political tricks, they managed to get their people transferred to this piece of real state. Got to stay there, working as a community. Supporting each other.

I was hoping to get a place there for myself, or nearby, at their borders. Even became part of their initiative. That was before I learn how much they despise us.

Now I try to see their point in all this. Albeit, to me, it is really stupid!

According to the Law. The big L “Law”, I mean. Alexandrine Law, the one no one can escape for good, anywhere in human existence. According to the Law, we are the same.

Humans call us “sub-humans”, term applies to them as much as it applies to us. High AIs ignore us equally. Despite that, they think we belong in the same category of humans. The “outsiders” who don’t belong in their community.

“Beasts”, “furies”, “uplifted”.

The majority of them are modified versions of some animal specie, other than homo-sapiens and its anthropoid variants included under the umbrella of Alexandrine definition of “human”. Mostly mammals.

Some are versions of more exotic stuff. Like octopuses or araucaria trees. A small percentage among them is the product of exploratory concepts. Living, sentient, beings, with DNA designed from ground zero.

We, well, we are humans. Just not legally. That’s why they reject us.

In origin, as individuals, we may have been born alexandrine humans. Or we are descendants of people who was.

From their perspective, that makes us “the enemy”. Never to be welcomed.

They treat us worse than they treat actual humans. Because they need to bow down to the wishes and whims of humans, to keep their relative privileges of autonomy.

It is funny, if you step back and look at the big picture impersonally.

There are a lot of myths and legends about immortal deities who looked like humans. Those deities lived forever and had power over the ephemeral humans.

We live those myths, and incarnated manifestations of those deities. In a twisted way.

Humans, legal humans, must die. Each legal person has 300 years to live, not one second more.

We have no rights of any kind. No chance to work with the quasi divine intelligences responsible for run mostly ever machine and system in the galaxy. Because, mostly because, we violate the legal limit for human live.

That means we get to, potentially, live for, ever.

Like the beasts who despise us, unlike the legal humans who also despise us. We get to live indefinitely. Biological immortality.

Under the power of humans.

Who are limited to live only 300 years each. Not biologically immortal themselves.

So, subjected to our master’s whims. Also, sometimes, in a sense, to their envy.

Beasts endure the same situation.

Only difference between us is our origin. Sometimes, often, our appearance. Often, but not always. Not necessarily.

Cosmetic surgery can reshape a lot. Often everything the human senses can see, for all practical purposes. Reshaping people in both directions, from fallen human into furies, and from them into us. Even Alexandrine humans can look like furies if they fancy the idea, as long as they do not mess with their DNA their status as legal people is under no danger.

To give you an example, the average uplifted canine could look exactly like me, after the right surgeries. I, after similar surgeries, could look like a barely humanoid werewolf, just what the average uplifted canine looks like.

To the beast’s political perception would make no difference.

They would feel it as cruel mockery, and hate me even more because of that. If I tried to get myself their appearance.

To them nothing would make me less human. To AIs nothing could make me human.

If was possible would be easy. Just get DNA redesigned to fit Alexandrine standards, live another 300 years, change it to non-human and get biological immortality back. Repeat the process. Not possible. Once you stop being human, legally, you cannot get the legal status back, and no descendant of you will ever have it. No matter what their DNA looks like.

All the real heavy construction work is AI business. Goes without saying.

No one would want biological brains meddling in the logistic implied by something as complex as that.

I get to live where I please now, because I was sent to here from Solar System to work is a project of some importance. Or, at least, of some scale of complexity.

Silver-Line is a ring that surrounds the entire solar system. Took humanity more than one thousand years to build it. This project here is even larger. This is going to be the largest structure ever build in one single project, in the galaxy.

Sealine will be even bigger and house far more people, of course, like the external belt community in Solar System is far larger than Silver Line. However, Sealine and the External Belt are a collection of space-stations. Even if they eventually connect in one single structure, one day, they will always be potentially detachable and somewhat independent. Silver Line and Mystery Line are structures designed as consistent unities. Each one is its own thing, one single structure.

Mystery Line will be a thin, spiral, structure, like its elder sister Silver Line.

Both structures exist to provide a touristic distraction for those living and working nearby. In the case of Silver Line, it means mostly those working in the space-docks of seeding vessels. The sharp edge of Expansion Initiative, the most important thing humanity his doing in Expansion Age.

Mystery Line will provide touristic options to the scientists engaged in the investigation of the largest undeciphered phenomenon in the know universe. Mystery System.

The purpose of Sealine is serve as base for investigation of Mystery System.

That is the deadly stellar system that eats all people, ships and equipment we send into it. The only part of know universe that does not play by the same rules of nature humanity has found everywhere else.

I have just arrived in Sealine, a couple weeks back. This is where I must live during the early stages of construction of Mystery Line. Some seven centuries, give or take.

Humans, as I have mentioned more than once before, in those notes, are limited by law to 300 years of living.

Except those humans born before the end of Baby Steps Age, before the Dead Line of Alexandria. Thousands of years ago. My boss, the person I will have to report to when he or she arrives, will likely be one of those. There are few of those humans, what makes their time expensive.

AIs are immortal to, but AIs have strange minds. More alien than the minds of any uplifted octopus or build-from-scratch beast. Investors only trust AIs up to some extent.

That is why people like me gets positions like this. Despite the fact that AIs will never accept to work directly with us.

The first fleet that travelled from Solar System and made the trip to Mystery System left 300 years after Expansion Age start. Took it more than one thousand years to reach this system. We are at the external border of it. They entered, and there they died. Everybody died.

Some time after the year 1500 of Expansion the speed limit for seeding ships was reduced by half. To make travel safer and reduce costs in frontal shield maintenance. Seeding Ships are big, and they need big frontal shields. Because of that reduction my travel from Solar to here took a bit more than 2 thousand legal years.

This project demands people whit direct experience with Silver Line daily affairs. Silver Line is the model and paradigm we are following as basic paradigm here. Would be impossible to get enough workers with the desired experience depending on legal humans only. Ironically, I own my job here to the Alexandrine Limit of 300 years for human longevity.

My personal experience with natives of Silver Line shall make me particularly useful when time comes to start moving in and awakening the first generation of Mystery Line ephemerals.

That should not happen for another 2 thousand years, or possibly 3 thousand.

The selection of candidates was in advanced stages when I left Solar System, and I played a small role in that process myself. They will not come just from Silver Line. There are habitats all over the inhabited portion of our galaxy, we will get new ephemerals for many systems. Not just from Solar.

Some communities will be as small as a few hundred individuals. Some will be larger than one billion. Some will came here awaken most the way, locked inside simulated wild life sections of the cargo-containers of a seeding vessel. Most shall arrive as frozen embryos or even stored digital data, to be cultivated and born here. All will be put to sleep and carried to their new destination. To awake up there. When Mystery Line is ready.

They could do the project without people like me. Certainly. However, the results are likely to end up being better with us.

I have been thinking about suggest the involvement of a larger percentage of beasts in the project. Right now, they are practically not involved at all, very small percentage of ephemerals. No one in administrative roles. The idea has being in my mind constantly, since my last years working in Silver Line.

That could be the a differential.

Silver Line has a very small percentage of them as ephemerals. Almost all sectors in there as populated by “dejs”. “Degenerated Humans”, jolly nickname given to us by furies.

The option to use subhumans who look like humans since birth has a conceptual and practical reason. The idea of facilities like those is to provide tourists the experience of walk around ephemerals without being noticed. The locals have no idea, as far as they know the visitors are just people from their “world”, from some other city of village in the sector.

You can have a few dog people here and there, sirens, whatever pleases you, for spice, but the basic population has to be human in look. Beasts add little to the experience, speaking generally.

Of course, you may have a few sectors fully populated by cat people, dog people, or lizard people living in some cartoonish version of Victorian Earth. They do have those in Silver Line. To tourists visit, in the role of divine entities to be served and worshiped by the locals. However, those are rare exceptions included to provide a more exotic taste. Usually for visits of days, weeks or even hours. Before or after the visitors get their main experience of a decade, more or less, in a more conventional sector.

Beasts ad little to the experience in those more conventional sectors, even if they are sometimes included as exotic ”ethnical” minorities of some sort.

I must mature the idea, still. Consult some surgeons more, make additional simulations to be sure about the costs. The options. For now it is just a concept, not yet ready to be presented to the company. I thing would be possible to provide the tourists the experience of “being” dog-people, cat people, etc. Some kinds of beat folk.

Some reversible surgery, mixed with a little cyborg-tech, should give our visitors not just the looks and the smell of beasts. Also, their physical sensations.

Possibly not the instincts, those things are tricky and hold some mystery to science still. However, if done right no one will notice the difference. Not the visitors, much less the ephemerals interacting with them.

That would make this place special!

Memorable.

Achieve that has been a concern since day one of Mystery Line Project. How we can differentiate this from Silver Line, without lose the integrity of the structure?

The very design of the project almost forces us to keep the one river geography. The “Infinite River” that runs through all sectors of Silver Line Habitat. Hard to avoid that.

Once that is stablished there are only a limited variety of ecosystems and, in consequence, only a limited variety of societies we can stablished. Or, usually, see developing, since the philosophy guiding most sectors inside the habitats is one of minimal interference. The ephemerals do not know the purpose of their existence beyond what they deduce by themselves. They organize their own lives, nations, and business, in war and in peace, anyway they please. Mostly.

Anything here may end up looking and feeling like a copy of something in Silver Line. That would be frustration. Worse! That is not what the company expects from us.

Since I am legal property of the company, satisfy their demands is a major concern for me.

The diameter of Mystery Line Habitats will be somewhat larger, thanks to improvements in material engineering between the two projects. However, that can end up making no difference for those inside the habitats. Gravity will still be provided by the rotation of the rings, of course. Centrifuge **** Simulated gravity, same we find in practically all space-stations and seeding vessels in the galaxy. In liveable areas.

We will get ourselves simulated stars in the night “sky” at the axis of those habitats. That shall be a pleasing detail! Least it will be pleasant to me. Also, for most of those few visitors who have the experience of expending years inside Silver Line habitat sectors, interacting with the natives. Nevertheless, stars are a too insignificant detail to count as core element of a differentiated experience. Our visitors shall get more than that.

Most life-plans for legal humans include a decade each 100 years for vacancies. That means 30 years in total, usually distributed in periods of 5 or 10 years. Is a considerable responsibility when a human trusts you with 5 or 10 years of their limited fee time in life. Such a small part of their already so short and precious time in existence.

We need to honour such trust properly.