Para-Imperium Technology
#6 of Para-Imperium
Technology:
Conversion Drive: The primary means of interstellar travel in the Federation and most surrounding systems. Magnetic monopoles are passed through a mass of hydrogen, the atoms the monopoles come into contact with are converted to antimatter which reacts with the surrounding hydrogen, catalyzing a fusion reaction that provides thrust. In theory it is safer than normal antimatter-catalyzed fusion in that it does not require carrying a large quantity of antimatter but merely a small amount of re-usable monopoles. The thrust achievable is far greater than normal fusion torches and acceleration exceeds that of solar sails. A typical cruising speed for interstellar voyages is half the speed of light, but velocities up to .7c have been recorded.
Casimir Thruster: In the early 21st century a low-thrust reactionless drive was discovered, it took most of that century to make practical use of the concept though. Regardless, it became invaluable to space travelers. Ships did not need to carry as much bulky reaction mass, all they needed now was a power plant and fusion power had made that far more simple. It was nowhere near fast enough for interstellar travel within the projected lifespan of civilization, and it could not provide enough thrust to rise more than a few centimeters above the ground of an Earth-size planet, but it was enough for regular travel within a star system.
Stargates: A typical stargate is a ring with a 10-kilometer diameter. But the actual mouth of the wormhole is a 500-meter sphere located at the precise center of the stargate. The stargate has no control over the actions of the wormhole, it simply marks its location and provides a base for the Federal Guard who defend the wormhole, or the system on the far side. Ships can enter a wormhole from any angle and come out the other mouth, but for convenience's sake most stargates are oriented perpendicular to the solar system's plane so that ships coming from a planet in the system can make a more-or-less straight run through the ring. They rocket out from one star system, pass through a wormhole, and keep on going into the interior of the next system. Most details on the construction of wormholes are considered top secret, but what has been revealed is that when the route is first laid down the wormhole is very narrow, measured in nanometers, and the mouths are transported in magnetic bottles. When both mouths are in place they are released and large quantities of "exotic matter" are fed into the more coreward mouth, somehow, this props the wormhole open and expands it slowly over the course of several years before finally it reaches its full .5km diameter. For some unknown reason every wormhole mouth has been placed no less than 100 astronomical units from a celestial body of planetoid size or greater, there are many hypotheses why this is, most of them are not good. Some say that wormholes are inherently unstable and only need a little "push" to explode with enough force to shatter nearby planets, others say that they conflict with significantly sized gravity wells, or perhaps the Federation wants to delay potential invaders who might think of using their technology against them, a lot of people think it's a mixture of all three. Regardless, the overall effect on society is that a conversion drive starship at full throttle takes at least a week to reach a stargate from the inner system of a Sol-type star, a couple hours if they had came in from interstellar space without decelerating, while most stargate-network exclusive craft with Casimir drive take a month or two.
Quantum Entanglement: Quantum Entangled Particles are primarily used in four ways. The first dates back to pre-exodus Earth, when they were used to make "keys" for unbreakable encryption of radio or optical communications, as QEParts are mass-produced these days a lot of companies or government agencies use them for secure internal communications, even a few wealthy individuals. The second is quantum computing, which was only solved a couple years after interplanetary travel began, the teleportation properties of QEParts enabled immense leaps in computing speed and their "fuzziness" allowed computers to "think" beyond binary. The third was discovered while testing claims of paranormal abilities, it seems that there are entangled particles suffusing the universe, but most of them are found in close proximity to one another. However, if two people happened to each have one of a pair of QEParts integrated into the permanent structure of a neuron, it appeared that they could share thoughts. Naturally, the strongest connections turned out to be between monozygotic twins, those who split off from a single fertilized egg. These twins could communicate instantly to each other across light-years it turned out, unfortunately their resolution was poor, most only manage to get across feelings or sensations, a few very lucky pairs have managed to send images. The majority of telepaths used for communication have to enter a state of altered consciousness in which one partner nudges the other's vocal apparatus or hand to make them speak or write. Due to the inefficiencies of this method of communication the fourth major use of QEParts was eventually invented, commlinks. QEPart commlinks can transmit text, audio, even video by quantum teleportation, unfortunately the instrumentation used to read the particles on the receiving end changes the quantum state of the particle and causes the connection to break, eventually the paired commlinks need a fresh supply of QEParts.
Nano-Fabrication: The real driver of the exodus, nanofabrication in its most common form takes the principle of a 3-D printer and adds the ability to extrude individual atoms. As the nozzle passes over the object being fabricated millions of microscopic machines on the head of the nozzle adhere atoms to the item in successive layers. Unfortunately this process is so delicate that it requires a sealed compartment with no free-floating particles, preferably hard vacuum though items that can't handle vacuum may be fabricated in a neutral gas or distilled water. Still, most dwellings in the Federation have at least one nanofabricator that is approximately the size of a microwave for making food or appliances, the better off get one the size of a refrigerator. As they can make one hundred percent of their own parts and can extract most of the needed resources from dirt or waste products, hunger and homelessness, even ill health, are considered "not to happen" in the Core worlds. A major breakthrough in manufacturing was the advent of modular swarms, small buglike robots that cooperated to nanofabricate large objects. Small bots in a swarm had nanofab heads, others gathered raw materials from the environment, and yet another category, the vast majority of any swarm, interlocked with one another to enclose the entire operation in a nano-friendly enviroment. And they were self-replicating. A small "starter swarm" of one gatherer, one fabber, and two dozen or so containers could become thousands given time and resources. Unfortunately swarms are much slower than conventional nanofabricators, so they are generally only used if the owner cannot afford an enclosed device in the necessary size. A shipyard with industrial-scale nanofabricators can produce a starship in a matter of months, a swarm takes years if not decades, but many wannabe tramp traders are willing to wait. Starships often have nanofabricators that can be bootstrapped into portable factories, capable of generating a showroom full of trade goods, a fleet of drones, or enough pre-fab structures to house a colony.
Implants: Cybernetics are rarely used for replacement these days, bioprinting enables a limb to be replaced with ease within a day or two, however they have some use for augmentation. In fact, on many high-tech worlds the majority of the population has at least two implants. The most common are medical microbots, microscopic but not quite nanoscopic robots that can move cells around and stimulate growth to patch up wounds, eliminate pathogens, and halt aging. They can even repair brain damage, though legally a person is considered dead when 60% of their brain is destroyed. Another common type of implant has been around far longer, a Brain-Computer Interface uses a combination of electrodes and optogenetics to form a direct link between the user's brain and a variety of electronic devices. There are many different brands and models of BCI, the most common uses a smartphone-like device typically implanted at the base of the cranium that can be used for a variety of purposes, usually communication without audible speech and augmented reality, which most worlds have networks of. Other BCI implants are specialized for things such as teleoperation of robotic "Waldoes", virtual reality, and memory backup. Memory backup implants record sensory data as the user experiences it, usually to be uploaded to an external device every so often, and can be replayed at will. Unfortunately everyone experiences things a little differently, playing someone else's memories can be confusing or disorienting, in some cases it can even cause brain damage. General use BCIs are capable of most specialized tasks but are less efficient or have less on-site memory. Unfortunately for telepaths optogenetic modification appears to unsync the QEParts in the altered neurons, weakening their links, many do not use BCIs at all. Many of them wear glasses or contacts that enable them to access augmented reality and are controlled by external neural sensors, with far less precision than implants. Subvocal pickups are another older type of implant, which were popular in the pre-exodus days when BCI implantation was perceived as too risky. They consist of a small microphone placed around the larynx which can detect the smallest movements and vocalizations, enabling the user to speak inaudibly to others wirelessly, and a speaker in one or both cochleae. These days subvocals are only used in the Federation by those paranoid of "brain hacking" and telepaths, but there are many outlier worlds where local medicine isn't up to the task of brain surgery. Perhaps the most radical augmentation is shapeshifting, a variation on medical microbots capable of making changes far beyond that necessary for survival. They can move fat, muscle, and bone tissue from one part of the body to another, and dye skin and hair in response to commands issued from the user's BCI. In a day or two a lithe felid woman can look like a brawny canid male, for example. Shapeshifting microbots are even capable of adding or subtracting limbs. But they are limited by body mass and require significant amounts of energy, shapeshifters tend to double or even triple their food consumption while shifting. The kitsune subculture embrace this technology and mitigate the mass requirements by adding multiple tails to their base forms, the number is generally an indicator of the kitsune's rank in their skulk.
AI: Self-aware artificial intelligence has managed to evade scientists for the past two thousand years, and in any case the Federation has banned research on the subject on the grounds that it would be unethical to make a janitorial bot sentient. In all seriousness, any sentient AI would be a product of its creators, and a very expensive product at that, if you freed it would the creators need to be compensated? Many parahumans were wary of the idea given their own origins. However, non-sentient AIs are in common use, in the Core it's rare to find a computer that doesn't have at least one AI program. A related issue is the existence of simulacrums, AI's designed to simulate the personality of a person. The most advanced are created by brain scans that map neural pathways, but it is possible to create one just by extrapolating from enough recordings or questions about the subject. It's not uncommon for simulacrums to pass the old "Turing Tests", but the academic community no longer considers that to be proof of sentience. If they were truly self-aware, they reason, simulacrums would realize they were machines instead of insisting that they were flesh-and-blood beings.
Gauss Guns: Magnetic acceleration has become the standard for projectile weaponry. The ease of maintenance and variable yield making them preferred over chemical projectiles once power cells capable of holding enough power were invented. Personal gauss weapons tend towards one of two types of projectile, needles or disks. Needles have the advantage of being more compact and piercing armor more effectively, but they don't do much damage to tissue or materiel, thus they are often filled with poison or explosives. Disks on the other hand tear through flesh with ease, but are easily stopped by armor. Larger magnetic accelerators use slugs of sizes ranging from half a millimeter to a full meter in diameter. Dedicated warships often have accelerators running almost the entire length of the ship, the Federal Guard's battleships are capable of flinging projectiles at up to three quarters of the speed of light.
Plasma Projector: The electrolaser was a 21st century experiment in "less-than-lethal" weaponry, the idea was that a laser could ionize a path of air that an electrical charge could follow to a target. It did not work too well as the plasma it produced left unsightly burns on the victims and it was easily blocked by non-conductive or grounded armor. Then someone got the idea of amplifying the heat of the ionized plasma to near-fusing temperatures, the result was a weapon that flash-boiled many soldiers in their own armor. Projectors are still bulky weapons, the smallest is the size of a small kinetic rifle and most are barely portable by soldiers without powered exoskeletons.
Non-Newtonian Armor: Throughout the ages body armor has been generally a choice that reduced the mobility of the wearer, either by stiffening their joints or simple weight. Powered armor reduced the weight issue, but was expensive and still inflexible. One solution that gained some measure of popularity was sheer-thickening fluids. Gels or suspensions formulated to form a solid barrier when struck with high levels of force, these could be sandwiched between two layers of flexible material, thin layers of kevlar for instance, and provide penetration resistance far in excess of armor of the same thickness made from solid material. Non-Newt vests proved very effective against kinetic weapons, the small holes let fluid escape slowly, but plasma weapons were found to cause the fluid to boil and explode outwards, often harming the wearer.