Advertising

To participate in the pious pod program and steer capsuleers towards service for the empire, LUMEN has put out in-space advertisements. I helped, taking charge of some of the targeted locations.

The idea is to put out a secure contained that displays a message. A short message only, one does not read a whole wall of text while warping gate to gate. It has to be catchy. I am no marketeer, but I do not think our messages "LUMEN recruits" + a galnet address quite make the cut. And "Save your soul and enroll!" sounds too aggressive. 

Mr. Firth suggested "Death to the enemies of the empire" + a galnet address that actually installs an MIO trojan. One should always be careful what to click on. I explained him that LUMEN prefers a gentler approach, the carrot rather than the stick, so to say. He was not impressed.

In Hedion, secure cans cannot be littered in space. A fine measure, there is already too much junk we leave about in orbit of planets or jump gates. So, advertising requires a mobile depot. This is a small base of operations in space, allowing to refit your ship, and keep a stock of goods and ammunition. Overkill to be used for an advertisement board if you ask me, but on the other hand we can use it to hand out fee copies of Pax Amarria to those who stop by.

Genolution livers

There have been some delays for lady Agatha Adelath's operation. She is getting several new organs, all top-of-the-line, with which she can face her fourth century of life as if it is the first. 

Now she has had second thoughts about a Genolution liver that was to be implanted. In itself, it is a very nice piece of bio-engineering, hand crafted and grown from individually selected stem cells by expert artisans. It has very good natural resists for fatty food. It has been upgraded with an energized membrane for improved alcohol resistance. It can easily passive tank three gin-tonic damage per hour. In addition, there is an active ancillary hepatic repair module with nanite biopaste. So, even the most serious Yoiul dinner attack should be no problem.

The problem is that it is a smart liver.

Such health monitoring smart organs are quite a fad nowadays. It connects to her datapad for readings, and you can fine tune all sorts of metabolic processes and it helps you keep track of your diet. 

But cookies are a major concern. Not the buttery one, but the sort of spyware that big corporations like Further Foodstuffs or Nurtura or Quafe leaves on your electronic devices. In your liver these allow to track your eating and drinking habits with much more accuracy, generating much more detailed data. These can then be used to create and advertise very personalized food, more irresistible to you than a hard drug. The data is also sold to any medical provider so they can more accurately limit your health plan coverage and determine an appropriate price. 

Lady Agatha, like many people of a certain age, does not want her liver to be remotely accessible. She fears it could be hacked, compromising both her privacy and her bowel movements. 

However, Genolution no longer makes livers that are not connecting to galnet, so it is not simple to accomodate lady Agatha's requirements. You could shield it from galnet, and try to use your liver offline. But livers nowadays automatically download updates, and that is a feature difficult to turn off: it will start complaining daily if it cannot update properly. They say they have found a workaround, but it will take some time.

The Pious Pod Program

A little while ago, an influential opinion piece appeared in Faith and Law, the quarterly glossy journal of the Theology Council. It was written by deacon Azir, who has been the spokesperson of the Theology Council on many occasions. In his letter, he denounced the fact that the Empire pours a disproportional amount of resources in educating and training new capsuleers, notably in Sehmy, Emrayur and Chaven. They get training and free ships, but statistics show that very few remain diligent in their duties to the Empire afterwards. The lure of wealth and power corrupt capsuleers all too easily, and they seek fortune in criminality with the likes of the Deathless. This, they can do with minimal punishment: diminished standings were lambasted as a joke. The piece ended with "Should we really keep investing in our own future enemies?"

It sparked a lot of debate in the Theology Council, ending in a compromise between pro- and anti-capsuleer factions. The Supreme Sobor of Theology decided that the Empire can keep training capsuleers without implementing measures to reduce their freedom afterwards, but in its ruling it also stressed that more should be done to keep Amarr trained capsuleers from going astray. The news of this ruling was followed by a harsh sermon by archbishop Drusius Qosh, speaking at the council's headquarters in Avair, exhorting all faithful capsuleers and capsuleer organisations to do their part in reclaiming those capsuleers that fell prey to the demons of greed, power, and heresy.

In a measure towards implementing the Theology Council's recommendation, the Ministry of Internal Order launched the "Pious Pod Program", a communication campaign to reclaim wayward capsuleers for the good cause.

Today, that news trickled down to the captain's desk of the Indagatrix, as mr. Ivan Firth handed me the leaflet of the program and asked how I plan to contribute.

The wait

No news yet from lady Agatha, she is in the hospital that she hired for the surgery. One of the floors has been transformed into her personal suite. They are waiting till to the medicines needed to prepare for her surgery do their thing. I have been burning a candle regularly at the chapel for her well-being.

Meanwhile mr. Maulus has been integrating well into our little Societas family. All in all it has been a few very uneventful days with only a few minor concerns. I need to buy new sandals. And for some reason Mr. Maulus is fond of guarding the origami arts and crafts section of the library, customers have been complaining about being chased away by him. Mittens enjoys the show, looking at it from a high perch on top of the do-it-yourself home repairs bookshelf.

Unfounded worries

I have been worried about nothing.

I thought it might be a problem to have mr. Maulus as a guest. Not because of assassins, that is nothing we cannot handle. But, I was worried about the reaction of my cat Mittens. Would she allow an intruder in her domain? Share food? And would mr. Maulus feel at home, or would he try to escape through the cat-flap in the door? Should I lock the cat-flap?

It turned out to be no problem, they hit it off right away. They even share the red blanket - the one that I am not allowed to use when Mittens decides to install herself on it for a nap. 

Hopefully they will not synergize on mischief.

Contacting the expert

The myriad of Jove factions are confusing me. I want to learn more about the Lost and Found Section, that retrieved artifacts deemed too dangerous for primitive civilizations that would stumble upon left-behind technology. Perhaps there was also another agency, that distributed technology, like they gave pod technology to the Caldari? How would that work?

There is very little information to be found, even on which faction of the Jove would take an interest in other civilizations' advances. So, I decided to contact the leading expert on the Jove, Uriel Anteovnuecci.

I wonder if he will have time to answer my missive. Perhaps a visit to the library, to sign copies of his work on Jove history? With the détente between the Empire and the Federation this should be no problem. And he is a member of the Arataka Research Corporation, to which I also contributed. 

We will see...  

A guest

Lady Agatha is convinced that there has already been an attempt to kill her pet furrier mister Maulus. 

"Attempted furricide", she calls it. 

Someone fed him chocolate laced with ginger, which made him vomit on a fifteen-centuries-old heirloom Kadorian pillow. This has given relief to mr. Maulus who now appears to be fine, according to the small army of veterinarians and regular doctors that Lady Agatha had summoned.

She now fears more for mr. Maulus's life than for her own.

She has half asked, half commanded me to take care of mister Maulus while she is in surgery and recovery afterwards. I seem to be the only person besides her that mister Maulus does not spontaneously maul. But the most important reason why I should be doing this is that she believes mr. Maulus will be safe in Gottin's Lamp, given its renowned top security measures. 

I am glad I have not told her about the contortionist killer janitor that got in through the ducts, or about that time a Sedevacantist was pinned to the altar with a knife, or the theft of ms. Griffiths's bath water, or the deadly toy attack, or the thing in the pool. And that's just last year. Well, perhaps a bit longer, but you get the point.

Anyway, it seems we will have a guest for a little while. 

PS. I forgot to ask whether it is the chocolate or the ginger that has to be avoided. I never had to take care of a furrier before. Luna will know, she loves animals.

The Heir

They should have seen it coming, the heir-hopefuls to lady Agatha's fortune.

She has named mister Maulus, her pet furrier, as the sole heir to her entire fortune should she come to pass. 

Furriers cannot manage wealth, but there is a way to make it work, by setting up a corporation for the special purpose of making mister Maulus's life comfortable and tending to his every wish. That corporation -run independently of the family- has been set up and has been made inheritor.

A furrier cannot be a Holder (at least not after the mad Emperor's decrees were revoked), so that title will go to her preferred great-great-granddaughter Irene Adelath. Needless to say, the rest of the family was furious. They pleaded and threatened, some tried to bargain to keep at least the race horses or the collection of old-timer three-masted sailing boats (including slave crews) of the late lord-consort. She did not budge. Maulus gets it all. He likes sailing, according to lady Agatha.

I was very much embarassed that the Societas and, indirectly, me are also part of the will - we will inherit the library of lady Agatha's late husband should the worst happen to her. According to lady Agatha, mister Maulus does not like reading stuffy books, and for chewing he prefers the latest fashion magazines. Nobody else in the family seemed to care about these books.

There will be tension over Youil dinner in House Adelath this year.

Salt, smoke and alcohol

Good news: lady Agatha is not terminally ill. But, she has to undergo surgery. Nothing very serious, they are replacing a few internal organs that were failing. However, for a frail lady of three centuries old, even standard procedures of surgery are never without risk, and will require a long period of revalidation. So, it is a wise choice to get the prayer of the sick. In addition, I also took confession. 

She does not use a standard confessional, but uses her Holder's prerogative to do this in the comfortable setting of her living room while having her afternoon tea and pastries. And gin. 

The latter may have contributed to the deterioration of her liver, according to her doctors. But she brushes away the doctor's concerns. According to lady Agatha, the best way to conserve food, or indeed anything organic, for a long period of time is either salting it, smoking it, or preserving it in alcohol. Why modern medicine advises her against salt, smoking, and alcohol is beyond her comprehension.   

She did not only complain about her doctors, but also about her grandchildren (her children and her husband passed away already). According to her, they are eagerly awaiting her death, in order to inherit the vast fortune of House Adelath and the Holder title. 

Now that she has to get surgery, the "vultures are circling closer", as she puts it. So, she has altered her will, and wants me as a witness tomorrow when the notary from the Amarr Civil Service administration comes to officialize the changes.

An urgent request

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend this year's Saint Razhden's Day celebrations. I have received an urgent summons from lady Agatha Adelath, requesting that I administer her the prayer and anointment of the sick. This is a rite, not that common any more nowadays, that gives grace for the state into which one enters through sickness or injury, and asks God for strength and endurance of the ordeal of illness or infirmity.

The message was delivered by a courier, hand written on white silk paper with gold ink. The courier did not know what illness struck lady Agatha. Of course I am now very worried that she may be terminally ill. I grew fond of the old lady who was my travel companion during the cruise to Mezagorm...

A brief history of wormhole space

The Talocan era

The Anoikis star cluster is situated at a distance of roughly 1500 light years from Amarr, far beyond the reach of modern jump drives. It is believed to have been first colonized over 6000 years ago by an ancient and advanced race, the Talocan. They were masters in manipulating spacetime, far outstripping even the Jove in that particular science. We now believe that the Talocan could alter the very fabric of spacetime to allow easy travel via artificially generated wormholes. 

There was a control hub for these artificial wormholes, hidden in our very own cluster, in the system W477-P. This hub would have consisted of a vast orbital lattice surrounding the W477-P star. One of the functions of this stellar swarm was to generate and stabilize wormhole passages at will. There have been rumors of similar hub in Anoikis, but to this date it has not been found. 

The Talocan used this technology to maintain a network of interstellar routes in Anoikis, in our cluster (bypassing jump gates), and between them. Some believe that the Talocan even manipulated the locations of the stars in Anoikis or the strength of their gravitational field, but that is generally considered far-fetched. 

The Talocan vanished, both from our cluster and from Anoikis. We do not know what happened to them, nor exactly when they vanished. They left behind only a handful of derelict structures, among which the wormhole control hub around W477-P, which has kept functioning until fairly recently.

The Sleeper era

A certain faction of the Jove, the Sleepers, discovered this wormhole travel hub, sometime near the end of the Second Jove Empire, roughly 1000 years ago. The Jove of this faction are called Sleepers because their bodies reside in permanent hibernation, and they live their lives as disembodied infomorphs in virtual space. They did not inform the other Jove about the Talocan highway to Anoikis. The Sleepers relocated, in secret, to Anoikis to escape the internecine Jove wars that ended the second Jove Empire. 

It is only fairly recently, three hundred years ago, during the Third Jove Empire, that their brethren found out where they had gone to. By then, Sleepers had thoroughly colonized Anoikis and had become its new inhabitants, heirs to the Talocan. You will encounter Sleeper structures in wormhole space, and their drones are still active there. They will attack you, for example while you mine. They will become more ferocious going from class 1 to class 6 holes.

The Seyllin cataclysm

All this time, the passage to Anoikis remained a well-kept secret - parhaps only known to the Society of Conscious Thought or the Sisters of Eve. This changed abruptly on March 10, YC 111, when a cataclysmic event occurred that revealed Anoikis to all.

That day, the type-O giant blue star at the center of the Seyllin system in the Federation erupted with a ferocity never seen before. The eruption resulted in an highly energetic and strongly-focused plasma flare that not only destroyed the Gallente colony on Seyllin I, but also reached a hidden entryway to the Talocan wormhole network. 

The flare's energy was injected in the hidden Talocan network, leading to an overload of the network and a concomitant overload of the Talocan stellar engine at W477-P. The wormhole control hub was critically damaged. As a result, the wormhole connections were no longer kept in check and became uncontrollable. Suddenly, hundreds of unstable wormholes opened up all over New Eden, offering temporary pathways into Anoikis that could be traversed by our ships.

A mere six years after the Seyllin cataclysm, W477-P went supernova, and the Talocan control infrastructure stabilizing the wormhole network was lost. The remnants of the supernova can still be seen in the sky, and are known as Caroline's star. As a result, for the foreseeable future, wormholes will continue to appear randomly throughout our cluster, and they cannot be stabilized any more. 

The Capsuleer era

Wormhole connections to Anoikis are short-lived and randomly connect stars. This inherent instability is why the Empire's rule of law cannot be enforced in Anoikis, and no territory can be claimed. At first, Concord tried to ban all travel to Anoikis, but this travel ban was soon defied. The first (non-Jove) person to enter Anoikis was a Jin-Mei astrophysicist from CryoDron, Lianda Burreau. She is believed to have died at the hands of the Sleepers.

Of course, capsuleers and their organisations -attracted by the lawlessness of the place- could not be stopped either. They are now the de-facto (third-wave) colonists of Anoikis, battling over its resources with the remnants of the previous inhabitants, the Sleepers.

Geography of Anoikis

Introductory note: As I was taking visitors and new personnel for the Chapel with me to Seclusion during my visit last week, I prepared a primer for them about Anoikis. This was also useful for me! When I was young, nobody knew of the existence of Anoikis, and it was a surprise to me when I first came back from the asteroid monastery to worldly matters. So, I decided to put this primer in my own log for later reference.

Today, I will start with the first part, geography, and tomorrow I will compile the next part, history.

Geography

Anoikis is a star cluster situated about 1500 light years from Amarr, in what would be called the south-western direction along our cluster's plane. Just like our cluster, it is a circular, disk-shaped cluster. It contains about 2600 stars, so half that of our own cluster of known worlds, grouped in sub-clusters. The stars have been named according to their stellar catalog number, starting with a "J" and then a number. That is why Anoikis is sometimes also refered to as "J-space". 

The stars are categorized in classes, ranging from class 1 ("C1") to class 6 ("C6"). The higher numbers are more dangerous as their original denizens (discussed below) are more entrenched. Many stars are unusual: among them are plenty magnetars, black holes, red giants, pulsars, and so on. 

The stars are grouped in constellations and regions, but there are no jump gates, nor fixed routes connecting them. The regions' designation start with a letter ranging from A (containing the C1 stars) up to F (containing the C6 stars). 

The map above shows the shape of the Anoikis cluster. Coordinates are in light years, putting Amarr at the origin. So, the center of Anoikis is about 1000 light years south and 825 light years east of Amarr.  The two coordinate lines in the graph point out Seclusion's location.

The colors refer to the class: C1 purple, C2 blue, C3 green : these systems always  have wormholes that connect to our own cluster. They are the entrance gate, and probably were the first to be colonized. From there it goes outward to C4 yellow, C5 orange, and the last subcluster C6 red.

New library of Scripture

Great news today in the librarian world: a new library of the Scriptures was unveiled. It will be the largest Scripture library for commoners, and it was opened under the patronage of royal heir Ersilia Kor-Azor. I have booked a ticket to visit, but the admissions office is overwhelmed at the moment and there is a waiting list.

Some of our non-Amarr friends have the misconception that the Scriptures are one, or perhaps a few holy books. Something that you can put in your luggage, or fit on a bookshelf. As lord Lok'ri -whom I have had the honor to meet in person- emphasized to foreign delegation asking about scriptures: the totality of scripture does not fit in a room. It encompasses all of Amarr's history and culture, and evolves constantly.

People are familiar with the most famous books - writings of the great prophets, such as Dano Gheinok. But that is just the tip of an immense iceberg. All the writings of all the emperors are part of scripture, as are the scientific breakthroughs, and even the Book of Records with all the names of every Amarrian that ever lived. This alone requires a building with huge sprawling underground levels. Not all of it is accessible to commoners; access must be granted by a Keeper of Records.

So, bringing it together, using historical copies and new prints as well as, I imagine, scanned data, in one location is a big enterprise. One that fits the aims of diplomacy and knowledge of house Kor-Azor. And it is a thrilling prospect for anyone to see this mirror image of Amarr, in scrolls and engravings and books.

Some may wonder, why books? Why still use something as archaic as ink on paper? It is not merely for the beauty of it, or for the respect of tradition. It is not just because ink is still readable when your capacitor is empty. But it also offers historians a view on how this data evolved in time, from the distant past to the present, and gives it some perpetuity. 

It is easy to alter electronic data in a way that cannot be retraced. Remotely update your copies. But it is harder to scratch a name out of the the written book of records unnoticed. The mad emperor tried to alter Scripture - but many ink on paper copies scattered throughout the empire retained the memory of the truth, unsullied by the mad emperor's heresies. The Order of Saint Tetrimon was able to undo his alterations because of that. 

Rite of Initiation

Many capsuleers feel restless, trying to quell a hunger for something that they cannot quite identify. It is a hunger that riches and power can not satiate. Not in the long run. For what they need is to find meaning, purpose in their actions. And that is a hunger that can only truly be satisfied by faith.

Some of them embark as a pilgrim on a journey towards God. That is why we call them peregrinans, in LUMEN. The first destination to reach on that lifelong pilgrimage is to join the ranks of the Amarr faithful. Conversion to the faith is a joyous occasion, and it is celebrated with a Rite of Initiation. 

Yesterday, Otto got initiated! We held a beautiful ceremony in the Lamp's chapel. Otto started as a peregrinan well over a year ago, and studied scripture assiduously. He composed a touching prayer. He lit the flame of the faith within himself. 

Now, his name is added to the Book of Records, identifying him to all as a faithful subject of the Empress.

Saint Vasrayi's chapel

I visited our wormhole system yesterday, in order to bring the relic of Saint Vasrayi to the chapel there. The nameless chapel will now be named after the saint whose relic it how holds, the Chapel of Saint Vasrayi of the Wormhole.

We brought the in procession from the docks to the chapel, through Pilgrim's Rest park. The service was nice, and well attended by the Amarrian baseliners of the station and the new industrial zone.

The relic is placed in a beautiful reliquary, in a small side-chapel next to the high altar. The sleeve of the saint's palm-leaf robe can be viewed through a glass window. I hope that it can inspire the 'voidlanders' as the inhabitants of Seclusion call themselves. 

Like the Saint, they choose a life away from the noise and tumult of the Imperial worlds. Vasrayi did this initially to escape from his pursuers, those that burned down his village and killed his parents. Perhaps also among the voidlanders, some came to the wormhole to escape a persecutor. I suspect many came to seek wealth by exploiting the abundant natural resources of the place. But regardless of his initial motives, saint Vasrayi stayed in his own 'seclusion' because he found that he could be closer to God when he was away from worldly distractions. 

Preparations

Preparations are going ahead for the translation of the relic of Saint Vasrayi the Anchorite to the chapel in Seclusion. I also have plans to enlarge that chapel; with the new influx of workforce in our wormhole dominion, the old one has definitely become too small. 

I am glad to see that we still use regular people and none of these Upwell clones to man the growing mining and industrial space complex there. Among these baseliners there are very few slaves though. It seems as though the "voidlanders" as Isidorus calls the capsuleers of Anoikis, prefer commoners (and non-Empire citizens). Anyway, we do need to let the light of faith shine more strongly in the wormhole darkness, for all.

As I am going over to Seclusion coming Saturday, I am using the occasion to take along curious capsuleers who want to experience the wormhole worlds. I am preparing a lecture on the history of the wormholes as well for that occasion, and I believe Rael will tell them a bit about life there.

A difficult conversation

((ooc note: Uncharacteristically, this log entry is encrypted and only readable by LUMEN officers. Usually -and unless noted differently- Theo's log entries are shared on a public server, since he thinks research notes should be publicly available. But today is different, and non-LUMEN folks would not have in-character knowledge of this unless told by a LUMEN officer.))

I talked to ms. Yubari's slave, and explained her the situation.

As expected, she did not take it well. She had a full-fledged panic attack and we needed to do breathing exercises for a while. I assured her we would not turn her over to the Heretic, but she only looks half convinced.

I had to dissuade her from running away - that option would be much less safe than staying under our protection. She agreed, but I think that has more to do with her needing the Vitoc antidote from the Lamp's medbay...

When she was owned by the Heretic, he used the Vitoc method, by which slaves are exposed to an ever changing toxic drug. Their masters control the antidote. It is very hard to wean anyone off the chemical, and the Societas has traditionally been running detox programmes (especially for the Heretic's slaves) and provided replacement drugs that have less side-effects. But that also means that she is stuck with us - we are in effect her new Vitoc dealers.

I told her to take some time off, on sick leave, and stay in her quarters for the moment. I will have her medicine delivered to her. The fewer people see her, the fewer can snitch on her to get a reward from Sedevacantists.

This may last for a long time as ms. Yubari is recovering slowly. So, I have been hatching another plan. Now that we are extending the chapel in Seclusion, our wormhole colony, it will need more hands. I am very confident that Seclusion is out of reach of the Sedevacantists. Putting two and two together you can see the obvious solution.

You've got mail

((ooc note: Uncharacteristically, this log entry is encrypted and only readable by LUMEN officers. Usually -and unless noted differently- Theo's log entries are shared on a public server, since he thinks research notes should be publicly available. But today is different, and non-LUMEN folks would not have in-character knowledge of this unless told by a LUMEN officer.))

The day starts bad, when the first mail in your inbox comes from the Empire's most despised and feared heretic. Well, perhaps I exaggerate - after all there is no shortage of despised and feared heretics. But certainly Nauplius is ranked prominently among them.

He wrote to me directly, to inquire about a slave that he once gifted Yun-Hee Yubari. Miss Yubari is now in medbay. She was found, injured, and suffering from severe cerebral damage for which she is getting treatment. She has memory loss and no recollection of what happened before she was found, let alone of the slave. 

But I know where her slave is. 

Miss Yubari entrusted her to me, about a year ago, right before she vanished. Her disappearance left the slave in some sort of legal limbo, and in order not to let her starve, I gave her some stipend in exchange for doing chores at the Chapel. Just until I could find time to figure out what to do. 

To be honest, I must confess that I had somewhat forgotten about her, until this mail from the heretic.

I think the slave got used to her new situation soon, and enjoyed the relative freedom that came with it. She was smart enough not to try leaving the station. A lone slave without her holder would not have passed the security checks at the interbus terminal without alerting the MIO. So, she kept doing her work at the chapel, and I think she did her best not to draw attention.

That will change now that the Sedevacantists (Nauplius' heretical cult) are looking for her. I am afraid that they will find out about her location and kidnap her. The heretic may even want to use her to perform experimental surgery to find a way to heal miss Yubari faster!

Luna calmed me somewhat, and told me to trust the Lamp's security. She also advised me to discuss it with miss Yubari, as soon as she is healthy enough. Of course I must also talk to the slave, inform her of what is happening...

Entropic signatures of advanced civilizations

Time to conclude my short study on the entropic limits to advanced civilizations. 

In the first part I argued that life, including consciousness, is neither a state of extremely high entropy nor a state of extremely low entropy. Rather, it exists in between, somewhere in the middle of a big stream of entropy from low to high. In the second part, I theorized that even advanced beings that consist only of information, i.e. disembodied consciousnesses, must create entropy purely by the act of thinking and must dump this excess entropy into the big stream.

Without temperature differences, there is no net current of heat - in other words, to have an entropy stream requires a temperature gradient. For us, the source of the stream is the star around which we live, a high temperature object. Deep space is our cold reservoir, at the chilling temperature of the cosmic background radiation, barely 2.7 degrees above absolute minimum. 

It is the temperature at which the civilization operates that sets the physical limits, rather than the temperature of the star. The maximum "bits per second" rate at which entropy can be dumped (and thus thoughts generated) is proportional to the operating temperature squared. The minimal power (energy consumed per second) that is needed for that is proportional to the operating temperature cubed.

The trick to keep the total number of thoughts infinite, while keeping the total amount of energy consumed finite is to let the operating temperature decrease with time in a very specific manner: it should go down faster than the inverse square root of time, but slower than the inverse cube root of time. 

In addition, the operating temperature must be higher than the cold reservoir. So, that means that it should be higher than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and that could pose a problem at some point. But, I speculate that if that temperature is not low enough, a highly advanced civilization can turn around the heat flow, and use its own star as the cold reservoir. An (artificial) black hole will do just fine - its characteristic temperature can be controlled by its radius, and can be brought extremely close to absolute zero. Excess entropy can then be dumped into the black hole. Manipulating spacetime and creating artificial black holes is something the Talocan could do - perhaps not (yet) the Jove. 

So, one can hypothesize that the hallmark of a sedentary hyper-advanced civilization would be a cold star or black hole with a very specific and rather unnatural power law dependence of its temperature over time. 

PS. I am writing down the calculations in a more orderly manner, and will link them here later for the mathematically inclined.

[[ooc attribution: this builds on Freeman Dyson's speculations. In Science 131, p.1303 (1960), he considers a Dyson sphere's infrared radiation as a signature. That is the radiation that corresponds to its operating temperature.]]

In the news today

There was a bone-chilling current-events documentary on Amarr Certified News today, warning of yet another new threat. 

I quote: 

New Deathless ships are believed to be in development. These ships are capable of fitting breacher pod launchers that include the infrastructure needed to run small virtualities. These virtualities can house a team of infomorphs who then transfer to clone bodies launched in SCARAB Breacher Pods. Dubbed “Shriker clones”, they are a specialized iteration of the Upwell Consortium's workforce clones.

The ink on my previous log entry was not yet dry, or the spectre of disembodied teams of informorps is in the news. Here, the substrate on which to run the infomorph's consciousness seems to be a "shriker". Whatever that is, it does not sound cuddly. The word has the same root as the "shrike". That is a species of small songbird, known to impale their lifeless quarry on sharp twigs.

There was another interesting thing in the news. A short item, under the heading "Minmatar, Gallente, and Caldari militaries pledge to provide further assistance in Pochven." Here, the Empire is conspicuous by its absence. I cannot recall that we recently renewed this pledge. 

Perhaps this is the start of diplomatic relations and negotiations with the Triglavians? What will this mean for Raravoss? Are we abandoning that system, and the brave resistance forces there fighting under the command of commander Arline Kley to its sorry fate in the hands of the Triglavians?