Exams

Mr. Firth was a bit grumpy when I asked him about Echo's relative. But he agreed to do it. It took him a lot of time.

He got results back to me today. And explained his earlier grumpiness: apparently, he was taking the exam for promotion. I thought he had already done that, but apparently he failed the first time around, and could retake it now. 

The result is not yet known, but he has the look of a student whose tension is lifted after the exam, and who suddenly feels the tiredness of the weeks of studying wash over him, making him for the moment too exhausted to worry too strongly about how it went.

I suggested we go for a drink, and for the first time since I've known him, he agreed.

Curious Request

There are always rumors circulating, in any congregation. 

After mass, as people greet each other on their way out of the chapel, one can almost see these rumors fluttering about like butterflies. They feed on the nectar of scandal, and move erratically from one group of faithful to another, pollinating brains with hearsay. The higher on the societal ladder that the scandal is about, the sweeter the nectar.

This is not something that can be stamped out, even by the harshest sermon and the sternest priest.

They reach my ears, but usually I ignore them. This time, a particularly nasty rumor is going around about lewd behavior by our Directrix. Such rumors tickle the imagination of our baseliners to no end, and they happily blow it out of proportion, to the point that any sane mind safely dismisses it at once.

But then I got this unusual request by the Directix: to help out certain persons that have uncommon professions. Well, perhaps not all that uncommon, but rather jobs that are frowned upon of by the more puritanical circles of clergy. Of course I am willing to help fellow man and woman, and if these rumors were not going around, I would have made nothing of it. But now I admit it has me a little worried.

Offline organs

Lady Adelath's Genolution organs were ready - and as per her request they do not connect to galnet, they remain fully offline. The workaround is that the she will have ports in her neck, to plug in datacrystals that update the organ's software when necessary. It will look as if she's a capsuleer with those, and she was quite proud to tell me she'd be "just like you".

The surgery took place today, and it appears all went well! Good news. 

This also means that - after still some period of time for post-surgery recovery - Mr. Maulus can return home. That will be good. We get along well, but Mr. Maulus demands a lot of time and attention, and I have to say I am looking forward to being alone with Mittens again. 

Searching the records

From time to time we have visitors to the library who want to use our access to the Book of Records, to find ancestry or relatives, for example to complete a family tree. Yesterday we had a high-profile visit, a capsuleer with callsign Deceiver's Echo. She is related to lord Ashland, a holder of a minor house. 

The young lady Ashland wanted to find her mother - and we did find the marriage link, and a record for her mother. At least, they are still in good standing with the Empire. But I had sad news for her: according to our records, her mother has passed away. Now, she was not originally Amarr and spent a lot of time in Yulai and in the Republic, so there is a very small possibility that record may still be wrong.

We did unearth another mystery. She appears to have a brother that she did not know about. And there is some seal on the record, I am not allowed to view it. I will ask mr. Ivan Firth, the political officer on the Indagatrix, how to best proceed. At this point, there is no need yet to bother the reverend mother Kahoudi. Mr. Firth is a bit lower on the Ministry's hierarchy, but I think he has enough clout to find out what is going on.

The Monastery of the Tetrimon Order of Saint Jamyl

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the monastery that now houses the Tetrimon Order of Saint Jamyl. 

It is an ancient structure, actually predating Empress Jamyl's time. I am correct it was built by the Khanid Order of Paladins. It had fallen into disrepair, around the time that also the Tetrimon Order of Saint Jamyl had become inactive. That is, untill Baron Redwolfe put his shoulders under the project of reviving this order to which his ancestors belonged and restoring both the order and the monastery to their former glory. 

Of particular interest is a large library that belonged to the Khanid Order of Paladins. It contains a vast number of ancient scrolls and I do not think that they have been translated or studied ever before. These paladins practiced the Exercises of Saint Aloysius of the Quill and had their knights copy scripture and write up things by hand. So many secrets lie there, and records of forgotten histories! I felt like a child in a candy shop! 

But looking at the bad climate control, this was closer to a candy shop of horrors. 

Time and nature took its toll on the library. The current shielding of the windows helps to keep rain and wind out - but nothing more. It is woefully unsatisfactory - I do not blame Baron on the Order, this is something that requires the tender love and care of proper librarians and conservation experts. 

I have arranged for a quick transport of climate control equipment - temperature and humidity should not be allowed to just go along with the weather outside, but should be very carefully controlled and kept at an optimum for preservation. Lighting should be adapted too - there are gorgeous frescoes of star maps that we must protect from fading. A team from the Lamp's library is going over to install the equipment as I write down this log entry. I'll go and inspect things as soon as they're ready.

Pochven wormholes

The Talocan were masters in weaving jump connections between stars. They did not use the gate network that we found in space and that the core powers still use to this day. I am curious about their technology - I believe that it was later copied by the Jove and may now resurface in Zarzakh. I am also interested in the network logic behind these connections. Deciphering this will lead us to discover hubs in their ancient network and it will offer new insights in this ancient race.

Coming Sunday, I plan to go the recently restored monastery of the Tetrimon Order Saint Jamyl. This order is a chapterhouse of LUMEN, headed by Baron Redwolfe. The monastery has a repository of ancient star charts which could be of use for my current investigation.

Another connection that I see is the Triglavian's creation of Pochven. They blocked the existing jump gates and created new pathways. The spontaneously appearing wormholes reacted to that, as they did in Turnur. The wormhole connections to Pochven were studied by Electus Matari - a rebel group that we had a temporary alliance of convenience with during the first and second Khybernaut wars. They compiled an entry manual to Pochven. 

This proved very useful in the wars against the Khybernauts, but it also showed that the C729 wormhole connections to any given Pochven system randomly walk around in only a limited amount of target systems, close to the original location of the Triglavian occupied system. For example, to get to the occupied Amarrian system of Raravoss in Pochven, one has to scan for wormholes in the following set of systems:

image from: https://pochven.electusmatari.com/

This is of course different from Anoikis. But I think it shares the property of randomness hiding regularity. If it could be deciphered for Pochven, perhaps it can too for Seclusion.

Research question

Wormhole connections are random. Supposedly, at some point, they were not. They were controlled by one or more Talocan orbital structure the size of entire star systems. However, when that went defect, the wormholes started appearing and shifting randomly, which they do up to this day.

Nevertheless, some veteran colonists of the wormhole systems have developed an intuition about the general region where the next static wormhole will pop up. They say things like "Oh, we have had our highsec static show up twice in Caldari and then in Minmatar space, the next one will likely be Amarr." Perhaps they are just guessing. They cannot explain the logic behind their hunches. But it has been noted by some etnographers of the voidlanders - as our wormhole colonists call their culture - that these hunches tend to be right in a statistically significant way.

This does imply that there is some hidden order in the apparent randomness, an order that we have not discovered yet. The cluster's brightest minds - at Hedion University, in the Arataka Research Consortium and in the Signal Cartel - have devoted all their energy to it, and could not find a pattern.

That should not stop a lesser mind like mine to take a fresh look at the problem, an make their own inquiry for the fun it. Of course, one should heed the failures of the past. Going for the grand goal of predicting every new connection is a proven delusion. Similarly, it is impossible to map out the entire time-evolving network of wormhole connections, even for a formidable alliance as ours.

So, I will start very humbly by looking at our very own corner of Anoikis, where I can ask Publius to give me daily information on where our C1 static leads to. I will then look for geometrical patterns in space,  tracing how the exit of our static makes its random walk around the Anoikis cluster. To me, that seems more relevant than arithmetic patters based on wormhole identifier numbers. 

Reflections on YC126

The start of a new year is a good occasion to reflect on the previous year. 

At the personal level, I thank God for guiding me into making a bit of progress with my quest. One lead that I continued to investigate is that the Takmahl, settling in the Araz constellation, had taken the holy relics. After searching there rather thoroughly, this trail led me onwards to Aridia, along the Blood Raider highway from Araz to Delve. I found a Takmahl biodroid with the help of my friends, and clues of the involvement of the Jove. I tried to find a passage into Jove space, only to find that other capsuleers who did so before me closed that door and lost their mind. These are still leads I must pursue this year, continuing in Aridia with a focus on the Anath system. I also need to gain more knowledge on the Jove and on the Talocan - the latter are a common denominator behind both the advance of the Takmahl and the Jove. A parallel (and very different) line of investigation is the idea that the Order of St. Tetrimon, working for the Council of Apostles, hid the holy relics. I followed that particular trail to Mezagorm, but had to abort that search prematurely. I will return and continue the search.

At the level of the Societas, and Khimi Harar at large, two notable events spring to my mind. Firstly, Prince Seraghis and his Zaraehvar combat group fought bravely to pacify Aridia, but after initial victories, the protracted battles wore down their forces, and they retreated, leaving the security in Aridia fully in the hands of the Amarr Navy again. They also left our blessed alliance. 

Secondly, there appears to be a wormhole renaissance, with waves of new settlers going to Anoikis. Our wormhole system of Seclusion has become a bustling industrial hub, thanks to the efforts of Publius Cornelius Felix, and his associate Isidorus. At Pilgrim's rest, we have now enlarged the Chapel and dedicated it to St. Vasrayi. The increased focus on Anoikis will be a help in my investigations of the Talocan.

At the level of the Empire itself, the notable news of this year are the new insurgencies flowing over from the warzone into high security systems such as Mehatoor. These have been a concern, and we have helped suppress this, earning praise from our beloved Empress. The insurgencies have also heralded the advent of a new type of warclone, the vanguard. The insurgencies and the vanguard are linked to a new enemy, the Deathless, whose illegitimate use of a Jovian station is putting the Drifters on a war footing, causing alarm not only in our Empire but in the other concord powers. 

Calendars and numerology

Another year has passed. In our own traditional calendar, we welcome the year 23363. Since New Eden universal time was agreed upon at the Yoiul Conference, people commonly use a calendar that sets year zero at the time of the Yoiul Conference. In that scheme, we are now entering the year YC 127. 

Having an universally agreed master clock to which others are calibrated is essential for trade. Official timestamps allow to find out who placed a buy or sell order first. But establishing this is particularly difficult for interstellar trade. Two traders moving at relativistic velocities with respect to each other disagree on the order that events take place - the concept of simultaneity is relative to the frame of reference. So, a choice must be made beforehand on an arbitrarily chosen "trading frame of reference" for timekeeping; an "arbiter" that says who or what comes first. 

This master clock and master frame of reference is kept fixed at the Secure Commerce Commission headquarters in Yulai.

For the purpose of determining who is first, the choice of when to put "year zero" is irrelevant: only time differences matter, not an absolute value. But apparently, it does matter for numerologists. I had a discussion with one at the new year's reception at the library. Numerologists like to play mathematical games, especially with prime numbers. I was informed that 23363 is a product of just two primes, 61 and 383. Before the advent of quantum computing, such numbers were used in cryptography, since it was believed then to be computationally very hard to find the prime factors for large numbers.

The number 127 is also prime, moreover it is a so-called "Mersenne" prime. Those are prime numbers with an additional property: they are equal to some power of two, from which one is subtracted - the seventh power of two is 128, subtracting one gives the prime number 127.

I have no idea why this matters to numerologists.

Misbehaving

It was busy at the Lamp's bar tonight. Perhaps a little bit too busy for mr. Maulus, who ran amok. Spilling his food, and running about kicking some glasses, and pecking at poor Luna's feet. Our directrix appears to be not keen at all on furriers. Strange, I thought she loved all animals, but furriers clearly are an exception. Perhaps a furrier trauma in the past?

It came to a point that Gaun and I had to keep mr. Maulus in a box for a little while. A spatious one, certainly, but I did feel somewhat bad about it. Next, I worried about all the stuff that mr. Maulus had been munching, picking off food from guests of the bar. 

Gaun told me that furriers cannot cope well with with capsaicin, the compound that makes chili pepper hot. I think it is a trait I share with furriers; and now I do know why chili laced chocolate was bad. Perhaps Rebechia's blood sausage contained some chili? One cannot be sure without proper chemical analysis, but mr. Maulus was acting a bit strange in his box.

I took him back to my quarters, and to my relief he returned to his old self almost as soon as he was released from that box. In retribution for being locked up, he destroyed another pair of sandals. But at least that tells me he is feeling all right.

Hospital visit

As lady Agatha's surgery has been delayed a bit, I brought mr. Maulus over for a visit. It is clear they miss each other very much. Lady Agatha has knitted a sweater for him, in joyful yoiul red, and with little reindeer antlers, so he will be able to celebrate the new year in style. I received instructions for the festive meal, including mr. Maulus' favorite champagne.

The advertisement campaign came up during casual conversation, and lady Agatha suggested to run an in-station advertisement campaign. 

Some time ago, we did try sending uplifting messages to display in the stations, but as far as I know, it has not been accepted for cluster-wide broadcast. I still have one of the versions on my datapad - low resolution and without sound. It was not really geared to be a recruitment holoreel (that is the kind of advert that they do air), rather it was meant to spread scripture. Perhaps that is why it was not selected for airing. Perhaps we can revisit the idea.

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.