early_riser

Yes I know about serotonin etc, but why does the stimulus of petting a fluffy critter evoke that response in the first place?

My personal uninformed armchair theory: We're apes, and apes pick bugs out of each other's fur to bond as a group. But when our ancestors forsook the trees for the plains, we shed our fur to gained sweat glands in order to become the ultimate persistence hunters. Yet the urge to groom remains. We have no fur and we must pet.

Background (imagine this as a Star Wars-esque text crawl):

As the cost of the Bright Way's interstellar missionary efforts began to climb, it became clear that they couldn't fund their efforts on free will tithes alone. Their research monasteries had brought about a great many technological marvels in their quest to fulfill the Great Commandment to find other sophonts dwelling among the stars, and it seemed reasonable to monetize the work of their paws in order to fund the missionaries.

Since time immemorial the shamans, and their Claravian descendents, the hearthkeepers, had been responsible for bringing light and warmth to those around them, with simple fire at first, but as their knowledge grew with the Bright Way's efforts, with hearth and then electricity. This, too, would be made profitable, in the name of fulfilling the Great Commandment, of course.

With time, the original purpose of this "corporatization" was all but forgotten, and the Bright Way mutated into a cyberpunk-esque megacorp monopolizing all the industries that made an interplanetary civilization possible.

Traditional yinrih gender roles assigned spiritual authority to women alone, and worldly authority to men alone, allowing for a degree of separation between the state and the clergy. In practice, however, the clergy's economic stranglehold on the entire star system meant that powerful governments were under the clergy's palms, and the rest that weren't were clients to those that were. At the height of the Bright Way's power, it even pressed into debt slavery those who could not pay their tithes.

Throughout this Age of Decadence, there remained a faithful core of Wayfarers who clung to the Bright Way's original doctrines and saw the organization's monopolies as a distraction from their divine mandate to seek out other sophonts dwelling among the stars. Less populous corners of the system also started attracting former debtor slaves, both manumitted and runaways, who had apostatized and began agitating for the Bright Way to be destroyed, root and branch.

Eventually, a war would erupt, initially between the Preservationists, who wanted to maintain the status quo, and the Dissolutionists, who wanted to break up the Bright Way's monopolies. As a Dissolutionist victory became all but assured, erstwhile allies splintered into two major opposing factions fighting both the remnants of the Preservationists and one another. The Pious Dissolutionists wanted the Bright Way to remain as a religious institution, but the Partisans wanted to blot out the Bright Way entirely.

The story below takes place at the close of this war.

---

The data center was enveloped in uncanny stillness. The hearthkeepers had cut the power to the whole region hours earlier in advance of the enemy's arrival. The backup generators had endured mere minutes before dying in their turn, leaving the anchorite's chamber alone running on a meager auxiliary battery, not that Skywatcher cared. The Preservationists had already lost, and he could only make the aftermath as unpleasant as possible for whichever faction, the Partisans or the Pious Dissolutionists, ended up taking over. The quiet darkness was punctuated by the sound of something slamming repeatedly against the fortified security door. Muffled barks could be heard between the booms, alternating between promises of leniency should the Farspeaker surrender and graphic threats of violence if he continued to resist.

“Take these and toss them in the shredder!” Skywatcher shoved a loose pile of claw-written papers into his slave’s chest.

Whitepaw looked down at the notes hastily thrust at her. A light held in her tail feebly illuminated the text. Network diagrams, node tables, firewall rules. Decades, no, centuries worth of meticulous documentation poured out in the anchorite’s own ink. “This… this is our entire network segment,” she gasped.

“Yeah, now shred it. All of it,” growled Skywatcher. “I already wiped the backup drives. If those scripture-thumping zealots want their precious noosphere they’ll have to work for it.”

“Body,” Whitepaw yipped meekly. “The network is the body of the noosphere, not the noosphere itself.”

Skywatcher wrinkled his muzzle, exposing his fangs. “I KNEW you were one of them. When I was your age, I believed in all that cloaca butter, too. Then I grew up. I swear each new slave I get is more pious than the last. If you’re not going to help me, then get out of my way!” He tore the papers back from her and spun around, his tail striking her in the chest. She toppled backward. Her shoulder hit a half-empty equipment rack stacked precariously with unmounted equipment. Whitepaw landed on her back just as the rack teetered over and fell in turn, burying her in a mound of inert electronics and knocking the wind out of her.

SMASH!

The noise of the collapsing equipment rack was drowned out by the sound of the security door being torn from its hinges. Sunlight streamed through the breach. Mechanical footfalls thumped down the hall and into the office. From her spot on the floor Whitepaw saw the hulking form of a mini mech lope into the room. Its body looked like some prehistoric monster wrought in polymerite and steel. Its torso was too short, and its forelegs were too long. Its forepaws were curled into fists, the knuckles bearing the weight of the mech’s front end rather than its palms. This was no scripture-thumping zealot, no Knight of the Sun. The mech’s right foreleg bore the device of the Partisans, a black paw held palm out in defiance. The Partisans’ credo was scrawled in Outlander below the symbol, “The skies are empty. We are alone.”

Skywatcher stared open-mouthed into the mech’s visor. The pilot’s mouth was half-open, his tongue protruding slightly, but his eyes were closed, and his head flopped seemingly lifeless to one side.

“An Immortal,” Skywatcher stammered. The pilot couldn’t have been older than Whitepaw herself, at least in body. Who knows how long he had been in metabolic suspension plugged into that mech. His fur clung in ragged wet mats to his gaunt expressionless face. It used to be white, but the neurogel he was pickled in turned it yellow. His eyes did not see. His paws did not feel. His heart did not beat. His body was dead, but his brain was frighteningly active, kept alive by the suspension capsule.

Whitepaw had heard stories of these Immortals. They started out as gel heads recruited by the disorganized secularist warlords dotted across the Outer Belt. They were usually terminally addicted teens who couldn’t be unplugged without flatlining. Their suspension capsule would be integrated into a mech, and their nervous system would be connected to the mech’s sensor suite and control system. They say the Partisans found a way to slow down a person’s time perception while in suspension, allowing them to react with lightning speed to what was going on around them. Whether this was true or not, they were legendarily hard to dispatch. After Firefly the Apostate united the secularist warlords under the Partisan banner, he turned these Immortals into his elite shock troops. Oddly fitting given the Great Leader himself never left his own suspension capsule even after returning from his failed missionary journey. Undead soldiers for Litchlord Firefly. The dregs of society proved poorly disciplined soldiers, so he started recruiting otherwise healthy men, using suspension capsules scavenged from unlaunched womb ships abandoned by the missionaries fleeing Firefly's genocide. The device of the missionaries, two enmeshed gears symbolizing the union of two noospheres, was still visible on the side of the capsule. The Partisans deliberately left it uncovered in an act of blasphemous mockery of the faith.

The mech wordlessly strode forward and lifted Skywatcher by the neck. The anchorite let out a few choking gasps, straining with a rear paw to grab some blunt object to toss at the metal brute. He managed to grab the heavy metal head of a loose network cable and send it flying at his attacker. It bounced off the mech’s free forepaw and clattered uselessly to the floor. The pilot’s tongue gave a barely perceptible twitch as though he were laughing at his victim’s futile struggling. The mech’s writing claw and inner thumb moved to grip the sides of the Farspeaker’s head, preparing to twist it off like a bottle cap. Whitepaw bit her tongue to stop herself from yelping. Skywatcher had not been a particularly kind master, but nobody deserved to die like this.

The pilot’s left ear flicked lazily as he processed an unheard order from his handlers waiting outside. He loosened his grip on Skywatcher’s head, then tossed him carelessly over the mech’s back and caught him again in the coils of the mech’s tail. The Immortal turned and plodded out of the room. Skywatcher looked helplessly at the pile of equipment Whitepaw was hiding under. The tail constricting his midsection didn’t keep him from wheezing out desperate prayers, seeking refuge in the faith he had scorned not three minutes earlier.

Whitepaw lay still, forgotten for the moment, at least she prayed so. She heard harsh barking coming from outside. Two more Partisans were questioning the anchorite. Skywatcher uttered a few raspy oaths to please his lightless captors. They didn’t seem impressed.

“You can either give us your network documentation willingly, or we can squeeze it out of you,” one of them growled.

“Please, by the empty sky,” he gasped. “Hard copies. I’ve got hard copies in the office where you found me.”

Whitepaw shuddered. If she hadn’t been seen before they’d surely find her when they came back inside. Apostasy or death, those are the choices they'd give her. It didn't matter that the Pious Dissolutionists were technically the allies of the Partisans against the corporate arm of the Bright Way. At least they used to be allies. Once the Preservationists, the ones fighting to preserve the Bright Way's stranglehold on the system's economy, were driven back to Yih, questions about the future of Focus, about the fate of the Bright Way, the real Bright Way, the faith, not the system-spanning megacorp that wore the faith like an ill-fitting mask only when it suited their needs, began fracturing the fragile alliance. She dug her claws into her palms and shut her eyes tight. “Don’t focus on the pain,” she told herself. “No matter how much it will hurt, at least it will be over quickly. Then I won’t have to worry about the war anymore.” She uttered a final prayer. “O Uncreated Light, please shine upon me, the least of thy little ones.”

THUMP!

A dull tremor shook the floor underneath her.

THUMP!

And then another, and then even more. The two Partisans began shouting incoherently. “A Knight--no there’s three,” one of them barked. There was more yelling, then the shriek of metal on metal as the Immortal engaged the interloping mechs.

---

"Come on, you old rust bucket." Daybreak flicked one of the mech's controls with his outer thumb, pulling up the hull integrity monitor on his HUD visor. His complaint broke the silence otherwise accompanied only by the low thump of the mech's footfalls as it loped across the terrain.

"I don't see anything wrong," said Sunrise, tilting his head back toward the squire seated behind him in the cockpit.

"I'm telling you, you may pilot this mech, but I'm the one patching her up after every sortie. I know every joint, bolt, hose, and wire in this thing. Feel that?," he pressed his palm against the bulkhead in front of him. "That faint rattle every time one of her rear paws goes down. It's her tail. The first joint is coming loose."

Sunrise checked the hull integrity on his own visor. "Everything's at twelve-dozen per gross," he grunted. "I think I have more faith in your repairs than you do."

"Void!" Sunrise swore. He had switched his HUD visor back to the mech's forward vid sensor array. "The Partisans beat us to the data center, and they have an Immortal with them."

"Why would they need an Immortal just to capture a data center held by an old anchorite?" asked Daybreak.

"Because they knew we were coming," Sunrise growled. He pressed a few chords on his own keyers, bringing up a comms channel to the two knights flanking his mech on either side.

"Yeah yeah, we already see him," one of them preempted. "I doubt he'll be much of a problem for--"

"Light blind me, where'd he go!" The other knight barked. "He was just there, and then--"

The Immortal had vanished in the flick of a whisker, leaving a dust cloud in his wake leading between the forelegs of the mech. Daybreak's nimble digits flew across his keyers with the grace of a musician playing an instrument. The mech's tail slammed into the ground, narrowly missing the Immortal as he slid just out from under the mech's chassis.

He grabbed the end of the mech's tail and dug his hind claws into the dirt, arresting the mech's forward stride.

Daybreak cringed at the metallic twang of tearing pseudosinew as the Immortal succeeded in amputating the mech's tail.

"What'd I tell you," said Daybreak.

"Not now, Light blind it!" Sunrise growled, his digits flying across his keyers. The mech reared up on its hind feet and extended its plasma claws, then lunged forward. It slashed empty air where the Immortal had been a few milliseconds earlier.

The mini mech leapt in the path of the other knight, wielding the amputated tail like a club. He brought the hulk of dead metal down on the other mech's head with a crunch, shattering its optics and stripping off the antenna arrays on its muzzle.

The Immortal clambered onto the blinded mech's back, clawing at random spots along the spine. It straddled the mech's shoulders and punched a hole in the polymerite armor covering the umbilical sheath connecting the mech's head-mounted sensor suite to the cockpit and started tearing away cables like an animal rooting through an insect nest.

The blind mech bucked and swerved wildly, trying to dislodge the saboteur. It crashed into the data center, bringing the wall down and causing a section of roof to collapse. The mech bent its legs and leaped into the air, twisting its spine so its back pointed earthward , then slammed down, all its weight concentrated between its shoulders.

The Immortal's suspension capsule popped loose from the frame of the mini mech like a seed from a pod and went rolling until it came to rest near its Partisan handlers hiding behind a standing section of wall.

---

There was an almighty crash as the outer wall and roof of the building crumbled. Sunlight flooded what was left of the office. Whitepaw opened her eyes and saw one of the Knights’ mechs looming over her. It was proportioned much more like a yinrih, with recognizable head, torso, and limbs. Its head turned down to face her. It lifted one of its great metal paws and began deftly removing the debris piled on top of her.

She stood up and shook the dust from her fur. A hatch on the mech’s underbelly lowered, revealing Sunrise and Daybreak within. Sunrise pulled off his HUD visor and jumped out. “Praise the Light, you’re alive! Are you hurt?”

“I think I’m OK,” Whitepaw muttered as she stared at the aftermath of the fight. The two Partisan handlers stood silently beside one of the mechs. All eight paws were shackled together, the mech’s rear paw resting on the chain, anchoring it in place.

One of the squires approached Skywatcher, dipping his head respectfully. “My reverend anchorite, could you show us the documentation for your segment of the network?”

“Choke on it, fundy!” Skywatcher spat. “I wiped the data drives, and good luck finding what’s left of my notes in that rubble.”

“You know, we could have let those Partisans tear you in half," said the squire. "They would have killed you even if you gave them what they wanted.”

“Found ’em!” Whitepaw and Sunrise walked up to the rest of the group. Sunrise had Skywatcher’s notes wrapped in his tail. “This kind young lady showed me where they were.”

“You eggless wretch!” Skywatcher barked.

Sunrise adopted an authoritative tone and addressed Whitepaw. “You are free, and your debt is forgiven.”

“By whose authority?!” growled Skywatcher.

“By the decree of her radiance, high hearthkeeper Iris,” Sunrise responded.

"That weak blunt-fanged pretender!" Skywatcher hissed.

"That weak blunt-fanged pretender just captured your entire network segment," said Daybreak.

“Just get over there.” One of the other knights bound Skywatcher and led him to one of the mechs, far away from his former captors.

“So, what’s going to happen to the Immortal?” asked Whitepaw.

“Well,” said Sunrise pointing his muzzle at the suspension capsule, “He is currently profaning a blessed instrument of our Holy Work. He’s going back to Hearthside with us, and we’ll hand him off to an order of rehabilitators. They’ll try to wean him off the gel, but by the time most of these poor lickers get plugged into those mini mechs their psyche is so integrated into the simulacrum generated by the capsule that they’ll die without it. If that’s the case they’ll get his metabolism running again and he’ll live out his natural life in sim.”

“What about me?” she asked.

“Like I said, you’re free. We can’t make you do anything. I’d suggest that you accompany us back to Hearthside as that’s the furthest away from the front. A lot of freed slaves want nothing to do with their former work, but we can set you up with the Farspeakers there if you wish. You’d be paid justly as an apprentice, depending on your experience you could be made an anchoress.” His voice caught on his next words. “A lot of slaves want nothing to do with the Faith, either. It hurts me that we pushed people away like that, but again, we can’t force you to do anything.”

“But you didn’t do any of that,” Whitepaw interjected. “You saved my life.”

“You’re right,” said Sunrise. “It may not be our fault personally, but it is our responsibility as Wayfarers to fix what the Preservationists broke. The Bright Way singing liturgies on Hearthside is the same Bright Way extorting and enslaving people on Yih.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Whitepaw. “I'll help make things right, too.”

As I prepare for my fifth eye surgery to fix a prosthetic lens, I'm reminded of how dumb elective cybernetic implants, augmentations, or what have you, would be in real life.

I bring this up because in most sci-fi settings I've encountered where cybernetics exist, they go unquestioned as a boon to the individual and society at large. When they are the focus of a work, people who are in favor of baseline humanity are portrayed as luddites or even bigots.

Very quickly, here's why I take a dim view of cybernetics:

1. Society is already stratified into haves and have-nots. The people most likely to get augmented are those who are already in power, the rich and connected, not the huddled masses. So a persecution scenario like that seen in the later Deus Ex games is unrealistic.
2. tech support. Devices eventually need to be serviced or replaced, and that's bad when it involves turning your innards into outards.
3. Following from number 2, planned obsolescence. Your model of brain chip is outmoded? Better get the newest one if you want to keep up.
4. Invasive medical procedures are inherently risky.
5. Do you really want your body to be vulnerable to cyber attacks?
6. Better pony up the dough for the gold subscription if you want to dream in color again.

In my conworld, even though the yinrih have achieved Kardashev II status they don't use cybernetics. Part of this is because they can't lose consciousness, meaning they can't use anesthesia, meaning surgeries have to be as minimally invasive as possible, limiting what sort of stuff can be implanted. The other, more realistic reason, is because wearable tech does most of what you want out of augmentations. Why chop off your legs when you can wear pseudosinew to improve strength? Why get ocular implants when HUD specs do the job? You get the point.

I'm not posting these in any order. This story takes place a few months after First Contact, a few hours before The Tornado.

---

"...another record-breaking afternoon, with temperatures throughout the region surpassing the 90-degree mark. A cold front is set to bring relief to central and southeast Texas later this evening but looks like there may be some severe weather along with the cooler temperatures. The Storm Prediction Center has issued a tornado watch for the region until early tomorrow morning. Now it's time for your local forecast." Sarah let the smooth jazz drifting out of the TV wash over her and sank deeper into the couch cushions. Her eyes stung with sweat rolling down from her forehead. Without looking, she reached over and grabbed a wrinkled shirt from the laundry basket next to the couch and wiped her brow. Her eyes were laser-focused on the wall clock, watching the seconds crawl by. "4:30," she thought. "He was supposed to be here by 4 o'clock." She closed her eyes and tried to relax. The maintenance guy had forsaken her. Only the sweet embrace of unconsciousness could provide respite from the heat now.

She was dragged out of her blissful slide into oblivion by the sharp click-clack of claws on the hard linoleum floor. It was the halting, rhythmless gait of one unaccustomed to walking on two feet. The clicking was replaced by the sound of a tail dragging along the living room rug, desperately trying to prevent its owner from falling backwards.

She looked up at the cause of the disturbance. Two six-toed paws were digging into the carpet, and a prehensile tail was wrapped around one of the legs of the coffee table, all in an effort to keep the creature before her upright. Its lupine maw was agape, purple tongue hanging off to the side, twitching in time with the creature's panting breath. Its wet nose was twitching frantically, soaking up a mélange of odors that Sarah couldn't hope to perceive. Its erect, triangular ears swiveled about, absorbing the soundscape of the room. Wrapped in its forelimbs, clutched tightly to the ruddy flesh of its chest was a ponderous tome. "Great news!" the creature growled cheerfully as it deposited the book onto the coffee table with a thud.

"You figured out how to fix the air conditioner?" Sarah sighed.

With a padded finger the creature tapped the cover, which bore the title 'Comprehensive Introduction to Biochemistry'. «At least according to this book here our food should be safe for human consumption.»

"That's nice, Sunshine."

«You don't smell very excited.»

"It's nearly 95 degrees inside, and it's already half an hour past the window that the leasing office gave me for the maintenance guy to come fix the AC. Forgive me for not being head-over-heels with enthusiasm."

Sunshine flicked her ears back. «What do you want from me. I'm a healer, not a mechanic. But speaking of food, I think I may have a little something that'll help you beat the heat.» Her curiosity piqued, Sarah leaned forward as Sunshine produced a small carton from a pocketed band wrapped around her right foreleg. "This is a little snack from back home on Hearthside. From the carton she produced a small translucent strip which she placed on her pendulous tongue. She drew her tongue back into her mouth for a moment, allowing the strip to dissolve. After a few seconds, Sunshine dropped back onto all fours, shook her head vigorously, then resumed panting. Sarah caught the strong scent of menthol on her breath.

"Just a breath mint?" Sarah inquired, unsuccessfully masking her disappointment. Sunshine came from a desert of eternal noon, a planet perpetually sweltering under the gaze of an unconquerable sun. Her species had subdued their entire solar system dozens of millennia before those naked Savannah apes Sarah called ancestors had even discovered agriculture. They could bridge the yawning gulf between stars, but the best thing they could come up with to cool off was a Listerine strip.

«Oh, it's a little stronger than that. Go on, try one.» Sunshine pinched another strip between her outer thumb and writing claw, flicking the little snack with another digit in a manner Sarah assumed was supposed to be enticing. She paused, her eyes darting between the textbook on the table, the little hairless monkey fox standing in front of her, and the consumable held in her paw. A dialog played out in her mind.

"Are you really going to put that thing in your mouth?"

"It's just a breath strip, why not?"

"An alien breath strip. It could kill you for all you know, slowly and painfully, too."

Sarah regarded Sunshine again. She had been holding that snack out for a good thirty seconds. "Guess when you've got six centuries ahead of you, you can afford to be a bit more patient," She thought.

"She is a licensed medical professional..."

"A licensed alien medical professional."

A bead of sweat rolled down her cheek, reminding her that the air conditioner was still broken and that it likely wouldn't be fixed today. "Eh, YOLO!" Her curiosity had won the day. Sarah plucked the snack from the alien's claws and popped it in her mouth.

The strip quickly dissolved on her tongue, leaving behind a cooling sensation. So far, so mundane. Sarah leaned back into the couch, chuckling to herself as she contemplated how old this stuff had to be, older than the US constitution, at the very least, given how long it took Sunshine and the others to get to Earth from Focus. Maybe she could start a YouTube channel eating ancient alien junk food. Still, though, it didn't really take her mind off the heat.

Just as her disappointment began to set in, the cold feeling in her mouth began to intensify. The sensation had started as though chewing a normal piece of spearmint gum, but had progressed to chewing a particularly potent piece of spearmint gum. After a few seconds, it became chewing a particularly potent piece of spearmint gum while chugging ice water. "OK, now this is getting uncomfortable," Sarah thought. "Well, it is getting my mind off the heat. Now all I can think about is my mouth freezing." The cold feeling cascaded down her chest and into her gut, then began radiating to the rest of her body.

The roof of her mouth started throbbing in pain, which then radiated to her forehead. She tried powering through the pain by sheer force of will. "It isn't real," she thought. "I'm not really cold. It's just a chemical tricking my nerves into thinking I'm cold." Through eyes tearing up in pain she caught a glimpse of the wall clock. It had only been twenty seconds since she had put that cursed strip on her tongue. She no longer felt like she was chugging ice water, now it felt like shoveling Antarctic snow into her mouth.

«Are you OK?» Sunshine whined. Sarah caught the concern in her voice but was too busy writhing in agony to pat herself on the back for achieving this milestone in human-yinrih communication. "I'm... fine..." she gasped. Sarah swore she could see clouds of super-cooled condensation billowing out of her mouth with each syllable.

It wasn't Antarctic snow anymore, now it was liquid nitrogen. She hunched forward in her seat, then collapsed onto the floor between the couch and coffee table. Through cryogenic tears Sarah could see Sunshine's large ears and muzzle hanging over her.

The penny finally dropped. Sunshine whipped around and bolted down the hallway, her claws skittering on the slippery floor. She failed to turn in time and ran bodily into the back wall, then managed to gain enough traction to dart into the erstwhile office that now served as her quarters.

Sarah could hear her frantically barking one of the traditional healer's invocations as she rummaged through her things looking for whatever implements might prove most useful. Sunshine had demonstrated several of these little rituals to her over the time she had been lodging with her. They were remnants of a time when the office of cleric and healer were still one. The particular invocation used largely depended on how severe the situation was. The one Sunshine chose did not buoy Sarah's confidence in her outcome.

«O Creator of the universe, paws and tail hast thou none, yet wield me, wretched whelp that I am, as thy instrument here within, and wrest this least of thy little ones from the jaws of death.»

Sarah was audibly whimpering now. Her vision began to fade. It felt as though her entire digestive tract was filled top to bottom with liquid helium. The blessed embrace of oblivion finally took her, but not before she saw Sunshine scampering back down the hall toward the living room, The end of her tail coiled around the handle of a satchel that was bouncing along the floor behind her.

---

Manny glanced at the clock on the dashboard as he pulled into the parking space. 4:36 PM. He was over half an hour late for his last appointment of the day, and a mere 24 minutes away from the nominal end of his shift. He pulled the key out of the ignition and opened the door, the perspiration-soaked back of his work shirt peeling away from his skin as he moved to exit the truck. The hot Texas air greeted him as he alighted the vehicle, a welcome respite from the even hotter air inside the cab. He shut the door, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. He turned to look at the apartment number written atop the front door. Unit 38. He glanced down at the work order affixed to his clipboard and sighed. "Unit 38: Broken air conditioner". He definitely wasn't clocking out on time today. At least he'd get paid overtime. He tucked the clipboard under his arm and walked up to the door.

---

Sunshine took a deep breath, letting the sharp smell of alcohol fill her nostrils. Sarah's unconscious form was sprawled out on the floor before her, her left arm draped across her chest, rising and falling steadily with each breath. The contents of Sunshine's satchel were strewn across the coffee table: a just-used bottle of paw disinfectant, yellowed only slightly by its two and a half century stowage inside one of the Dewfall's cargo holds, and an electric healer's razor, also none the worse for wear despite its age. The remaining item she had seen fit to include in her impromptu medical bag, a human anatomy text recently borrowed from the college library, lay open on the floor at her side.

«OK, Sunshine, you can do this. Everything's going to be alright. Sarah's going to be alright, alright?» She began a cursory examination of her friend. She slid a pair of azure bandpass membranes over her eyes, shifting her visible spectrum down into the infrared. «Her temperature hasn't changed, and she's still breathing. That's good. First thing's first...» She picked up the razor, only to change her mind and place it back on the coffee table. «No no, that's not right. No fur. Why did I bring this thing anyway?» She began thumbing through the book with her right rear paw. She was greeted by incomprehensible diagrams and labels written in a dead human language she didn't understand. What little confidence she had been able to muster ebbed away with the turn of each page.

«Light blind me!» She kicked the book under the coffee table and crumpled to the ground, heedless of her now contaminated forepaws. «I can't do this by myself. My ignorance got her into this mess. I'll only make things even worse. She needs a human healer.» Just as she rose to her feet, there was a knock at the door.

---

Manny approached the door and knocked. "Maintenance," he declared in his best "How can I help you" voice. He could hear the sound of the tenant's dog skittering its way toward the source of the noise. Without so much as a "down, boy!" from the resident within, the door burst open. Manny braced himself for a physical encounter with yet another pet far too large to be kept in an apartment. When the assault was not forthcoming, he glanced down at the open doorway.

His mood immediately brightened. "One of our little visitors!" He thought. Manny had seen her walking around the neighborhood many times, all wrapped up in a white cloak with only her ebony paws and snout poking out. He had heard through the grape vine that she was some sort of doctor, but didn't know much else. He had always wanted to meet her, but could never find the courage to start a conversation. What do you say to an alien? The mundane happenings of a broke college student who had never even been out of state must seem terribly dull to someone who was born under a different sun. Now he found himself thrust into this little first contact, at a loss for words. He had just settled on a simple "Good afternoon, ma'am" when she wrapped her tail around his forearm and began attempting to drag him inside, yipping and growling frantically. Attempting, but not succeeding. The only way he was getting free of her grip was if she decided to let go, but her claws scrabbled uselessly across the hard floor of the entry way, failing to find purchase against the slick surface.

«By The Light! Another human! Please, sir, I need your help. My friend is in trouble.»

"Hay! Slow down. I don't speak space doggo," Manny protested.

Sunshine stopped her fruitless attempt at pulling Manny inside and glanced down at her empty paw. She had been making her desperate supplications in Commonthroat. Without disengaging her tail from Manny's arm, she reared up and grabbed a keyer and HUD specs that were nestled along with Sarah's keys and wallet in a bowl atop the entry table. She wrapped the keyer in her right front paw and donned the HUD specs, the claws of her left rear paw clicking impatiently against the floor as she waited for the computer to boot.

"Sir," said the keyer held in her paw, "Please, I need your help. My friend is in trouble."

Manny stood back up and attempted to enter the apartment. Sunshine's tail was still constricting his arm like a snake. "OK, what's going on?" he asked. "And can I have my arm back?" Sunshine refused to let go until he had entered and shut the door behind him. Keyer in paw, she knuckle-walked around the breakfast bar and into the living room, Manny following behind.

As he rounded the corner he noticed Sarah lying on the floor. Sunshine kept switching her gaze between Manny and Sarah, as though expecting he would immediately know what to do.

"OK, calm down and tell me what happened," said Manny.

More urgent yipping and huffing from Sunshine. «I... I didn't think it would be a problem. We breathe the same air, drink the same water. This book here,» she pointed at the biochemistry textbook with her muzzle, «says you humans consume proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, sugars, amino acids... all the same stuff we eat. I didn't think it would hurt to share a little snack.» she swept her tail angrily across the corner of the coffee table, knocking off the little carton of cooling bark.

"Mind repeating that in English?" said Manny as he bent down and picked up the carton, turning it over in his hand, examining the alien lettering on the label as though it would provide a solution.

Sunshine repeated her self-recrimination via the synth while Manny took the time to examine Sarah. He noticed her hand resting over her chest, gently rising and falling in regular time with her breathing.

Sunshine's ears perked up in sudden realization. "Don't you have emergency medical transport?" She grabbed Sarah's phone from the arm rest and attempted to unlock it. The gentle tick-tick of her claws on the glass failed to elicit a response from the device. «How do you use this stupid thing?» She had just figured out to touch the glass with the pad of her writing claw when Manny rested the phone from her paws. Sunshine gave voice to a frustrated hiss like an angry goose. «Hay! I was using that!»

"Hold on there," said Manny. "Let's not get the wee-yoo wagon involved if we don't have to."

"What?! Why not? She needs a human doctor," Sunshine said, desperately wishing she could inject more emotion into the tiny synthesizer.

Manny took a few seconds to respond, considering whether now was a good time to introduce Sunshine to the particulars of the American healthcare system. "Well, I'm a human, and you're a doctor. I think we can figure this out between the two of us. Besides," he said as he bent down and checked Sarah's pulse, pressing two fingers against her other wrist sprawled on the floor, "I happen to be an Eagle Scout, and I have the First Aid merit badge." He made this declaration as though that made him a reasonable stand-in for a paramedic. "She's breathing fine, her temperature feels good, and her pulse is normal."

Sunshine's agitation at Manny's lack of urgency began to mount. She started thumping her tail on the floor. Her anxiety caused a momentary lapse in her English proficiency. "What reason you human do nothing? On that floor this my friend die!"

"I'm not 'do nothing'," he said. "I think I know exactly what will fix her right up." He walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a cup from the counter, and began filling it with cold water from the fridge.

---

Sarah floated content in a featureless void, finally free of the extremes of hot and cold. She could stay like this forever. Snatches of English and Commonthroat bubbled up from the abyss. She didn't catch what the voices were saying, but a vague notion of concern tickled the back of her mind. She brushed it aside and continued drifting in this room-temperature sea of beautiful nothingness.

But her repose didn't last. A sudden shock of wet and cold tore her away from the lukewarm void. She came to, sputtering and swearing. The first things she saw were Sunshine's lapis lazuli bandpass membranes staring back at her. She bolted upright, her head barely missing the edge of the coffee table.

Sunshine pressed the top of her skull against Sarah's shoulder. «You're alright! Light shine upon all of us, you're alright! I thought you were dying!»

"Why did you do that? I was finally asleep!" Sarah glanced down at the water dripping onto the collar of her tee shirt.

«That wasn't me.» said Sunshine. She trotted over to Manny and repeated her cranial gesture of gratitude with the knee of his blue jeans.

"Maintenance," Manny repeated. "Sorry I'm late. Your friend let me in. Are you OK?"

"Well, insofar as I'm not dying, yes." She looked at the wall clock. "I wasn't even out for ten minutes."

"Glad to hear it. Now let's see about that air conditioner."

Manny got to work, checking the thermostat and then the compressor outside. Sunshine shadowed him all the while, peppering him with questions about everything he did and every tool he pulled out of his bag.

"I'm surprised you're so interested in what I'm doing," Manny said. "I figured you all think we're cavemen banging rocks together."

"You humans are so fascinating! The way you're built, the fact your forepaws are completely specialized for grasping and your rear paws are optimized for movement, how you've compensated for your lack of an innate ability to write, and how all that effects the tools you use, and how you construct your buildings and vehicles. Plus it's nice to be around people with almost as little fur as me!"

"But, like, there are others, right? Out there? We can't possibly be that interesting," said Manny as he put away his tools.

"Nope." said Sunshine.

"Nope? What do you mean."

"There's nobody else out there. We Wayfarers have been looking for other sophonts for nearly one hundred thousand years. Until we found you we hadn't encountered so much as a microbe."

Manny stood up and brushed the dirt off his pants. "So It's just you monkey foxes and us humans, all alone?"

"Seems that way." she responded.

"That... actually makes me feel kinda lonely."

"Believe me, we know the feeling. But now we can be lonely together!"

Thunder murmured in the distance. Manny looked toward the horizon, where storm clouds were gathering. "I need to let Sarah know I'm done and get out of here before that nasty weather hits.

He knocked on the window behind the compressor. "Is it working?" he asked. Sarah gave a thumbs up. "Awesome. Let the office know if something else happens. I gotta get going." He picked up his bag and started making his way to the truck, with Sunshine trotting behind.

"Listen, it was great to finally meet you, I've seen you walking around in that cloak of yours but I never knew how to say hi. I didn't even know you could speak our language with that computer in your hand."

"I'm happy you came by when you did. Come say hi when I'm out walking, and I can start teaching you Commonthroat." She set the keyer aside and shook a cramp out of her paw. "The more humans that understand Commonthroat, the less I need to use this blasted keyer."

Manny gave a thumbs up and pulled out of the parking space. Sunshine went back inside just as the gust front from the distant squall sighed through the trees.

This was originally going to be a response to the "spare parts" post, but it grew into an afternoon project.

If I have something I like that doesn't fit my conworld's lore, I present it as an urban legend, revisionist history, an ideological schism, or in this case, a bit of in-universe fiction.

The Bright Way has a long tradition of stories and dramas describing First Contact scenarios. These stories always end well, with the yinrih and the newly discovered aliens coming together as friends.

These aliens come in all shapes and sizes, but one popular conception stemming from old folklore is of small insectoid sophonts about the size of a yinrih's thumb. This is one such story.

---

I was sitting atop her head, an arrangement she tolerated as it was the only way I could get a good look at what she was doing without risking getting under paw. In her rear paws she was holding two strands of wire insulated with some sort of tree gum, each strand half as thick around as my thorax. In one forepaw was another length of wire, softer and uncovered, and in the other she wielded a great iron rod fiercely radiating heat. at least it seemed great to me. She likely found its size quite unremarkable. A cable, even more thickly insulated, connected the iron to a large structure--she would have called it a mere box--that I guessed provided the iron's heat.

"What are you doing, great one?" I asked.

"I have a name, remember?" she said, her voice a low rumor like distant thunder. "It's Sunbeam."

A pretty name, but one that hardly matched her appearance. "What are you doing, Sunbeam?" I repeated.

"My job," she rumbled. "I'm building an electric light tower to put at the center of town. Well, I'm assuming it's a tower from your perspective. It's just a wooden dowel not even half the length of my tail, and I'm sticking that little LED array on top." She gestured with her tail toward a flat contrivance covered in intricate little studs--the LEDs she mentioned, as I would find out later.

"Your job?" I asked.

As she spoke, she touched the exposed ends of the insulated wires and twisted them into a single braid, then touched the hot iron to the area where they met. "I'm a hearthkeeper," she said, bringing the end of the softer wire in contact with the exposed copper. "I bring light and warmth, physical and spiritual, to those around me." The soft wire liquified, coating the exposed ends of the other two wires and releasing smoke that smelled like burning tree sap.

"Yes," I said half to myself. "You did say you're a missionary. Why don't you preach, then? You don't think your faith can stand up to scrutiny?"

"I wouldn't have spent hundreds of years travelling the stars to get here if I didn't have the courage of my convictions," she said. "But, well, look at me."

"It's hard to see a building when your standing on top of it," I said.

"Exactly. When we discovered your world we had no idea how... small you were. I'm not even that big, a runt in fact, but to you I'm a giant, a disgusting inside-out giant, if I recall what you said when we first met."

I looked behind me. From four stories up, I could see the moss farm just outside of town. The field still bore a faint indentation in the shape of one of her paws. She had trampled over half the crop in a single step. This was on her first visit to town the day after her skyship landed, before we knew what she was, before she knew what we were.

I had awoke to rumors spread by the town drunk that a star had fallen to the east, half a day's journey from town. I had dismissed them at first until a friend of mine, a fellow merchant who was up late taking inventory in his shop, confirmed that he saw it, too, a star, glowing violet, had fallen to earth. "Didn't make a sound," he had said. "You'd think something that big would make some noise when it landed."

The day went on as normal, other than a few lads trying to drum up a party of adventurers to investigate the fallen star, nobody seemd too bothered. "A great beast has returned!" one of them had said to me as he left my shop. He had purchased a water bladder, "For the adventure," he had told me. "I'm tellin' ya, there's riches beyond your wildest dreams. We just gotta slay the beast and its horde will be ours."

I clicked my mandibles dismissively. "You're chasing fairy tails. There haven't been any great beasts in centuries. We exterminated them all as soon as we figured out how to fire a cannon."

"Where's your sense of wonder?" the lad said as he walked out the door.

I had closed my shop for the afternoon and was chatting with some friends at the inn on the east edge of town, sipping a bead of honeydew. That's when we heard it, a dull, rhythmic tremor sent ripples through the drink on the table.

THUMP

We put our drinks down and looked through the open door to the street outside.

THUMP

I and a few others ventured outside to find the source of the noise.

THUMP

A crowd was gathered near the edge of town.

THUMP

We stared past the moss farm at the crest of the hill behind. That's when we saw her. She bounded over the hill, crushing the moss crop under paw along with the decoy the farmer had placed in the middle of the field to scare away the crow-flies. She turned her head down to look at us all gathered at the edge of town. Her eyes widened and she checked her momentum just before plowing through the city. She dug her iron-red claws into the dirt leaving furrows in their wake.

For a moment we stood there, this great beast and us terrified bugs, staring up at what, to us at least, was every bit the giant horror from the sky described in the old stories. It's hard for me to put into words exactly what I thought I was seeing. Some people say that you don't know what you're looking at until you know what you're looking at. I had always thought that an odd notion until I was staring up at this giant... thing. I didn't know what was paw tail or leg or snout or fang or fur, all things I would only learn much later, so it should be kept in mind that the description that follows is only possible with the benefit of quite a bit of hindsight.

She towered over us, even while sitting with her back end on the ground and all four paws resting flat. I suppose the first thing I noticed was the heat, this calid humidity that seemed to envelope her. I'm not sure what compelled me to do this, maybe it was that same heat. She had this long thick round structure, as long again as the rest of her body, protruding from her back end, a "tail" I would later learn. She had it wrapped around her forefeet. I reached out and touched it, my hand plunging through stiff guard hares then downy undercoat before it was stopped by a pliable, oily surface, her "skin". It was not just warm, it was hot. Not painfully so. I'd compare it to a balmy summer day. Shocked, I drew my hand away.

She pulled her tail away from me and I got a good look at her paws. She had six digits to our three, dug into the earth like tree roots. Each digit was tipped with a sharp iron-red claw. The ends of her digits were furless, the "skin" grayish black. I saw something pulling taught and relaxing at intervals under the bare skin of her paws, tendons and muscles making minute adjustments to maintain her balance. Once again I reached out and touched the exposed skin. It yielded under my hand as I pressed down until I felt something hard underneath, "bone". It was bone that gave structure to her body, and the skin kept her soft viscera from spilling out. Something clicked in my brain and I staggered backward. "It's inside-out," I gasped. "soft on the outside and hard on the inside." I fought the urge to vomit.

Meanwhile, she had shrank back from my touch. When she shifted her paws back I caught a glimpse of their undersides. There were thick soft pads on each digit, with more pads arranged on her palms in the same pattern I saw pressed into the moss field. So ponderously massive was she that she needed cushions to soften the impact of her footfalls. I felt more heat, this time pulsing over me in rhythmic waves. I looked up following her forelegs covered in the same white pelage as her tail, up to her thorax, or what she would later tell me was called her "chest". It was expanding and contracting in time with the waves of humid warmth washing over me. Still further up I saw her mandibles, well, "mandible", singular. Rather than two mobile mouth parts it was fused to form a single structure that could only move up and down. It was hanging lax, revealing the red inside of her great maw. A disgusting red growth, glistening wet and twitching in time with those same heat waves, flopped out of her mouth to one side. This I would come to know was called a "tongue".

The mouth, I discovered, was the source of the hot wet gusts I was feeling. Once again only much later I learned why this was so. Just like us bugs, her body required air to live. We bugs simply took in air passively through spiracles dotted across our carapace. Because of her massive size she required organs dedicated to the purpose. These "lungs" were constantly inflating, drawing in fresh air, and deflating, exhausting spent air. This was why her chest was heaving.

Pointed white protrusions lined both sides of her mouth, "teeth" they were called. Four of these, two below and two above, were larger than the rest, erupting like stalagmites and stalactites in a cave. These were "fangs". Above the mouth were two large spiracles, the only I could detect on her body, unless, I thought at the time, more were hidden under her fur, not the case, as she would explain later. These "nostrils" were surrounded by rugose black skin covered in more clear liquid. The liquid coating the end of her snout was "mucus", that in her mouth and on her tongue "saliva".

Framing the wet tip of her nose were clusters of stiff hairs, much longer than the surrounding fur, "whiskers", tactile sense organs not unlike our antennae, though lacking the faculty of smell. That sense was furnished through the nostrils.

Then came her eyes. Those were the only things about her that didn't make me nauseous to look at. Simple, deep, black. Soulful, I'd come to say with time.

Lastly were her "ears", triangular flaps of skin jutting out from the top of her head. They had been erect when she first crested the hill, but presently were pinned against her head. They were covered in fur, black unlike the snowy pelage across the rest of her body, though she would loudly insist to anyone and everyone they were dark gray.

I must reiterate that none of these details were evident to me at the time. All I knew was horror at this thing, this star beast, mountain-high and radiating uncanny warmth, and the only thing escaping my mandibles was endless gibbering "It's inside-out, gods below it's inside out."

The last thing I saw before I regained sense enough to flee into the nearest building was her mouth, now dripping crimson fluid that dribbled down her jaw and painting her chest, still heaving like bellows with her breathing.

What I say next is still a mystery to me. Sunbeam has explained it to me a hundred times, but I still can't grasp it. I said before we were terrified, and justly so, of this giant monster looming over our town. But, and I can't believe I'm saying this, she was just as terrified of us. We little bugs that she could trample to death in an instant with barely a thought, filled her with a sharp visceral fear digging into her gut and made her want to flee. That's why she retreated from my touch. That's why she merely tolerates my sitting between her ears. "It's how you move," she would say when asked. "The way you skitter around, the way your legs move."

That red fluid dripping from her mouth, it was tears caused by fear.

"You are... quite singular," I said after my long reflection.

"Which is exactly why I have to watch what I say and exactly how I say it." She had slid a black sleave over the two spliced wires and was applying blistering hot air from another of her seemingly endless array of cunning artifices. "A gentle exhortation could be interpreted as the command of a goddess, a warning given out of love as a threat of divine retribution. That's why I'm hesitant to preach. I'm not afraid I won't be compelling, I'm afraid I'll be too compelling. Error barks, the Truth whispers, but how can I whisper when every syllable I utter is a thunderclap? I want you to worship with me, not worship me."

The black sleeve had shrunk tight around the wires, joining them as one. Dazzling white light burst from the LED array, turning the fading evening twilight to mid-day. "You're lucky," she said, pushing the wooden pole into the earth. "Just a little light for little eyes." She tilted her muzzle skyward. I had to grab hold of her ear to keep from loosing my balance. "You can still see the stars."

She rumbled a prayer under her breath. "O icons of the Light, shine upon us little ones."

"US little ones?" I asked. "You call yourself little?"

"We're all little measured against the vastness of Creation," she said. "You may be smaller than my thumb and I may be four stories tall, but we're both not even rounding errors in the grand scheme of things."

"Infinitesimal," I said.

"Yes, infinitesimal in scale, but infinitely loved." She seemed to be gazing in adoration at something beyond even the black behind the stars, and just for an instant I thought I felt someone gaze back.

The main core of the network stretched out before me: rack upon rack of black boxes extending into the distance, their chassis scintillating with link lights blinking softly as packets rushed in and out of each interface. Meticulously bundled cables of various colors spilled forth from the racks and ran here and there along runways above my head. A cold breeze from the heat pump rustled my whiskers. Permeating this cavernous chamber was the rushing white noise of thousands of cooling fans. I turned my muzzle up, taking in the whole scene. This chamber so huge that I couldn't see the far wall, it was all but a tiny ganglion in the vast interplanetary nervous system, the body of the noosphere.

My mind wandered back to my puppyhood, to a catechism class where I was taught about the farspeakers, the ones who labored ceaselessly to maintain this network. They said that the sophonts who dwelt among the stars, whose bone is not of our bone and whose flesh is not of our flesh, that they must have internetworks of their own. Sapience, I was told, is much more likely to arise in a social species with an intrinsic need to communicate among themselves, and so a noosphere must in time fashion a body for itself as the species spreads across its homeworld and hearth star, and these sophonts find themselves needing to cast their thoughts across far flung space and deepest time. It was the Farspeakers' duty to tend to the body of our own noosphere, so that one day they could fulfill the Great Commandment by uniting these alien internetworks with our own. And now, I suppose, it was my duty as well.

I made my way to one side of the room, where a thick curtain separated the anchorite's chamber from the data center. I pushed the curtain aside with my snout just enough to poke my rhinarium into the room. I smelled an older woman. She must have seen at least six centuries by the scent of her. Over top her musk I detected the odor of a strong perfume, the sort that barked "leave me alone!" The roar of the machines outside became muffled by the thick cloth in the doorway as the rest of my head followed my muzzle into the chamber. The anchoress's large Hearthsider ears were silhouetted against the green glow of a terminal. Her right ear flicked as my claws clicked against the raised tile floor, and I detected a slight note of annoyance in her musk.

"You're finally here," she said, not looking away from the display. "So, the hearthkeepers pressed you into their service since you could not pay your tithe to your lighthouse."

I tilted my muzzle upward, though she didn't see my affirmation.

"We bought you," she spat the words with disgust, "for a hefty price off of those witches on Yih. They wonder why so many are wandering from the path. The Outer Belt is filling with apostates scandalized by the clergy's decadence. They blot out The Light's Truth with their sins!" she barked. "Forgive my outburst," she said more softly, "On Hearthside the faith flourishes while the slothful hierarchy allows it to rot across the rest of Focus. The Missionaries who dwell past Moonlitter are the only others who keep the old traditions."

She let out a sigh, and I could smell her trying to calm herself. "If it is any comfort to you, I detest your presence here as much as you do. We anchorites prefer to keep no company. But if our holy work is to continue, we must pass down our knowledge to those whose muzzles are not silvered by age." She at last turned to face me. Her frosted snout contrasted with her sable pelage. She reared up and performed the holy greeting. "Light shine upon you, friend."

"Mistress--" I began, but she cut me off. "That's not my name! And your name isn't 'pup', or so I guess they called you on the homeworld. You will call me Seabreeze, or Breezy if you are not one for formality." I took a breath to speak, but she plucked the words from my throat. "I know, a strange name for a Hearthsider. A few of my dams were from Sweetwater. It is a tediously common name there, but quite refreshing here in the Nightless Desert. And you, sir, what is your name?"

I blinked all four pairs of bandpass membranes in astonishment at her deference. "It's Littlepaw."

She examined me nose to tail. "Littlepaw, eh?" Her earlier harshness had softened into a more maternal tone. "It suits you. The runt of your litter, were you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Splendid!" she yipped. "A meager frame is an asset for a farspeaker. You'll be crawling through narrow conduit pulling cable in your tail."

My ears wilted. I had hoped that I could leave hard labor behind by becoming a Farspeaker's apprentice. Seabreeze saw my apprehensive expression and took pains to reassure me. "I won't ask of you more than you can give," she said gently. "We're not so mercantile here on Hearthside as they are on Yih. We take time to do things right, and that includes making sure you feel rested and ready. Of course you're not ready yet. You need to be trained first." She reached under the table, and giving voice to a grunt, I guessed for the weight of the machine, she pulled out a black box like the ones fastened to the racks outside. "This is an internetwork node," she said patting its metal chassis with her tail as a dam would a pup she's particularly pleased with. "You need to get comfortable with this before I turn you loose on the nodes out there. I'll give you the honor of turning it on."

I reached forward and depressed the power switch with my writing claw. The machine roared to life like a shuttle taking off. I couldn't help but pin my ears back and open my eyes wide with puppyish glee. The hearthkeepers back home would never have so much as handed me a wrench, but here I was going to be in control of that network node. It was an empowering feeling.

Seabreeze matched my expression, as though she herself were just beginning to uncover the mysteries of the noosphere again. Then she cleared her throat and her face grew solemn, and she began what sounded like a long rehearsed preachment. "The impious accuse us of obscuring plain facts behind a curtain of mysticism. We do no such thing. The noosphere is a complex and many-faceted thing, and its body, which we farspeakers are charged to attend, reflects this complexity. One cannot grasp its wonder in a day, indeed, so intricate are its inner workings that no single farspeaker understands it from nose to tail."

I thought about the endless rows of nodes outside, about the arcane protocols that governed their interactions, about the impossibly complex web of cables and wireless uplinks and Underlay tunnels that connected everything together. The task before me suddenly seemed insurmountable. If no one, not even an anchoress like Seabreeze, could fully grasp the extent of the noosphere, what chance did I have?

Seabreeze smelled my apprehension. She looked at the node now humming quietly, having finished its boot sequence, then back at me. "You're a young pup climbing his first tree. You will fall many times before you reach even the lowest branch. Each time it will hurt, but don't let the pain discourage you. You stand atop my own paw prints. You won't be judged by how many times you fall, but by how many times you pick yourself up, shake the dust from your fur, and start climbing again."

The picture depicts the transit (motion across the sun) of the principle chapter monastery of the Knights of the Sun.

The fact the principle chapter is an orbital colony located very close to the yinrih's home star is where the Knights got their name.

In Commonthroat knights are called rGHqg, related to rGHg, meaning "mech" or "heavy armor". The organizational unit that has a local presence in a particular city is called an rGHlNg, meaning "armory" or "mech hangar". The local leader is simply "the head knight" or "head of the armory" but humans usually refer to the place as a "chapter" and to the local leader as a "chaptermaster", mostly because the Knights are warrior monks in powered armor, evoking comparisons in-universe to a certain grimdark tabletop game. The knights, for their part, find these comparisons offensive given they actually like aliens.

This got promptly deleted when I proposed it on /r/worldbuilding, but let's see how it fairs here. I'll start with one. Feel free to add others. Fill in the blanks in a way that makes sense in your setting.

[plural noun]? [plural noun]? [plural noun]? It's yours, my friend, as long as you have enough [name of currency]!

A rain sensor just tells you if it's raining or not. A rain gauge will give you cumulative rainfall values. I know there are DIY projects to make HA-compatible gauges but I'd rather have something out of the box, at least in terms of hardware.

I found this on Amazon, and it appears to be be a clone of a more expensive station by Ambient Weather. It looks like it could be made to work with HA as it has a web interface, but I'm not sure if an app is required for setup. The rain gauge also doesn't seem super accurate, which is frustrating as that's the only thing I really care about.

Horses are boring. What critters do you use as mounts?

This is a question I haven't entertained much for my conworld, as it focuses on a time when the yinrih have achieved Kardashev II status and no longer rely on beasts of burden (except perhaps on the surface of Sweetwater where various primitivist communities can be found).

At first I thought yinrih would simply not use large riding animals, but I may change that. Yinrih are not cursorial like humans, and thus would benefit from domesticating a species that is.

One critter I've had in the back of my head for years but have yet to introduce into this setting is the Iridopter, a parrot-like animal used as a mount. I've pictured them as more dinosaur-like in the past, but I may make them more avian. Iridopters are excellent distance runners and may be able to glide for short periods thanks to Yih's lower gravity. They're also a fair bit smaller than a horse. Yinrih max out at about 80 pounds (relative to Earth gravity, even less on Yih, so they can manage with smaller mounts.

Of course this wouldn't be complete without some xenoergonomics. Yinrih have two resting postures that allow the use of their paws and tail, namely lying on the back or on the belly. My current idea is that they lie on the belly across the Iridopter's back, with the rider's tail cradled in the iridopter's own long stiff tail feathers.

Not sure what I'm rambling on about here, but I took the time to write it so I might as well post it.

I assume many of you, like me, are on Lemmy because you fled Reddit for one reason or another. For me the API fiasco opened the door, and me realizing I was addicted to it made me leave.

I enjoy conworlding, both my own and that of others, differently than I do more polished works. It's raw unfiltered imagination. Sometimes the ideas are stupid or cringy or poorly presented (I know mine are at least), but they have an authenticity that you don't see in published works, and I think there's a joy in the very act of pretending, or, to dignify it with Tolkien's words, sub-creation.

The size of /r/worldbuilding meant there was always something interesting to see or read about, whereas other communities are less active. There were problems though. Art posts were disproportionately favored, a consequence of humanity being an overwhelmingly visual species, in my opinion. This left those of us without artistic talent feeling ignored. The mods could be trigger-happy about posts that they felt didn't provide enough context. I posted an image that I thought was adequately explained in the title, but got a warning from the mods because I didn't write a novel's worth of backstory. More "gamey" prompts were deleted. I once posted a "worldbuilding mad-libs" game where you had to fill in the blanks in a way that made sense in your setting, but it got deleted pretty quickly.

Besides the mods, there were a glut of posts asking about characters and characterization, which isn't really worldbuilding, as well as comments complaining about stuff that is worldbuilding, like realistic map making.

In a way I signed up for this. I've been trying to de-urbanize my online activity, separating myself from the massive centralized platforms that dominate the modern web and seeking out more niche corners of the internet to fill my needs. I guess I shouldn't complain about it in that case. Of course this community is going to be less active. It's smaller than Reddit, and that's what I wanted.

Ubiquiti is pretty good about HA integration, so I decided to take a chance buying one of their new line of sensors. It's a door/window sensor that also senses motion, light, temperature, humidity, and (somehow) leaks.

You either need their proprietary (boo) superlink hub or a U6 series access point for the sensors to work. I have the latter. Everything gets reported to HA immediately as expected. My only complaint is that you're unlikely to need or want every single sensor in the same place. I still don't know how the leak detection is supposed to work on a door sensor. It uses an uncommon battery size, and cramming all those sensors into a single package makes it an expensive purchase compared to other brands, especially if you purchase directly from Ubiquiti.

All in all it does what it's supposed to, and I suppose it's worth the cost if you need all those sensors in one place.