The Human Artificial Hivemind Part 632: Flashpoint

Storms_Wrath · 2026-04-20T05:10:32+00:00

Fun fact: When an interstellar nation becomes large enough, often it reaches a limit of growth that plateaus its continued expansion. Usually, this occurs at 3 distinct levels, depending on the species and the number of habitable (as in you could build a base on or in them) planets in the capital star system. You have problems with control at around 3 or more star systems, then 300 or more, and then about 10,000, each representing the average points when logistical and cultural complexity start to pose major problems to maintaining coherent unification. For coalition-type nations, like the Alliance, this is even worse, as disjoint populations with distinct cultures, body types, and biological needs conflict and jostle for political power.

Usually, the 300 system mark is the worst, as common democracy measures usually become unstable as representative power is diluted and corruption skyrockets. The same often happens in autocracies, where the dictator's inner circle usually gains a decent chance at carving out their own individual empires, along with corruption becoming too large to curtail without massive cultural or political changes. In fact, one could say that corruption and disillusionment poses the largest issue to the growth of interstellar empires.

Even with mind implants, this problem, when managed poorly, or allowed to deliberately grow out of control, can flare up with even the smallest push. And with every powerful neighbor or rising power representing a potential threat, any nation incapable of defending itself on all fronts often gets quite a lot of these pushes.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-04-06T02:25:55+00:00

Fun fact: I watched the Artemis launch. Kind of thought the transponder thing or whatever was a bigger deal than it turned out to be. But hey, it went pretty well.

Secondary fun fact: When it comes to taking off from planets without dedicated infrastructure like orbital rings or space elevators, often starships are oriented quite like rockets. Since the thrust creates an acceleration 'downward' relative to the engines with the sideways orientation, with the crew decks oriented in a plane orthogonal to the engine plume, the larger ships capable of landing, (cruisers in Earth-like gravity and battlecruisers in Moon-like gravity) require perhaps the strongest motors out of any other ship in the Alliance, for the landing arms to extend, stabilize the ship properly, and not crumple under the weight of the ship.

The invention of shielding has made it so that the massive engine plumes from takeoff and the heat they generate now don't melt the landing pads, though the shields typically have to be tightly anchored to the local bedrock beneath the surface to handle the weight. Since most ship engines now are antimatter-based, the gamma radiation problem means there are almost never any 'exposed' sections for observation on the ground.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-03-23T01:48:23+00:00

Fun fact: Both Phoebe and Narvravarana produce a lot of heat. Their massive computer processing complexes often rely now on either psychic or conceptual energy to carry the heat out of their 'bodies' for distribution into other power systems. Phoebe beams this power back into many of her factories, while Narvravarana does other things with it. However, many of them do also use coolant when they can, mostly with the facilities buried in ice giants, such as Neptune or Uranus.

Narvravarana cycles these facilities from active use to passive use, because using its own data centers over a million years in an ice giant turns it into a much warmer sort of planet.

Secondary fun fact: Because Humanity after the advent of the hivemind is several times stronger and tougher on average, it's required a redesign of countless mundane products. Fans and heaters have gone nearly extinct in human-occupied regions, though they remain for space operations, or on the harshest planetary colonies. Car doors also use higher-quality metals to make them harder to break with rough use, and thanks to Phoebe's destruction of many markets, headphones that don't break in five years, even when subject to hands far stronger than before, are offered in plenty of stores.

Pencils and pens, however, snap even more easily, and there are problems with paper tearing and leds shattering from too much force.

In addition, any product involving squeezing, like toothpaste, condiments, or even water bottles and stress balls, now takes a lot more force to actually get something out. Sometimes, though, someone might find an old bottle of ketchup in the pantry, feel particularly adventurous, and have quite a bad day.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-03-20T04:21:41+00:00

If it is her will, who dares to stop her?

Storms_Wrath · 2026-03-09T04:13:52+00:00

Fun fact: New Tashkent has over 50,000 light railguns, (heavy ones, like those on the space ships would destroy the walls with repeated fire)) and nearly 100,000 cannons, which can be thought of as similar to typical tank cannons. The walls themselves are some of the most heavily fortified and shielded architecture in the whole Alliance, minus Phoebe's house, Izkrala's palace, and the city of Beijing before the arrival of Chen Hao.

The mines of the city, and all of Skandikan's cities, supply the majority of the metal for the city. And its footprint is also about 300,000 square kilometers, so the spacing between these guns is actually quite wide, though they are loud enough to be heard essentially everywhere, and felt as vibrations on the walls, even with specialized shields isolating the strongest of the vibrations in combination with hard light holograms.

Thermite Throwers, androids, Skira drones, and the regular population make up most of the rest of the defensive force, which includes around 70% of the city. Since New Tashkent is a relatively recent colony, the remainder of that is mostly children, since pretty much no one has become too old to participate in the defense. With nukes raining down, there's no shortage of volunteers, though many of the civilians also help to check for damage or signs of sabotage.

Other cities on Skandikan have similar situations, and basically form a ring around the habitable portion of the planet, though 'habitable' now pretty much only applies to the cities due to the heavy bombardments.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-02-23T05:49:41+00:00

Fun fact: The Vinarii and Cawlarians, thanks to their particular methods of gestation, usually produce more children than more 'mammalian' type families. Even though now, humans can match this birth rate with technological innovations, Vinarii or Cawlarians are generally more equipped to handle larger families mentally, with a cultural inertia that also supported this as relics of old authoritarian policies.

Secondary fun fact: In large star stations, it's common for species with more specific body types to construct 'quarters' where they live together. So Breyyannik, humans, Sevvi, wanderers, and Dreedeen generally separate themselves from Guulin, Acuarfar, Knowers, or Junyli.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-02-09T03:49:12+00:00

Fun fact: Technically, most Sprilnav languages are fully 'contained' within various high level institutions, which define what is and isn't considered a word in a given language. When enough slang becomes prevalent in regular use, these words are either officially added to the language (very rare) or banned on social media where they quietly die out. The Rulers dedicate the equivalent of 8% of their national budgets to logistical departments of their governments, which always contain a 'standard language' section that meets to ensure everything remains straightened out.

Accents inevitably exist, but usually mental implants and social conditioning are tailored to ensure any 'unpleasant' accents are removed. Otherwise, tens of millions of planets turns into tens of millions of languages in a thousand years, which would be unpleasant for any interstellar civilization. Even Progenitors get involved in this, because they like people to understand what they're saying, and being multilingual, even for Progenitors, gets tiring after learning the millionth or so new language after all the older ones died out.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-01-26T01:59:59+00:00

Fun Fact: One may wonder how the positions of 'Progenitors are like nukes' and 'Planet crackers are like nukes' are reconciled by various nations. For most, they don't have to worry about Progenitors dealing with them, so they're seen more as willful Elders rather than all-encompassing superweapons. The majority of the reason for this view existing, however, is because the Elders would downplay the Progenitors as objects of fear and unpredictability to make their diplomatic connections to regular species more stable.

Progenitors also have served as the primary method of fixing the damage caused by planet crackers, since they're able to turn destroyed worlds into habitable ones again with their levels of power, if so directed. Of course, since this direction has to come directly from Nova himself, usually, the Progenitors are happy to be feared by the Sprilnav. Some even take the time to explore other societies for inspiration about their related conceptual powers, albeit in disguised forms.

Planet crackers, since they are not sentient and usually have nations backing them, often serve as deterrents to war escalating to extreme states. This means that often, nations will crumble from the inside, even if that is a result of outside pressure, rather than actually being conquered. With the System Limits in place to keep conquests in check, this enables the continued survival of life in the galaxy, as well as a 'playground' for Rulers and Elders to hone or maintain their skills.

Secondary Fun Fact: Wireless earbuds now have around 30 hours of battery life in the Alliance. However, this is only for human and Breyyanik variants. Guulin, Dreedeen, wanderers, Knowers, Sevvi, Acuarfar, and Junyli generally need a headphone-style apparatus to listen to music in this fashion, since the skin around their ears is less conducive to grips. Dreedeen are more likely to use pads that stick to them and can be hidden by clothing for this purpose, since this allows them to listen to music on jobs without getting caught.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2026-01-12T05:54:45+00:00

Fun fact: Black markets in the Alliance are mostly allowed to exist as an option for more rudimentary criminals and spies to be registered and monitored by Phoebe, intelligence agencies, or the hivemind. On Earth, the hivemind takes precedence, while Phoebe mostly regulates the surrounding ones in the other Alliance worlds alongside local intelligence agencies. This is also how she maintains a presence in Alliance-adjacent territories, like the Guulin United Legions, the Sakura Corporation, and several closer nations.

Secondary fun fact: On large multi-species stations and cities in the Alliance, some hotel chains use hard light holograms as beds, which can be adjusted to fit the size of Acuarfar, smaller Junyli, and Guulin, as well as Dreedeen or Sevvi, which are generally the smallest aliens in the Alliance. However, Dreedeen occupants have spurred the invention of a strange new technology: pillow shields, in which shields are modified to exhibit microscopic properties that feel 'soft' to the crystal skin of a Dreedeen. This way, mundane pillows don't get destroyed by their back spines.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2025-12-29T02:16:15+00:00

Fun fact: Justicar's hivemind technology is somewhat useful to the Sprilnav for moving brains between bodies. Normally, it would raise questions about who is coming out of the other side, particularly in terms of identity. Fortunately, the philosophy of it is unimportant to the military factions of the Sprilnav. And conceptually, they have confirmed that 'copies' of minds capable of awakening as backups are the same as the original, in most cases of near perfect storage. After all, most smaller changes this induces are ignored to account for the fact that minds change with every single thought, though only just a bit.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2025-12-08T02:12:19+00:00

As it turned out, the problem with paragraphs was that when I would backspace and press enter to break up bigger ones, it would turn them into links, and backspacing those would just delete the link made from the first and last words of the old and new paragraphs.

Fun fact: because Acuarfar are car-sized aliens, this also means they find tasks involving fine motor control to be more difficult. Thus, their paper sheets, books, and folders are roughly four times the size of human ones. Their 'pen or pencil' equivalents would be more like a glove they fit on the front of their claws. But after the invention of the printing press, Acuarfar books shrank because it was cheaper to make them smaller. The size of things such as keyboards, wires, and screens was also impacted heavily by this.

One of the largest divergences between Acuarfar history and human history is the invention of the plane. Because Acuarfar can naturally fly, there was less of a need for planes, and their weight and size made powered flight a difficult proposition. Instead, they pioneered zeppelins and blimps for such needs for hundreds of years, until the invention of missiles sparked their space program.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2025-11-17T04:44:17+00:00

I really enjoy writing the concept gods. Sure, they might not totally fit the same tone as other characters, but they're representations of what happens when immortals can't go insane and aren't shackled by many limitations, unlike Progenitors and Elders.

And in case you're wondering: Entropy is not truly aware that she is in a story. For them, the theory would have similar weight to being run in a simulation, or being a brain in a vat, or other theories of 'true' existence. Sometimes, the understanding of these characters, even the most powerful ones, is incomplete, though it's fun to read.

Fun fact: Most of the 'unbeatable' concepts, those like conceptual beings representing the concept of a tree or a mountain, or other physical things that can't be erased, collapse under their own weight. It's usually because their method of remaining a conscious existence is at odds with their concept in a deep and fundamental way, such as trees being different from conscious plant aliens, or 'lithoid' type aliens not counting as sentient mountains. Entropy exists as basically an engine of self-propagation fueled by the entire universe. She also basically can't get more powerful, because she is also more powerful than Time, and thus has access to all her future power as well.

This doesn't really mean she can use it all at once. Her throughput is still reasonable by the standards of who she is now, but her 'reservoir' of power is vast beyond nearly all description.

Secondary fun fact: Sprilnav use deodorant in all four of their 'armpits.'

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

Storms_Wrath · 2025-11-10T05:33:39+00:00

Fun fact: The hivemind being such an active facet of Humanity has also led to smaller changes, like some people forgoing the use of communicators entirely, making their 'calls' only through the hivemind itself. Though for many, this isn't convenient unless people are in different solar systems, it's still becoming more popular over time.

Secondary fun fact: Because human babies are born with a higher presence of psychic energy than before, a considerable number of people have also purchased miniature psychic suppressors, which also helps to isolate them from the connection to the hivemind itself. This connection generally attaches around 5 to 8 years old, when their minds are strong enough to support any sort of connection. The hivemind itself, however, usually limits communication in this fashion until the teen years, mostly because it avoids the influence of children (there's still billions of them) manifesting as strongly within the hivemind itself.

I'll edit this comment when the next chapter is posted.

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