In the Lion’s Mouth

Notes for the Curious

It’s a big Spiral Arm and the technology of thousands of years from now is about as imaginable as airliners would be to Assyrians. It helps that there were intervening dark ages, lost technologies, and deliberate suppression of innovation. That lets us get away with over-the-horizon science and technology of here and now. Take some stuff that we maybe almost know how to do, and then suppose that we can do it really well. The list below can be thought of as the acorns from which the oaks of some Spiral Arm technology have grown.

1. “Subway tunnels” through space. Just a gleam in the physicists’ eyes, for now: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw86.html

2. Meat vats.

Dr. Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, as well as researchers in the Netherlands, are presently working on the growth of “in-vitro” or cultured meat: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110130/sc_nm/us_food_meat_laboratory_feature

3. Gravity grids.

Depend on antigravity. Recent citings found here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw83.html

4. Domino Tight’s exoskeleton.

We’re already making their precursors: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2174

5. Invisibility cloaks.

We can’t make them yet, but see here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/16/space.time.cloak/index.html?hpt=T2

6. Self-assembly and self-repair of shenmats, equipment, and systems.

Self-healing polymer mixtures from Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Tennessee: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v42_3_09/article15.shtml

Nanoparticles assembling into complex arrays at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/10/22/new-route-to-nano-self-assembly/

A University of Illinois polymer with self-sensing properties that can react to mechanical stress: http://news.illinois.edu/news/09/0506polymers.html

Raytheon HEALICS Technology incorporates self-healing into a complex system-on-chip (SoC) design, providing the capability for the chip to sense undesired circuit behaviors and correct them automatically: http://raytheon.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1410&pagetemplate=release

7. Teasers and dazers.

At Old Dominion University, nanosecond long, high-voltage pulses that punch holes in cell membranes could be used for a Taser-like weapon that stuns targets because the pulse temporarily disables human muscles: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16706-shocking-cancer-treatment-may-also-yield-weapon.html

8. I-ball.

Thrown cameras with image stabilization have been developed in the United Kingdom: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-10101293-42.html

Shadow culture is based loosely on the decadent Franco-Burgundian knighthood of the fifteenth century, the main source for which is Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Many of the anecdotes, events, and poems are based on actual anecdotes, events, and poems of that era, including the sudden passions of cruelty and sentiment. Extravagant oaths, such as Manlius’s pledge to eat standing up until he had bested Epri, are typical of the era. And in fact, a Polish knight admitted into the Chivalry of the Passion by Philippe de Mézières took just that oath. The pasdarm on Ashbanal is derived from the pas d’armes la fontaine des pleurs, l’arbre Charlemagne (“The Fountain of Tears, the Arbor of Charlemagne”), fought in 1449/50. The ceremonial chains the combatants wear reflect those worn for the combat of Jacques de Lalaing and Jean de Boniface, 1445.