Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.
The Ethics of Greed
Industrial Base
If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness--a good and wise life.
The Republic
Datalinks
Social Psych
The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons, and behind electrons quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries.
For I Have Tasted The Fruit
Advanced Subatomic Theory
I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength.
Essays on Mind and Matter
Monopole Magnets
Heaven lasts long, and Earth abides What is the secret of their durability? Is it because they do not live for themselves That they endure so long?
Datalinks
Quantum Power
Time travel in the classic sense has no place in rational theory, but temporal distortion does exist on the quantum level, and more importantly it can be controlled.
For I Have Tasted The Fruit
Temporal Mechanics
Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded.
Looking God in the Eye
Probability Mechanics
Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that. It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the thickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology.
MorganLink 3DVision Live Interview
Super Tensile Solids
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
Critique of Pure Reason
Datalinks
Self-Aware Machines
Time dilates as the speed of light approaches. To the extent that light consists of particles, it is in its own way timeless. Through simple perturbations of the temporal manifold, we can refract or repel photons most efficiently.
Now We Are Alone
Photon/Wave Mechanics
The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons.
Report on Human Rights
Mind/Machine Interface
Objects once measured in meters have become so small that they cannot be seen by the naked eye, with revolutionary applications across the board. Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!
Morgan Industries Annual Report
Nanominiaturization
Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, because there IS no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash out before it ever gets off the ground.
The Centauri Monopoly
Industrial Economics
In the borehole pressure mines 100km beneath Planetsurface, at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity where crust gives way to mantle, temperatures often reach levels well in excess of 1000, degrees Celsius. Exploitation of Planet's resources under such brutal conditions has required quantum advances in robotic and teleoperational technology.
Annual Report
Industrial Automation
The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it can do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them.
Nonlinear Genetics
Gene Splicing
Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
Looking God in the Eye
Bio-Engineering
I loved my chosen. How then to face the day when she left me? So I took from her body a single cell, perhaps to love her again.
Time of Bereavement
Biomachinery
The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell.
Confessions
Datalinks
Cyberethics
The first living thing to go through the device was a small white rat. I still have him, in fact. As you can see, the damage was not so great as they say.
See How They Run
Matter Transmission
We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains
From the Yang Collection
Environmental Economics
You are the children of a dead planet, earthdeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question--will we too catch the planetdeath disease?
Conversations with Planet
Adv. Ecological Engineering
Energy is the currency of the future.
The Centauri Monopoly
Global Energy Theory
'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, always choose 'Retry.'
Morgan Polysoft
Nanomatter Editation
Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these . . . things . . . these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?
We Must Dissent
Industrial Nanorobotics
Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. Need as well as greed have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enough to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse.
The Centauri Monopoly
The Merchant Exchange
I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
MorganLink 3DVision Interview
The Longevity Vaccine
And the Lord God said, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, we must send him forth." Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Datalinks
Clinical Immortality
And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?
We Must Dissent
The Bulk Matter Transmitter
From the delicate strands, between minds we weave our mesh: a blanket to warm the soul.
The Collected Poems
The Telepathic Matrix
As we approached we were confronted by the ruined splendor of Sparta Command. The true immensity of the place became instantly apparent as our Quantum Tank crunched over the rubble and parked next to a shattered bunker, but the extent of the destruction took weeks to assess. The shielded datacore had sustained several massive breaches and smoke still billowed from the numerous cannon ports. There were few signs of human life.
Our Secret War
Headquarters
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.
Ethics for Tomorrow
Recycling Tanks
The entire character of a base and its inhabitants can be absorbed in a quick trip to the Rec Commons. The sweaty arenas of Fort Legion, the glittering gambling halls of Morgan Bank, the sunny lovers' trysts in Gaia's High Garden, or the somber reading rooms of U.N. Headquarters. Even the feeding bay at the Hive gives stark insight into the sleeping demons of Yang's communal utopia.
A Social History of Planet
Recreation Commons
Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means of survival.
The Centauri Monopoly
Energy Bank
Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours--the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers.
Morgan Stellartots Keynote Speech
Hologram Theatre
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Datalinks
Paradise Garden
In the great commons at Gaia's Landing we have a tall and particularly beautiful stand of white pine, planted at the time of the first colonies. It represents our promise to the people, and to Planet itself, never to repeat the tragedy of Earth.
Planet Dreams
Tree Farm
You see in this dome the intermingling of native and earth plants. Outside, they are competitors, struggling over the trace elements required for life. Often, one destroys the other. Here, they are tended with care and kept well nourished. They thrive together, and the native fungus does not unleash its terrible defenses. As you can see, competition is unnecessary when resources are plentiful and population growth is controlled.
Planet Dreams
Hybrid Forest
Captain said to big old John Henry, That old drill keeps a-coming around. Take that steam drill out and start it on that job Let it whop, let it whop that steel on down Let it whop, let it whop that steel on down.
Traditional
Datalinks
Robotic Assembly Plant
Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements.
The Ethics of Greed
Nanoreplicator
And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.
The Centauri Monopoly
Quantum Converter
My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?
Essays on Mind and Matter
Genejack Factory
It is not uncommon to see patients undergo permanent psychological trauma in the presence of the Sphere, before the nerve stapler has even been strapped into position. Its effect on the general consciousness of the culture is profound: husbands have seen wives go inside, and mothers their children. Dr. Xynan left the surface of the sphere semitranslucent for a reason. You can hear them in there; you can see them. It is a thing of terrible beauty.
The Music of the Spheres
Punishment Sphere
Red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, and iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds.
Bleak House
Datalinks
Nessus Mining Station
I hold a scrap of paper in the darkness and light it. I watch it burn bright and curl, disappearing into nothingness, and the heat burns my fingers. Where has it gone? What has it become? I cannot shake the feeling that I have witnessed a form of transcendence.
The Convergence
Stockpile Energy