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A BILLION WORLDS GLOSSARY

Aldakor: Shape-shifting smart-matter chassis.

Altok: Language based on English.

Baseline: An intelligence level roughly equivalent to an unmodified Homo sapiens; the legal minimum for personhood in most places.

Biara: All-Qarina hab in Neptune’s leading Trojans.

Biologicals: Intelligent beings made of meat.

Borg: A cyborg, typically one whose body is mostly mechanical with only a small biological component.

Bot: A mechanical being with sub-baseline intelligence.

Centro: Boss (Rocasa slang).

Chac: Giant ring habitat a thousand kilometers across, orbiting Jupiter beyond the major moons.

Corvids: Intelligent species genetically engineered from ravens.

Deimos Ring: Large orbital structure extending all the way around Mars in synchronous orbit; one of the major powers of the solar system.

Ebuthuntu: Utterly safe and comfortable Main Swarm habitat.

Entertainment: Most common form of fiction, incorporating elements of novels, films, and interactive games.

Fangshuo: Team ball game in which contact is forbidden.

Fratecea: Medium-sized hab in the Main Swarm, currently ruled by a repressive regime.

Gendakhel: Zero-gravity ball game.

Gigajoules: Units of energy, or of purchasing power, very roughly equivalent to one-tenth of a US dollar in the early 2020s.

Glorious Unique State: Empire which ruled most of Earth in the post-Great War era; sometimes called the Tsan-Chan Empire.

Great War of the Ring: Massive conflict in the Fourth Millennium, between the Inner Ring and most of the rest of the solar system.

Hab: Short for “habitat,” an artificial structure in space.

Inner Ring: A structure surrounding the Sun at a distance of 0.3 AU, made of the remains of the planet Mercury transformed into computronium. Home to the most advanced minds in the solar system.

Jiaohui: One of the larger Salibi habs, located in the Main Swarm between Earth and Venus.

Juren: Largest space hab ever constructed, located at Jupiter’s L1 point.

Kendraraj: Large habitat in the Main Swarm, scene of genocidal violence in the 9890s.

Koenig: Design cooperative based in Plato, Luna, specializing in plasma drive and weapon systems.

Kreyda: Habitat orbiting Venus.

Kumu: Lawless hab in the Kuiper Belt where Qarina are made and trained.

Longwu: Martial arts for dinosaurs.

Magonia: Cycler hab circling between Mars and Jupiter.

Main Swarm: The collection of several hundred million space habitats orbiting between Mars and Venus.

Malapert: City near the Lunar south pole.

Martian redwood: Engineered redwood species growing on terra­formed Mars.

Memetic Intelligence: A being capable of independent decision-making, embodied entirely in patterns of legal and organizational information rather than an algorithmic digital mind or a biological brain.

Mysteries of the Hidden Emperor: Cult founded in the Eighth Millennium, claiming an origin in the Fifth Millennium under the Glorious Unique State. Boasts about a hundred billion adherents, mostly in Jovian space.

Ningen: Language derived from Japanese.

Nuledor: Nulesgrima player.

Nulesgrima: Zero-gravity stick-fighting sport, uses graphene palos.

Old Belt: The original asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

Osorizan: Hab dedicated to backup storage for digital intelligences.

Oterma: Comet converted to a habitat, in a cyclic orbit between Jupiter and Saturn.

Pasquin Tiu: Martian writer famous for his anti-Deimos lampoons.

Politica: Political prisoner in Fratecea habitat.

Qarina: Human created for sexual slavery.

Raba: Habitat at the Uranus trailing Trojan cluster.

Rebodar: Rocasa word for a drifter or transient (“ricocheter”).

Retro Ring: The outermost ring of habitats circling Jupiter, orbiting retrograde.

RKV: Relativistic Kill Vehicle. The ultimate argument of worlds. A chunk of something dense traveling very fast.

Rocasa: Language derived from Spanish and Esperanto which originated in the Old Belt.

Sabela: Queen and hereditary owner of Oterma, of the matrilineal House of Buntala.

Safdaghar: Wrecked habitat formerly at the outer edge of the Old Belt.

Salibi: Followers of an ancient religion with only a few billion remaining adherents.

Saur: Hindi-based artificial language (“Solar”).

Scapino: Habitat in the Jovian Retro Ring, notoriously home to criminals and shady mercenaries.

Scarab: Salvagers of derelict or obsolete habitats.

Sekkurobo: Ningen word for a sex robot.

Shikyu: Artificial uterus or baby printer (from Ningen).

Summanus: Large, old, and powerful space habitat orbiting in Jupiter’s L2 position; also the high-level AI controlling the habitat.

Synchronous Ring: The lowest orbital ring around Jupiter, with elevator cables extending down into the planet’s cloud tops. Home to about a trillion people.

Tiedao: Gambling card game, its origins lost in time.

Titan Psychoactives: A self-owning Autonomous Corporation. An example of a purely memetic intelligence.

Trojan Empire: Powerful government controlling thousands of habitats and asteroids in the Jupiter Trailing Trojans cluster.

Ubas: Genetically modified fruit based on grapes. Commonly grown in space habs.

Woshing: Most common language on Mars, derived from Chinese.

Xiyu: Seldom-used language.

Washikyosho: Famed Lunar goldsmith of the mid-9900s.

Zukyu: Sport resembling rugby (from Woshing).

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