#speculative technology

The white sketches show a pre-contact portable radio, and the coloured drawing shows a little post-contact device akin to a phone.

The single, biggest question I wanted to answer about life in a human body is how gravity is dealt with. Previously it was like, this flat plane? Bc that’s what’s implied in the canon? But that was FAR too restrictive in what could actually be done. How does it move? How does it exist in a way that at least makes SOME sense?

What I decided on was basically a very humanlike 3d structure. It stands up and moves and does all the things that a human body does, whether or not I want to talk about them. Any organ you can think of, structurally at least, is just “real life but mechanical.” Each one has its own quirks and lore and everything, but that’s the framework. Just so SOMETHING exists before manual adjustment.

But cells don’t function on the organ level, so we have to go smaller. And that’s what this fucker is

This is what the inside of an “urban module” looks like. There are millions of these scattered throughout the Body, each specialized to its specific tissue. If you were a cell, they’d be roughly the size of a large college campus or town square (but can be as big as a metropolis or as small as a supermarket) and houses about 30-40 thousand cells.

The reason they fix the gravity problem is that they can rotate freely. The module is made of two spherical shells—the outer shell is anchored to the Body’s flexible matrix, and the inner shell is unattached to anything. The space between the shells is filled with a slippery, fat-like substance that allows free motion of the entire module. This happens readily because the lower half of the module (underneath the city) is weighted with storage units, though emergency correction technology helps prevent damage due to sudden motion.

Those Twinkie-looking things between the shells are shuttles. To get in and out, red blood cells must pilot them to climb through the tangle of ventilation and energy cords to get from the blood vessel to the nearest docking station, which is what you see against the wall there. It’s clunky, but it works. It also makes the passive spread of pathogens incredibly difficult.

The most populated regions of the city are the two ring-shaped buildings. The outer ring is all apartments, and the thick inner ring is all workplaces. This particular module is in the vascular endothelium, but different tissues will have different specializations in both workplaces and living arrangements. But no matter what, every module will have two (sometimes more) huge radiators to dissipate heat from respiration, which also maintain homeostasis of the module in general. The little “gardens” also serve a purpose. Those are synthetic cilia, they a) look pretty and 2) trap pathogens, especially bacteria. In this AU, bacteria are no longer sapient, so they’d naturally be looking for places to hide. The idea is that they’ll hide in the cilia where they can be ambushed by immune cells and processed in the hidden bunkers underneath.

Behold my beautiful space ouppy that’s been years in the making….

“Humans and the bridge they built once they established first contact and achieved light speed have been a major proponent of the galaxy’s interstellar expanse. Their knowledge is vast and their perseverance is great- for better or worse- and with the new resources from the sudden advancement into space, they began creating technology more advanced than was ever seen before. Automatas, colloquially called “mechas” or “robots” of this caliber are varied, and yet unique for the job they provide. They’re the perfect blend of delicate sinew and machine, a true marriage of creator and creation.

Void tech! Based on a convo with @cloudyswritings

She mentioned using void as a depth measurement and I went a little crazy

This is the Depth Sensor! It’s composed of two main parts: a glass sphere filled with Void, and a metal ring with a smaller glass piece filled with Void set into it. The ring is attached in a way that allows it to spin.

Void is attracted to either the Void Sea, or the largest body of Void nearby. The smaller void “gem” is kept floating by being attracted to the sphere. No matter what way you turn the sphere, the ring should always be parallel to the ground, otherwise something is wrong.

The deeper you go into the cave systems, the more the ring is pulled downward. Think of it like a compass, almost. You can tell your depth based on how low the ring is dipping.

Note: these devices are incredibly difficult to make, due to the dangerous nature of the Void. They’re also extremely volatile, though the good manufacturers will make sure the glass isn’t easy to break. As a result, well-made depth sensors are very expensive, usually only owned by wealthy explorers.

They also have to be kept in special padded cases to make sure they don’t crack and begin to expose their owners to Void Poisoning.

To be honest, I'm still figuring that out! But I do have a rough sort of idea...

Every civilisation in the Zhagaviit System is a part of the Wider Galactic Community, thus each one is at (roughly) equal stages of advancement. This is due to being in close proximity to each other and being able to easily share technology with neighbouring planets.

Despite this, each sophont species has differing 'media'. It's a very broad term. I will say that each species has some form of planet-wide communication network and databanks, but I'll have to get back to you on what they look like.

One of the many lucrative results of the development of the Mystery Flesh Pit were tremendous advances in the fields of computer science and cybernetics. The American conglomerate Anodyne, Inc. pioneered the design and development of “wetware” computing in the early 1980s by harvesting living nervous tissue from the Permian Basin Superorganism. The processing capabilities provided by these living tissues were decades ahead of technology at the time and allowed Anodyne a brief commanding share of an already saturated computer market.

While the user interface of these computers were similar to other machines of the time, the resource requirements necessary to power the electrical systems as well as the living tissue life support systems made them expensive to operate, and almost impossible to repair without highly specialized equipment.