Introduction

This is a database of terminology explicit to the Karbon universe. These are poorly organized at the moment, but that will be fixed.

Basic Terms

Here quite a few basic terms that need defining and that occur in the rest of the document.

Lace: A crystal technology grafted onto living cells. It is generally used to enhance the performance of human beings, and occasionally other life-forms. When activated, Lace glows faintly with a color, this color is an indicator of its type. The type of lace is encoded by the creator to denote its purpose.

Nano: The short term for micromachines, or nanobots. Nano technology is prevalent in the world of 2212.

LightWire: This was an amazing breakthrough in Lace, giving it more power at the sake of endurance. LightWire uses itself up and must be regenerated often. LightWire is more powerful than Lace, but costly to maintain.

C2 Drone: A set of mobile automated weaponry that takes direction. Some are in the form of people, or animals, or even crawlers (legged tanks). Banned technology after the ten years war, but that doesn't mean your agent can't have access to them - with the proper paperwork.

PSI-9 Device: This is a logical marriage of Nano with advanced quantum state scanning and the Rooted Omni. When the PSI-9 Device is used, people in the area's thoughts and feelings become readable to the user. Highly illegal and considered a blatant invasion of privacy. Difficult but not impossible to detect in use.

Twister: Employing the twister makes it possible to alter a person's perception of the world around them if they are using an Omni feed (commonplace in the modern world). Literally its a hack into a users omni as it offers them augmented reality. Using a twister is a class 2 personal attack and often warrants arrest if detected.

Sparkle Nano: Automated, almost intelligent clouds of active Nano which can be coerced into making subtle changes to the people around them. These are very hard to detect and resist, but are also hard to control. Sparkle Nano is often used to change the mood, intent, and even knock-out people without Nano armor.

Projector: A very rare, high-energy, portable device the size of a briefcase. The projector does what the twister and PSI-9 device can't do: change the world around the user. Using the projector, the controller can create new matter within its operating radius (usually 10 meters or so). This matter is unstable and will collapse into a photon cascade if not maintained by the Projector, but is real all the same until that point.

Reflection: This an uncommon device that mates with an Omni. It is a huge storage device, normally loaded with the VersalLibrary (a collection of most of the knowledge of humanity) but can also hold other massive amounts of data: the state of 100 kg of matter, the brain of ten common people, or the image of the most advanced AI in existence. Think of it as one impressive hard-drive.

UpLink: While your omni can access the wire (internet) as incredible speeds, sometimes that is just not enough. In these cases your need an UpLink, a network transponder that offers 100 to 1000 times that bandwidth. Often, complicated local networks and devices use these same nodes for interfacing.

Amplifier: Any device that takes human input and amplifies its ability. In general these are instruments for performance, but they can often be used as weaponry and be bent to even more creative uses.

ShadowLink: The Uplink is designed for linking to one point, the ShadowLink is meant to scatter data to many local sources that are keyed to its encryption. This is often used by agents to link shadow puppets (drones and the like) to them, letting them control them remotely.

Rooted Omni: The omni is the common powerful computing device carried by almost everyone. Its the price of living in such an advanced world. Many root their omni to access restricted features and write their own programs. The rooted omni is a minor illegality (a fine) but the damage it can do is often severe in the wrong hands.

Blank Sig: Everyone has a sig in the modern world, an encrypted id and password that identifies them. Blank sigs have been stolen from the central sig bank, and are valid but unconfigured. A blank sig allows someone to literally be whoever they want, though its hard to make the sig copy a valid real identity. Such theft is the work of super-class-a hackers.

T1 Drone: The program has developed these so far unknown drones (to the public). They use cloak technology to remain invisible, but have powerful hover and sometimes other features. Originally designed for nearly undetectable surveillance, they have been bent to new purposes by creative agents. An agent can use a net of T1 drones to walk on air for instance, or seem too at any rate.

Diamond Steel: This is a kind of enhancement that both disfigures (though perhaps not horribly) and grants awesome power. Its the cybernetics of 2212, a kind of diamond steel composite that is weaved into and on top of bone.

Black Nano: These are Nano that has been configured for stealth using enhancements discovered when the T1 drone was created. They have the normal nano features, but are almost undetectable using common sensory technology. Only ShadowLink echolocation has been proven possible to detect them, and then only with time and persistence.