The search for Kalid/meta/Glossary



This page is for detailed information about the fictional world depicted in The search for Kalid. For example, this page can contain detailed descriptions of technologies and organizations that are never revealed to the reader of the story, but this information can be useful to authors who are developing and writing the story. Another page, The search for Kalid/Contents/Glossary is available for readers of the story and that page contains brief descriptions of special terminology used in the story and can help the reader keep track of the meaning of terms like "nanite" and "Antiquist Party".

Antimatterics
Antimatterics is the technical field concerned with the antimatter-powered spaceship engines that are used for travel between planets within star systems (where travel by means of jumps through hyperspace is not possible). In general, accelerations of greater than about 50 meters per second squared (5g) are rarely attained. As the threshold for black hole production is approached (See Figure 2, right), energy requirements increase exponentially. The graviton field of the drive system is tuned to allow some of the available energy from the antimatter reaction to compensate for the force due to acceleration, reducing the acceleration experienced by passengers in the central habitation ring of the spaceship. "Standard Acceleration" (SA) is about 3g, a level at which the passengers experience about 1 g (Earth normal gravity). Using SA, spaceships can travel about 200 million kilometers in two days; in many cases, spaceships do not need to travel more than this distance either in preparation for a hyperspatial jump or traveling to the destination planet following completion of a jump.

Antiquist Party
The Antiquist Party is a local political party on Sakkara that is concerned with doing things "the old fashioned way" using technologies that are not new. The Antiquist Party is financially supported by the Spaceship Guild. There is also a Galactic Antiquist Party which attempts to coordinate local planetary Antiquist Party organizations.

Azur
A major Earth-like world that was one of the last pockets of resistance against the forming Empire. Azur is in the Akara star system.

Earth
The origin of humans. The Earth is now a dead planet, infected by a green nanobot cloud. Some people claim that the Empire has tried to hide the true location and history of Earth.

Empire
The "New Empire" is established as the first political system of the Space Age to claim dominion over all human settlements in the Galaxy. In the time of "The Search for Kalid", years are counted as "years ANE", After the New Empire, the number of years that have passed since the Empire had been established. "The search for Kalid" takes place in 108 ANE (After the New Empire); this is the year 2472 CE, as years were previously counted on Earth. The capital of the Empire is the planet Parsa.

Esclangon
An asteroid in the h32 star system that is visited by Leone and Aristark.

Flammis
Veritas Flammis was a desolate world selected as a base by the Haldus Order for secret research into technology that can aid human telepathic communication.

Futurist Party
The Futurist Party is a local political party on Sakkara that has members who are interested in the development of new technologies that will improve human lives. The party formed as a reaction against the Antiquist Party. The Futurist Party is interested in building space elevators on Sakkara.

Green planets
"Green planet" means that the world's surface and atmosphere are a poisonous green cloud of nanites.....the result of a type of disaster in which nanites go out of control and destroy a world.

Haldus
In 2156 CE, members of the Haldus Order established a base on a Trojan dwarf planet located in the orbit of the major disc-shaped companion object of the Epsilon Aurigae star system. The reason why the Haldus Order is named after this star, and why members of the Haldus Order made this the site of their first settlement outside of the solar system, is a closely guarded secret of the Order.

Haldus Order
A secret society that has a base in the Epsilon Aurigae (Haldus) star system. At the time of The Search for Kalid, Kalid is the Great Master of the Haldus Order.

Hyperspace
Interstellar travel is made possible by spaceships that have "hyperdrive", a technology that allows a spaceship to be moved from normal spacetime into a "hyperspace" consisting of compact dimensions. Once the spaceship is represented within hyperspace, instantaneous movement of that representation is possible....the spaceship can be rematerialized at another location in normal spacetime. While the actual movement through hyperspace is instantaneous, in practice, some time is required to rematerialize the spaceship at the destination point following a "jump" through hyperspace. Hyperspatial communication is actually more difficult than movement of a spaceship through hyperspace because the hyperspace drive device is not sent to the destination and so cannot organize the signal upon its return to normal spacetime. In practice, coded pulses of hassium are sent through hyperspace. Upon returning to normal spacetime at the destination, the hassium nuclei decay and release "T particles", a form of nonhadronic dark matter. The original message can then be reconstructed from the coded pulses of T particles, but their reception requires a special and very large T particle-detecting antenna structure. Most inhabited star systems have such a T particle antenna structure and a relay station for sending the messages on to nearby human bases and inhabited planets by means of conventional electromagnetic signals.

Hyperspatial communications center
Reception of hyperspatial communications signals requires a large antenna array. The Empire has a network of hyperspatial communications centers distribute throughout interstellar space. These communications centers allow spaceships to jump close and carry on two-way communications with people located in distant star systems. The spaceships can then quickly jump to another location, continuing their journey.

Nanites
Nanites are nano-scale devices (see Nanorobotics). Some nanites are destructive (see Grey goo). In "The search for Kalid", a destructive form of nanites is referred to as "green goo" because it infects a habitable planet and covers the planet in a suffocating green nanite cloud. Nanites also can function as an automated repair system for spaceships or a "medical nanites" for repair of damaged tissues.

Planetary Counselor
Planetary Counselors on the planet Sakkara are high-ranking politicians who must be elected to office. For example, the Planetary Counselor for Transportation administers the planetary government's Department of Transportation.

Plato
Name invented by Leone to refer to the planet Flammis.See Chapter 2 of The Search for Kalid.

Rugo
The minority faction of the under ground population of Azur. The Haldus Order's Temple on Azur is located in an under ground chamber within the Rugo area of control.



Sakkara
The most important Earth-like world for research and development of new technologies. The home planet for Leone and Aristark. The star that Sakkara orbits is called Memphis.

Shackleton Base
The first permanent human base on the Moon. It was destroyed in 2212.

Silver Tulipan Order
Sybil is a member of this secretive organization on Sakkara. Women members enter into the Neofinetia Falcata Order.

Space elevator
In "The search for Kalid", the technology needed for building space elevators on high gravity worlds has recently been discovered. Use of space elevators on worlds like Sakkara would end the monopoly of the Spaceship Guild for transport of passengers and cargo to and from the surface of inhabited worlds.

See: The Elevators for the space elevators of Sakkara.

Spaceship Guild
Soon after the discovery of hyperspatial drive technology, the Spaceship Guild was formed by the major manufacturers of hyperspatial ships. From that point in time, the Spaceship Guild remains as the dominant economic force in all the Galaxy.

Telepathy
Most people have no evidence that telepathy is possible, however, members of the Haldus Order believe that telepatic communication is possible and they perform research on telepathy.

Thot spaceship
A Thot spaceship is the most modern type of interstellar spacecraft. Thot spaceships have a sophisticated artificial intelligence-based control system that can integrate with human brains to allow easy control of the ship.

The Elevators
In 89 ANE tessellanium quarpounds with high specific strength were discovered, making it practical to build space elevators on Sakkara. The Futurist Party funded construction of two elevators for Sakkara. The Elevators were nearly completed on Sakkara but then a terrorist attack destroyed them. The Elevators would have functioned as space elevators and ended the Spaceship Guild's monopoly on transport of passengers and cargo to and from the surface of Sakkara.

Tessellanium quarpounds are high specific strength materials made from strange quark-containing synthetic matter that includes up, down and strange quarks in their nuclei and resoleptons replacing electrons. The original tessellanium compounds, such as carbon nanotubes, were all composed of ordinary matter and their tensile strength depends on covalent bonds. Tessellanium quarpounds have strange matter atoms with small bond lengths that allow a significant amount of strong force interaction between adjacent atoms.

Towering Justice
A radical splinter group of the Futurist Party formed after the destruction of The Elevators and dedicated to revenge against those responsible for destroying the space elevators of Sakkara. Linked by the Sakkaran Department of Justice to Set.