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Description

For at the first glance, the Assembly’s society may appear not that different from our own, or at least what we expect it to look in the far future – but upon closer inspection, you’ll see that in essence, it is much closer to a complex, massive ecosystem, rather than to a civilization in a classical sense of a word!

The cities of Assembly are not just piles of bricks and slabs, but living organisms – or, perhaps, even superorganisms. They grow, reproduce, absorb energy and resources from their environment; while the citizens are their symbionts – they harvest various goods from the cities and use them for sheltering and reproduction purposes (although they can reproduce by themselves, if necessary) – but also provide the vital maintenance in return. By using the portal webs (also biological in nature, and far more autonomous), these cities can creep from planet to planet all by themselves – but after forming the most basic buildings, every newborn town will fall dormant and wait, only resuming its growth after being properly populated.

As time passes, the cities evolve – literally, by gradually tweaking their genetic data and sticking to the variants that work best. Eventually, this urban evolution will always lead to specialization, providing each city with some unique benefits, but also limiting their abilities to effectively gather and produce some specific stuff. But since even the smallest empires of Assembly have at least thousands of them in their disposal, such limitations can be easily negated by a careful logistics and planning on the government’s part.

Gods – quite amusingly – take the role of consumers in this biosphere. Their bodies, rich with all kinds of exotic matter, require large amounts of energy – and so they seek the cities with the largest degrees of energy production. The exact methods of feeding, however, can vary: some gods are symbiotic – providing the actual help for the cities they are nourished by; some are parasitic – tricking people into worship by deception; and some are predators – their behavior, I presume, is pretty self-evident and doesn’t really requires any further explanation.

And finally, there are Thanatories , the role of which in the system is quite bizarre by human standards – to process memories of the deceased. The citizens are “lifeblood” of the cities – and if they take some damage and part of the citizens die, the dead must be recycled back into living as fast as possible. And while it is pretty easy to just mold inert corpse matter into new beings, it will only repurpose the physical part! Memories and experiences of the dead can be seen as a kind of resource in its own right – and for that reason, all remains from all cities are sent to the Thanatories of the Inner Circle, where they’ll be recycled properly!

The proses of recycling extract all of the residual data that can be found within the body, while the cadaver itself gets reduced to its basic materials and used… for a variety of purposes. The extracted data is then compiled with the previous brain scans – if such are available – and used to create a… "digital ghost" of sorts.

When the process is finished, the complete post-mortem data is sent back to the incubators, where it can be used in a creation of future generations – and thus continue the cycle of life !

Description

For at the first glance, the Assembly’s society may appear not that different from our own, or at least what we expect it to look in the far future – but upon closer inspection, you’ll see that in essence, it is much closer to a complex, massive ecosystem, rather than to a civilization in a classical sense of a word!

The cities of Assembly are not just piles of bricks and slabs, but living organisms – or, perhaps, even superorganisms. They grow, reproduce, absorb energy and resources from their environment; while the citizens are their symbionts – they harvest various goods from the cities and use them for sheltering and reproduction purposes (although they can reproduce by themselves, if necessary) – but also provide the vital maintenance in return. By using the portal webs (also biological in nature, and far more autonomous), these cities can creep from planet to planet all by themselves – but after forming the most basic buildings, every newborn town will fall dormant and wait, only resuming its growth after being properly populated.

As time passes, the cities evolve – literally, by gradually tweaking their genetic data and sticking to the variants that work best. Eventually, this urban evolution will always lead to specialization, providing each city with some unique benefits, but also limiting their abilities to effectively gather and produce some specific stuff. But since even the smallest empires of Assembly have at least thousands of them in their disposal, such limitations can be easily negated by a careful logistics and planning on the government’s part.

Gods – quite amusingly – take the role of consumers in this biosphere. Their bodies, rich with all kinds of exotic matter, require large amounts of energy – and so they seek the cities with the largest degrees of energy production. The exact methods of feeding, however, can vary: some gods are symbiotic – providing the actual help for the cities they are nourished by; some are parasitic – tricking people into worship by deception; and some are predators – their behavior, I presume, is pretty self-evident and doesn’t really requires any further explanation.

And finally, there are Thanatories , the role of which in the system is quite bizarre by human standards – to process memories of the deceased. The citizens are “lifeblood” of the cities – and if they take some damage and part of the citizens die, the dead must be recycled back into living as fast as possible. And while it is pretty easy to just mold inert corpse matter into new beings, it will only repurpose the physical part! Memories and experiences of the dead can be seen as a kind of resource in its own right – and for that reason, all remains from all cities are sent to the Thanatories of the Inner Circle, where they’ll be recycled properly!

The proses of recycling extract all of the residual data that can be found within the body, while the cadaver itself gets reduced to its basic materials and used… for a variety of purposes. The extracted data is then compiled with the previous brain scans – if such are available – and used to create a… "digital ghost" of sorts.

When the process is finished, the complete post-mortem data is sent back to the incubators, where it can be used in a creation of future generations – and thus continue the cycle of life !