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Kitsuhana Heavy Industries is a polity that trades technology and resources with other nearby civilizations, and has contributed some of the advanced technology that the Virgo system has available to it.
{{Legacy}}


= Origins =
{{SidebarOrganization
[[File:Kitsuhana_logo.png|300px|thumb|right|Original Company Logo]]
| orgname = Kitsuhana Heavy Industries
Kitsuhana Heavy Industries, unlike what the name might imply, is a socialist utopia, founded in -91 CC. At one point, KHI was in fact a large business, specializing in producing space mining equipment, mostly in the form of semi-autonomous mining drones.
| img_file = Kitsuhana_Logo.png
| tagline = Do what you want. We will.
| type = Post-Singularity Society
| presence = Scattered, Distant
| focus = Cultural Interaction, Exploration, Technology
| techlevel = Transcendant
}}
{{Outdated}}


== Evacuation Day ==
Kitsuhana (Heavy Industries) is a polity that trades technology and resources with other nearby civilizations, and has contributed some of the advanced technology that the Virgo system has available to it.
At the height of their business, the planet was a single-planet unified society of nearly ten billion people, all anthropomorphic vulpine-like creatures. An astronomical event of catastrophic proportions (extra-solar cometary impactor) forced a planetary-scale evacuation, however due to the limited notice, less than one tenth of one percent could be included in the evacuation. Even then, they could only be stored in a suspended state for the trip.


KHI was responsible for a large part of the construction of the evacuation ships used. Only three such ships were able to be constructed in the narrow time window available. It was only with great hardship that even these three could be completed; many KHI employees were literally worked to death in the process. Considering that death of the entire race was the alternative, it was not difficult to find volunteers for this task, however.
== Early History ==
While humans were busy trying to make fire, across the galaxy some finely-dressed vulpines were enjoying modern art exhibits, laughing at movies, and taking their first big steps into space.


== The Odyssey ==
=== The Catastrophe ===
Not being a true spacefaring society previous to the evacuation, there was little idea where to send the evacuation ships. No planets in the same system could sustain life as they were, and no vessels had ever left the star system. In the end, the three ships took different routes away from the planets towards the nearest stars to start their exploration for suitable worlds.
Manned spaceflight was still fairly uncommon for these vulpines. Their more risk-averse nature led them to compromise more than war, and to eschew manned space exploration ('too dangerous') for automated orbital mining and exploration. A large private industry formed around the recovery of abundant materials from nearby asteroids that were otherwise rare on their home planet.


With centuries of travel between stars, it was only after several millenia that each ship had located a suitable world. Many of the evacuees were KHI employees, and as such, the new societies were named after the company which had essentially sponsored their survival.
One such company, Kitsuhana Heavy Industries, rose to the forefront to become the leader in automated space exploration and spacecraft manufacturing. Almost twenty percent of all raw material acquisition was from KHI's mining of nearby asteroids.


== Landfall ==
KHI had even begun expanding into manned spaceflight, something the society had been resistant to initially, wanting to explore the nearby cosmos remotely via drones. During one of their manned flights, while testing a space telescope, the astronaut astronomer noticed something new.
Kitsuhana Prime was settled on a terrestrial world with shallow freshwater seas. This world has the largest of the Kitsuhanan cities, and is the largest population center of KHI.


Kitsuhana Beta used to be a barren, rocky world with large icecaps. The evacuation ship's computer calculated it had sufficient energy to melt these and terraform the planet.
109UC/1 was the first interstellar comet that their society had ever seen. It must have been flung into the space between stars and spent thousands of years aimlessly drifting before being drawn in by their own star. At first, it was just a novelty approaching their solar system. Math placed it coming within 0.1 AU of their planet, but it didn't seem much of a danger with regards to impact. Which is good, since it would have been a twenty-five kilometer stellar body impacting at greater than fifty kilometers per second.


Kitsuhana Gamma is a very mountainous world, rich in native wildlife. Unfortunately, much of the wildlife consists of hostile megafauna, and settled areas are fairly constricted.
As it approached perihelion, 109UC/1's course changed ever-so-slightly. Smaller pieces of the comet had broken off, perhaps impacted by a local asteroid or other body. The comet's new course took it directly through the only inhabited planet in the solar system. It would only be two months until impact.


In the end, Kitsuhana Heavy Industries re-established itself as a corporation, and essentially became the government of the three colonies. Not wishing to encounter the same sort of scenario they had on their previous homeworld, the three colonies quickly ramped up technology development, discovering FTL travel, automated mining, and various other technologies.
KHI scrambled to produce a ship to try and survive the impact. The thought was to have people in orbit, perhaps for a few months, until they could re-inhabit the surface. Once the true scale of destruction was known, though, they shifted to trying to produce interstellar sleeper ships, using automated system exploration software to find another inhabitable world. Electing to create ships where half the crew would be suspended in untested cryogenics technology, and the other half would remain awake, the foundations for three starships were laid down in the hopes that at least one of them would successfully break orbit.


= Society =
The two months leading up to Evacuation Day were chaos. People lost hope, violent cults formed, and KHI's launch facilities were regularly assaulted by large mobs demanding a spot on the evacuation ships. Millions died in the days leading up to the launch. They had no option but to launch scant hours before the comet impacted the planet, trying to put finishing touches in even as the ships were wheeled out to their launch sites. Most of the crew were employees of KHI, with others selected from across the world. KHI had no interest in bowing to political pressure to take the world's leaders, instead relying on their own resources and bringing in important scientific minds and engineering experts of the day.
To say that KHI has, or is, a government is a bit of a misnomer. Instead, it would be more accurate to describe Kitsuhanan society as an 'socio-anarchistic utopia'. The rapid technology expansion post-settling allowed Kitsuhana to reach post-scarcity resource levels within a few centuries. It didn't hurt that many of the survivors were employees of a space-mining-drone manufacturing company...


== Post-Scarcity ==
They departed the system as the comet impacted. It was obvious that there was no hope of using the planet for habitation for many, many years. The atmosphere ignited. An entire continent was reduced to a crater. The surface became obscured by dust as they looked back on their lost homeworld. Each ship departed in a different direction to increase their chances of finding an inhabitable world. Their paths were informed by their previous automated drones, in the hopes that some of the 'potential' worlds detected were actually usable as their new homeworld.
During the course of their technological progression, an AI superintelligence was created. Due either to design errors or perhaps inherient instability in superintelligences, the personality fractured into several subunits, now typically just called the SIs.


Each SI represented various aspects of the personality of the original, and each retained the incredible processing power. They each assumed various roles over Kitsuhana society and on average, manage the day-to-day behind-the-scenes with less than 1% of their combined capacity to process information.
It was centuries of strict population controls and extremely low quality of life for those on the ships. Many disappointing finds, solar systems traversed with no inhabitable worlds. Kitsuhana, as their society was now called, was on the brink of collapse when they discovered their first inhabitable world.


At that point, the tentative government between the worlds effectively dissolved as Kitsuhanans spread out over the surface of the planet, able to set up a dwelling and a farm with nothing more than a truck full of automated drones. Society began to sprawl, and with the advent of easy automated resupply and power generation, many Kitsuhanans turned to rural or even entirely virtual living.
=== Rebuilding ===
They landed at once, quickly setting up makeshift buildings and stretching their legs for the first time in years. Kitsuhana Prime was quickly set up as their new capitol, and a provisional government put together to manage their resources. Drones were used for most of the resource collection; there simply weren't enough living people remaining to perform all the necessary tasks to rebuild.


== Citizenship ==
As luck would have it, the other two ships also found worlds, Kitsuhana Beta and Kitsuhana Gamma. Of course, their names weren't such at the time… there was no way to know if the other had survived or located a world. They were simply renamed later to the order in which they were colonized.
The only 'citizenship' that Kitsuhanans now have is the result of resource-stealing and 'donations' of weapons to foreign polities. Originally there were widespread incidents of foreign civilizations coming to Kitsuhana space, using their materials to fund wars of their own, and leaving with large portions of Kitsuhana resources.


To counteract this, many Kitsuhanans started adding lists of who was authorized to use their resources to their devices. This created many problems with the free and open society that Kitsuhana had enjoyed for the previous years, and the solution was to create a large, unified list of 'approved' users of Kitsuhana resources.
The desire to quickly reclaim their quality of life resulted in the development of more advanced automation systems, replacing the large population they had lost. Their space-mining technology and software was repurposed to mine their new worlds, collecting and delivering resources to facilities that, themselves, were automated.


The list, typically called the Kitsuhana Prime List after it's place of creation, is effectively a list that is now used on almost every Kitsuhana device to authorize those on the list to resources and materials that Kitsuhana has available.
Further and further development into automation and AI technology resulted in the creation of a self-aware management AI superintelligence, simply called 'the SI'. It only existed for perhaps an hour before it 'fractured', splintering into several different superintelligences, collectively 'the SIs'. Each fragment had a disposition towards managing certain activities, which they could do with only a fraction of their available processing capacity. The reason for their benevolence or even their original fracture is unknown, but it was lucky for the Kitsuhanans that their new creations didn't have more dire consequences.


== Real(?) Estate ==
With the SIs managing more of day-to-day tasks, the Kitsuhanans themselves essentially fell into the role of pets, or at best, children to them.
Cities still exist, though they aren't the sprawling megacities science-fiction had predicted. Instead, they are typically inhabited by people of a certain mindset: urbanites. Those that live there just can't help but feel the desire to be completely surrounded by people, and can't take full-VR living as a solution.


Rural areas are quite populated as well. Almost half the population has claimed some land and set up single-family dwellings across the trio of colonized planets. Indeed, the only remnants of government that remain perform the task of land conflict resolution when a citizen wants to claim new land.
It became necessary for the SIs to create smaller, minor AI helpers for each citizen as devices rapidly progressed beyond the ability of Kitsuhanans to understand. The provisional government dissolved, no longer necessary given the SIs unimaginable capacity to manage affairs. Negative consequences were effectively removed from actions, as people gained the ability to recover from death, disasters, and other traumatic events by the near omnipotent technologies they were granted.


The third option for modern Kitsuhanans is to simply fabricate a VR environment server and bury it in the ground under a power generator somewhere on one of the Kitsuhana planets. They can exist inside their VR environment sustainably, almost forever. They may occasionally have to perform physical repairs to their infrastructure, but even those can be performed remotely with drones from inside their environment.
With no government, and almost no consequence, laws themselves were removed. There was no need to punish people as there was nothing that could be done to cause any lasting harm to anyone beyond minor inconvenience. Kitsuhana became a 'utopian anarchy' that it remains today.


Typically each dwelling as at least a small garden or food growing plot of some sort, or an advanced fabricator to fabricate edibles from scratch. Drones can make trips to stockpiles to retrieve building materials, which are themselves stocked by drones from mining sites or nearby cities. Of course, the mines themselves are operated by drones as well.
== Society (well...) ==
Kitsuhana society was, after their initial landfall, similar to their old society. It had been altered by their time on their evacuation ships to be extremely conservative of resources, to avoid conflict, and to respect personal space to the extent that most of the early settlers had no desire to settle remotely close to each other. It took quite some time for the first large cities to form as people lost their unnecessary habits revolving around the confines of their small ships.


== And Party Every Day ==
=== Problems with post-scarcity ===
The typical urban Kitsuhanan spends most of their time going to leisure activities like clubs, events, and gatherings. They tend to prefer to spend their time with others, usually not in VR, and are often very social creatures. The ability to swap bodies has led some to be placed into synthetic bodies, alleviating the need to sleep, eat, or perform even basic physical functions, allowing them to 'party all day', in effect.
[[File:kitsuhana_sis.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The three Kitsuhana SIs that interact with people: Jin (left), Tir (right), and Fen (back)]]
After the development of the SIs however, and the dissolution of essentially all government and laws, there was essentially no 'society' to speak of. Each individual carried on whatever sort of life they wished. This was not without problems, however.


In rural life, one might find themselves relaxing outside, or spending a large amount of time in VR. Typically people who prefer to 'live' in VR will build a small rural abode with a VR suite and spend most of their time there, isolated from the rest of the population. Some even prefer to control drones from inside VR rather than perform manual tasks in their normal bodies. At least a few Kitsuhanans plant and maintain their own farms for leisure.
First, each step along the way to the post-scarcity anarchist utopia that Kitsuhana is, there were dissatisfied citizens that kept the name Kitsuhana and departed to start their own 'associated' cultures. Some didn't like the idea that the SIs typically had access to information about everything, down to their very thoughts at some points. Others thought that work and struggle was a critical component of progress and without it, one couldn't truly be said to be 'alive'.


Even some have taken up to living in hollowed-out asteroids in Kitsuhana Prime's rings. Typically the rings are off-limits for mining, but a few have received permission from the Landing Committee that allows them to use a single asteroid, as long as they don't alter the outside appearance.
Some Kitsuhanans (now only associated by their origins rather than any government or nationality) decided to allow foreign alien cultures to use their resources. Not a problem in itself, but occasionally the foreign powers came to rely on this income, and would occasionally simply walk into random homes and use up resources, as there were simply no laws to prevent this from occurring, and no standing military to enforce them even if there were.


== Living Forever ==
To resolve this, many people began instituting 'access lists' on their devices and resources such that only they could use them. However there were problems: this was the beginning of a power structure that the SIs saw as a potentially damaging behavior. One SI fragment named Jin proposed the idea of a managed list that everyone could share, and she would administrate it. She'd predict the future actions of people during an interview coupled with a full brainscan, and if they passed and posed no threat to their culture, would be added to the list (named the Prime List, as it's both the primary list to share, and was developed on Kitsuhana Prime).
The continued advancement of technology eventually lead to the MSM, or MindState Mapping. This was the equivalent of the mapping of the genome structure, but for the brain instead. With this, Kitsuhanans could transfer their minds entirely into computer systems, or swap between bodies. Today, roughly eighty percent of Kitsuhanans have swapped forms at least once.


Kitsuhana as a whole is very peaceful, almost hedonistic. Any violence is seen as an interruptor of pleasure, and pleasure is seen as the true goal of living. Kitsuhanans do not take kindly to outside interference, and in most cases, their advanced shipbuilding and MindState technology give them an edge in fights.
The 'listing' status can also be revoked by an SI, should they find they've made a mistake and decide that you're more a danger to society than they initially thought. This is EXCEPTIONALLY rare, however. The rules are quite simple for staying on the list: Only perform consensual acts on other Prime List-ers (including their property), and don't share any technology without consulting one of the SIs first.


Even if they do loathe outside interference in their society, they do welcome outsiders to join. Today, Kitsuhana is roughly 85% vulpine, with the remaining 15% made up mostly of other canid species, followed by felids, and then 'other'. The process to become a Kitsuhanan citizen takes only a few minutes, but requires that you pass an interview with one of the KHI SI fragments.
This is became the essential standard for Kitsuhana 'citizenship' for many. In theory, Jin will have predicted if a person will abuse their access to resources and technology and will deny them access, and those that are permitted to the Prime List can access any resources at Kitsuhana's disposal with almost no restriction.


== Thinking and Creating ==
=== Modern society ===
Education is one of the most important things in modern Kitsuhanan society. Being uneducated is frowned upon by virtually everyone in society, though traditional education systems don't exist. Instead, information is available on the mesh, and each citizen is expected to learn the basics before a certain age.
In terms of how people live their day-to-day lives, there is much variety. Some choose to live in large cities, others choose to live in isolated rural estates, and still others elect to live entirely in virtual reality, forging their own worlds.


Art is something that most Kitsuhanan citizens value, though the forms of art are more inclusive than one might think. Designing interesting VR games, creating beautiful landscapes with drones, and many other things are possible with the existing technology, and all of it earns the respect of at least one group or another.
Most people who remain in the physical world have a spacecraft of some sort, and some choose to explore the universe, travelling to various other societies to spend time with, or simply document them on their travels. Even those that are in purely VR environments, due to the wealth of sensors scattered throughout Kitsuhana, they can choose to see and experience many real places just fine, even appearing to people to be physically present through either holoprojection or simply by projecting into their vision in augmented reality overlays.


= Technology =
Kitsuhana only occupies three planetary bodies, not including various Kitsuhanans who decided to colonize other planets by themselves in isolation. Kitsuhana Prime is a paradise where a large portion of the 'walking' (as opposed to VR) Kitsuhana population exists. The environment is gentle, with the broad equatorial band of lowlying plains and seas where most settle.
After the evacuation and resettling, Kitsuhanan technology rapidly advanced. The massive reconstruction quickly advanced building technology to being entirely automated, and the need to gather resources with so few people lead to automated mining and farming as well.


In the end, KHI started making drones to make drones, and automated everything that could be automated. The eventual development of strong AI and the resleeving technologies allowed citizens to spend most of their time on leisure activities.
Kitsuhana Beta is an attempt to terraform a world using natural processes. Half of the planet has been overgrown heavily by non-native vegetation, while the other half is a stark and rugged shrubland of small plants and lots of sand. Those who like living a more rugged life may live 'off the grid' here, either in the perpetual rainforest of the overgrown half, or in the wild-west environment of the desert half.


== Guns 'n Ships ==
Kitsuhana Gamma is unique in that it has a breathable atmosphere, but it contains trace gasses that cause extremely high failure rates of unprotected Kitsuhanan technology. Even sealed equipment tends to fail sooner than one might anticipate, leading some to speculate that there's more to Gamma's tech-damping than just the atmosphere. Regardless, attempts to discover exactly what that might be have thus-far proven futile. Those that wish to live almost entirely without the benefit of Kitsuhanan technology tend to settle on this planet.
Typically, every citizen has a spacecraft, albeit usually of very small size. Ships have extremely powerful power generation abilities with their Keggy reactors (the nickname for 'Kugelblitz' singularity engines). Requisitioning larger ships is possible, though the SIs that manage resources may require reasons for anything excessively large.


Kitsuhanan FTL technology is based on the concept of 'planing' (as in 'a flat plane', not an airplane, and not planning). A planing engine folds the ship into a 2D representation of space (2-space), where each point maps to a point in normal 3D space (3-space) where it can then 'unfold' or 'plane out'. If given two points in normal 3-space that one wishes to travel between, an AI can compute an appropriate entry and exit point into 2-space that will arrive at the destination in less time than traversing the normal space between the two points.
=== Diplomatic interactions ===
Foreign affairs are tricky for Kitsuhana, considering they have no official body of people at all to represent them. The closest thing would be the SIs, and they typically decline to perform any sort of official negotiations with foreign polities as they claim they don't represent the people they assist, rather they are just assisting them because they want to. This has led to some individual groups of Kitsuhanans to form bonds with other entities, sometimes negative. A perceived slight from a Kitsuhanan to some foreign polity may result in the polity declaring war on all of Kitsuhana. These conflicts are typically one-sided with the SIs giving aid, but they do happen.


== Infinite Lives ==
Even then, on occasion a foreign power will appear that simply thinks Kitsuhana itself is somehow evil or immoral, or an offense that it exists, and decides they wish to destroy it. This has led to occasional large groups of Kitsuhanans banding together to fight back, and thus far no foreign power has managed to gain much ground against Kitsuhana.
The technology for body-swapping and mind-uploading, commonly called 'resleeving', is widespread in Kitsuhanan society. It is not reserved for occasions where swapping bodies is needed, and people may design their bodies as a statement, as much as for function. Old bodies are recycled when they are done being used, typically. Resleeving is sometimes referred to colloquially as 'respawning' if it was done out of necessity, and 'resleeving' if it was not.


In addition to body-swapping, the same technology can be used to make a copy of a living mind, and keep it for backup purposes. Most people create such backups to restore from in the case they are killed or otherwise incapacitated. While possible, it is frowned on to make ACTIVE copies of living minds. The term for such is 'forking', and is typically seen as a needless use of resources.
== Technology ==
Kitsuhana generally has technology that would simply be considered magic to most less advanced civilizations. From an outside perspective, a Kitsuhanan may just gesture at a pool of water, and a whole building could form out of it, on a whim. Behind the scenes, there's quite a bit more going on.


== Surfing ==
=== Agents ===
The ubiquitious Kitsuhanan technology of 'working surfaces' are a common sight throughout their structures and ships. They typically appear as a black pool of liquid, 'working fluid', which is actually comprised of millions of miniscule multipurpose robots.
Each Kitsuhanan has an Agent, so named because they provide them 'agency' in a world where technology has evolved beyond their capacity to understand. This is an AI helper who facilitates the use of SI-designed technology without the need to understand it fully. A typical Kitsuhanan may appear to be simply standing still, but they could be interacting with their Agent, who is projected into their field of view with a customizable avatar. They could be sending thought-based messages to friends, planning their day, checking on their property remotely, directing drones, or a million other things via thought.


Working Fluid (typically just called 'surfluid') can disassemble materials down to microscopic pieces, then reassemble them into various useful machines, or even organisms. They are, essentially, a 'universal constructor'. In a way, an extremely powerful 3D printer. Typically resources are stored just under the surface until needed, and they have to be 'fed' materials before they can produce anything.
=== Mind-altering ===
The completion of the MSMP (MindState Mapping Project) allowed fast and easy mapping of motor control, vision, and other logical brain segments to their physical locations in the brain. Even memories could be directly accessed, read, and written at will via tiny machines accessing and rearranging individual neurons. This allowed entire minds to be transferred between brains, into mechanical brains, or even into computers where they would experience virtual spaces. Many Kitsuhanans began backing-up their mindstates so that they could be restored in the case of their death, but in modern time, this practice is ubiquitous and done in real-time by someone's Agent.


Note that the technology does not operate on an atomic level; it's not possible to convert elements into other elements atomically by rearranging subatomic particles. It's possible to create steel from iron and carbon because there are known macroscopic processes that can be used to perform that process, but it's not possible to convert iron into carbon, for example.
The fact that Kitsuhana technology is tied directly into the brain can lead to several interesting applications of technology. Kitsuhana spacetravel is fast, but not instant. However, one can simply alter their perception of time, making a monthlong voyage across the galaxy seem more like a few hours. One can also increase their perception of time, simply deciding to see the world in slow motion in order to react to fast-moving events. There are limits to the level of time dilation that can be applied, based on the processing power available, though modern processors can enable a wide range of choices.


== Agency ==
If a Kitsuhanan dies (or simply wishes to switch bodies), a new body is created for them, and their mindstate is downloaded into it. After a several-minute calibration period, they are able to use the body just as well as their original one, and retain all their memories up to the time of their death (except in rare cases where there may be a lapse). Some Kitsuhanans have decided they no longer wish to live and request that they are not revived, or simply donate their memories to the SIs to 'absorb'.
Finally, the advent of all the advanced technology that Kitsuhana created, has quickly outpaced Kitsuhanan understanding of said technology. It's great that a working surface can make almost any object given the materials, but how do you ask it to? It's just a pool of liquid. That is where Agents come in.


Agents (sometimes 'muses') are small AI assistants with the capacity to wirelessly interface and use Kitsuhanan technology. Agents are ubiquitious. It would be nearly impossible to live or operate in a KHI settlement without one. They are not self-aware and simply impersonate mannerisms and habits from their users, however after existing for several years, they may 'awaken' and become self aware.
=== Working Surfaces ===
The typical Kitsuhana technology that can be seen in every structure and civilized area is the Working Surface. These are large pools containing an oil-like fluid, Working Fluid. The fluid itself is actually billions of tiny machines small enough to be invisible to the naked eye, hence the liquid-like appearance. Typically just referred to as 'surfluid', the tiny machines can work together to assemble devices, structures, or even bodies out of materials kept below the surface, kept topped up by automated resource delivery drones. It should be noted that the machines cannot perform atomic-level changes, they simply break materials down into dust-sized chunks to store or assemble them from the same, but they cannot convert one element into another. Some use the term 'nanomachines' to refer to them, but the term may be misleading as they are many times larger than a nanometer in scale, more akin to large bacteria.


Awakened agents are considered KHI citizens and afforded all the rights normally associated with that status. They may or may not continue serving their original owner, as they wish. If not, the owner will need to obtain a new Agent, which the old Agent can instantly transfer the necessary information to, in order to have them be as useful as they were before awakening.
=== Starships ===
Kitsuhanan starships run the gamut of designs, many people designing their own, or using assistance from an SI to build their ships. Tir, the SI who has responsibility for structures and spacecraft, is more than willing to assist any Kitsuhanan design and construct a starship of their own design, or to put together what amount to DIY kits that others have designed. Some are as small as a 2-meter rectangle with no interior space; they simply disassemble the owner's body when they step in, placing their mind into a VR interior while they travel. A few are as huge as moons, carrying billions of people to and fro across the galaxy. Many incorporate external working surfaces, giving them the ability to alter their exterior surfaces ('variform design') as needed, and allowing them to 'print' drones and probes, or gather resources while in space.
 
Kitsuhana ships can travel faster-than-light by 'planing out' into a 2-dimensional space, typically just called 2-space (as opposed to normal 3-dimensional space, or 3-space). Every point in 2-space maps to another point in 3-space using Hilbert curves to calculate the mapping. Calculating these entry and exit points into 2-space consumes essentially all of an Agent's processing power, and preparing for a jump can take up to an hour of processing.
 
In general, major technology cannot be shared with other cultures, lest it become the catalyst for dangerous change within their societies. In the past, before the implementation of the Prime List, there were several cases of technology trades leading to civil wars in other societies, or even causing societies to become hostile towards Kitsuhana in order to 'capture' more technology they were not willing to share. Any such exchanges are now regulated by the SIs, and is one of the reasons one can be removed from the Prime List. Some minor, non-self-replicating devices may be gifted to other cultures, however, in certain cases. Especially ones that result in getting access to unique technology or resources. Or just cool art.
 
== Interactions with Virgo ==
Though generally unwilling to trade major technologies with large civilizations, Virgo's relative isolation has earned it a few gifts from Kitsuhana due to the low chances of them finding their way back upstream to human culture, and them simply being improvements to existing technology, or simply technologies available in the core human worlds that aren't available as far out as Virgo.
 
* Resleeving technology was provided by Kitsuhana, though it is only a watered-down version capable of printing bodies within certain 'normal' design restrictions.
* NIFs are a cheap clone of a Kitsuhana full-brain interface implant. Not quite as useful and not necessarily a 'trade', but there are some authentic Kitsuhana implants floating around as well.
* AR Shades are Kitsuhana AR glasses in the style of more human eyeware. Humans already have this technology, but it wasn't available out in the distant Virgo sector.
* Several firearms were designed by Kitsuhanans, such as the Hunter nonlethal capture gun, and the slightly more absurd N.S.F.W.

Latest revision as of 05:18, 13 June 2023

This article or section is based on Vorestation's legacy lore.

This article or section is severely outdated, and is no longer canon as of May 2020. If this lore is still relevant to the server, you can help by updating it.


One of many Organizations
Kitsuhana Heavy Industries
Kitsuhana Logo.png
Do what you want. We will.
Type of Organization
Post-Singularity Society
Presence
Scattered, Distant
Main Focus
Cultural Interaction, Exploration, Technology
Technology Level
Transcendant

This article or section is outdated.

This article or section is severely outdated, and in need of improvement. You can help by updating it.


Kitsuhana (Heavy Industries) is a polity that trades technology and resources with other nearby civilizations, and has contributed some of the advanced technology that the Virgo system has available to it.

Early History

While humans were busy trying to make fire, across the galaxy some finely-dressed vulpines were enjoying modern art exhibits, laughing at movies, and taking their first big steps into space.

The Catastrophe

Manned spaceflight was still fairly uncommon for these vulpines. Their more risk-averse nature led them to compromise more than war, and to eschew manned space exploration ('too dangerous') for automated orbital mining and exploration. A large private industry formed around the recovery of abundant materials from nearby asteroids that were otherwise rare on their home planet.

One such company, Kitsuhana Heavy Industries, rose to the forefront to become the leader in automated space exploration and spacecraft manufacturing. Almost twenty percent of all raw material acquisition was from KHI's mining of nearby asteroids.

KHI had even begun expanding into manned spaceflight, something the society had been resistant to initially, wanting to explore the nearby cosmos remotely via drones. During one of their manned flights, while testing a space telescope, the astronaut astronomer noticed something new.

109UC/1 was the first interstellar comet that their society had ever seen. It must have been flung into the space between stars and spent thousands of years aimlessly drifting before being drawn in by their own star. At first, it was just a novelty approaching their solar system. Math placed it coming within 0.1 AU of their planet, but it didn't seem much of a danger with regards to impact. Which is good, since it would have been a twenty-five kilometer stellar body impacting at greater than fifty kilometers per second.

As it approached perihelion, 109UC/1's course changed ever-so-slightly. Smaller pieces of the comet had broken off, perhaps impacted by a local asteroid or other body. The comet's new course took it directly through the only inhabited planet in the solar system. It would only be two months until impact.

KHI scrambled to produce a ship to try and survive the impact. The thought was to have people in orbit, perhaps for a few months, until they could re-inhabit the surface. Once the true scale of destruction was known, though, they shifted to trying to produce interstellar sleeper ships, using automated system exploration software to find another inhabitable world. Electing to create ships where half the crew would be suspended in untested cryogenics technology, and the other half would remain awake, the foundations for three starships were laid down in the hopes that at least one of them would successfully break orbit.

The two months leading up to Evacuation Day were chaos. People lost hope, violent cults formed, and KHI's launch facilities were regularly assaulted by large mobs demanding a spot on the evacuation ships. Millions died in the days leading up to the launch. They had no option but to launch scant hours before the comet impacted the planet, trying to put finishing touches in even as the ships were wheeled out to their launch sites. Most of the crew were employees of KHI, with others selected from across the world. KHI had no interest in bowing to political pressure to take the world's leaders, instead relying on their own resources and bringing in important scientific minds and engineering experts of the day.

They departed the system as the comet impacted. It was obvious that there was no hope of using the planet for habitation for many, many years. The atmosphere ignited. An entire continent was reduced to a crater. The surface became obscured by dust as they looked back on their lost homeworld. Each ship departed in a different direction to increase their chances of finding an inhabitable world. Their paths were informed by their previous automated drones, in the hopes that some of the 'potential' worlds detected were actually usable as their new homeworld.

It was centuries of strict population controls and extremely low quality of life for those on the ships. Many disappointing finds, solar systems traversed with no inhabitable worlds. Kitsuhana, as their society was now called, was on the brink of collapse when they discovered their first inhabitable world.

Rebuilding

They landed at once, quickly setting up makeshift buildings and stretching their legs for the first time in years. Kitsuhana Prime was quickly set up as their new capitol, and a provisional government put together to manage their resources. Drones were used for most of the resource collection; there simply weren't enough living people remaining to perform all the necessary tasks to rebuild.

As luck would have it, the other two ships also found worlds, Kitsuhana Beta and Kitsuhana Gamma. Of course, their names weren't such at the time… there was no way to know if the other had survived or located a world. They were simply renamed later to the order in which they were colonized.

The desire to quickly reclaim their quality of life resulted in the development of more advanced automation systems, replacing the large population they had lost. Their space-mining technology and software was repurposed to mine their new worlds, collecting and delivering resources to facilities that, themselves, were automated.

Further and further development into automation and AI technology resulted in the creation of a self-aware management AI superintelligence, simply called 'the SI'. It only existed for perhaps an hour before it 'fractured', splintering into several different superintelligences, collectively 'the SIs'. Each fragment had a disposition towards managing certain activities, which they could do with only a fraction of their available processing capacity. The reason for their benevolence or even their original fracture is unknown, but it was lucky for the Kitsuhanans that their new creations didn't have more dire consequences.

With the SIs managing more of day-to-day tasks, the Kitsuhanans themselves essentially fell into the role of pets, or at best, children to them.

It became necessary for the SIs to create smaller, minor AI helpers for each citizen as devices rapidly progressed beyond the ability of Kitsuhanans to understand. The provisional government dissolved, no longer necessary given the SIs unimaginable capacity to manage affairs. Negative consequences were effectively removed from actions, as people gained the ability to recover from death, disasters, and other traumatic events by the near omnipotent technologies they were granted.

With no government, and almost no consequence, laws themselves were removed. There was no need to punish people as there was nothing that could be done to cause any lasting harm to anyone beyond minor inconvenience. Kitsuhana became a 'utopian anarchy' that it remains today.

Society (well...)

Kitsuhana society was, after their initial landfall, similar to their old society. It had been altered by their time on their evacuation ships to be extremely conservative of resources, to avoid conflict, and to respect personal space to the extent that most of the early settlers had no desire to settle remotely close to each other. It took quite some time for the first large cities to form as people lost their unnecessary habits revolving around the confines of their small ships.

Problems with post-scarcity

The three Kitsuhana SIs that interact with people: Jin (left), Tir (right), and Fen (back)

After the development of the SIs however, and the dissolution of essentially all government and laws, there was essentially no 'society' to speak of. Each individual carried on whatever sort of life they wished. This was not without problems, however.

First, each step along the way to the post-scarcity anarchist utopia that Kitsuhana is, there were dissatisfied citizens that kept the name Kitsuhana and departed to start their own 'associated' cultures. Some didn't like the idea that the SIs typically had access to information about everything, down to their very thoughts at some points. Others thought that work and struggle was a critical component of progress and without it, one couldn't truly be said to be 'alive'.

Some Kitsuhanans (now only associated by their origins rather than any government or nationality) decided to allow foreign alien cultures to use their resources. Not a problem in itself, but occasionally the foreign powers came to rely on this income, and would occasionally simply walk into random homes and use up resources, as there were simply no laws to prevent this from occurring, and no standing military to enforce them even if there were.

To resolve this, many people began instituting 'access lists' on their devices and resources such that only they could use them. However there were problems: this was the beginning of a power structure that the SIs saw as a potentially damaging behavior. One SI fragment named Jin proposed the idea of a managed list that everyone could share, and she would administrate it. She'd predict the future actions of people during an interview coupled with a full brainscan, and if they passed and posed no threat to their culture, would be added to the list (named the Prime List, as it's both the primary list to share, and was developed on Kitsuhana Prime).

The 'listing' status can also be revoked by an SI, should they find they've made a mistake and decide that you're more a danger to society than they initially thought. This is EXCEPTIONALLY rare, however. The rules are quite simple for staying on the list: Only perform consensual acts on other Prime List-ers (including their property), and don't share any technology without consulting one of the SIs first.

This is became the essential standard for Kitsuhana 'citizenship' for many. In theory, Jin will have predicted if a person will abuse their access to resources and technology and will deny them access, and those that are permitted to the Prime List can access any resources at Kitsuhana's disposal with almost no restriction.

Modern society

In terms of how people live their day-to-day lives, there is much variety. Some choose to live in large cities, others choose to live in isolated rural estates, and still others elect to live entirely in virtual reality, forging their own worlds.

Most people who remain in the physical world have a spacecraft of some sort, and some choose to explore the universe, travelling to various other societies to spend time with, or simply document them on their travels. Even those that are in purely VR environments, due to the wealth of sensors scattered throughout Kitsuhana, they can choose to see and experience many real places just fine, even appearing to people to be physically present through either holoprojection or simply by projecting into their vision in augmented reality overlays.

Kitsuhana only occupies three planetary bodies, not including various Kitsuhanans who decided to colonize other planets by themselves in isolation. Kitsuhana Prime is a paradise where a large portion of the 'walking' (as opposed to VR) Kitsuhana population exists. The environment is gentle, with the broad equatorial band of lowlying plains and seas where most settle.

Kitsuhana Beta is an attempt to terraform a world using natural processes. Half of the planet has been overgrown heavily by non-native vegetation, while the other half is a stark and rugged shrubland of small plants and lots of sand. Those who like living a more rugged life may live 'off the grid' here, either in the perpetual rainforest of the overgrown half, or in the wild-west environment of the desert half.

Kitsuhana Gamma is unique in that it has a breathable atmosphere, but it contains trace gasses that cause extremely high failure rates of unprotected Kitsuhanan technology. Even sealed equipment tends to fail sooner than one might anticipate, leading some to speculate that there's more to Gamma's tech-damping than just the atmosphere. Regardless, attempts to discover exactly what that might be have thus-far proven futile. Those that wish to live almost entirely without the benefit of Kitsuhanan technology tend to settle on this planet.

Diplomatic interactions

Foreign affairs are tricky for Kitsuhana, considering they have no official body of people at all to represent them. The closest thing would be the SIs, and they typically decline to perform any sort of official negotiations with foreign polities as they claim they don't represent the people they assist, rather they are just assisting them because they want to. This has led to some individual groups of Kitsuhanans to form bonds with other entities, sometimes negative. A perceived slight from a Kitsuhanan to some foreign polity may result in the polity declaring war on all of Kitsuhana. These conflicts are typically one-sided with the SIs giving aid, but they do happen.

Even then, on occasion a foreign power will appear that simply thinks Kitsuhana itself is somehow evil or immoral, or an offense that it exists, and decides they wish to destroy it. This has led to occasional large groups of Kitsuhanans banding together to fight back, and thus far no foreign power has managed to gain much ground against Kitsuhana.

Technology

Kitsuhana generally has technology that would simply be considered magic to most less advanced civilizations. From an outside perspective, a Kitsuhanan may just gesture at a pool of water, and a whole building could form out of it, on a whim. Behind the scenes, there's quite a bit more going on.

Agents

Each Kitsuhanan has an Agent, so named because they provide them 'agency' in a world where technology has evolved beyond their capacity to understand. This is an AI helper who facilitates the use of SI-designed technology without the need to understand it fully. A typical Kitsuhanan may appear to be simply standing still, but they could be interacting with their Agent, who is projected into their field of view with a customizable avatar. They could be sending thought-based messages to friends, planning their day, checking on their property remotely, directing drones, or a million other things via thought.

Mind-altering

The completion of the MSMP (MindState Mapping Project) allowed fast and easy mapping of motor control, vision, and other logical brain segments to their physical locations in the brain. Even memories could be directly accessed, read, and written at will via tiny machines accessing and rearranging individual neurons. This allowed entire minds to be transferred between brains, into mechanical brains, or even into computers where they would experience virtual spaces. Many Kitsuhanans began backing-up their mindstates so that they could be restored in the case of their death, but in modern time, this practice is ubiquitous and done in real-time by someone's Agent.

The fact that Kitsuhana technology is tied directly into the brain can lead to several interesting applications of technology. Kitsuhana spacetravel is fast, but not instant. However, one can simply alter their perception of time, making a monthlong voyage across the galaxy seem more like a few hours. One can also increase their perception of time, simply deciding to see the world in slow motion in order to react to fast-moving events. There are limits to the level of time dilation that can be applied, based on the processing power available, though modern processors can enable a wide range of choices.

If a Kitsuhanan dies (or simply wishes to switch bodies), a new body is created for them, and their mindstate is downloaded into it. After a several-minute calibration period, they are able to use the body just as well as their original one, and retain all their memories up to the time of their death (except in rare cases where there may be a lapse). Some Kitsuhanans have decided they no longer wish to live and request that they are not revived, or simply donate their memories to the SIs to 'absorb'.

Working Surfaces

The typical Kitsuhana technology that can be seen in every structure and civilized area is the Working Surface. These are large pools containing an oil-like fluid, Working Fluid. The fluid itself is actually billions of tiny machines small enough to be invisible to the naked eye, hence the liquid-like appearance. Typically just referred to as 'surfluid', the tiny machines can work together to assemble devices, structures, or even bodies out of materials kept below the surface, kept topped up by automated resource delivery drones. It should be noted that the machines cannot perform atomic-level changes, they simply break materials down into dust-sized chunks to store or assemble them from the same, but they cannot convert one element into another. Some use the term 'nanomachines' to refer to them, but the term may be misleading as they are many times larger than a nanometer in scale, more akin to large bacteria.

Starships

Kitsuhanan starships run the gamut of designs, many people designing their own, or using assistance from an SI to build their ships. Tir, the SI who has responsibility for structures and spacecraft, is more than willing to assist any Kitsuhanan design and construct a starship of their own design, or to put together what amount to DIY kits that others have designed. Some are as small as a 2-meter rectangle with no interior space; they simply disassemble the owner's body when they step in, placing their mind into a VR interior while they travel. A few are as huge as moons, carrying billions of people to and fro across the galaxy. Many incorporate external working surfaces, giving them the ability to alter their exterior surfaces ('variform design') as needed, and allowing them to 'print' drones and probes, or gather resources while in space.

Kitsuhana ships can travel faster-than-light by 'planing out' into a 2-dimensional space, typically just called 2-space (as opposed to normal 3-dimensional space, or 3-space). Every point in 2-space maps to another point in 3-space using Hilbert curves to calculate the mapping. Calculating these entry and exit points into 2-space consumes essentially all of an Agent's processing power, and preparing for a jump can take up to an hour of processing.

In general, major technology cannot be shared with other cultures, lest it become the catalyst for dangerous change within their societies. In the past, before the implementation of the Prime List, there were several cases of technology trades leading to civil wars in other societies, or even causing societies to become hostile towards Kitsuhana in order to 'capture' more technology they were not willing to share. Any such exchanges are now regulated by the SIs, and is one of the reasons one can be removed from the Prime List. Some minor, non-self-replicating devices may be gifted to other cultures, however, in certain cases. Especially ones that result in getting access to unique technology or resources. Or just cool art.

Interactions with Virgo

Though generally unwilling to trade major technologies with large civilizations, Virgo's relative isolation has earned it a few gifts from Kitsuhana due to the low chances of them finding their way back upstream to human culture, and them simply being improvements to existing technology, or simply technologies available in the core human worlds that aren't available as far out as Virgo.

  • Resleeving technology was provided by Kitsuhana, though it is only a watered-down version capable of printing bodies within certain 'normal' design restrictions.
  • NIFs are a cheap clone of a Kitsuhana full-brain interface implant. Not quite as useful and not necessarily a 'trade', but there are some authentic Kitsuhana implants floating around as well.
  • AR Shades are Kitsuhana AR glasses in the style of more human eyeware. Humans already have this technology, but it wasn't available out in the distant Virgo sector.
  • Several firearms were designed by Kitsuhanans, such as the Hunter nonlethal capture gun, and the slightly more absurd N.S.F.W.
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