Glossary for DESCENDING ROAD

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Ia Ma Tou: Ia, Ia Ma Tou: leader of the Eastern bloc of Earth in the 22nd century CE.

Iana: a name chosen by Sulimar for an acolyte.

IAU: the International Astronomical Union.

ideoscript: ideoscript, ideoscripts: a cursive form of the ideogrammatic written languages of some of the colls, particularly Darko Hejj and Kai Ren Hau. Often used in the minsharrn, the collechi skin incisions.

IDer: the battle helms carry intelligence and signaling functions that allowed them to identify other people and helms as friend or foe.

Ididai: the name, in CLang, of the fifth day of the eight-day week of the City Calendar. From tabular data: Ididai is day number 5 in the City Calendar‘s eight-day week. The days of the week are listed in the reference table titled WEEKDAY NAMES. From tabular data for “Ididai": Ididai is day number 5 in the City Calendar‘s eight-day week. The days of the week are listed in the reference table titled WEEKDAY NAMES.

Iggy: one of the Nains.

immunoharmonizer: immunoharmonizer, immunoharmonizers: a class of synthetic microorganisms that converts the immune responses of incompatible tissues into metabolic exchanges requiring only a small amount of energy to run.

improv: improv, improvs: a portion or portions of a song in which one or more singers or players create melodic figures over a consistent harmonic background. Like jazz of Earth, but follows complex restrictive rules.

Incarnastar: Incarnastar, Incarnastar Coll: Rion‘s coll. Members are called Incarnastari. With the Arcus, Gellin Sintherou, and Novander Wye, the Incarnastari prepared and carried out the insurrection in the City. From tabular data: Incarnastar refers to one of the collective clans of Tarnus. The names of all the colls are found in the reference table titled COLL NAMES. From tabular data for “Incarnastar": Incarnastar refers to one of the collective clans of Tarnus. The names of all the colls are found in the reference table titled COLL NAMES.

incestry: the coupling of obscene word-roots in graphic synthesis.

Indi: refers to anyone with ancestry predominantly from the Indian subcontinent.

Indi Scientist: reviewer of cryosleep development

indies: corpo and militia term for independent surface farmers.

Indridge: a City street near and parallel to Streakrun Score, where Lejina lives.

Indrio: lover to Frei and Tariall, but bound to Arlen‘s service.

infoaccess: one type of the many conduit tunnels burrowed the the bedrock of the City, used solely for information transmission and distribution.

Infobase: the information clearinghouse, part of the Caldron, used by the militias and the corporate police. Similar in content to the antiquated databases of ancient Earth: the NCIC database, the credit clearinghouses, and the complete employment record for any person.

infoconduit: infoconduit, infoconduits: the forearm-sized tubes carrying optical fibers in the millions throughout the cities and the regions between them. Andrew worked extensively on these conduits in the City.

infoject: infoject, infojects: a neuroenhancement purporting to provide information to the user, installing it permanently in the user’s brain. Mostly a scam.

infravid: infravid, infravids: an artificial eye, sensitive to infrared-range radiation, designed to “plug in” to the eye socket, mating with a neurally-grafted set of synthetic terminals to the optic nerve.

Ing: shopkeeper on level 641.

Inguiniar: one of Bujilla‘s employees.

inhesion: inhesion, inhesions: a term of Marra‘s for the ability of an herb to facilitate the scar-less healing of damaged internal human tissue.

innerspace: androspace, innerspace, innerworld: Innerspace was the discovery by a genengineer of what she called a ‘perceptual closure’, a seeming mental environment with limits set only by the possessor’s imagination, something like human imagination actualized perceptually. This so-called perceptual closure was used in the in-vitro (in-tank) patterning of the growing andros, which used canned experiences loaded into their developing senses at ultrafast rates; once out of the tank the andros were free to use it as their playground. The genengineer didn’t know that this was not a closed mental environment but rather added perception of larger aspects of the world, taking the shape of familiar worldly objects and processes. This link to the familiar world became clear during the time of this story.

inspeaking: inspeak, inspeaking: the practice of preaching or teaching as performed in City understreets by those affiliated with the Fandarinn Coll.

InterFabric: one of the major scientific pools of global computational power, frequently harnessed by astrophysicists to attempt to compute solutions to stellar and planetary n-body problems.

interferometry: a wave-interference processing technique used in astronomical applications to develop extremely-high-resolution images of distant objects. The technique was developed greatly in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Stellar Viability Survey uses an extension of the hypertelescope designed and developed by Antoine Labeyrie in the 1990s and after. The SVS design deploys shotgun spacecraft all the way out to the Oort Cloud, where they unfold small telescopes that target a succession of nearby star systems and transmit back to Earth the image information they obtain. The returned signals hold sufficient information to reconstruct synchrony well enough to recreate a single combined image from any target. The resulting image has a resolution rivaling that of a telescope billions of miles in diameter.

interpanel: referring to the connections among the microcircuit panels in electronic/optical devices. Like ribbon cable or other wiring, carrying electrical or optical signals, or both.

Interplanetary Union: Interplanetary Union, IU: the combine of most nations of the west forming the major counterpart to the Hau Ren combine of the East Asian nations.

Intro: the Archive ainons use this name to induce casual viewers to explore their realm further.

Introduction to the ELM: What an ELM is, and how to use it.

ionizations: in deep space, cosmic radiation is rampant, with few barriers capable of soaking it up before it strikes deep into a spacecraft or its contents. Some cosmic rays are actually the spawn of supernova explosions, which can hurl heavy atomic nuclei, stripped of their electron shells, at velocities ranging up to a significant fraction of the speed of light. A single heavy atomic nucleus, such as that of any element heavier than iron, can destroy an entire microchip all by itself, or wreak great damage to any strands of DNA near its site of impact with another nucleus. The absence of the electron shell around the nucleus makes it intensely ionized, so that any molecules in its path suffer destructive damage as it passes – the intense electric field from the ionization severs molecular bonds easily.

IR: infrared radiation, or heat.

irbarr: an andro name for a color in the five-octave andro color spectrum. irbarr is in the far infrared range (3000-1500 nm), and its name refers to a multiple of the human color yellow-green. In relation to neighboring colors in a musical scale with red at A, this would be D. From tabular data: irbarr is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. irbarr is in the Far Infrared (3000-1500 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, irbarr equates to a musical D, and is in the same place in the octave as Yellow-Green. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES. From tabular data for “irbarr": irbarr is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. irbarr is in the Far Infrared (3000-1500 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, irbarr equates to a musical D, and is in the same place in the octave as Yellow-Green. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES.

ironhumper: ironhumper, ironhumpers: a person who performs physical tasks demanding great strength, but who is merely seeking changes in the body’d appearance.