Are we living in a SIM?
Simulation Theory
Much attention of late has been garnered by the centuries-old philosophical notion that our lived lives are in fact not real. This idea is known as simulation theory and posits the universe as we know it is an advanced digital construct overseen by some higher form of intelligence.
David Chalmers of NYU believes the simulation may be run by a transcended species reliving ancient corporeal living; a level up kind of super being aka a God.
There is a very well written article detailing Simulation Theory in layperson terms. ?
The 3rd House - SIM Theory Cultists
I take this notion and expand on it in extrapolating a human diaspora that includes a radical Simulation Theory sect composed of elite physicists, mathematicians and spooks (spies); the 3rd House.? They arrive as Free Settlers with the crowdfunded Toivoan fleet but soon run afoul of the mainstream and are exiled. Sometime during their 10,000 year sojourn in the naughty chair they achieve a breakthrough to level up access to the God running the simulation ( or so they convince themselves) . The 3rd House is so named as it succeeds where the 1st House of Simulation Worship on Terra and its successor on Enceladus failed due to earlier pogroms.
Here a 3rd House Sato Polla mag-lev craft is seen coursing across the Steppes of Toivoa
Off-world Parasites - Caedes Vespa
Here, on Earth, toxoplasma gondii appears to manipulate human personality as a result of adaptations that normally help complete its complex life cycle from intermediate hosts to the final host, a cat (Webster 2001). The reproductive phase of this protozoan lives in the cells that line the intestine of a feline. Oocysts shed to the soil with the cat's feces can, through ingestion, directly infect cats or encyst in the brain and other tissues of a wide range of warm-blooded vertebrates, including humans (Beverley 1976). Tissue cysts in intermediate hosts are long-lived and infective to carnivores (including humans).
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On Toivoa, there lives a particularly nasty parasite known to the human settlers as the Cades Vespa or Murder Wasp. Via an extraordinary drill-like proboscis it injects eggs into the nostrils of humans where after 16 weeks gestation small, live young emerge via any or all body orifices inciting instant death to the host. During the gestation period of the parasite it causes enormous hormonal and metabolic changes in the host? leading to massive strength gains and mood swings.
Reviving Prehistoric Mammals - the hope of De-Extinction
No longer the storyline to a Hollywood franchise, scientists are making concerted efforts to revive targeted extinct species. To resurrect an extinct species, scientists would first need to sequence its genome, then edit the DNA of a close living relative to match it. Next comes the challenge of making embryos with the revised genome and bringing them to term in a living surrogate mother.
The so-called de-extinction movement is trying to reference the potential ecological restoration upside to these species or hybridizing current species with their DNA.?
In The Last Ritari we leverage de-extinction to capitalize on lost adaptive traits of long dead species and put them to use on planets with different ecological challenges faced by settlers post-terraforming.
Off-World Parasite Meets De-extinct Procoptodon
A Sherpa-Douin Merchant Warrior is accosted by a Murder Wasp whilst riding his Procoptodon