Infraflux Technology (WIP)

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VERY WIP DON'T LOOK

General Tech Level

March Earth's level of technology is futuristic by our standards but limited by the resources and remoteness of the locations it's found in. A village may have an advanced farming drone but use woven baskets to carry the harvested crops home. Much of March Earth tech would be familiar to us as more advanced versions of our current technology, but there were a few key innovations in the 400+ years since the Cataclysm that have added tech that's a bit more exotic:

Shapeshifting Tech

A gift from the alien Geometrids. Rare and very difficult to make, most commonly found in exceptionally small quantities as part of high end data processing or other internal mechanisms. Allows for adaptive technology of many kinds and lead to technology that allows storage of vast amounts of data and immense processing power (such as for SAI). Also allows for large cool shapeshifting devices like you would expect, but they're extremely rare and expensive and are often enchanted to assist in their function.

Enchanting

(See also: March Earth magic)

A Shine-based magic user (usually a wizard) is able to take a tiny piece of themselves and bind it to an object, allowing the object to repeat a simple act of magic for as long as the magic user is alive. This ability to bypass mechanism in favour of manipulating the laws of physics directly allows tech to exist that would otherwise be enormous, complex, or physically impossible. Any Shine magic user of sufficient skill can create magical devices, but with the limitations and risks of every device made by that person being linked to the life of that person, large-scale production is difficult. Most devices made for public consumption are enchanted by multiple magic users as a failsafe. The most common magical tech is raybenders, which are devices that contain harmful radiation and allow radioactive people to walk among others.

Guided Spontaneous Generation

Part of the toolset of the GMO industry that is key to feeding the people of March Earth, guided spontaneous generation is connected to genetic modification but a totally different thing. Symbolism and intent are used in combination with things like genetic modification, engineering, and witchcraft, to create artificial inorganic life. This technology sees the most use as neurotech: Interfaces that are basically artificial organisms that allow nerve-to-machine connection between the user and the device. In the Infraflux supercountry, guided spontaneous generation is mostly done by the ArchiLab, and has heavy legal restrictions for anyone else.

Architect Engines

Another Geometrid gift, these seemingly infinite sources of power are very rare and nearly impossible to replicate safely. The technology is incredibly complex and involves the entanglement of the fabric of spacetime, a process best suited for being undertaken far, far away from any living planet. Architect Engines were key to getting March Earth back on its feet after the dark centuries post-Cataclysm. Most of them are very small and lost to time, but a few notable cities are powered by single larger Architect Engines, such as Neoland.

Daily Life

To the average citizen of March Earth the most important pieces of technology that they use all the time are printers, personal devices, and augmentation tech.

Printers

"Printer" is a generic term for any device that either makes or dispenses items such as food, clothing, tools, etc., usually just with a few button presses. Sophistication of printers varies widely across the globe but most commonly they provide very simple, practical items. In the Infraflux supercountry, basic printer use is covered by Standard, but even in other countries the cost for such basic amenities is usually low. Printers exist at all levels of sophistication however, ranging from elaborately fancy printers that can produce custom designs and intricate machinery, to gargantuan agricultural feeder systems. Printer tech is as varied as 3D printers today, and is rearrangement of pre-existing resources into new shapes, not matter synthesis like a replicator in Star Trek.

Personal Devices

These small machines are crucial for communication but have an enormously wide scope of use, as much as if not more so than the smartphones we use today. The most common shapes for these multi-purpose devices are Scrolls, Clips, and Cards. Cards are small rectangles that may flip open or have any variety of features to expand their surface area but generally remain flat and stiff. Scrolls are flexible surfaces that roll up into tubes or fold like cloth, generally much larger and favoured by those who like big screens or who don't have the manual dexterity for a Card. Clips are small like a badge or a brooch, they are the most limited in function and usually have no screen at all. Clips are often used as control nodes for other personal tech such as headphones and translator boxes. Though these three types are the most common, personal devices can come in all shapes and sizes, and in any area with people living together it's rare to encounter someone who doesn't have one. In the Infraflux supercountry, personal devices are often linked to your ID, making them the equivalent of a smartphone, your wallet, and access to all your legal documentation.

Augmentation Tech

Augmentation tech describes everything from clothing to artificial limbs. With the incredible variety of body forms in March Earth people, technology is often required to bridge gaps of communication, comfort, or accessibility. In the Infraflux supercountry tech like this is called RA's, or "Required Augments", and is provided for free. Other countries may handle this differently but tech that accompanies an individual their entire lives is a common thing worldwide. The most frequent type are communication/translation related: Whether it's the air-water barrier or the quirk of an individual's vocal abilities, so many different ways to communicate exist on March Earth that a lot of tech has evolved to connect them. Translators, radio-to-acoustic converters, text-to-speech, etc. Many devices of this type are often simply referred to as a "box". Boxes are highly advanced on March Earth and communication is usually a smooth affair when one is used. Augmentation tech can also refer to much more invasive technology that alters or connects to the body directly, such as in the case of artificial limbs. Neurotech is often used for this, making it a costly endeavour.

Power

Electrical power on March Earth has been refined by the same geometrid tech that allowed the development of advanced data storage, creating batteries that last for a long time and can store high voltages safer. The materials used are generally still toxic and rare, but last much longer and are often reused.

Most medium-level power on March Earth comes from water as fuel, generating hydrogen through an electrolysis process which is then burned. This is called a "water engine" and powers the majority of large autonomous devices such as vehicles and portable electrical generators. Nuclear power is also heavily utilised; the existence of raybenders allowing fission engines to be both smaller and safer. Fusion power exists but has a high technological demand and massive power output that mostly restricts it to being found in the power plants of large cities. Very low power demand items such as personal devices often power themselves from ambient energy such as movement or sunlight.

Unique energy sources often serve as the core of smaller settlements, such as a natural wellspring of kerosene or a forest of living electrical generators. Fossil fuels do not otherwise feature much in the production of power on March Earth, as they are a rare resource with logistical difficulties that are easily outmatched by the lower energy but vastly more convenient output of a water engine.

Vehicles

Transportation devices on March Earth would mostly be familiar to us but there are occasionally wild outliers. Most vehicles are powered by water engines but heavier more powerful ones are often nuclear.

UTAD's/Tadpoles

The official name for a device that assists an individual to move with speed underwater is an Underwater Transport Assistance Device or UTAD, but this name is generally not used. Instead they are often called "U-tads" or "tadpoles" in english. Broadly they are split into two types: Devices that attach to the body (usually on a belt or harness), and devices that are held in the hands or other appendages (much slower but more versatile). They are mainly used by those whose physicality isn't fully suited to underwater travel, since making people shaped like Phinnies or other speed-oriented hydrodynamic body forms go faster than their natural limits can lead to injuries without additional protective gear. The phinny word for UTAD's is the same as for any propulsion engine: regular-fuzzy-concussion wave or "thumper".

Convoy Trains

Trade on March Earth is most safely conducted by armed and fortified groups of vehicles known as convoys. A convoy train on the other hand, is a single interconnected vehicle with many cargo segments that serves the same purpose, on a track that is itself protected to some degree. Convoy trains come in two very different categories: Trains that are used because the area is particularly safe and construction of a rail line is easy, and trains that are used because the environment is so hostile that a regular convoy is more at risk. Safe area trains are varied and individual, often with their own names and signature looks and defenses. The rail lines are longer and in rare cases may even be double-tracked, allowing trains to go back and forth continuously in a loop. Hazardous area trains are usually low-slung and heavily armoured, using tunnels or walled tracks to cross short distances of deadly terrain. The hazards such convoy trains are built to defend against are often environmental: Hot spots, acid rain, or extreme temperatures, for example.

Trade Ships

Instead of convoys, most underwater settlements rely on trade ships: Enormous village-sized vehicles that move on cyclical migration routes around March Earth's oceans. Commonly trade ships have more of their mass underwater than most ships (to facilitate their aquatic crew and patrons) but every trade ship has a unique design that has grown and adapted and changed along with its crew and history. Trade ships exist in numerous configurations including: Fully submersible, crawling across the sea floor like a tank, hydroplaning out of the water for travel and sinking down into it for trade, or even upending themselves like the FLIP research vessel. Trade ships often generate their own power in the form of internal nuclear plants but there is much diversity. Some are also extremely old; rust-caked behemoths sailing their routes for nearly 100 years. Trade ships are always accompanied by at least one smaller ship called an auxiliary-- often a gunship or high speed submersible-- for defense and scouting.

-Captured Vehicles

Big Stuff

-construction -farming -industry

Defense

-wall tech --specters (floating underwater defenses) -weaponry

Underwater Tech

(see full) -breathing -communication/sound importance (SOFAR)/other mediums -buildings/filtration -pipe roads

Wild Tech

One particularly complex aspect of March Earth technology levels is the fact that fully-formed technology can manifest by itself, usually as part of Synth entities or as part of spontaneous generation zones, such as the Chimewilds. The level and advancement of this tech is entirely random but draws mainly from existing past and present devices. These manifestations make it possible to obtain extinct, ready-made, or entirely unique technology by "hunting" it, though this is often a dangerous endeavour. In some cases wild technology can also be utilised or tamed for ones own benefit, such as the network of uncontrolled but rideable steam trains that lay their tracks across the March UK. Always an element of danger remains with this, however, as with anything from the Wilds.

-copperworm network

Communication

Since the advent of the Teleost Broadcasts at the turn of the 24th century, radio has been a vital part of communication between the Earth's scattered settlements. Even places too remote and disconnected to have internet will still be able to tap into radio communication. Radio relays can be found in the wildest places; many being built as part of a global initiative by the supercountry of Infraflux to connect its inhabitants, but the older ones are built by unknown hands and a few have grown or manifested by themselves.

For places less remote, the internet is the key means of communication, serving myriad roles from entertainment to politics, and allowing long-distance communication across the globe. Servers are generally placed in larger cities, or heavily reinforced outposts of their own. Cable-laying is a massive and well-supplied initiative propagated by daring and well-defended teams riding massive burrowing machines that slowly cross the Wilds, laying high-speed cables or offshoots from a domesticated network organism known as the Copperworm. The Copperworm network existed dormant for at least 100 years before being discovered and harnessed. The cable-like synth organism slowly grows towards settlements that have electronic activity, seeking connection. The bandwidth of the copper-based lines is not very good but they are self-repairing and spread almost throughout the entire globe, including on the seafloor. Major connections, such as between nearby cities, may be reinforced with mechanically or magically boosted wireless signals, making a corridor between them that has perpetual wi-fi. Connectivity in rural areas tends to be spottier but the internet is still usually the main means of communication worldwide. The supercountry of Infraflux considers internet a personal right, one that is crucial for their governmental and social systems, and heavily prioritises the upkeep of their connectivity.

Physical communication in the form of letters and personal packages is rare and goes through courier services and individuals, who charge accordingly high amounts for their risky journeys and hard-won knowledge of the Wilds.

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