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Glossary of terms in the Jean le Flambeur series
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This is a glossary of terms in the Jean le Flambeur series. The science fiction series by Hannu Rajaniemi currently includes the novels The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince. Agoras Agoras, similar to their Greek namesake, are public places in the Oubliette where gevulot is overridden. Thus, anyone who is in an agora can be seen by everyone in the vicinity, even by persons outside of the agora. This makes agoras popular places to meet people. Athar The athar is the Sirr word for the spimescape of Earth. Beanstalk station Visitors to the Oubliette pass through the beanstalk station or spaceport. They arrive by means of the beanstalk, which appears to be a space elevator. Beemee A beemee is a headgear that connects a human mind directly with machine intelligence and other disembodied intelligences. The technology dates back to before the Collapse, when it was used to upload experiences of the wearer, or allow the wearer to communicate with the cloud directly. On Sirr, Tawaddud uses it to provide sensual experiences to jinni, like Mr Sen, without actually having to undergo entwinement. Biot feed A biot feed is a telepathic system that feeds the biological sensory information that one person generates to another. This information is usually experienced in the form of a muffled background sensation by the latter. Body thief A body thief is a jinn who possesses a human via the use of stories. Branching Branching refers to the process by which Founders create new gogols of themselves. There is a hierarchy amongst gogols that ranks them according to the branch that they come from. A hardcoded deference to more senior gogols, called xiao, is used to enforce this hierarchy. The Cry of Wrath The Cry of Wrath was an event that appeared to have pitted the Aun against the Sobornost. The Sobornost may have been intending to attempt the complete uploading of Earth, but this was opposed by the Aun. Many Sobornost ships crashed into Earth as a result, and the Wrath is a place between Sirr and the desert where many of the Sobornost ships fell. According to Tawaddud, the Cry of Wrath happened when she was eight. Her mother became mad after the "star of madness", which appears to be the Spike, since the symptoms bear a resemblance to the mad Oubliette artist Jean (as Paul Sernine) met. When Tawaddud saw that it was raining light and told her mother, her mother was terrified and jumped to her death. The Cry of Wrath Accords The Cry of Wrath Accords was a treaty signed between Sirr and the Sobornost after the Cry of Wrath. The events on Sirr in The Fractal Prince seemed to have been set off by an initiative to renegotiate the Accords with the Sobornost. Part of the renegotiation would involve allowing the Sobornost to harvest gogols from the desert directly, cutting out the muhtalibuns as the middlemen. This has triggered a guerilla movement amongst the jinni, called the masrurs, who ambush soul trains (convoys carrying gogols harvested from the desert) to protest the proposed renegotiation. Deficit angle In The Fractal Prince, a scene from the aftermath of the Spike shows Sobornost warships surfing a deficit angle to confuse their Zoku enemies. Angular deficits occur because of the singularities and cosmic strings created during the event of the Spike, which change the local geometry of the space where Jupiter used to be. In this case, the local geometry around the warships is hyperbolic. Dilemma Prisons Dilemma Prisons are built and maintained by Archons, who are the creation of the Engineer-of-Souls. Prisoners there are condemned to play a perpetual game of iterated prisoner's dilemma, in which defection is shooting the occupier of an adjacent cell. Prisons are seeded with copies of the prisoners' gogols, as well as other gogols, such as warminds, and the composition of the prison population evolves, depending on the results of each round of prisoner's dilemma, according to rules similar to Conway's Game of Life. To spice things up, prisoners may be presented with more elaborate scenarios of defection and cooperation, besides the above-mentioned default scenario. Entwinement Entwinement is the process by which a human mind and a jinn become one. This allows the jinn (now known as a qarin) to be embodied and the human to be able to see athar. The latter ability is highly priced. Muhtasibs are humans who have been entwined in childhood and are usually sought after, as they can see the athar and thus observe the state of the city of Sirr or help to hunt for jinni in the desert. Exomemory The exomemory in the Oubliette is the public memory of the Oubliette. Anyone in the Oubliette can look up the exomemory to obtain information by 'blinking: note the apostrophe in front of "b", which denotes the Oubliette-specific action of blinking to access information from the exomemory. This term may have been derived from , similar to the way in which "web log" became blog and perhaps in direct reference to the act of blinking. Founder Code Founder Codes are to passwords what "nuclear weapons flint axes: not just a string of characters, but a state of mind, a defining moment, the innermost self". In short, they contain the essence of the Founder, and are frequently the targets of Jean's heists. Gevulot Gevulot (Hebrew for "borders") is a privacy protocol used in the Oubliette. It is a system that allows people in the Oubliette, both citizens and visitors alike, to set the desired level of privacy in every social encounter, to share memories and to access the exomemory. People can obscure themselves from being seen by others if they are hidden behind a gevulot "fog". However, this effect is only apparent, as analog recording devices, like cameras, can still capture images of people behind gevulot. Gevulot is physically implemented using a wearable shell, which visitors to the Oubliette are given upon entry. However, as Jean le Flambeur realizes in The Quantum Thief, gevulot can be hacked. The basic architecture is a tree, with each node being one memory. However, a node can have two or more parents, in which case it is called a loop. These are weak points in an individual's gevulot and triggering such a node, by sharing the correct co-memory, can lead to the unwitting disclosure of a massive number of nodes, seriously compromising the privacy and memory of said individual. Gogol pirates know and exploit this, as did Jean le Flambeur when he was Paul Sernine. Another feature of gevulot is that there exists root nodes, which are generated by private keys. In theory, this is not accessible to anyone, but there is a master key and this is held by the Cryptarchs. One could also generate root nodes that cannot be generated by Cryptarchs and then generate co-memories from these nodes. This is used towards the climax of The Quantum Thief by the tzaddikim to inoculate the Oubliette citizens from being controlled by the Voice. Ghul A ghul is a human possessed by a body thief. This is different from entwinement, in which jinn and human are equals. The Axolotl created the first ghuls in Sirr when he learned the secret of the Flower Prince. Gogols Apart from newly-born citizens of the Oubliette and Sirr, most characters in the series have undergone mind uploads and can easily have their minds transferred between bodies, while artificial intelligence has advanced to a point where artificial minds are almost indistinguishable from uploaded ones. Gogols (likely in reference to the Nikolai Gogol novel, Dead Souls) are used to refer to these sentient entities, which may be likened to souls or minds. They are also similar to software, as gogols can be cloned and transferred between bodies. The state of a gogol is considered to be "anathema to anyone from the Oubliette", which is ironic, given that the process of entering the Quiet is precisely the process of mind uploading. On Sirr, gogols are called jinni. The treasure-hunters or mutalibun of Sirr dig them up from the upload heavens in the desert and sell them as jinni slaves in Sirr or to the hsien-kus, who use them to update their ancestor virs. Gogol pirates Gogol pirates extract gogols from people without prior consent. In The Quantum Thief, gogol piracy is rife in the Oubliette, and appears to be run by the copyclan of Vasilev, a Sobornost Founder. Gogol pirates have many ways to steal a gogol, the simplest being an optogenetic method, but the gevulot in the Oubliette presents a barrier to such crude methods. Nevertheless, there are ways to hack the gevulot to achieve the gogol pirate's goal, which Jean and Mieli tried to learn from the vasilevs with some success. Gogol trade The gogol trade is the buying and selling of gogols. The gogol trade is a major industry for Sirr. Gogols are usually obtained by the muhtalibuns (treasure-hunters), who venture into the wildcode desert to dig up insurance heavens for the gogols stored inside them. These gogols are then sold as slave jinnis in the city of Sirr, or to the hsien-kus for their ancestor vir project. The gogol trade is forbidden in the Oubliette, which leads to the proliferation of gogol piracy. Great Common Task The Great Common Task is the stated ultimate goal of the Sobornost. It is to eliminate death from the universe by re-writing the laws of physics, either within the physical realm itself or by the complete uploading of all sentient life. The Task admits a variety of interpretations and goals, however. The name may be a reference to the "Common Task", i.e. the resurrection of the dead through science, in the writings of Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, as the name of Fedorov is referenced several times in the novel. However, in The Fractal Prince, it is implied that the importance of the Great Common Task in the Sobornost is partly due to the influence of Matjek Chen, who has personal reasons for wanting to see this Task being accomplished. The Gourd The Gourd is a Sobornost structure surrounding Earth. It is a framework of silver arcs that orbit the planet in a geostationary orbit and, from space, looks like two skeletal hands closing around the planet. Insurance heaven An insurance heaven is a vir housing one or more uploaded minds, or gogols, that is housed in an underground reinforced structure. This dates to before the Collapse, and may have been considered as an insurance for the future backup of the mind of the insured. Unfortunately, by the time of the events of The Fractal Prince, insurance heavens, or jannahs (from the name of the pre-Collapse corporation that sold them), are a rich source of slave gogols to be unearthed and sold by the muhtalibuns. Jinn A jinn is the Sirr word for a disembodied gogol. Jinn jars are sometimes used to contain jinni. They are usually worn by the muhtasibs to keep their entwined jinni close to them. Moving City Mars has been settled but all settlements are in the form of Moving Cities, which are built on mobile platforms in order to escape the ravage of the phoboi plague. Oubliette The Oubliette is a Moving City of Mars and the location for most of the events in The Quantum Thief. The Oubliette society is characterized by the use of exomemory, gevulot, and Time as a currency. Visitors to the Oubliette are given a temporary gevulot shell to access exomemory and gevulot, and a temporary Watch to keep Time. Origins of the Oubliette It was originally held that the original citizens of the Oubliette were brought to Mars as gogols used to control machines for terraforming Mars by an eccentric King. They rebelled against their enslavers during the Revolution and founded a new state based on the freedom and privacy of individual minds. However, it is later revealed that the Oubliette was actually a panopticon prison in which the prisoners later rebelled, and the Kingdom was a fabricated exomemory of a more genteel past enabled by the Zoku Realmscapes after the Zoku colony was established. Part of this was already realized by Christian Unruh, who had stumbled upon the fabricated nature of the Kingdom memories when he started his project of collecting them after acquiring a massive amount of Time. This realization triggered an existential angst in Unruh, which led him to seek an early Quiet. Governance of the Oubliette The Oubliette is governed by the Voice, a composite of the unconscious beliefs of all Oubliette citizens. In the course of events in The Quantum Thief, it is revealed that possession of the private keys to generating root nodes in the gevulot system enables the Voice to be controlled through shaping the beliefs and memories of the Oubliette citizenry. Thus, there exist people, known as Cryptarchs, who actually have control over the Voice and can subtly (or otherwise) influence political decisions in the Oubliette. q-objects Q-objects are objects made out of q-dots, a ubiquitous and versatile material. The q-dots can function as weapons, sensors, building materials, fabrics, etc. The Quiet The Quiet is the state in which all citizens of the Oubliette must eventually enter at some point. When citizens enter the Quiet, their gogols are assigned by the city computer to the Quiets, machines that help run the Oubliette, while their bodies are collected by the Resurrection Men and kept in storage for their return from the Quiet. Early entry into the Quiet can be voluntarily chosen or imposed as a sanction by the courts. Quptlink The quptlink functions as a telepathic messaging network and appears to be mediated by neutrinos. Individuals can qupt each other using the quptlink. It is functionally connected to an "entanglement ring" which one wears, a likely reference to the use of quantum entanglement in quptlink. Almost everyone can qupt, but in the Oubliette, the use of gevulot is preferred. Rogue nanites Rogue nanites are nanotech machines that have turned destructive and threaten the lives of settlements in the physical realm of the solar system. The phoboi The phoboi are dangerous rogue nanites left over from the Martian civil war. They infest the surface of Mars and make it necessary for cities like the Oubliette to keep moving, so as to avoid being destroyed by them. Wildcode Wildcode is the Sirr name for the rogue nanites found on Earth. They were apparently formed by the merging of the noosphere with the biosphere on Earth, shortly after the Collapse, and are thought to be complex self-modifying code. Baseline human and Sobornost bodies alike are vulnerable to them, but the latter is especially vulnerable. Prolonged exposure to wildcode in humans protected by Seals can lead to sapphire-like growths and other deformities. Seal A Seal is a spime that protects the wearer from wildcode on Earth. Seals are made by speaking the words of the Seal and painting the words in the air. Zoto Gomelez was taught the use of Seals by the Aun, so that humans may continue to live safely on Earth. The Sobornost The Sobornost (etymology) are a posthuman upload collective. They appear to have control over many parts of the solar system. Gogols of the Sobornost place great importance on a common mission, the Great Common Task. The Sobornost is controlled by the Founders, the original creators of the collective who have made millions, if not billions, of copies of themselves, giving them access to the combined computational abilities of their many copies. The combined copies of the founders are called copyclans. Individuals other than the founders uploaded into the Sobornost become slaves to the copyclans, and are used to maintain the computational processes of the Sobornost. The Spike The Spike is the event that destroyed Jupiter in the in-story universe. This led to the displacement of the Kaminari zoku and may have led to the creation of the Kaminari jewel. Ripples of this catastrophe may have reached Mars, where it led to the mental retardation of an Oubliette citizen, and even Earth. Spimescape A spimescape is a virtual reality environment. A spimescape is populated by objects called spimes. Spimes, as proposed by Bruce Sterling, are objects that can be tracked in space and time throughout their lifetime. Hence, the user of a spimescape is in effect given a four-dimensional view of the world. Characters in the series use the spimescape for many purposes, ranging from combat to the monitoring of economic conditions. In The Fractal Prince, the spimescape on the wildcode-ravaged Earth is called athar by the inhabitants of Sirr. Athar glasses are used by people who have not been entwined with a jinn to see the athar. The muhtasibs can see athar without them, having been entwined with a jinn since childhood. Due to this, they usually serve in positions of authority, as they can observe many things normally unseen by baseline humans, e.g. the flow of goods and services within Sirr. Sunlifter A sunlifter factory is a Sobornost facility for mining the sun for heavy metals, which are then used to produce the synthetic materials used in Sobornost technology. Time The currency of the Oubliette is Time, which is used to pay for goods and services, as well as the privilege to have children. The currency is stored in a Watch and appears to be made of a material that can encode quantum states. The amount of Time citizens have in their Watches determines how long they have before they enter the Quiet. Visitors have to purchase a temporary citizenship and Watch upon arrival, but when their Time is used up, they do not enter the Quiet. Instead, they are put into a state of suspended animation and reanimated only after their deportation from the Oubliette. Utility fog A utility fog (originally proposed by J. Storrs Hall) is a hypothetical dispersed collection of tiny self-reconfiguring modular robots that can replicate a physical structure. It is a versatile material and can be used for many purposes. In The Fractal Prince, the inhabitants of Sirr even use it as a form of aerial transport, called a carpet. Vir A vir is a virtual reality environment, as opposed to the physical world (i.e. the flesh realm). Virs are used as locations where Sobornost entities meet and can be customized according to the whims and tastes of their owners. Virs can be nested. Ancestor vir An ancestor vir is a simulation of a certain period of history. The hsien-kus on Earth interpret the Great Common Task to mean the resurrection in ancestor virs of all sentient minds who have ever lived. Thus, their endeavor is of a historical and archaeological nature, as they seek to build ancestor virs that they deem to be faithful to history by harvesting gogols from Earth through the gogol trade with Sirr. They run their ancestor virs on the Gourd, the Sobornost structure surrounding Earth on a geostationary orbit. Firmament vir The firmament contains the "meta-laws ... that govern all virs" and is thought to be impossible to counterfeit. However, in The Fractal Prince, it is shown that Jean le Flambeur knows how to create a firmament vir, a vir that emulates the firmament. He had attempted to use this on Matjek Chen, but was unsuccessful, though Chen was delighted that this feat could actually be accomplished. His later attempt on the Sumanguru gogol, however, succeeded. Running a firmament vir is apparently costly, but in confronting the sumanguru, Jean had Perhonen, and it appears that Oortian hardware operating on Sobornost software is an excellent platorm to host a firmament vir. Watch In the Oubliette, every person, citizen or visitor, has a Watch, which keeps the Time that the person still has. The Watch also contains a private encryption key that is required to 'blink exomemory and use gevulot. Xiao Xiao (from the Chinese word for filial piety) is the hardcoded reverence that Sobornost gogols feel for other gogols who are from a more senior branch (i.e. an earlier branching) than themselves. This enforces the hierarchy within the Sobornost. The zoku The zoku are a faction of posthuman warriors. As with the Sobornost, each member of the zoku is a composite of many minds. However, it is implied that the minds that make up the different members of the zoku have more equality compared to the Sobornost. The zoku are descended from members of MMORPG guilds, and their culture reflects these origins. They are warriors and mercenaries, and are primarily motivated by the desire to find new challenges and improve themselves through conflict. They dismiss people who believe in actual causes and movements as "meme zombies." The zoku fought a war against the Sobornost called the Protocol War, which they lost. Some of them originally lived on Jupiter, but its destruction during the war led to them seeking asylum on the Oubliette on Mars in order to recover. Kaminari zoku The zoku known as the Kaminari (a Japanese name for the god of thunder) may have originally made their home in Jupiter, but have been displaced or decimated due to the destruction of Jupiter in the Spike. A remnant of the zoku may have set up a colony on Mars with the permission of the Oubliette, so that Pixil may be of this zoku. In The Fractal Prince, it is claimed by a chen gogol that the Spike was the result of something that the Kaminari had managed to achieved, which the Sobornost did not. Kaminari jewel The Kaminari jewel was a zoku jewel allegedly made by the Kaminari. It is said to have been made during the Spike and may be the "key to Planck locks". Zoku colony The Zoku colony in The Quantum Thief is in the Dust District of the Oubliette. It resembles a dome. This colony was probably set up by the Kaminari zoku, who became refugees during the Protocol War after Jupiter was destroyed in the event known as the Spike. Pixil mentions that the older zoku members reminisce often about their Jovian days. See Also
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