Some Professions

copperhead: In ancient times, an unskilled laborer who would work for a traditional rate of a selenis (a copper coin) per hour, doing anything, so long as the coin was paid up front. In the modern era, slang for casual contract labor.

My grandfather was a contract barker in Lodendar’s Gyre of Commerce, bringing in copperheads and running jobs for the Towers merchancy. He built his business on reliability and competence, delivering it upchain and keeping ledgers downchain so he could shine his best workers. My father, too, path-pointed labor contracts across all of Mossstone. So you could say that we’ve always been in the same trade.

Faleran Rysakar, CEO, in the Service Gate, ICC, corporate history

dirt farmer: One who produces soil from regolith on worlds undergoing ecopoesis where there is no existing soil, such as eutalentic worlds, or who produces soil for habitat use from asteroid regolith; skilled, technical labor that takes a great deal of patience through physical and chemical processing, followed by the multiple stages of building up the layered soil microbiome from bacteria through microfauna.

It’s easy, by comparison, to farm in dirt. Life springs forth from living soil with the greatest of ease – indeed, half your problem is stopping it. Bringing forth life from lifelessness – ah, now that’s a real challenge.

Tirel Meliane, Sixth Well ecopoesis team, Adírdis

ergtech: a worker with energy production facilities, usually fusion or fission reactors, who routinely works with cryogenic fuels, power metals, dangerous magnetic fields, high pressures, liquid metal coolants, and so forth. A profession descended from the fissioneers of the Era of Steel and Steam who tended the first nucleonic boilers.

Nothing makes you feel so alive as riding the rods on one of the big piles. Nothing’s more likely to kill you, either.

Solian Desúmé, 11th century fissioneer

freehand: An obsolete term outside the Emerging Markets; prior to near-complete automation and ubiquitous robotics, an unskilled laborer guided in the performance of various skilled tasks by AI and v-tag assistance. Also, pejorative; an AI’s meat-puppet.

It’s not the best way to build an orbital elevator; in fact, it’s close to the worst way to build one. But out in the Periphery, where robots are feared, lest they “deprive” the sophonts of work – which they must have; apparently we cannot simply pay them to do nothing – and tachydidactic training would “violate mental autonomy”, it’s the way we’re left with. The frustrating, tedious, centuries-obsolete way. At least we still get to use the management system AIs.

Sartra Beldevil, site director, Empire Constructions, ICC

freemind: By analogy to freehand, a freemind is an unskilled thinker engaging in thought-for-hire; which is to say, the renting of one’s spare cognitive capacity on the specialist cycle spot market for general-purpose neural network applications.

On the one hand, I’ve spent the last year working on a bunch of fragmented ideas, with nothing to show for them but a headful of memories I don’t understand. On the other, it’s paid for me to spend next year on projects of my own. Not the worst deal I’ve ever taken.

Sed Mer Lacann, artificer-in-training

nomomach: “war-lawyer”; a military branch whose primary mode of effort is to use legal, moral, memetic, and/or sociological engineering against a target group to attempt a specific goal. Contrast: warbarrister.

Not impressive, you say? Well, while they may not be as majestic as one of the Navy’s dreadnoughts, the mess of controversial lawsuits these amicus briefs will generate will keep their electoral system in turmoil for at least a decade. And a democracy that can’t trust itself is a democracy that isn’t stamping around the trailing marches looking for trouble to cause.

Odera min Toriss, nomomach, Bellatry TAG

public eye: a sophont sensor platform, or the entry-level newsie, the public eye is simply any citizen who permits remote access to sensors on their person or property (or even, via slink, to their sensorium) by the public: for sousveillance, for adding to publicly available datasets, or simply to capture events and viewpoints that might not otherwise have been seen.

The eye is blind.

traditional statement upon entering an area of defended privacy

stigmeologist: Colleagues of the logotects in the Keepers of the Language, stigmeologists are linguistic experts in punctuation and cadence.

What sort of uncultured savage writes a diplomatic threat in hendecasyllabic stanzas?

Sapphíä Corescianos, Logarchy of Engraving, Printing, and Stationery

!tesh: (“ant”) a kind of freehand, a !tesh (“ant”) is someone who is assigned one tiny portion of a task in exchange for a micropayment without receiving any of the surrounding details of the task. In this way, the details of the overall task to be performed can be concealed not only from observers or from those who might ask questions, but even from the workers themselves. In some cases, !tesh labor can be used without the workers even knowing that they are working on a task; for example, when the tasks are disguised as quests in an augmentality game.

Took a photograph of the crowd outside the Fillio Building and sent it to the specified nym: 4,096 points.

Shadow Walkers game system message

voucher: A professional witness trained in observation, remembrance, and precision, able to describe situations and events reliably after the fact without extrapolation, distortion, or assumption. Vouchers often make use of specially-certified mnemonic enhancements, and in a manner similar but not identical to Cilmínár professionals, operate under geas to speak the complete and exact truth.

You should probably know that I have heard the joke ending with “There is at least one nekhalyef in Ossiréï that is black on this side,” precisely 1,597 times. Including this one.

Bríäla Sallantar, senior voucher, Credible Guild

warbarrister: A legal specialist in the laws and conventions of war, including the applications of contract law specific to mercenary work. Contrast: nomomach.

Under Imperial law, your plan includes seven distinct war crimes. Under Republic law, thirteen. Under Galian law, none at all, but you should not consider that encouraging…

Also, I’d shoot you myself.

Delék mor-Valakad, legal adviser to the Black Dragoon Battalion