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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“The Altreian elite are all of the Dhaldric race that evolved to function in either air or water. They also have psionic abilities that are much stronger than that of the smaller Khyre race that makes up the bulk of the working and military classes.
The subsequent combat resulted in both ships shooting each other down over New Mexico in the year 1948. The U.S. government located the crashed Kasari ship almost immediately and spawned the top-secret Rho Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in an attempt to reverse engineer its alien technology.”
For the first time in millennia, Khal Teth felt the touch of another Altreian mind—the one thing he had been counting on. Isolated from his own body, he did not have the psionic strength to reach out and dominate another of his own race. But Broljen, the research-vessel commander, had linked his mind to Jack’s in order to dominate this long-anticipated visitor. And by so doing he had opened a mental door that allowed Khal Teth in. Broljen seemed surprised when the human was able to resist his initial attempt to take control of his mind, but when Khal Teth latched on to that link, it galvanized
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Psionics
This brain was human, but all sentient species had the inherent structure for telepathy. But like the human ability to wiggle ears, few knew how to initiate such a feat. Khal Teth knew how to take advantage of that inherent psionic capability. Activating a particular region of Jack’s brain, Khal Teth gripped the smoky tendrils of Broljen’s thoughts, forcibly extracting them from Jack’s head. Broljen’s presence squirmed to free itself, but with each passing second, Khal Teth’s mental grip grew stronger. As his mind fully connected with Broljen’s, Khal Teth allowed the commander
Khal Teth’s body lay inside a similar chrysalis cylinder on Quol, one that had been programmed to block his mind’s return.
Silver Chord?
Except for the clarity she retained, the experience reminded her of how she had felt under the influence of the heroin administered by NSA personnel, with addiction being the end result. She still knew right from wrong, but the part of her mind that made the decisions just didn’t care anymore. Worse, the hive-mind saw whatever she saw, heard whatever she heard, and, unless she did something to limit their control, would soon be able to command her to do whatever the Kasari wanted. And she would do it willingly.
“I don’t see any 3-D printer.” “That’s because I didn’t send the parts to build one,” Mark replied. “We’ll deliver those through the gateway when it’s activated.” “And where will you get all the powdered metals and plastics that it will use?” Mark’s face lit up slightly. “We make them. We feed the matter disrupter-synthesizer with rock, dirt, or whatever we’ve mined. The MDS then transforms that matter into raw energy that’s converted into the wave packets that form whatever material we want to produce.”
“One thing I don’t understand. If you have a working wormhole gate on your end, why didn’t you just enter the coordinates for this warehouse and push the equipment through instead of risking yourself making the trip here? So long as you’re not sending living things through it, you shouldn’t need another gate on this end.” “Actually,” said Mark, impressed with the extent of Aaden’s knowledge, “that’s not true. Unless it’s firmly anchored at both ends, the unanchored end of any wormhole thicker than a hair waggles through space. It’s impossible to know precisely where anything you send through
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“How are you manipulating them?” “Robby uses Eos to give directions to one of our supercomputers,” said Heather, “and it downloads the required knowledge to each of the robots through a subspace link. The robots then cooperatively accomplish their tasks using swarm computing algorithms. The supercomputer monitors their progress and, when necessary for optimization, updates their instructions.”
Swarm Computing Algorithms = Colored Petri Nets??
A person is only defeated when they accept defeat as an inevitable end state, and that was a condition she could not and would not tolerate.
No. She’d have to establish a true psychic link. And that meant she’d have to be close to Raul.
How close ?
At that moment, she tightened her focus, activating her telepathy, and thrusting the protected part of her mind into Raul’s. Knowing that she only had moments until the hive-mind realized what she was doing, she made her message brief. “Get back in the ship and get out of here. I’m compromised.” Feeling the hive-mind react to shut her down, she passed Raul a vivid image of her pulling the Kasari dart filled with quivering fluid from her neck. Then her consciousness winked out.
“Yeah, I get that. But since you’ve almost gotten us killed twice now, I’d rather go out watching you suffer than let you keep screwing up your inept attempts at a power grab.” “Inept?” “You heard me.” “And you think you can do better at seizing power over a psionic empire than the most powerful psionic in history?”
The willful bonding was an additive process. Khal Teth had discovered that the mental powers the Twice Bound granted to Jack increased as each new recruit added his or her potential. And because Jack was in charge during the ritual, the Twice Bound were primarily bonded to him. That produced an odd and disturbing side effect. Whenever Jack yielded mastery to Khal Teth, the channeled power of the Twice Bound weakened dramatically.
But the fact that no one could gain mental dominance of any Twice Bound gave each connected citizen his or her own special brand of power. And though Jack might eventually reach a limit beyond what Khal Teth could handle, he could currently channel the sum of all of their psionic power.
Thousands of repetitions over the last several orbdays had unlocked an understanding of myriad psionic processes, like how to search another’s mind for hints of betrayal and how to shield one’s thoughts from other telepaths.
Jack was getting better at manipulating the entanglement of his mind with Khal Teth’s. Tonight he and his thirteen Khyre commandos moved through Ashelan’s dark alleys on their way toward his chosen target. And as he moved, he hazed the minds of all who would have otherwise observed them.
Like the SEP (Somebody Else's Problem) from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's "So Long and Thanks For All the Fish : )
