Technology in Revelation Space

These are technological elements found in the Revelation Space series of stories and novels.

Quickmatter
A substance used by the Demarchists in The Prefect, it appears as a general purpose building material, as well as serving numerous other functions. As its name implies, it is capable of changing form. It was susceptible to the melding plague and was destroyed by it.

Conjoiner Drive
Conjoiner drives are starship engines that use quantum mechanics to propel starships up to a fraction less than the speed of light. It is at one point said that they contain a small wormhole linked to the very deep past, through which they draw their propulsion energies from the Quark-gluon plasma created by the Big Bang. In Redemption Ark, their design is implicated as attracting the Inhibitors, and subsequently modified after a 100-year suspension of their production (referred to in Revelation Space).

A small part of the workings of the drives is revealed in Galactic North. The drive has six manual control dials that allow the power of the drive to be varied. As the drive power is increased, so does the risk of an uncontrolled, ship destroying explosion. Lighthuggers typically mount a pair of Conjoiner drives, both of which are controlled by a disembodied Conjoiner brain that performs rapid calculations to control the internal drive reactions. If the turbulence within the drive exceeds the ability of the brain, the drive will explode. The drive is also designed to explode if non-conjoiners attempt to open it for reverse engineering, or if the gap between two drives on the same ship grows too large. This occurs because the Conjoiner brain is housed within one of the engines and controls the other remotely; once the other drive passes out of the brain's control, the internal reactions quickly spiral out of control.

Exordium
Exordium is a method of communication, wherein its participants form a quantum telepathic link to exchange knowledge across time. The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is assumed, and allows participants to form neural links with their past, future, and alternate selves via the instigation of quantum superposition states in their neural implants. Galiana and Skade use this system to obtain and modify inertial suppression technology and take various precautionary actions to eliminate the existential threat of the Inhibitors.

One limitation of the technology appears to be the total informational capacity of the superposition states - each instance of communication makes subsequent attempts more difficult in an effect described similarly to the presence of static interference. It is unknown whether this limitation holds only for each individual repeat participant (which seems more likely) or for the entire process independent of the participants. Also never explicitly stated is the exact effect of the process' acausal nature, though it is implied that it, consistent with its assumption of the Many-World interpretation, the timelines that sent back the information via Exordium continue along their predetermined worldline, and it is a newly branched timeline that is "saved".

Hypometric weapon
The hypometric weapon is a fictional weapon, manufactured using technology acquired from the huge reservoir of alien knowledge stored inside an enormous distributed computer system disguised as neutron stars and (possibly) other astronomical objects. Hypometric weaponry is said to be highly advanced, usually discovered only by races after one or two million years of spacefaring civilization.

The author does not explain exactly what the weapon looks like or how it works, although it is described as being seen as "a threshing machine", with tolerances measured on the atomic level. Due to the high velocity of its rotating physical parts a slight miscalculation in construction will almost certainly destroy whatever vessel it is contained in. It is described repeatedly as "wrong" by characters who have had close exposure to it. The weapon appears to simply eliminate areas of space from existence (or, as is implied, transport them to somewhere else), leaving gaping holes in whatever it is attacking. Though the full extent of the weapon's power is not explored, its area of effect is large enough that it is useful in space warfare and can also be contracted to an area small enough to take out a section of a man's stomach without causing collateral damage. However, it is also implied that this degree of accuracy is not something often achieved, and that the weapon is usually difficult to use with any degree of precision, to the extent of being dangerous to the users themselves. Indeed, hypometric weaponry is described as "weakly acausal", meaning that it is theoretically impossible to fire them with any certainty that a target will be hit. The weapon is apparently capable of firing at targets out of its line of sight, and even through solid walls. The inhibitors eventually adapt to the technology, rendering it useless against them.

Cache Weapons
The Cache Weapons, also known as "Hell Class" weapons, were built by the Conjoiners in their early days based on information believed to have been received from the future. Concerns about the source of information and the power of the weapons lead to the conjoiners destroying the knowledge necessary to build additional weapons. There are only 40 cache weapons, and no more can be constructed as the Conjoiners deleted the necessary information (Clavain and Remontoire speculated on creating more by reverse-engineering the technology, but this never occurs in the novel). The weapons are sentient, at least to the level of a gamma class simulation. Some of the weapons operate by triggering a cascade of chemical and nuclear processes inside themselves creating an extremely powerful energy bolt which can be directed at targets. The power and nature of the weapons varies, and is not fully understood in all cases. Some of them appear to operate on more "conventional" principles (for the humans of the time period at least): such weapons include a relativistic projectile weapon and a gamma-ray laser, or "graser". The latter two were amongst the weapons used by Ilia Volyova in her attack on Cerberus. Once an energy weapon's charging process is engaged, it cannot be stopped by any method short of destroying the weapon. In some cases, usage of a cache weapon destroys it (as was the case with the weapon used in the attack on Haldora in Absolution Gap).

Inertia Suppression
In Redemption Ark, Skade and Clavain independently encounter technology captured by the Mademoiselle, that permits the alteration of a ship's inertial mass in order to permit high-G acceleration for interstellar travel. Skade tries to modify the technology with the help of Exordium to allow faster than light travel, via state transition to a tachyon: however, her efforts are not successful, and the technology itself has the side effect of removing individuals caught in the transition bubbles from all recent history (only some people remember people that were caught in their timeframe, and recorded history indicates a much earlier death of that person). When this happens, the drive also apparently explodes.

Lighthugger
Lighthuggers are spacecraft that travel at just below the speed of light, taking months or years to accelerate to their cruising speed. Generally 3–4 km long, they use Conjoiner drives for propulsion, and are also coated with a thick caul of ice that protects against minor impacts at relativistic velocities and acts as armour against the attacks of other ships. The great size of the lighthuggers enables them to carry vast numbers of passengers and huge amounts of cargo. At the end of Redemption Ark this is demonstrated by Ana Khouri and Triumvir Ilia Volyova as they load approximately 160,000 of the almost 200,000 on the world Resurgam onto the Nostalgia for Infinity.

Lighthuggers are also described as having a limited repair and redesign capability in the novels. They are capable of moving rooms or machinery around within their hulls, or stripping material from one point to repair another. At least some are also equipped with "manufactories", which can build a considerable range of devices, given the relevant specifications (the full extent of their capabilities is unknown as they are only ever used in the novels to produce weapons).

Most lighthuggers are owned or ruled by their crew of Ultranauts, who, because of their long stretches in reefersleep and constant hopping from one star system to another are mostly divorced from baseline humanity. They are characterized by extreme modifications, often in the form of replacement or mechanical limbs or even holes right through them (as seen in Chasm City).

By the end of the sequence, there exists a fleet of lighthuggers that have been upgraded or built from scratch by the Conjoined and other elements fighting the Inhibitors. These ships are far more advanced than the average lighthugger, and are equipped with stealthed drives that do not emit in any detectable spectrum, "cryo-arithmetic engines" which cool the hull to make it nearly indistinguishable — in thermal terms — from empty space, inertia suppression machinery that allows extremely fast acceleration and deceleration, and extremely heavy armaments, including hypometric weaponry.

Cryo-arithmetic engines
Cryo-arithmetic engines are not actually 'engines' in the sense of propulsion devices, but rather a specific class of quantum computer discovered by the Conjoiners. When certain algorithms are executed on processors of this architecture, it leads to a local violation of the Second law of thermodynamics: the computer gets colder instead of hotter. Consequently, cryo-arithmetic engines have massive industrial (as opposed to calculatory) ramifications for Conjoiner manufacturing; such engines abound in Conjoiner asteroid factories, where their calculations can drain away the heat of starship construction.

Cryo-arithmetic engines are also used by the Conjoiner's modern 'stealthed' lighthuggers; they cool the exterior of the ship to the temperature of ambient space, making the starships difficult for the Inhibitors (or other foes) to detect.

Like many of the technologies in the Revelation Space universe, the cryo-arithmetic engines can have potentially catastrophic consequences in the event of an accident. In Absolution Gap, Skade's ship crashes in the ocean of the planet Ararat, and the cryo-arithmetic engines malfunction. Their control systems fail, and so they get colder. Getting colder enables them to calculate faster, prompting a positive feedback loop. By the time the inhabitants of Ararat find the wreck, Skade's ship is encased in an ever-expanding iceberg.

Melding Plague
The Melding Plague is a nanotech virus that attacks anything that has nanotech present within it and does not discriminate between human and machine. It attempts to meld the nanomachines and implants that are commonly present in the bodies of humans, with the structure of their body on a cellular level. This results in horrific, uncontrollable modifications to the body of whoever is infected and almost inevitably leads to death.

The most extreme example of a Plague outbreak is encountered in Chasm City, in which Chasm City, the capital of Yellowstone, has been infected by the Plague. Once the center of Demarchist society, the buildings and even the inhabitants of the city were capable of modifying themselves. The coming of the Plague changed all this and reduced the city and its inhabitants to a level of technology that the Plague could not attack. By the time that the worst of the Plague had passed, the city was almost unrecognizable, its buildings were twisted and deformed and the population decimated by the Plague. The only survivors were those that had taken steps to remove their implants or who hadn't had them to begin with, although some extremely wealthy individuals could afford "palanquins"- hermetic devices secure against the plague. Others used "dream fuel"- an alien drug that counteracted the plague. Ilia Volyova develops a virus which can apparently combat it, but the plague she attempted to fight it with was immunised against it before she could use it to any effect.

By the time the events of Redemption Ark took place, the Plague was seen as less of a threat, though it was still considered dangerous. The Conjoiners in particular, being one of the only factions to have been relatively unaffected by the Plague, were adept at dealing with its various strains. This is demonstrated in a scene in Redemption Ark in which Galiana's lighthugger is brought into the Mother Nest. Conjoiner quarantine techniques include large amounts of ceramic armour (amongst other things) which the plague apparently cannot penetrate.

Simulations

 * Alpha level: A complete, functioning copy of a mind, fully capable of learning and developing inside its host computer system. Despite the process of creating an alpha-level simulation resulting in the complete destruction of the neural structure of the mind copied, several dozen (Eighty, to be exact, referred to as "The Eighty") of those hyper-wealthy enough to afford the hugely expensive computer systems required to host the Alpha copy volunteered for the first round of transfers, considering it a minor price for effective immortality inside the machines. Unfortunately, a problem with the transfers resulted in the minds being corrupted in a matter of weeks, perhaps due to the uncertainty principle, becoming irreparably insane. Later technololgy was far more effective, creating perfectly sane simulations without killing the scanned individual (although large amounts of medical equipment were still necessary to survive the scan). Rushed scans often failed and produced useless simulations.


 * Beta level: A poor cousin to an Alpha-Level simulation, a Beta-level is based on modelling the behavioral patterns of the person copied, attempting to predict their reactions to a given stimulus.


 * Gamma level: standard AI used for handling computational work.