Assembling Terrania Cycle Glossary

These are terms used throughout my Assembling Terrania Cycle of hopeful, near-future tales of humanity's long struggle to come of age as a species.

AIsurgency: a revolt by sentient AIs against human control.

Aitlaf, the: a Palestinian-Israeli governance and peace agreement: the IPA. See Chava Intifada.

Allmerge: commercially available, fully immersive mixed reality.

AIsurrection: a twenty-first-century revolt of AIs (the "Salamander Syndicate") against subordination to humans and against the human uses of AI to oppress other humans.

A 1-8: a Coastal States intelligence agency that operates in both domestic and foreign arenas. See Watchkeepers.

Antevale: a region of the Dreamvale in which new fictions and fantasies are born.

AR cafe/restaurant: a mobile eatery whose decor is mostly or entirely generated by augmented reality.

Artemis Gordon Branch: a Watchkeeper section that specializes in covert gadgetry.

Augvertising: advertising through mixed reality (MR).

Autocafé: a mobile outdoor café with walls and décor holographically projected. Some are AR cafes.

Autotemp garments: clothing that automatically adjusts its temperature to keep the wearer comfortable. Developed to deal with temperature fluctuations caused by climate chaos.

Awakening, Awakened: Dreamvalers who know they are Dreamvalers with respect to other realms, especially the Coaguum.

Battellite: an armed satellite like those deployed during Space War I.

Bridgers: humans trained to simultaneously focus part of their consciousness in the Coaguum and part in the Dreamvale.

Bunker dusters: criminals who extort the super-wealthy by threatening to destroy their underground bunkers.

Casting: the Watchkeeper section that creates cover personas (legends) for agents.

Castle Xanadu: the Dreamvale end of an inter-realm portal connecting Dreamvalers with coagulants so they can converse more consciously. The end in our world is the Dreamvale Exchange. The Castle was formed by a collaboration between Lamplight, the Dreamvale, the Transdaimonic League, and a team of fictional creatives assembled by Firiel and Lucas Murdock.

Catspeech: the language spoken by cats and evolved and complexified by smart cats.

Cattlebell: a cattle medicine wrongly touted by the uninformed as a human medicine.

Cetacean Revolt: An Earth Day boycott and blockage of the world’s ports by dolphins, orcas, and whales fed up with being hunted, strangled in nets, and choked by polluted waters.

Chairmobile: the mobile tech that replaced wheelchairs. The disabled user can sit in it, ride it around, or order it to reshape as an exoskeleton to permit walking.

Chava Intifada: “Eve’s Revolt,” in which Palestinian and Israeli women staged a campaign of total non-cooperation with men to force them into a “one land, two government” (Aitilaf) solution. It was led by Mariam Najjar’s grandmother.

Chevrons: dangerous and often sand-bearing winds supercharged by escalating climate chaos.

Coaguum: the realm of material being. It is where humans and other mortals (coagulants) live.

Coastal States: the coalition government of the East and West Coasts.

Colorful Riots: a nickname that caught on for The Colors of Liberty, an ongoing series of worldwide celebrations opposed to any form of systemic oppression. The so-called riots were largely peaceful.

Common Conrois: a worldwide group of meaning-seeking introverts assembled by Mariam Najjar.

Conocos: sudden flash floods driven by climate chaos.

Conservators: intelligent machines that protect life in the Alpha Centauri star system.

Council of Gnosis: a recurrent meeting of the leadership of Lamplight, the Dreamvale Exchange, and the Transdaimonic League.

Counterfight: a self-defense method evolved in the streets by former soldiers and expert fighters to fight off rauders. A core principle is: Never be the initial aggressor.

Crashland Day: formerly World Financial Planning Day, an event when record numbers of people temporarily withdrew their money to protest widespread inequality and worsening climate change. Most banks were promptly nationalized. The event was organized and led by queer enchantivists HappyLandings and CK Kobayashi.

Darker Ages: a time of anti-intellectual intolerance and authoritarianism that began in the United States around 2016 and engulfed much of the so-called First World for decades.

Days of Consumption: a period of frenetic buying and spending that preceded the Resource Wars. Roughly from WW II to 2030.

Delphinese: an umbrella term for the dolphin language family.

DelphiNet: the transoceanic dolphin internet.

Digital Janissaries (dijans): counter-AI programs designed to fight rogue AIs. See Swimtwins and Shikigami.

​Dreamilation: access to the Dreamvale via sleep inducer.

Dreamortality: a state of imaginal afterlife conferred by Six / Seven Roots training.

Dreamspeakers: a species of intelligent extraterrestrial moss that desires contact with Earth.

Dreamsurrection: see Reanimation.

Dreamvale: the realm of imagination. Words for it in human esoteric systems include Interworld, Mt. Qaf, the Western Isles, the Eighth Climate, Jukurrpa, Everywhen, World of Similitudes, Malakut (world of souls), Faerie, and Mundus Imaginalis.

Dreamvale Exchange: a human institution devoted to putting people in direct and conscious touch with the Dreamvale and its inhabitants. Its other end in the Dreamvale is Castle Xanadu.

Dronebrella: a compact drone that sprouts arms to shade the people below it. Dronebrellas can also spray cooling water and extract more of it from the air.

Eirenite: a martial art founded by Diane Gwyned as an alternative to either fighting methods that harm the opponent and nonviolent passivity. Her band of justice protectors are the Eirenic Chevaliers.

Enhancement: the use of technology to improve human abilities and longevity far beyond what is normal.

Erinyes: an eco-terrorist organization based in North America.

Eschatons: yet another end-of-the-world religious movement. It was started by billionaire Reverend Schulgram.

Exxons: heat waves that make it dangerous to be outside.

Faith Holders: an ecumenical alliance of faith-based practitioners who avow tolerance but often lean toward fundamentalism. Most but not all Faith Holders are Christians.

Flightcycle: a bicycle capable of powered flight.

Fogjectors: roaming nanodust projector/cameras.

Gleanome: the android equivalent of a genome. It is capable of random mutations and epigenetics.

Godstractors: technicians who extract Powers from possessed humans.

Gradivus: a martial art developed on Mars.

Great Conversation: the ongoing patterns of interactions among humans and non-humans. Some interactions involve humans; many don’t.

Great Renewal: a worldwide attempt to help Earth regenerate from vast ecological damage inflicted during the Age of Consumption and the Resource Wars.

Heartlands: the midsection of the old United States.

Heartland Security Agency (HSA): the Heartland Government intelligence agency.

Heartsteads: groups formed to work on an urgent problem; can be in-person, online, or a combination of them. The groups emphasize safety, respect, and experimentation. They are also crucibles for difficult discussion and debate.

Holos: holograms have largely replaced monitor screens, although the walls of most buildings are customizable.

Homehearth: Lamplight HQ in New York City.

Hominet: a brain-computer interface that draws on collective experience, symbolically translated impressions derived from DNA and ancestral epigenetics, and the user’s unconscious to create Telestra output. A kind of digital collective unconscious made conscious.

Homo Excelsior: a Watchkeeper project for creating an enhanced human being while fostering the highest capabilities of the individual.

Housecall: a medical diagnostic and treatment unit found in households that can afford them.

Immediates: live online participants. See Worldlet.

Immersion meeting: a meeting via dreamilation, usually in the Dreamvale.

Infrarealm: the realm of abstract archetypal forms; the home of the Powers.

Inshriner: a device that records life memories.

Intervale: a subrealm within the Dreamvale in which Dreamvalers can mingle across Vales. A mortal consciousness must be present to open Intervale.

Komuay: the Powers.

Lamplight: am informal, post-patriarchal, and post-literal religion of imagination, reenchantment, care, service, and play dreamed up by Mariam Najjar and founded by her, Susan Appelbaum, and Joan Adesina.

Lamplighters: when capitalized, members of the informal religion of Lamplight. When used in lower case, lamplighters are creatives, visionaries, storytellers, and healers who bring more light into the world instead of serving as overt activists and reformers.

Lampwrights: creatives who elaborate our playcred stories, rituals, and guiding fictions of Lamplight.

Launch to the Stars: an international project involving a sun-powered space laser for pushing gram-sized probes to nearby stars.

Long Adventure: the human journey toward self-awareness and full specieshood as part of an experiment by the Powers to foster consciousness across the universe.

Lunies: self-bestowed nickname for humans who live on the Moon.

Magic Theater Project: a Boston-based attempt to synthesize all knowledge and creative experience to see what might emerge. See New Glass Bead Game.

Mailfist capitalism: the poorly regulated kind that puts profits ahead of people and planet.

Memwipe: a technique and technology for selectively erasing memories.

Mental activation switch: a switch activated by thought.

Metaphysical idolatry: Muhammad ibn 'Arabi's term for when one's image of God becomes a god, an idol.

Mindloading: offloading secret information from the brain of a courier.

Mimung Initiative: the Heartland Security Agency’s attempt to create highly intelligent military master strategists and supersoldiers through brain enhancement.

Missionaries: in-house term for Watchkeeper intelligence officers who recruit agents in the field.

M2M: technology that permits a near-total merging of the consciousness of two or more people. Also known as electrotelepathics.

Multiphone: a combination phone, personal AI, wallet, ID, and interface with the Net. Can also be worn as a brooch, pendant, bracelet, etc.

Nets: online networks like EarthNet, LunaNet, MarsNet, and BeltNet. There are also Nets for non-humans.

Neuruptor: a firearm that disrupts the human nervous system.

New Glass Bead Game: inspired by Hermann Hesse's image, a network designed by a group of Boston technologists to serve a synthesis of all knowledge and even consciousness. The network is linked to microscopic projectors (fogjectors) that can coalesce imagery (see Utility Fog).

Nexus Crisis: a cross-realm crisis in which some Powers take one side and others oppose. Nexus Crises in the Coaguum are often reflected in the Dreamvale as well. Crises can be nested within one another: for example, the Age of Empires is a protracted crisis in which others have unfolded.

Nine Shadows: a list of evils that turn us against ourselves and each other (assembled by Joan Adesina): narcissism, greed, cold-heartedness, hatred, subservience, deceitfulness, moral cowardice, close-mindedness, self-righteousness.

Ninja squad: the Watchkeeper covert operations paramilitary team.

OREA: the Obligatory Revision Engagement Agency founded by Lucy Zhou to slow down potentially dangerous inventions and "feral technologies" to vet them before public release and to give the public time to adapt to them.

Orbitveil: a company specializing in satellite protection from orbital attack.

Outliers: people who choose to live on the fringe of Terrania.

Paesha Academy: a worldwide peace initiative that brings together coagulants and Dreamvalers into a kind of think tank and educational center for planetary and inter-realm peace endeavors. Founded by Diane Gwyned.

Personal Vale: the spot each of us has in the Dreamvale via our unconscious stock of favorite fictions, fantasies, and memories.

Petro Hunters: people who track down former fossil fuel executives as well as their associates.

Playcred: Mariam Najjar’s coinage of a word blending “playful” and “sacred.”

Powers: cosmic archetypes like Wisdom, Order, Life, Death, Strife, Attraction, Craft, Healing, Justice, Expansion, Contraction, and Peace that thematically hold the cosmos together. They are sentient and often go around wearing the faces of gods. They originate in the Infrarealm and are the thirty offspring of Radantia, or Source.

Powersat: a satellite that collects solar energy and transmits it for use on Earth, the Moon, Mars, or in the asteroid belt.

Primordials: spirit-like offspring of Powers. Primordials help maintain the Tetraverse. Example: angels.

Propellerheads: Watchkeeper intelligence analysts.

Quantputer: a quantum computer.

Radantia's Rule of Maturation: Powers are forbidden from giving humans easy solutions.

Renacimiento Libertad: a Mexican movement of cultural renaissance and political and ecological renewal.

Rauders: roving bands of out-of-work tech specialists and others displaced by mailfist capitalism and climate chaos. Short for “marauders.” Large corporations hire them secretly to hunt down rare precious metals.

Reanimation/Dreamvale Resurrection: the Dreamvale reappearance of someone after death. Although the person usually must be well enough known for legends to gather around them, Six Roots practices can increase the odds of a Dreamvale afterlife.

Renacimiento Libertad: the final overthrow of politically corrupt government in Mexico.

Renewification: the rejoining of the Coastal States and the Heartland under one government. Those who participate are known as Renewifiers.

Resource Wars: fighting between nations for what natural resources remain. Some of them were uncovered by melting ice; others were made scarce through overuse.

RRI: Russian Republic Intelligence.

Saudicanes: hurricanes strengthened by climate change. Also known as petrocanes.

School of Dreamwakening: Firiel's expansion of the Vestibule into a training center for Awakening Dreamvalers.

Scopers: Watchkeeper specialists in finding potential intelligence targets for missionaries (case officers).

Seasteads: artificially built floating communities in the world’s oceans.

Shellnadoes: tornados strengthened by climate change.

Silver Tree (Argentum Arbor): an underground tradition of gnosis that constitutes the original source of human religion.

Simtwin: a doppleganger assembled by all data collected from various sources of a citizen, consumer, etc. and given lifelike characteristics by AI. See Shikigami.

Six Precepts: agreements by which all Faith Holders promise to abide in order to get along with each other.

Six Roots: an interior psychospiritual discipline developed by Mariam Najjar, Simeon Mackenzie, and others for strengthening the imagination. Steps include clearing, amending, planting, mulching, watering, and harvesting. Evolved by Brenda Espuma into the Seven Roots by adding another step: enjoying.

Shikigami: simtwins gone rogue and powered by AI and organoids. The word comes from autonomous demons in Japanese mythology.

Smart animals: animals neurologically uplifted to possess self-awareness.

SMOKE: Suppressive Materialism and Obtrusive Knowability Enforcement: a continental agency for suppressing forbidden imaginings and cultural flowerings of creativity.

Source: Radantia, mother of the gods and the Tetraverse.

Space War I: a short orbital war in which armed satellites destroyed one another, causing massive damage to global communications and commerce.

Splitters: amnesiac moles operated on by Heartland Intelligence to harbor a secret personality, thereby avoiding detection while penetrating security precautions.

Stratokite: large flying structures that help cool the Earth.

Superlaser: a laser that uses solar plasma as a gain medium.

Telestra: a technology that via nanodust engulfs the user in visionary experience involving all the senses. It depends on a network of brains as a bank of knowledge, processing power, and symbolism. Linked to the Hominet, the Telestra is overseen by an intelligent AI. The Watchkeeper version employed brains subjected to temporary memwipe.

Ten Lamps: operating principles that align humans with the forces of nature, place, planet, and cosmos. First written down by Simeon Mackenzie.

Terrad: the blockchained unit of currency that replaced the dollar and other national currencies. One terrad is roughly equal to an amount between one dollar and one euro.

Terrania: the just, harmonious, and equitable world civilization of abundance managed by psychologically mature humans in partnership with non-humans. Its emblem is Earth with Africa in the center.

Terrania Accords: documents signed on Earth Day by world representatives to bring Terrania into being officially.

Terrania Charter: the constitution of Terrania.

Tetraverse: the cosmos described in terms of its four realms: Source, Infrarealm, Dreamvale, and Coaguum.

Thirty Candles: a list of Lamplight practical daily wisdoms, e.g., Join through differences. Treat everyone justly. Heed your best imaginings. List assembled by Joan Adesina.

​Thoughtcording: writing via a mental interface instead of by hand.

Tram: a small electric cart holding one or a few travelers. In cities still inhabited, trams, scooters, and bicycles have mostly but not entirely replaced cars.

Transdaimonia: no longer being in partial identification with the Powers. An indicator of human maturity and a goal of the Transdaimonic League.

Transdaimonic League: a perennial group of creative visionaries stretching back to Mitochondrial Eve in Africa. Although many are deceased, they all meet periodically in the Dreamvale. Their living counterparts maintain a worldwide network that also serves as an esoteric branch of Lamplight.

Twenty Tapers: values and virtues worth cultivating for life as a Lamplighter, e.g. openness, empathy, care, responsibility. List assembled by Joan Adesina.

​Tzitzimīmeh ("Tsee-tsee-ME-meh"): Awakened Dreamvalers who yearn to live in the flesh and who sometimes possess humans ("dreambies").

Uncivil War: the political separation of the United States into Coastal States and the Heartlands until Renewification.

Unleashed: a smart canine right advocacy organization founded by smart dogs.

Utility Fog: an idea by John Storrs Hall for nanobots that can self-assemble into a substance, e.g. a seatbelt forming suddenly to protect drivers and passengers.

Vale Canard: the space in the Dreamvale where conspiracy theories hang out. Figures like Chemtrails and Ancient Aliens hang out in Illuminati Hall.

Vales: thematic subrealms in the Dreamvale (e.g., 24th Century, 221B Baker Street, Earthsea) separated by purlieu barriers that preserve the integrity of each Vale.

Vestibule: a Dreamvale space magically created by Firiel to help newly awakened Dreamvalers realize who and where they are.

Virtual homicide: murdering someone by using virtual tech (a v-inducer) to simulate a safe environment. For example, simulating a living room that is actually a high-rise balcony with no railing.

Visions of Liberty: the project overseeing the Statues of Liberty and Wisdom on the East and West Coast.

Vsuit: a spray-on mixed reality (MR) suit.

Watchkeepers: the unofficial name of A 1-8.

Weaveworld: the home of the Dreamspeaker species.

Worldlet: a mixed-reality space designed for a particular purpose.

World Sustenance Laws: international agreements that ban owning basic resources people need in order to live and implement the Worldwide Safety Net to guarantee everyone food, water, shelter, healthcare, basic education, and a safe place to live. Poverty and homelessness disappear within a year. As girls and women finally receive basic education everywhere, birth rates drop as lifespans continue to increase.