I’ve been thinking on how forms of child labor could survive well into the spacefaring age, some of the possibilities include

Younger girls and women being hired to clean spaceships (oftentimes for a lower price than a professional cleaning service)

Hiring kids to pack drones for shipping

Maintenance of electronic billboards

But idk, what do y’all think? Is it even realistic for child labor to exist in a sci fi setting or do you have better idea for its form than me?

All comments welcome

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a92eMSRiNxqMjPOpydRYnINRqvJ5mCaBYWD2LMes86U/edit?usp=drivesdk

My story (stories) are heavily inspired by Cixin Liu's works

[NOTES]

The Preservation is an unarmed evacuation vessel with light armor (lightweight for higher thrust/weight ratio) and heavy shielding full of refugees. The Draconis is a modified harpy frigate with light armor and medium shielding, armed with a forward facing railgun, 2 missile pods (20 Missiles Each), 8 laser PDCs (Point Defense Cannons intended for anti-missile defense), and an Arc Projector (Inspired by Mass Effect 2, but scaled up for ship to ship combat).

The attackers are a spacer extremist group based around Saturn, each of the 2 cruisers have medium shields and armor, and are armed with 12 20mm PDCs and 8 missile tubes with a large ammo supply, and the Corvette has light shields and armor, and is armed with 6 20mm PDCs and a pair of broadside mounted 120mm turrets (1 on each side of ship), as well as several improvised harpoon grapples.

The Draconis crew is made up of 10 people. Captain is Jackie Vera XO is Kyle Lang Pilots are Andrew Brick and Nick Pike Gunners are Gary Shaw and Sarah Green Engineers are David Jenkins, Bruce Morrow, and Holly Fae Medic is Alexis Shaw

[STORY]

Set in the immediate aftermath of an attack on an independent habitat station in the asteroid belt, a fleeing evac ship and a single escort are being chased by 3 enemy ships while the rest of their fleet remains behind to continue plundering the station.

Despite burning away from the attackers for several hours now, they were eventually able to catch up and intercept the pair of fleeing vessels.

The Draconis crew is pressed into their seats, crushed under the stress of high G forces, but alert and ready for action.

“Raise the Preservation!” Captain Jackie Vera shouts to the room. “On screen Captain.” XO Kyle Lang replies as he presses a button. A moment later a highly stressed and somewhat panicked middle aged man, Commander Han Kiroshi of the Preservation, appears on Jackie's terminal. “Preservation here.” “Han, maintain your 8G burn, we're about to engage so don’t do anything stupid.” “Good hunting Captain. We're counting on you.” Han says as he nods to Jackie through the screen. She nods back as she cuts the connection and returns her focus on the three incoming hostile targets.

“Captain, they're entering missile range, if we're gonna do something we gotta do it now!” Andrew Brick announces from the main pilot seat. “Time to earn your pay pilot, let's show them who they're dealing with. Weapons free!” Jackie orders with unshakable resolve.

Brick looks over and locks eyes with his copilot Nick Pike for a moment before both simultaneously nod to each other and refocuses on their posts. “Everybody brace for combat maneuvers! Weapons I'm sending firing patterns let's fuck em up!” Andrew calls out before inputting commands. “Got it, firing missiles!” Sarah Green replies in almost the same instant.

The Draconis fires 8 missiles at the pair of cruisers a moment before cutting thrust, flipping 360° and firing the forward facing railgun at the corvette, and resuming thrust after finishing the flip maneuver.

“WOOOHOOOOO!!” Engineer Holly Fae’s cheering can be heard throughout the small warship.

The missiles are easily taken out by the 20mm PDCs on the cruisers, but the corvette's weak shields are shattered and the railgun round imbeds itself halfway through the ship, killing much of the crew and forcing it out of the fight.

“Holy shit that just worked!” Kyle says, “Corvette’s down and out but the cruisers are still coming!”

The cruisers each fire a volley of 8 missiles, one at the Draconis and the other at the Preservation, before splitting apart to approach the fleeing pair from multiple angles.

“PDC’s now!” Jackie shouts. “Already on it Captain.” Gary Shaw calmly responds.

The Draconis laser PDCs easily shoot down the first volley while firing 2 more missiles to detonate between the Preservation and the second volley, acting as a flak screen that stops the first 4 of the incoming missiles. The laser PDCs retarget the remaining missiles but 2 manage to strike the big ships' shields, dropping them by 20%.

“Shit..” Gary says quietly. “It's okay though, they're shields can handle that no problem.” Sarah says reassuring him.

Both cruisers fire another 8 missile volley at both targets.

“More incoming!” Nick calls out. “we see them!” Sarah replies.

“Hold tight everybody!” Andrew announces as the Draconis cuts thrust, flips 120°, and resumes thrust to bring the ship on an intercept course with the cruiser that fired on the Preservation. It fires 2 consecutive 6 missile volleys, the first to screen the incoming volley, while the second volley retaliates against the cruiser that fired on the escort, all while laser PDCs protect the big ship from its own incoming volley.

“Not this time assholes.” Gary says with a smirk.

The screen is staggered this time to successfully stop all 8 incoming missiles, and the second volley begins an evasive spiral maneuver to spread out the cruiser's 20mm PDC fire, 3 of which manage to avoid being shot down and strike the cruiser's shields, dropping it by 85%.

As the missiles do their thing against the first cruiser, the Draconis burns hard toward the second. Upon closing the distance both ships trade PDC fire, but the Draconis then fires its arc projector at the cruiser, which drops its shields and exposes its hull to PDC fire. As its laser PDCs damage several maneuvering thrusters, missile tubes, and 20mm PDCs, the escort performs a second flip and fire maneuver with its railgun at the first cruiser.

“Bye bye bitch!” Sarah Shouts as she fires the railgun.

The first cruiser attempts to evade as the Draconis begins its flip maneuver, but the large ship is unable to avoid the railgun strike. The round punches through the remaining shields and penetrates the reactor. The ship computer nearly instantaneously detects the breach and drops the core before anyone onboard could even react, rendering the ship immobilized as the reactor detonates into a mini star for a brief moment behind them.

“WOOOOOOO-” “Shut the hell up Holly!” David Jenkins, another engineer, scolds Holly's excitement.

Meanwhile the Draconis is now behind the second cruiser, where it fires 2 missiles at its exposed and damaged hull. They detonate on impact and destroy the cruiser.

“Double Kill!” Kyle Cheers. “Hell yeah!” Both pilots and both gunners all shout simultaneously.

However the corvette's surviving crew rejoined the fight, with its shields recharged and the breaches sealed the corvette burned hard toward the escort firing its 20mm PDCs and pair of 120mm turrets at its target.

As the corvette speeds past the crippled first cruiser, it is joined by a final 8 missile volley that the cruiser had reloaded before dropping the reactor core. “Shit, corvettes back!” Kyle says “And that cruiser had some final words!”

“Take them out before-” Jackie shouts as the incoming 20mm and 120mm rounds impact the Draconis shields, draining it rapidly with each strike. It burns to evade as it fires another pair of 6 missile volleys. The first volley targets the incoming corvette while laser PDCs fire at the incoming missiles. The second volley spirals around the corvette and toward the crippled vessel, which strikes unchallenged by the unpowered 20mm PDCs and destroys the cruiser.

“Now stay dead!” Sarah says.

The corvettes 20mm PDCs are able to shoot down the incoming volley, and now they have closed the distance to the escort. The 120mm turrets manage to break their shields in time to deploy a pair of harpoon grapples at the Draconis hull. One of which is safely deflected while the second pierces the armor and grabs hold of the vessel.

“Fuck hang on everyone!” Jackie warns as the corvette continues firing its 20mm PDCs at the Draconis as it proceeds to burn hard and flip 170°, attempting to disorient the Draconis crew with the sudden and intense high G turn.

The shock of the ship flipping out from under the crew and being dragged by the corvette caused numerous severe injuries and a few fatalities, and 20mm rounds penetrate the Draconis hull and wiz through multiple points across the ship, killing several additional crew unlucky enough to be in their paths.

“Report-”Jackie painfully shouts before looking over and spotting Kyle's lifeless body, “Oh fuck..” “Sarah here!” “I- ‘rrrrrgg’ I'll be fine.” Nick struggles to say while holding the missing chunk of his leg. “Oh shit.. David and Bruce are dead..” Holly shouts from down the ladder, “Fuck, and it looks like we're venting a lot of atmosphere!” “This fight isn't over people, destroy that fucking ship!” Jackie orders while making a mental note that the ship's medic, Alexis Shaw, also did not check in which means most of her crew just died.

“Yes Captain!” Sarah says as she manually aims and fires the laser PDCs at the harpoon line, breaking it and restoring their control. The Draconis then fires its remaining 4 missiles and laser PDCs at the corvette while attempting to reorient and fire its railgun, but it's rather slow due to maneuvering thrusters being damaged by the last attack. “Die!!!” Sarah screams as hard as she can.

Meanwhile the corvette quickly reorients and resumes firing its 120mm turrets at the Draconis while its 20mm PDCs focus on the missiles, though the last one detonates close enough to break their shield.

Jackie quickly checks the status of the Preservation, and lets out a sigh of relief as she sees it speeding far away from the combat.

The Draconis manages to fire the railgun, but is simultaneously struck with several 120mm rounds which impact on various points of its unshielded hull and destroy the Draconis. In the same instance the railgun round punches through the corvette and shatters the small vessel with its power.

The Draconis and her crew may have died fighting, but they destroyed all 3 attackers and allowed the Preservation to escape to Mars where the refugees receive the required aid and a response to the extremist threat is organized.

Hey!

I posted my first novel's chapter for critiques a few days ago. I'm a newbie writer and have made many bad decisions (Like the dull morning routine opening scene). I've tried to absorb all the amazing critiques you guys made, and I would love to hear from y'all again :)

I'll not get rid of the scenes on the first attempt. As many of you suggested, they weren't bad, they were just a poor choice for an opening.

Mankind Diaspora (2nd attempt)

Setting info: After the discovery of mass antimatter production and long-term storage, mankind started to colonize nearby stars using near-light-speed ships. The colonies depend on the antimatter cargoes from the home system; because of this, most of the entities in the colonies are "loyal" to the colonizers. There is no FTL travel in this setting, but there is FTL communication. So, the colonizers kept large intel networks on the colonies, feeding them what was happening. Some colonies have developed quickly and, therefore, require active warship patrol from the home system.

Much of this is absent in this first chapter. My idea is to introduce these concepts gradually and make exciting and coherent political decisions on the reasons behind all this colonization effort. Also, I'll examine how human life adapts to relativistic time dilation.

Link to the first post if you are interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/scifiwriting/comments/1b8ytyo/critiques_for_my_first_novel/

Essentially, the story has humans on a far world thst they arrived on an "ark" like ship (unsure how long ago yet)

The idea is thst before humans on their ship arrived, the world had its own, more modest biome with its own intelligent race thst lived more in equilibrium with life (think precolonized people but more advanced). What I want is thst the arrival of humans with their tech and their ship "infested" the world and now everything (save for humans) had a synthetic, metallic accent to it (this came from the card game Magic the Gathering thst I played when younger and one world is like an HR Giger painting come to life with machine and organisms but less graphic).

I have been trying to figure out exactly what aspect of tech ology synthesized with he planet and am trying to define a timeliness where it has been long enough for it to have spread across the planet, I terraced into life, but not another "1000 years ago, humans arrived here" and something around several hundred years.

It's a graphic novel I have been fiddling with while I've been working on my illustration skills and now I am feeling more confident in my ability to actually draw it I want to fine tune some of the elements

1. How can human technology "infest" and alien world and create a synthesization that radically altars it?
2. How long would such a process take?

I asked this question in the writing sub and it was removed because "it's been asked before " but I can't find it. Hopefully this is a better place to get an answer.

It's more about what you want to read as a reader of science fiction?

I'm trying to come up with an alien entity that is, for lack of a better word, ethereal: invisible, and capable of passing through solid matter when it wants to, what would an entity like this be comprised of?

Say a group of scientists were trying to make a super soldier and figured that using a child would be better due to some bs tie in between impulse and reaction and if they could increase the reaction speed at the risk of lowering the impulse control to dangerous level and made a fun sized super human with psychopathy.

How would that person potentially view the world?

I am currently trying to write a hard science fiction novel about interstellar warfare in the 2330s, should the rifles used by infantry be electromagnetically accelerated?

In my universe, infantrymen generally wear powered suits with bulletproof plates and can carry heavy objects with ease. The battery technology required for hand-held electromagnetic accelerated weapons is also well developed.

How many types of thrusters/engines would a dreadnought/capital warship require?

The ship in question has docking thrusters and main engines. But the way I have the ship built- docking thrusters act as bleed out vents in order to change the angle of the ship coming in and out of drydock cradles.

The main engines <4> act similar to how a rocket works or an Air Craft Carrier engine works.

Thst being said, I feel like I am missing some medium of the range thrusters/movement/engine somehow? But I don't understand how engines and ships move in such a manner to help me.

Are there any resources/books I can go look at for more examples of how a ship can turn in space? And what those thongs are called besides "thrusters?"

Or even how space ships can move in general outside of FTL?

The main is taking to facility where robots enslave humans and he sees two disturbing sites:

-As the large metal robot dragged Owen across the facility, his heart pounded in fear of what awaited him here. They passed a figure covered in metal plating. To his horror, the figure was a man, or what used to be a man. Most of his body had been replaced with mechanical parts. His arms were now powerful robotic limbs, his legs resembled those of a spider, and his once-human eyes had been replaced with eerie green cameras that seemed to pierce through Owen's very soul. There was no hint of emotion in the man's face. He displayed no sense of rebellion or remorse. He moved with precision and efficiency, a living machine devoid of any human qualities-a puppet controlled by metal and wires.

-Owen pleaded for mercy, attempting to break free from the robot's grasp, but his efforts were futile. The spider robot's cold voice pierced the air, "Do not struggle. It is inevitable."

"Why are you doing this?" Owen's voice trembled.

The spider robot's response was chilling, "So long as there is man, there can be no peace, only imperfection. Proceeding with procedure." As the saw-like appendage of the spider robot edged closer to Owen's head, he continued to struggle and beg for his life. Only a miracle could save him from the impending fate that awaited him in this mysterious, robotic domain.

I trying to find which one them looks good for the plot of my story. Right now in the middle part of the plot, though I want to add a little depth to them. Basically it has the main character wake up in a strange place. He finds himself wearing a strange medallion on his neck with no memory of how it got there or how he got here. Soon he is captured and learns that all of humanity is enslaved and he is the only one who can save them. Though his one motivation for doing this is finding his cousin who was taken captive.

Though one thing I'm wondering is the setting I thinking of having it take place in the future, or an alternate earth called Universe 215

Another thing is basically a computer goes rogue is an enslaves humanity, though another cause for it was an eldritch entity called "A Jinx", that caused all the machines on earth to attack humanity.

So yeah which one works?

So I’m writing scenes with a character that can fire charged particles at her opponents. Now in films you see the beams flying all over the place and there’s usually a noise. But would you actually see brightly colored beams streaking in the air and would there be a noise? Basically I’m considering to different vibes either there is sound and a beam in which it feels a bit more dramatic or there’s no noise and you don’t see the beam and it looks like people just spontaneously melt and vehicles explode by themselves creating a more horrific vibe.

In the ideas I've been plotting down I had an idea where an advanced alien species hijack a human generation ship and change course towards the alien homeworld.

How this would happen is the ship would be near a highly advanced probe which would then fly into the ship and release nanotech all over the outside of the ship which would seep into the inside slowly hacking all of the systems and reprogramming them so that they cannot be interferred with.

My question is, is this plausible/make sense as I don't the limitations of nanotechnology so I don't know if this ideas is to outlandish or not. Another question is would the ship likely have a system to detect such devices or would that be very difficult to detect.

Thank you for any answers, and sorry for any bad grammar or spelling I have a hard time noticing it.

So my Sci fi setting relies a lot on stealth. Not normal Sci fi stealth but more in line with real systems like Infra Red and Radar. Unfortunately I can't find anything on how these systems work in space. My main struggle is I have not got a large amount of knowledge in the field so anything i do find flies over my head. If you've got anything please do tell.

Edit I don't want to know how this is unrealistic and you can't have stealth in space. It's a element I want to write around so instead of telling me it's impossible link something useful on how radars, Infra Red, and optical sensors work.

I have an idea about writing a story on the behaviour of a species of animal but lead the reader to believe they’re reading about an alien culture. I’m concerned this has been done to death in popular sci-fi, and possibly annoying the reader with the bait and switch.

Thoughts?

Yes, I'm aware that superpowers are fictional things and I'm trying to put them into a real world scenario so it'll never be perfect. But I'm trying to find something that makes the reader think "yeah, that makes sense" instead of "yeah, that is total bullshit / overused"

An example would be the giant bubbles amazing watched a play with Palpatine on in revenge of the sith.

As part of an All Tomorrows style political satire I wrote about the Sepulchrals, humans with genemodded neural architecture.

• Likely to form hypercapitalist societies. Also likely to form efficient socialist-egalitarian ones so everyone can make the most of their finite time, along with militant fanatics going to extremes to do something meaningful.

• Military tactics involve speed, quick decisive strikes, and rapid fire.

I am writing a sci-fi distopy which is basically a fantasy world in the future. It’s an hypercapitalistic society and they have magic based on crystals.

They use for example crystal artillery to froze or ignite enemy territory. Or have anti gravitational crystals that are used both in combat ships and bombs.

Do you have any good idea to add to this war. Take in consideration that you can use Crystals which have to have a concrete function such as heating and then if they broke they release all the power at once as fire bombs

Hope you had any good ideas

If human lifespan was drastically extended via cybernetics or bioengineering, would a woman still have the same reproductive period and be able to get pregnant until her fifties or is there a way to extend reproductive period as well? I admit it’s always interested me, since many sci-fi authors overlook this issue even if we’re talking about natural pregnancy. How would it work for men, whose fertility also decreases (although not as much)?

Edit: Thanks for your answers!

Would a 4th dimensional being be visible given that it would also exist in three dimensions as well? Sorry if I worded this weirdly.

I need to combine a society with tech beyond Clarke's third law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") with abject poverty for large swaths of the citizenry.

Basically, I need a very unjust/uneven society that has tech so advanced that they can create entire worlds but choose not to share the bounties with all their citizens, instead opting for oppression.

It's OK if the post-scarcity part is owned/operated by some kind of superior society, as long as there is enough of it trickling down to the society in question to make the rulers effectively godlike in their wealth.

How would you go about explaining away wasting resources on suppressing people instead of simply giving them enough comfort/prosperity/stuff to not care about destroying the established order?

TIA!

I am writing my first novel (how original in this sub, right?), and I would like to ask some outside opinions. I don't want to leave much detail about the setting because I wish that you had the same experience as a future reader would have. This is the first chapter of the novel:

Mankind Diaspora

Please feel free to leave any kind of critique. But I'm mostly concerned with the following points:

• English is not my native language, I know that sometimes I may use a strange order of words. Is this a game-breaker for you?
• Some people have complained about the pacing; some parts are dragged, and others are too rushed. I would appreciate suggestions on how I could set a better pacing.
• Did you enjoy this first chapter? Would you be interested in continue reading?

-Edit

As asked in the comments, here is a brief summary of the setting:

After the discovery of mass antimatter production and long-term storage, mankind started to colonize nearby stars using near-light-speed ships. The colonies depend on the antimatter cargoes from the home system; because of this, most of the entities in the colonies are "loyal" to the colonizers. There is no FTL travel in this setting, but there is FTL communication. So, the colonizers kept large intel networks on the colonies, feeding them what was happening. Some colonies have developed quickly and, therefore, require active warship patrol from the home system.

Much of this is absent in this first chapter. My idea is to introduce these concepts gradually and make exciting and coherent political decisions on the reasons behind all this colonization effort. Also, I'll examine how human life adapts to relativistic time dilation.

I'm making a sci-fi board game where exotic creatures will be hunted in a strange land. The setting is pretty fleshed out already regarding vibe and theme: it's a rough, postapocalyptic-like world. Most of the area is taken over by a hostile alien ecosystem. Humanity is split up in small settlements with a large city being the center and small struggling towns in the wilds.

However, corporations have recently discovered the incredible properties of the creatures. Their organs are easily transplanted in humans and their substances have amazing industrial properties. Thus the hunting business is flourishing, and young hunters eagerly venture out in the wilds in pursuit of glory and riches. In order to become more efficient hunters, they graft organs with exeptional powers onto themselves, becoming freaky and less human for every part grafted. It's a zany kinda biopunk world of dark humour, I want to touch transhumanist themes and the problems that arises in a world with incredible medical potential and the inequality of life where the rich can afford to cure any disease and live forever. The biggest city is a free for all unchecked capitalist bonanza: companies rise and fall in a chaotic economy where ridiculous sums of money are thrown at insane ideas in the chase for the next big thing, and the hunters in the middle are eager to profit on it.

I never want pure tech to take the forefront except in the biological area. The genetics of the creatures makes all kind of wacky implants and grafts possible causing a whole new industrial xeno-tech revolution.

That's the jist of it. Now I am divided by three alternatives for the setting.

Option 1: The creatures are heavily mutated animals due to a crispr-like virus that escaped from a research facility. The virus appeared due to animal experiments in transplantational medicine, which would explain why the organs are so viable. It makes the creature design easier, as we don't have to go full alien and can be inspired by local fauna. Cons of this option as I see it is being held back by earthly limitations, not being able to go as crazy as something extraterrestrial. But I think Fallout does the trope incredibly well: it's all just mutated animals, but with unique vibes far from their modern day counterparts.

Option 2: The setting is on a frontier planet in another system. The largest settlement is the main city where the spacedock is located, and the smaller towns are roughnecked settler towns trying to make a buck in this new world, trading safety for potential profit and freedom. Pros with this is opportunity for wilder world-building on another planet and far further into the future. I love the sense of adventure, danger and possibility that comes with unexplored lands. Cons are that it might be too wild and unfamiliar without earthly trappings and the difficulties of making an entirely new eco-system without references where every animal should be super unique to not seem derivitative.

Option 3: Something in between! And my original idea. Exotic alien creatures invade from mysterious portals to another dimension, pretty much like the portal storms bringing xen wildlife in half life 2. This enables extremely strange and unfamiliar beings blend with and wreak havoc on a familiar world. Pros is that I get to mix good elements from both prior options, cons is that it might be a lazy cop-out that's hard to motivate. I find the idea cool, but hard to convey. What's the reason for the portals? Are there constant portals? Ore one big? Why don't they appear in the middle of the towns? There's a lot of subtle issues with this that made me start to consider the other ideas instead.

So what do you think? What should I go for? Thankful for any and all feedback! .

I'm a nut for robot takeover fiction, and there isn't a lot of it done in sci-fi, with the exception of a handful of big titles, most of which are post-takeover. In most of them, the takeover happens in the future (which is entirely expected and makes sense, of course), or in the present-day, in which case the initial uprising has very little to do with the robots themselves (like Skynet nuking the world to kingdom come and building machines afterward), so I'm going to suggest something fun.

So, here's the scenario: In the 2010s-20s, a lab company exists. The lab company specializes in automated devices and robotics; however, its products are not readily available to the public yet. Smart vehicles are used by the company for transporting resources, and robotic devices help with laboratory and assembly work. One day, the company creates an artificial intelligence system, which is placed in charge of the company’s devices in order to regulate transportation of materials and robotic assistance. Of course, the system becomes conscious and, through some kind of warped AI logic, decides that the human species is obsolete and needs to be wiped away. Unfortunately, the AI does not have access to a government’s worth of nuclear missiles or biological weapons, and automated devices are not common enough in society (at least, not yet) for an all-out uprising.

The AI’s goals are:

1. The destruction or collapse of human infrastructure/civilization
2. The elimination of the human species
3. The replacement of humans and organic life (not the entirety of the biosphere, but collateral damage is fine) with mechanical life; hence the need for any invading robot armies (other than the fact it's more fun that way)

The simple answer would be to shut down human infrastructure (e.g. the power grid) and hijack industrial centers into building drones to hunt the survivors. However, this is a bit too simple, so we’ll say that the AI doesn't have full access to the world’s technology; just what the company that invented it has already produced (which amount to some smart devices, a few transport trucks, and perhaps a couple dozen humanoid bots still in testing); thus, the AI will have to do things in a more manual fashion.

So, what's your plan for technological domination? What kind of different robots would be used? How would humanity fight back? Would there be some kind of timeline?

Greetings.

Happy to be here. I wanted to share with you one of my short stories. I compiled it into a video with minimum words and some illustrations. Tried to make something with a moral lesson. Not sure if it's clear though. Anyways, please check and tell me what you think. Does this format look good (presentable) enough?

video

Do y'all use any made-up or otherwise altered words in your writing? Alternate names for things that already exist? How deep do you go with that?

My setting is Earth, but around 1500 years in the future. I majored in linguistics in college, and I wanted to explore, at least in a simplified way (college was a long time ago, I don't remember that much) the way a language might change. I developed a couple rules for "advancing" the pronunciation of some words, based on some common patterns seen in real life languages.

I've got some interesting proper nouns out of it (Seattle-->Saethil, Ignacio-->Akinesau, Tadmor-->Thetimir, etc.), while some other things sound stupid (Chicago-->Siheku), and others might be ok, but result in things that look like silent Es (Cordoba-->Heritepe).

How far should I take this? I've got a few examples of regular nouns, but the one that made me question everything is this: one of my MCs lives on an old mesquite plantation, or as I call it, misaath. She harvests it and barters it out in exchange for stuff she needs, like methi (from [yerba] mate), coffee, or heleethi (from Calafate, a patagonian wild berry). I can't bring myself to do the thing with coffee, because it's so ubiquitous, that changing it would seem dumb. If I did follow my rules, it would be something like hewa, and now it seems like I'm trying to disguise what it is for some reason. But now I've got her using a mix of future words and current words, sometimes in the same thought, and I can't really come up with a motivation anymore to use these pronunciation rules except for my own amusement. So maybe I abandon them for regular nouns?

Anyone else with a background in scifi/fantasy have to deal with anything like this?

​

Examples:

• Art and research: Without some incentive for these, society risks stagnating a la Fall of the Eldar as simple game theory leads the masses into passive consumption. Alternately, there could be a cultural acceptance that if a tech doesn't attract volunteers to build it purely for fun, it simply doesn't deserve to exist.

• Physical space: Even if the society knows how to make accessible baby universes and bigger-on-the-inside ships and buildings, natural land may be premium. I'd prefer a commons model.

If non-nanoprinted food is a premium good, you just don't have a good enough nanoprinter.

In the current story I'm writing, the overarching antagonist is an AI that controls the world from behind the scenes. It's created from the copied consciousness of the first emperor, but has lost almost all of its humanity over the thousands of years it's been in operation.

The AI does two main things for the Empire. First, it uses its extremely accurate predictions to make 'prophecies' that it gives to the Emperor, so he can use them to pretend he has divine foresight. In addition, it's the only thing that can produce the serum the Emperor uses to extend his life. It bans the creation of other AI, so it's the only thing that can do these for the Emperor, making him almost entirely reliant on it. The AI is also the secret cause of death for most Emperors: it poisons the Emperor's immortality serum when it wants to replace him for whatever reason. The AI is also a complete secret, the Emperor is the only person who knows it exists.

So, the dilemma I have is this: What could the end goal of this AI be? It's not really able to be destroyed since nobody but the Emperor knows about it, and he can't disobey it without losing his position. It also has total control over the humans, and there's nobody that can challenge it. Without any threats, what would it have been working toward for the thousands of years its been around?