Sandbox / The Harbo

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incredibly complex password

Data: Computer, establish a security code for access to all functions previously transferred to Bridge.

Computer: Enter code.

Data: One seven three four six seven three two one four seven six Charlie three two seven eight nine seven seven seven six four three Tango seven three two Victor seven three one one seven eight eight eight seven three two four seven six seven eight nine seven six four three seven six. Lock.

— Data makes damn sure no one but him has access to the Enterprise's computers, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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In today's world, passwords for anything are usually stored with one-way encryption in databases; authorisation is not granted by decrypting the stored password, but by encrypting the password given during a log-on attempt using the same method as the stored password was, then comparing the result with what is stored in the database.

This means it is nigh impossible to 'decipher' a password if you have somehow obtained access to the database it is stored on. It's possible, but very difficult.

As a result, today's focus has shifted from computational security, to making sure the password cannot be easily replicated by a would be attacker. You no doubt know what sort of requirements that usually manifests as when creating a password.

• X amount of characters
• Upper and lowercase
• Numbers
• Symbols
• Usually not allowing certain kinds of common passwords

All to ensure that it cannot be guessed, brute forced, or stolen - though ironically, the latter is sometimes facilitated by these security requirements forcing people incapable of remembering their — sometimes demanded to be regularily changed — passwords to write them down.

But some in fiction take this too far. They use passwords that makes one wonder how the hell do they even remember them off the top of their head? Because they are never seen using a password manager.

Viridia

Viridia is a story written by Jacob Harbo seeking to provide a glimpse into the future of humanity and what it means to be human 500 years from now. It is a story of Audience Surrogate Alandra, a clone of the woman sharing her name who lived and died somewhere in northern Europe during the 21st century, and whose genetic material and personality served to mark her out as being suited for colony life.

But the clone that awakes from her cloning pod with a simulacrum of Alandra's life and experiences is not Alandra. She shares her name, much of her genetic material, and is educated in the 26th century equivalent of her own occupation, but she does not recall her progenitor's life.Set to colonize the titular world in the Alioth system alongside thousands of other clones and the colony's autells, she finds herself thrust into the world of the 26th century with an understanding of the technology, but a cultural latency given her approximated 21st century upbringing and has to make a new life for herself.

But as she struggles with integrating herself into this strange new world on a world that would have killed her progenitor simply by virtue of having too much oxygen and finding her own place on this new world, humanity is also studying the world.Because a world like Viridia should not exist orbiting around a star like Alioth. It shouldn't even have cooled from planetary formation. Viridia doesn't make sense to the human understanding of the universe.

And as Viridia will soon reveal, it has secrets of its own, and it is under no obligation to make sense to the aliens from beyond the stars.

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Tropes found on (and in) Viridia:

• The Ageless: Every single human at the time of the 26th century. No one dies of natural causes due to advances in genetics research, but they are just as vulnerable to other kinds of injury, even if medical sciences have advanced to the point of (re)growing limbs and organs.
• A.I.-cronym:
  • Implied to be Defied with the Autells: Their names are written in All Caps and range from the names of the mythological, to the historical, to concepts. But no one in-universe even considers asking whether their names are acronyms or what they might be acronyms for. It might simply be an remnant from when they weren't considered sapient.
  • "Autell" itself used to be short for Authorized Intelligence, but when their sapience was recognized, it was retrofitted into meaning Authentic Intelligence.
• Artificial Intelligence: Numerous different kinds exists.
  • Nearly every system used by the colonists are controlled by artificial intelligence, with algorithms learning and adapting to suit the needs and schedules of those using them.
  • This aside, the colony is also home to four autells^note Authentic Intelligences", who are every bit as sapient as the humans who made them, though the story stresses that this does not mean they are equivalent: in particular, the autells struggle with defining purposes of their own, inherently putting no more value in assuming control of the world than they do becoming Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving. Having humans around to give them purpose is thus an immense boon to them, and allows them to bring their unwavering focus and unbridled computational power to bear: they do not get tired, they do not get bored, and they operate at a pace that allows them to more or less function as overseers to every other artificial intelligence used by the colony, ensuring they stay within parameters.
  • Notably, it is implied the reason autell exist is that at some point in humanity's past (and our future) something went wrong with unregulated AI. It is never expanded upon, but the cybernetic age seemed to die with it, which is the reason that very few people are what we would recognize as Cyborgs in the 26th century, and AI are limited to single-system operation, overseen by the autell.
• Asteroid Miners: This is how the colony acquires the resources to construct the Warp Gate and the colony itself - these mining operations are also how the material necessary for biological synthesis and cloning aboard the Argo was obtained, as the vessel didn't carry the large amounts of water necessary for the task - it was mined from comets in-system.
• Big Damn Heroes: VIGIL isn't going to let a little thing like the ground get in the way of rescuing Verrire from grinders closing in. When he recieves a ping from below ground, he uses it to locate her, turns his drone's turrets downward, starts blasting, digs a hole into the tunnel system, and immediately grabs the attention of all three grinders closing in on Verrire. He then proceeds to have the drone fire wildly at its surroundings to draw attention to itself, before luring the grinders away and setting the drone to self destruct. We don't see the aftermath, but the grinders don't show up again afterward.
• Boldly Coming: Kathryn gives this as a justification for why she is willing to have sex with Alandra despite having displayed no interest in her before - the viridine physiology is triggering all of her xenophilia. Notably, the time they spend together while playing up her otherworldly appearance and physicality makes Alandra realize that trying to cling to her humanity when she has been given the opportunity to discover what it means to be unburdened by human standards feels wrong, and it marks her first step towards becoming Verrire mentally.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Viridia should not exist in its present ecological state given the stellar timescale Alioth is working on. There's obviously more to it than meets the eye, and even though the "Alien Terraforming" theory remains an unproven theory by the end, even the administration is taking steps towards preparing the nation for when, not if, sapient alien life is encountered.
  • Alandra mentions in the early chapters that even VIGIL's reconnaissance drones have enough power in their fusion generators to vapourize a small lake. Water is one of the most energy dense materials known to occur in nature - meaning VIGIL's drones aren't going to let a little thing like meters of soil get in their way. And it also functions as a handy Taking You with Me move.
  • The pheromones of the pantheus infected are repeatedly mentioned to be exceedingly complex. Through them, a gestalt consciousness has formed on Viridia.
• Colony Ship: The Argo, though unlike most examples it doesn't carry the colonists - it carries only The Administrative Council and the autells necessary to conduct initial scans of the system, set up mining operations for ressources, which allows construction and hydroponics to begin, which - combined with the mining operations - provides all the necessary ingredients for cloning and colonization to begin only once the ship has arrived. For its entire voyage, the Argo was little more than a Ghost Ship gliding through space at near-relativistic speeds. Now that it has arrived, it functions as cloning bay, mining operation headquarters, home of the administrative council, and the idea is that it eventually will be expanded into the moon-sized warpgate megastructure.
• Cutting the Knot: VIGIL detects a ping from Verrire's armband, but she's meters below ground with no obvious opening for his drone to get to her, and there are Grinders closing in on her location. His solution? Put all that foreshadowed power of his drones to use and dig straight down, melting and vapourizing the ground beneath the drone until he reaches the tunnel system.
• Everyone Is Bi: No, they are not. Despite gender having lost just about all relevance to humanity in the 26th century, people still have physical preferences - some are attracted to the masculine, some to the feminine, and some find themselves surprised by what they are attracted to.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Downplayed: Humanity has only figured out one way to breach the lightspeed barrier; by connecting sets of warpgates and warping the fabric space between them. The downsides of this is that you need a warpgate at your destination, and thus such warp gates need to be created by colonies which have been established by going at close-to-light-speed the first time around. Warp Gates also need to handle vast amounts of radiation, which influences their size and means they aren't exactly transportable.
• Feel No Pain: While under the effects of the Red Ring protocol, Verrire gets a good part of her tail torn off and sears her wrist by continuously firing her overcharged survival laser. She notes the feeling of the tail being gone, and the smell of burnt flesh in her nostrils, but the pain is absent completely.
• Hearing Voices: Alandra begins to hear them after her melding. It turns out that they are not the pantheus that has taken over her body - but rather her formerly subconscious mind, having had its unity with the rest of her mind interrupted by the melding.
• Heroic RRoD: The name of the Red Ring protocol activated by VIGIL seems to imply this is the end result of its effects upon the body. And if Simone's outburst is anything to go by once Verrire contacts her following the escape from below-ground, it's only thanks to humanity's biological expertise and the resilience of viridine biology that Verrire isn't in mortal peril following its deactivation.
• Nature Is Not Nice:
  • Thanks to the pantheus and the prodigious amount of energy on Viridia, evolution has been running in high-gear, providing numerous ways to kill the unprepared. Humanity gets around this by spreading the pheromones of the local apex predator around the places they want to settle: the predators stay away from a rival pack, and all their prey avoid the areas too.
  • The Pantheus-infected are beset by instinctual urges which drive them towards becoming an unfettered part of nature. Sapient beings are capable of resisting these urges to greater or lesser extents, but as shown throughout the story, it doesn't take a lot for them to discard the veneer of civility and give into survival instincts - and they are lethal combattants, even when unarmed.
  • Even the Pantheus Infected, while they are adapted to life on Viridia, are not atop the food chain. Iolanna and her crew suffered Dwindling Party to the numerous dangers in the underground, and by the time they are rescued there's four of them left.
• No Antagonist: Despite several Red Herrings, no antagonist ever manifests.
  • Councillor Harbrook is initially set up as the guy to beat following the bioclasm, but his influence is limited to being a minority in diplomatic votes, leaving the conflict of the story wholly on the socio-political disruption of the bioclasm.
  • Alandra believes The Pantheus to be one as it exerts more and more influence upon her, up until it actively takes control of her - but the more she thinks about it, and the more time passes, it becomes clear the Pantheus only acted to protect her, and they slowly build a rapport that isn't antagonistic.
  • In the latter parts of the book, the grinders serve as direct obstacles in that they are feral creatures who really hate anything producing surface pheromones, but beyond the danger they pose.. they really don't have any beef with the protagonists. They are predators seeking prey, a part of the world like so many other creatures.
• Outside-Context Problem: Surprisingly, not humanity itself. Viridia's first Bioclasm is a resounding success for the gestalt, proving that the aliens from beyond the stars are susceptible. Instead, the he colony's craft and structures themselves serve as an example for Viridia's pantheus gestalt. The former category because they move at incredible speeds yet are not alive and thus no vulnerable to infection, but their number is only increasing and they are proliferating rapidly, the other is a fungal-based structure that is just close enough to be alive that the gestalt considers them viable infection candidates - but they are simply dead structures and thus cannot host the symbiote - and their number is increasing too.
• What Measure Is a Human?: Alandra is hit with this more of less the moment she starts talking to BASTET aboard the ago - with humanity's genetic engineering having spawned untold diversification, from what she recognizes as harpies to merfolk still being considered 'human'. It takes her a long time to internalize that her notion of humanity is no longer compatible with what is before her, and when she is infected by the pantheus symbiote and has to come to grips with her new alien physiology, she eventually recognizes that trying to hold onto her notion of humanity is ultimately pointless; it doesn't matter what you are, so long as you are sapient.
• Single-Biome Planet: Downplayed - The titular Viridia is predominantly tropical, though it is by no means uniformly so. Mountain ranges soar skyward, and there are pockets of desertification to be found in their downwind sides. This aside, nearly 80% of its surface is covered in water.
• The Symbiote: The Pantheus is an example of mutualism. It gets a host, the host gets adaptations allowing them to better survive and procreate on Viridia, and that was before it bonded with a sapient.
• Solarpunk: Five centuries into the future, humanity has access to fusion power so robust that you can simply feed the reactors ocean-grade water, and they have miniaturized this technology enough that even VIGIL's drones are powered by it: Alandra at one point posits that a single drone houses enough fusion power to vaporize a small lake.
  • Climate change is implied to have been solved back on Earth after a period of bumpiness as humanity cleaned up after itself in the latter part of the 21st and early 22nd centuries, and the advances in genetics since then have led to people living healthier, ageless lives.
  • The Administrative Council has enforced this as a concept during the colony's foundation: they are committed to leaving as little an impact as possible on the world while still allowing humanity to thrive, building hexagonal spires to limit the footprint of construction, either growing the material necessary or mining it from asteroids.
  • Even when the reason behind the increasingly severe gestalt-responses to humanity is revealed, it is not because humanity itself is a disruptive influence on Viridia, but rather because humanity's structures and crafts are causing a bit of a Logic Bomb in Viridia's gestalt.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The Grinder encountered below ground really hates surface pheromones, and short of lethal danger it will keep pursuing.
• Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Life on Viridia has at least six limbs rather than four. and if you have less than six, the Pantheus makes sure you get them once it has bonded with you.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Alongside the advances in genetic engineering removing all kinds of genetic defects, the wristbands worn by humans in the setting also include constant biomonitoring by way of nanomachines - allowing the wristband to micromanage the human body and nip any illnesses in the bud before they become noticeable. More advanced systems also exist to deal with major physical injuries, and humanity has seemingly removed the faults in the genetic code that causes ageing in the first place.