The shards screw with peoples heads and seek out conflict, on top of trauma the shards give you want you think you want in the worst possible way

So there is no using tinker tech to improve society medically or arcology building and farming and the environment because they are there to make things worse

Conflict is apparently more interesting to read about for most people than post bio/cyber soloar punk post scarcty still I want to read about it

Some think if it goes on like this it's not going to be any different than if aliens conquered/enslavevd humanity we'd be bred to be like dogs who genetically worship our masters as work/herd/guard/attack/lap/etc dogs

Survive-flight/eat/fight/mate THIS is who we are at our core we can't control our nature but we can control our actions

The Undersiders have been victims of corrupt and incompetent authorities

wow

Smaug is the best.

My only problem with this story is the idea of Dragon just abandoning Earth. She's pretty much the most heroic person in Worm who willingly sacrificed herself so a different version of herself could live life freely. And she fully knows that she's a significant presence in keeping the world from falling into chaos.

So I could see her joining the Polity. I could certainly see her wanting to move there after she's fixed things on Earth. I could even see her trying to arrange a planetary scale evacuation to the Polity. But flat out abandoning Earth? I can't see her doing that, even if the PRT openly sided with Saint in trying to kill her.

I would have expected her to mention something along those lines in one of the AI's viewpoint segments.

Subminds are dicks.

Yeah, this could be very, very bad. And just when things were looking up as well.

I wonder what the Undersiders will end up doing in the upcoming action.

Well, there's Eidolon's big secret (secret even from himself) revealed. What do you do with that information indeed?

Take care, good luck, stay safe, stay healthy, and I look forward to your next update.

Nice chapter, good work.

Finally an update! Love it and thumbs up!

The main character was rescued? I thought he was kidnapped by these people, and they were taking him to whoever hired them.

Also are these guys full aliens, first I thought they were like futuristic and highly modified humans.

So he's a pirate, but he didn't get his drives jailbroken, nor did he make sure that there was an airgap between his coms and his ship's hardware.

Yeah, Kramer is an idiot, and Geneva was _really_ stupid to marry him. But it sounds like 'young adulthood' lasts until about a hundred for humanity in the Polity setting, so I suppose it was the right time for her to make mistakes she could learn from.

Well, shit.

just reread this also. previously Taylor had asked for help. I was not expecting the Gambler's Ruin to show up.

woo hoo

Great work

Oh, Coil. You made the right call for all the wrong reasons. Noel, can lighting strike twice, is the question…

And, just in case things were getting too easy, a new challenger appears!

I quite enjoy this :D and I love Coil's mistaken interpretation of the chamo'd ship :p