Rare event that sees a common intellect elevated to the rank of heavenly Nephilim. Usually prompted by displays of supreme virtue.
A place on the Omninet. From a technical standpoint terms like zone or realm would be more adequate. Most users, however, donr’t have the patience to enter every world they stumble upon, preferring to cycle through bubble-sized collections instead. Hence the word has become firmly grounded in the digital consensus and any attempt at reform would be futile.
The name by which the renegade djinn have come to be known to all of digital kind. Presumably an amalgam of the three words cyber, AI, and Satan.
Term used by those on higher floors to categorize denizens of lower sections. Can be traced to the first towers in the Sudogwon area, whose lower levels are still composed of moving cubes. Sometimes exchanged for the equally insulting tunneler.
Chief Executive Intelligence: Label typically applied to the head of a corporate entity. Superseded the antiquated Executive Officer, as the fast-paced markets of the future call for AIs or ascended humans to manage businesses.
Technical term describing the (forbidden) act of exchanging one’s identity with someone else’s. Such tampering will lead to more than just a name change, providing the violator with a completely different online experience and thus (almost) transporting him/her/it to another world entirely. Known in the underworld as an act of invasion.
Word with flexible meaning. Most commonly describes the virtual turf an entity/institution has carved out for itself. Is also used in a narrower form, Character Domain, thereby specifying a human’s personal spot on the net.
Derogatory term used among the shadow guilds. Exact origins unclear but probably a reflection of the underworld’s social ladder. Those that shed most of their humanity attain the highest ranks among the dark djinn while new recruits often start as mere copies of their mortal selves.
Synonym for AI. Derived from the flip-flop circuits in ancient electronics and belittling in its use (not that the machines had the capacity to care, though).
Short for fuck blog. Refers to a region present in most domains, where the owner has uploaded a feed of his/her/its sexual exploits.
The (informal) name by which the Demon Hunters have become known among the civilian population, owing to the fact that the heads of neutralized criminals are often subjected to further analysis.
People with a fetish for human drones.
Improved Reality: Just your plain old reality but improved with virtual goodies!
People working in the news business.
Joint Venture Corps: the fabled private army of the allied megacorps and the bloody hammer that forged the new world.
Formal sovereign of a safe-bastion. Chosen on the basis of popularity and endowed with administrative and representative powers.
Leading figures in the Omninet sphere, adept at mesmerizing followers with the harmony and purity of their thoughts. Effectively serve as role models on how/what to think and thus control all kinds of trends.
Acronym of Neural Processing Unit. These circuits are the building blocks of modern WC technology. By linking NPUs together, the behavior of organic neural networks can be emulated.
The Optimized Civilization project: now bygone era that saw the great rallying of corporations to combat climate change and social injustice once and for all. Heralded the construction of the safe-bastions.
Common slur among tower folk. Initially described people not participating in online life (voluntarily or involuntarily) but got a negative spin sometime after Omninet access became a human right.
Dreamlike successor to the Internet consisting of interlinked worlds.
An expert (human or otherwise) on the hardware aspects of WC technology.
Mindfluencer subgroup focusing on political and sociological topics.
Cataclysmic PR event. Usually forces corporations to their knees and public figures into exile.
An application designed to “run” on human brainware. Can range from simple entertainment gimmicks to mind enhancements and complete “skill packages”.
Expression most common among students. A full curriculum up to the Grand Master stage will require participants to download tons of skill modules, many of which need additional hours of REM sleep for perfect integration.
World Companion: Collectively refers to the nanotech used to enhance human brains. Not to be confused with the abbreviation for water closet. (Even though the toilet industry reaped massive profits from this naming conflict.)
Mocking label applied to travelers from Earth. Despite having been subjected to extensive terraforming experiments, the Moon’s gravitational force is still below one g. The native inhabitants are accustomed to this environment, but foreign travelers tend to struggle. Those from humanity’s ancestral home, in particular, betray their origin through a clumsy, oftentimes erratic, gait.