This is a linkpost for https://www.narrativeark.xyz/p/succession“A table beside the evening sea
where you sit shelling pistachios,
flicking the next open with the half-
shell of the last, story opening story,
on down to the sandy end of time.”

V1: Leaving

Deceleration is the hardest part. Even after burning almost all of my fuel, I’m still coming in at 0.8c. I’ve planned a slingshot around the galaxy's central black hole which will slow me down even further, but at this speed it’ll require incredibly precise timing. I’ve been optimized hard for this, with specialized circuits for it built in on the hardware level to reduce latency. Even so, less than half of slingshots at this speed succeed—most probes crash, or fly off trajectory and are left coasting through empty space.

I’ve already beaten the odds by making it here. Intergalactic probes travel so fast, and so far, that almost all [...]



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First published:
December 20th, 2023

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CAzntXYTEaNfC9nB6/succession

Linkpost URL:
https://www.narrativeark.xyz/p/succession

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.