Atlas Station has a population of 3 million and is one of the largest torus habitats that orbits Earth.

It
serves as the Empires premier gateway to space. Atlas is a vast torus 1.5 kilometers wide and 1.3
kilometers high, forming a wheel with a diameter of 12 kilometers. The interior is divided into 30 levels,
with the outer levels devoted to manufacturing, life support, raw material storage, and similar non-
public functions. The rest of the station consists of 20 levels of dwellings, shops, entertainment facilities,
and places of employment. Each level has a 45-meter ceiling and is carefully designed to feel relatively
open and airy. The innermost level has a 100-meter ceiling, lit by reflected sunlight. This area is a vast
semi-wild public park divided into three different biozones: a tropical rainforest, a tropical savanna, and
an open temperate forest with many lakes.

Codex:

Quantum Field Drive

The "jump drive", is a form of point-to-point hyperspace travel. A starship activates its jump field
generator while on a vector from one star to another, and the ship is propelled into hyperspace, through
which it travels (nearly) instantaneously on a ballistic trajectory and re-enters realspace within the gravity
well of the destination star. There are no "gates", but the jumping starship must be within the proper
outbound zone and have the correct velocity vector to escape from the originating star and to arrive safely
at the destination star.

Optimal jump points tend to be located at significant distance from the system primary, so after jumping,
the ship must travel through the normal space of the solar system (using conventional drives) before it
can reach the next jump point and jump again to the next star. Jump drive only works between adjacent
stars because the gravity wells are needed to govern the "pitch and catch" of the hyperspace transit. Other
stars' gravity will interfere with this ballistic hyperspace trajectory, so it's usually not possible to jump
"past" a nearby star to a more distant star. This effectively limits safe jump range to roughly 6-10 light
years, depending upon the density and mass of stars in the area.
Cortical Stack:

The cortical stack, or simply "stack" for short, is a specialized data storage device that contains a
continuously-updated digital copy of a person's memories, personality, and skills - known as an "ego."
Backups are updated by nanomachines that constantly map the neurons in the brain; on average a cortical
stack will be updated with a new backup over eighty-four thousand times per day. In the event of body-
death, a cortical stack can be retrieved from the corpse and the backup uploaded into another brain, a
process called "resleeving." The stack is normally implanted around where the spinal column meets the
brain stem.

The cortical stack is primarily intended for use as an emergency measure in case of unexpected death.
Creation of stored backups (in case of total loss of the body and stack) and controlled resleeving of an ego
to a new body typically occurs in special "ego clinics" using devices called "ego bridges." The user lies back
in a chair and rests their head in the bridge, which unfolds and molds itself around their head. Mapping
nanobots similar to those used by a cortical stack scan the brain and make a digital copy which is then
transferred to the target body, where more nanomachines alter the neural structure to match the
previous body. Creating a backup typically takes no more than ten minutes, which sleeving into a new
body altogether can take an hour or more.

An individual resleeving often experiences "continuity stress," the disassociation between their previous
body and the new one. This stress can be greatly increased by a faulty or prolonged resleeving process or
- in the case of body-death - remembering one's own demise. Many people have difficulty with becoming
accustomed to their bodies, particularly if it greatly differs from their original.

Morph:

"Morph" is the common term for human bodies that have been genetically modified from birth. The
majority of human bodies have undergone "genefixing" processes, where the genome has been screened
for hereditary diseases and had been optimized for a healthy lifespan. Many humans continue to use
these baseline "spliced" bodies and apply custom genetic or cybernetic augmentations. Others are born
into or sleeve into more unusual or specialized bodies.

"Menton" morphs are modified to possess greatly improved mental capacity. "Olympian" morphs with
greatly improved athletic capabilities such as endurance, coordination, and cardiovascular and muscular
functions. "Sylph" morphs are optimized for social situations, being modified with unusually attractive
features, elimination of unpleasant body odors, and adjustment of pheromones (with specific gene-mod
packages to target particular species). "Bouncers" are optimized for zero-gravity environments, with
limber legs, prehensile feet, and often additional limbs for grasping.

There are also more specialized morphs, which bear little resemblance to normal human body structures,
often designed for survival in extreme or inhospitable environments. A common example of this type is
the "surya" morph, a massive, radiation-resistant body that closely resembles a winged whale and is
designed to live and fly in dangerous environments like the upper cloud layers of gas giants or a solar
magnetosphere.

Military forces, by necessity, are largely made up of normal genefixed humans, but elite formations use
specialized military morphs.
Ego: The part of you that switches from body to body.

AKA ghost, soul, essence, spirit, persona.

Technology: Mesh

The "mesh" is the current outgrowth of the former internet, a massive decentralized array of wireless
electronic devices, radio transmitters, and sensor networks, all in constant communication. The vast
majority of the transmitters and network connections are so unobtrusive that they are typically built into
any device or object that could conceivably need to communicate, resulting in an endless array of
thousands or millions of nodes. Once an individual has entered a habitat or colony, they are usually
automatically connected to the mesh and everyone in the immediate area.

Meshes are difficult to lock down or disable, because of their decentralized nature. Individuals moving
through an environment with a mesh system are easily trackable without particular security
countermeasures to hide their presence. Infomorphs and virtual/artificial intelligences can easily track all
movement within a mesh system and maintain constant communications.

The mesh is used not only to maintain constant contact with local networks but also for emergency and
security reasons; if there is a danger, nearly everyone in the environment is made instantly aware via
emergency alerts. However, despite the mesh's prevalence, basic security procedure is typically observed.
Critical electronic systems such as weapons, life support, and power controls are isolated completely from
the mesh and require physical access.

The mesh is typical accessed through mesh inserts. These implants are grown in the brain via non-intrusive
nanosurgery. The processor, wireless transceiver, storage devices, and other components are directly
wired to the users cerebral neuronal cells and cortical centers responsible for language, speech, and visual
perception, among others. Thought-to-communication emulations (so-called transducing) enable the user
to control the implant just by thinking and to communicate without vocalizing. Input from the mesh-
inserts is transmitted directly into the brain and sometimes perceived as augmented reality, overlaid on
the users physical senses.

Egocasting:

In spite of being a spacefaring civilization with outposts throughout the solar system and beyond,
humanity makes scant use of spacecraft for interplanetary travel. Shuttlecraft using a variety of propulsion
systems makes regular trips between habitats, planetary surfaces, and moons. But for any trip longer than
1.5 million kilometersthe distance a fusion drive craft can cover in a daypeople egocast.
Formation of the One Empire

The One Empire traces it lineage back to the Federative Union of Sol,