Glossary for DESCENDING ROAD

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vac-e: a starship announcement abbreviation for a vacuum emergency, usually referring to a sudden loss of air pressure and the resulting trauma to an unprotected person.

vader: a retro slang term for ‘father’. Its use began with andros, vat-grown, who feared the people outside their growth vats. Their fear climaxed at the moment when they were first removed fully-grown from the tanks, and confronted with life in the City. The first person they encountered, human and incapable of meeting them in innerspace, they called ‘vad’. Like ‘mader', the term found favor with young streetboys and streetgirls, who gave the pronunciation a twist that brought in echoes of the Archive records of ancient Earth.

van: van, vans: an enclosed wheeled vehicle, powered by hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells, used for carrying people and freight.

vanuass: an andro name for a color in the five-octave andro color spectrum. vanuass is in the near ultraviolet range (187-375 nm), and its name refers to a multiple of the human color red. In relation to neighboring colors in a musical scale with red at A, this would be A. From tabular data: vanuass is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vanuass is in the Near Ultraviolet (187-375 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vanuass equates to a musical A, and is in the same place in the octave as Red. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES. From tabular data for “vanuass": vanuass is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vanuass is in the Near Ultraviolet (187-375 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vanuass equates to a musical A, and is in the same place in the octave as Red. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES.

vapor: be vapor, I’m vapor, vapor: v.i., to disappear immediately.

Varnell: an andro woman, partner of Martin.

vat: vat, vats: term for the tanks for immersion of humans and andros when regenerating tissues and organs. Also used for the huge tanks used for growing andros from fertilized eggs.

Vatatzes: n., a Byzantine emperor of ancient Earth, John III Ducas Vatatzes, of Nicaea.

VeeVee: little street girl.

veinfinder: an emergency medical device used to locate and stabilize a subcutaneous blood vessel so that a worker can probe the bloodstream to insert chemicals or take samples.

Vellia: an andro miner with genes for healing secretions and sensitivities, friend of Shuramis.

Vernam: in cryptography, the infamous one-time pad, an unbreakable cryptosystem that is also, unfortunately, unusable in most practical situations due to the need to distribute a single-use key as long as the message it encrypts. Distributing the key is therefore just as difficult as sending the message itself. Since two separate transmission channels must be used, the likelihood of discovery of a transmission is no worse than the likelihood of finding the easier-to-find of the two channels.

vibro: describing a special feature of the type of knife called a shiver. A shiver blade with a vibro edge oscillates circularly in the plane of the blade, at rates controlled by the tightness of the user’s grip. A shiver with a vibro blade can be used to cut meat, or slice through almost anything except cryssteel.

viewfield: the visual display area of a battle helm. The edges of this field are squeezed to give the wearer a sense of what is beyond normal peripheral vision; sensations originating behind the wearer’s head are displayed in flickering outline with colors opposite those of the forward-vision display.

viewscreen: viewscreen, viewscreens: flat display devices. Some date from antiquity, and are guarded carefully at the University; these provide access to the world archives. Others are simply cheap substitutes for the holographic and relief-holographic displays in common use.

viewtank: a three-dimensional visualization tool, being a large tank of fluid containing a transparent liquid matrix. Pixels of the matrix are activated by coherent infrared signals from points in the containing vessel in all three dimensions, creating full-color translucent displays in a scale large enough to let them challenge full eye resolution.

Vince: Vince Carlino, starship officer

Vince Carlino: an officer aboard the starship Tompuso.

VingZero: a smaller space-exploration combine based in the Caucasus.

Vintarri: one of Marra‘s early suitors.

virals: a term for certain molecular metal matrices capable of spreading their organization throughout a semi-molten alloy.

Virdiando: a former partner of Ti’Ann, when they both labored in the Transellas mines.

viridian: a dark bluish-green color. In sky images of terrestrial surfaces, often indicative of the presence of coniferous forests.

viro: a viruslike gene transform used for cosmetic and entertainment purposes.

viroid: viroid, viroids: a scaled-down virus, something between a virus and a prion in complexity, which causes various forms of illness. Viroids are reputed to be fragmentary leftovers from the Genedriver Plague.

Virrani: daughter of Tiurin, a farmer.

Visitor: the farther of the world’s two moons. It has an extremely high albedo in some areas, but is sufficiently far from the world to require telescopic viewing to discern its surface features, some of which seem unusually regular. It has many names among the colls.

Visitor Calendar: not generally known, although it is reputed to be used to mark shifts of social power over long spans of years. One Visitor month takes very close to six Moon, or Lulith, months. The Visitor Calendar is a closely-kept secret of three of the colls: Arcus, Fandarinn, and Kai Ren Hau. All colls have their own names for both the Visitor and its calendar.

vizaZK: viza+, vizaZK: an andro name for a color in the five-octave andro color spectrum. vizaZK is in the far ultraviolet range (95-187 nm), and its name refers to a multiple of the human color blue-violet. In relation to neighboring colors in a musical scale with red at A, this would be F sharp or G flat. Pronunciation of sounds written as SR (*) or ZK (+) as spoken in anjive is described briefly in Andro Notes. From tabular data: vizaZK is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vizaZK is in the Far Ultraviolet (95-187 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vizaZK equates to a musical F#, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Violet. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES. From tabular data for “vizaZK": vizaZK is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vizaZK is in the Far Ultraviolet (95-187 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vizaZK equates to a musical F#, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Violet. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES.

VLBI: very-long-baseline interferometry, the technique of increasing telescope resolution by placing multiple telescopes far apart and correlating their signals accurately. The resulting imaging can rival that obtainable by having one telescope of an aperture similar to that of the distance between the two small telescopes.

vuzmin: an andro name for a color in the five-octave andro color spectrum. vuzmin is in the near ultraviolet range (187-375 nm), and its name refers to a multiple of the human color blue-violet. In relation to neighboring colors in a musical scale with red at A, this would be F sharp or G flat. From tabular data: vuzmin is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vuzmin is in the Near Ultraviolet (187-375 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vuzmin equates to a musical F#, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Violet. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES. From tabular data for “vuzmin": vuzmin is the name of a color in the spectrum visible to andros. vuzmin is in the Near Ultraviolet (187-375 nm). In the five ‘octaves’ of the andro color spectrum, vuzmin equates to a musical F#, and is in the same place in the octave as Blue-Violet. More information is available in the reference table titled ANDRO COLOR NAMES.

Vzitain: the name, in CLang, of the fourteenth month of the Lulith Calendar. From tabular data: Vzitain is month number 14 in the 14-month Moon Calendar. You can find all the month names in the reference table titled MOON CALENDAR MONTH NAMES. From tabular data for “Vzitain": Vzitain is month number 14 in the 14-month Moon Calendar. You can find all the month names in the reference table titled MOON CALENDAR MONTH NAMES.