Synesthesia Beacon

Synesthesia Beacon
Type	Lore

Synesthesia Beacon, also known as telepathy beacon, is a machine translation device made by Elias Salas and later signed over to the Synesthesia School of the Intelligentsia Guild. It is an injectable implant.

Description

From the moment civilizations started exploring the cosmos, they have been set into a dilemma between ceaseless conflict and desirous of communication, though conflict is also a form of communication. Instead of resorting to the violent carnage and loss of warfare, people crave more to surpass language barriers and reach a mutually beneficial understanding. Therefore, humanity started an endless pursuit toward the accurate translation of languages.

However, the problem of linguistic information losing its accuracy and becoming muddled between different writing systems seemed unconquerable. According to records, the IPC once created a Translation Dictionary that contained languages from nearly six thousand civilizations, but this could not be used in practice due to the huge size of the searchable database. What was even more troubling is that languages are living entities. As civilizations advanced, new phrases and slang grew rapidly, making translation exponentially harder. The Riddlers were also interfering with languages, making communication between planetary systems even more challenging.

After many years, the deceptively simple issue of "translation" was finally solved by Elias Salas, the 56th member of the Genius Society. Elias Salas proposed the following hypothesis to make communication between geniuses easier.

"The thought processes of intelligent creatures are mostly represented via inner language, just like how people would subconsciously read to themselves when looking at words and form thoughts that way.

If we can skip that step of information transmission and instead link up our consciousness, convert the codes of our inner language, then let the receiver's language processing system analyze and restore that information, then we will have no barriers in communication."

— A Manuscript on Thoughts Regarding the Art of Communication, Prologue, by Elias Salas

That was how Elias Salas created the first pair of Synesthesia Beacon prototypes. Regrettably, language was not the only communication barrier between geniuses. There was also arrogance. The members of the Society ignored his invention, and this brilliant piece of engineering marvel was forgotten for centuries.

However, the invisible restrictions of language continued to frustrate the Interastral Peace Corporation. They issued an irrefutable ultimatum to the Intelligentsia Guild, which they themselves funded. The scholars modified and labored amongst ancient manuscripts, and finally re-created the Synesthesia Beacons. The age of interstellar communication finally began.

Nowadays, the Synesthesia Beacon is the fundamental technology of all intelligent lifeforms in the cosmos. With just one injection that embeds the beacon in your central nervous system, you would be able to understand an alien language from the furthest star as if it was your native tongue.

Unfortunately, the cosmos did not become peaceful with a universal language. On the contrary, there were even more conflicts. When people could understand each other's language but had very diverse standards in life, countless fights started to erupt between groups with different outlooks. Parties sought to surpass each other, and races eagerly planned to hunt each other down. Neither Elias Salas nor the Intelligentsia Guild had predicted this outcome.

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Data Bank, Terms

Overview

The Beacon facilitate communication between intelligent creatures by connecting their consciousness and directly transferring an individual's thoughts into a language the receiver could understand, bypassing traditional communication. It can not only translate languages and scripts, but also nonverbal signals such as "all body movements, flash signals, sound vibrations, or the change in odor molecules". The IPC used the Synesthesia Beacon to build "a giant database, storing the speech and vocabulary of almost a hundred million languages."

History

The first Beacon was invented by Elias Salas to better conduct intergalactic exploration and encourage communication between members of the Genius Society. This technology was not disclosed to the public until Elias Salas signed the ownership of the Beacons to the Intelligentsia Guild, which was then later reproduced by them.

However, it has also been mentioned that the Synesthesia Beacon has been invented during the era of the Borderstar Trade War, in which the most recent member was Rubert I, the 27th member of the Genius Society, bringing up contradictions. Telora Farnsha gave up memoria-based technology and had to give way to the invention of the Beacon.

Boothill received a Synesthesia Beacon, though he believes that someone at the IPC sabotaged his due to his frequent swearing, often resulting in him speaking awkwardly whenever he attempts to do so, coining phrases such as "son of a nice lady", "fudge" and "forker."