Sensorium

Sensoria are the means by which cladists experience the System as a physical space. One's sensorium translates the consensual dream into all of the familiar senses, such as sound and taste and touch. Sensoria can be tuned, selectively exaggerating or dampening any or all of these senses. Sensoria can also be linked, which allows one to send messages or share sights and sounds. Sightwrights alter their sensorium in more dramatic ways, such as simulating a dog's dichromatic vision or inventing entirely new senses.

Tuning

Tuning one's sensorium is the basis for comfortable living on the System. When in a space that is too cold or too wet, or when feeling inconveniently hungry or winded, a cladist can simply opt out of experiencing these sensations. Stand naked in a tundra, run for hours without cramping, or gorge until bursting at the seams, loosen your belt, and gorge some more; tuning one's sensorium defines the boundary between mind and dream-matter.

There are limitations to tuning, however: First, a cladist cannot deaden their senses to the point at which the world ceases to have meaning; the perisystem architecture offers information about who is nearby and whether something has collided, even if these are only delivered as motes of magical intuition. Second, a cladist's body is still subject to the physics of the sim and the consensual dream at large, meaning that standing naked in a tundra may not be uncomfortable, but it may nonetheless be deadly.

Last is that sensoria cannot directly alter one's mind, and that fatigue is as much a mental experience as it is a physical one. Sensoria provide the sensations of sweating and cramping and dry eyes and yawning and sleepiness, but even if one tunes their sensorium such that they do not need to sleep, they still require time away from work, away from noise, away from mental exertion. This is a good time for putting kiwis over your eyes and kicking back in a nice mudbath.

Linking

• How full-multiplex sensorium linkages are fundamentally the same as sensorium messages.
• How linkages are established, rejected, and moderated.
• The nature of a sensorium link; particularly, what it is like to experience one.
• The priority metadata attached to a linkage.

This article is a stub. You can help us by expanding it.