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Description
From the sketchbook, ink (Mitsubishi liner), ca. 6,5x4 centimeters. Perspective and French curve practise.

A princess of the Hyperorian Aggregate musters the fleets and prepares to defend her home against a Confederate retaliatory incursion. She does so in the absence of her husband and sons, nearly a year of constant luxon conduction away at the frontline, and having borne no daughters to be by her side. But not alone. She is assisted by her oldest confidant, and alike her most prized heirloom: An Elektronika 2000, chassis type 44 customised as albino border collie, commissioned by her grandfather. His presence keeps her nerves unfrayed and, as much as she would never admit it, has more than once helped keep her regal composure intact over the years. She knows from own experience there is nothing false about the sense of security he brings...

It has been over thirty years, but she remembers as was it yesterday when as a young kit she was thrown by the running fowl she had begged her father for. Perhaps the bird was startled by her eagerness and the clumsiness of her commands, or perhaps he simply had a yet undetected violent streak to him, but whichever the reason from one moment to the next she was no longer in the saddle but launched helplessly through the air. Then in a bound no fleshy beast could ever have managed the robot collie was there with her, catching her by the tail and bracing her with his sturdy plastic body as they crashed through ferns and magnolias, headfirst meeting the hard ground below.
It happened so fast she had no chance to be afraid until she saw the sheer horror of her father, who at the first sign of a tear on his daughter's face had immediately barked an order to his adjutant, and with a purple flash and a gush of boiling blood and soot the traitorous bird saw the consequences for his last mistake. But the collie rose unsteadily, only taking the time to inspect that his nuclear vessel was intact before he knelt for his master, an arm limp and twisted by his side and ripped fur hanging from his limbs.
"I have harmed your property, my lord," said he with a laborous clicking in his words. "I await your discipline."
But the elder tod had done no such thing.
"Look closely and remember," her father had told her, indicating the wrecked robot. "This is courage. This is what you will reward."

This would be set in the ready room of a princely arcology somewhere among the rimward worlds of the Hyperorian Aggregate, around 45.000 light years from Sol. Even in the gilded age open air holographics are an engineering nightmare. Most factions do not use holographics for any kind of large scale display whatsoever, but the Aggregate clings to less complicated implementations of the technology for aesthetic reasons. Their preferred method of display is in an enclosed underfloor space, with a transparent floor pane as waveform interrupter. Such displays are normally manipulated with thimble controls.

The system map is - perhaps needless to say - not to scale in this scene. The issues which have plagued cartographers from the most ancient nautical charts to the most sophisticated intelligent displays remain open ended design problems, such as how to conveniently and coherently display relevant information to the user. At the settings shown here orbits (elliptics) are shown much narrower than actual size, planets (circles) larger than actual size, and fleet formations (polygons) vastly larger than actual size. In practice even at maximum effective dispersal few fleet formations even approach the volume of an Earth-like planet, and even during optimal alignment travel between planets at subluminal speed takes days or weeks.

EDIT: To clear up confusion, 2000 is not a distinct robot family like Z80 or P1-700. "2000" is the traditional designation for one-off designs officially produced by the Elektronika group, such as pathfinder models, testbeds and customisations. 2000 units are constructed around standard chassis types of extant families. The albino border collie modification seen here is likely built on a P1-499 base.

Description
From the sketchbook, ink (Mitsubishi liner), ca. 6,5x4 centimeters. Perspective and French curve practise.

A princess of the Hyperorian Aggregate musters the fleets and prepares to defend her home against a Confederate retaliatory incursion. She does so in the absence of her husband and sons, nearly a year of constant luxon conduction away at the frontline, and having borne no daughters to be by her side. But not alone. She is assisted by her oldest confidant, and alike her most prized heirloom: An Elektronika 2000, chassis type 44 customised as albino border collie, commissioned by her grandfather. His presence keeps her nerves unfrayed and, as much as she would never admit it, has more than once helped keep her regal composure intact over the years. She knows from own experience there is nothing false about the sense of security he brings...

It has been over thirty years, but she remembers as was it yesterday when as a young kit she was thrown by the running fowl she had begged her father for. Perhaps the bird was startled by her eagerness and the clumsiness of her commands, or perhaps he simply had a yet undetected violent streak to him, but whichever the reason from one moment to the next she was no longer in the saddle but launched helplessly through the air. Then in a bound no fleshy beast could ever have managed the robot collie was there with her, catching her by the tail and bracing her with his sturdy plastic body as they crashed through ferns and magnolias, headfirst meeting the hard ground below.
It happened so fast she had no chance to be afraid until she saw the sheer horror of her father, who at the first sign of a tear on his daughter's face had immediately barked an order to his adjutant, and with a purple flash and a gush of boiling blood and soot the traitorous bird saw the consequences for his last mistake. But the collie rose unsteadily, only taking the time to inspect that his nuclear vessel was intact before he knelt for his master, an arm limp and twisted by his side and ripped fur hanging from his limbs.
"I have harmed your property, my lord," said he with a laborous clicking in his words. "I await your discipline."
But the elder tod had done no such thing.
"Look closely and remember," her father had told her, indicating the wrecked robot. "This is courage. This is what you will reward."

This would be set in the ready room of a princely arcology somewhere among the rimward worlds of the Hyperorian Aggregate, around 45.000 light years from Sol. Even in the gilded age open air holographics are an engineering nightmare. Most factions do not use holographics for any kind of large scale display whatsoever, but the Aggregate clings to less complicated implementations of the technology for aesthetic reasons. Their preferred method of display is in an enclosed underfloor space, with a transparent floor pane as waveform interrupter. Such displays are normally manipulated with thimble controls.

The system map is - perhaps needless to say - not to scale in this scene. The issues which have plagued cartographers from the most ancient nautical charts to the most sophisticated intelligent displays remain open ended design problems, such as how to conveniently and coherently display relevant information to the user. At the settings shown here orbits (elliptics) are shown much narrower than actual size, planets (circles) larger than actual size, and fleet formations (polygons) vastly larger than actual size. In practice even at maximum effective dispersal few fleet formations even approach the volume of an Earth-like planet, and even during optimal alignment travel between planets at subluminal speed takes days or weeks.

EDIT: To clear up confusion, 2000 is not a distinct robot family like Z80 or P1-700. "2000" is the traditional designation for one-off designs officially produced by the Elektronika group, such as pathfinder models, testbeds and customisations. 2000 units are constructed around standard chassis types of extant families. The albino border collie modification seen here is likely built on a P1-499 base.