=Kiviuq= 
**Posted by:** Sakti Wakashi, Firewall Proxy <__Info__ __Msg__ __Rep__>
Kiviuq is a small irregular moon, only 16 kilometers across, on a far orbit, around 110 million kilometers from [[Saturn]].
==Kiviuq Monastary== 
**Station Type:** [[Beehives|Beehive]]
**Allegiance:** Independent
**Primary Languages:** Greek, Russian
**Population:** 50
Out in the big black empty, more than three times further away than the next closest moon, there’s a whole lot of peace and not a lot else. I suppose that it makes sense that someplace this isolated would attract mystics and ascetics, and that’s exactly what happened. Out here, Saturn is about the same size a full moon on [[Earth]] used to be, and the [[Sol|sun]] only provides fairly dim light. Most of what you see is light years away, with the occasional dot of a moon moving past your ﬁeld of vision.
The rules of Kiviuq are clear and simple: to be allowed to visit, you need a [[Morphs|morph]] that can handle vacuum and the cold for several hours and you need to be willing to help out in the common buildings. There are only a little more than a thousand people here, and they’re about evenly divided between synths and bios. Everyone sleeps and eats, for those that eat, in a single large common building, and everyone helps with the upkeep and maintenance, which is easy and takes very little time. In their off time, residents and visitors can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t disturb anyone else. There are no celibacy vows or any sort of similar restrictions. However, for 10 hours a day, everyone is expected to go outside and contemplate the universe in silence. Everyone goes out and comes in together, but once outside you’re free to do whatever you feel like. The only limitation is that all mesh signals are blocked outside, so you’re not going to spend this time losing yourself in a vid game.
Some people just sit and stare at the stars, others walk or perform various moving meditations, including everything from yoga to tai chi to weird movements I’ve never encountered anywhere else. Everyone is free to interact with the inﬁnite in whatever way they see ﬁt. Also, once everyone comes in, it is common for many small discussion to start up on what people thought or experienced. Locals mostly refrain from heated theological arguments, but the discussions can be both intense and fascinating—if you’re into that sort of thing.
The monks welcome tourists, but expect them to abide by all of the local rules. What recently generated interest in Kiviuq, however, is the neutrino telescope. Several of the mystics here wanted to listen to the universe, and so they built a large neutrino telescope to commune with “the hearts of stars,” whatever that means. This neutrino telescope is speciﬁcally designed to listen in on neutrino sources outside the solar system, with electronics that ﬁlter out anything coming from inside the orbit of Saturn. They also constructed other neutrino receivers on four of Saturn’s more distant moons, so now they have the second largest neutrino telescope array in the solar system. Not bad for a team of a few dozen monks. They even got special dispensation to “listen” to the data from all of the telescopes when they’re outside. 
While this was only news of passing interest to the mesh, the bigger controversy came a few weeks later, when one of these monks claimed to hear some sort of language in the neutrino ﬂux that they received. Her name is Mirella Kouri, and she is certain that someone out there is saying something. She’s having trouble ﬁguring out the basic concepts, and believes that she’s either uncovered some sort of divine message or something exceptionally alien, and she’s started to gather a bit of a following. None of the software the other monks have let crunch the neutrino data has found anything resembling language or other consistent patterns, but after observing her carefully for a whole month, I’m pretty certain that she’s a gifted async, meaning she may actually be able to ﬁnd patterns and decipher messages that nothing else can. 
Since reviewing the data, most mesh pundits dismissed her as a nut, and even most of the locals think she’s simply having visions inspired by the data. I think she’s actually found something,however, but space only knows what she’s found. We need to get one of our own asyncs on this data. Since the controversy passed, the monks have been keeping their latest batches of data to themselves to discourage further speculation. Their security is a bit underwhelming, though, so I was able to snag a copy. I’m sending it along with this report.

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