Logris
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Logris (or Logres) is an alien supercomputer in The History of the Galaxy series of novels by Russian science fiction writer Andrey Livadny.
Originally introduced in the novel The Third Race, the true nature of Logris was explored in The Verge of Reality. Logris is the one of the greatest achievements of an ancient alien race called the Logrians. It was built over 3 million years ago, when the Logrians were a properous, highly-advanced civilization. The computer consists of billions of small jewel-like mini-computers called logrs. Each logr can be used for a variety of purposes, from storing audio-visual information to containing the memories and personality of a living being. When multiple logrs are joined together in a specific configuration, their capabilities are increased exponentially. Based on the description in the novels, it can be concluded that the fully-assembled Logris looks very similar to the Crystalline Entity from the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation
Logris was deactivated and disassembled into individual logrs during the Forerunner crisis 3 million years ago. The Logrians fled their space and were subsequently enslaved by the Harammins, who either were not aware of the potential of Logris or did not believe in its usefulness. Thus, Logris remained deactivated until the events of the novel Living Space, when the human InterStar network was crippled during a failed Harammin invasion attempt. Since it would take too long to rebuilt the destroyed main hub, the freed Logrians offered to reactivate the Logris to act as the InterStar hub.
The following novel The Verge of Reality described that not all humans were glad of the aliens' assistance. Since most logrs contained personalities of dead Logrians, certain people in power were afraid of what would happen if humans began to do the same. As a result, a dead human's personality was encoded into a modified logr to see what would happen if he managed to "escape" his logr into InterStar. This eventually resulted into a new religious order that created modified logrs and sold it to people who wished to attain virtual immortality after death. The order also helped the "clients" create their virtual world.
The novel The Bridge over the Chasm has established that a vertical force-line of Hypersphere leads directly from the First World into Logris, allowing InterStar access from within the center of the anomaly (although the lack of working electronic devices on the First World would only allow mnemonics or cybreakers to utilize the connection).
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