A couple technical questions

[Camillo]

Greetings,

 

I'm putting together a work of 40k fiction that started as a simple short story and has metastasized into an unwieldy beast in desperate need of an editor.  As I began working through the first couple of sections (I hesitate to call them "chapters"), I found a couple of detail questions that my own research couldn't answer, and was hoping that I could benefit from this forum's extensive knowledge of all things 40k.

 

 

* Does the Imperium have security cameras or the equivalent?  I know it seems odd, but the amount of available tech seems to vary wildly (lasguns and plasma-based energy, but is information kept on paper or parchment for example).  I have a scene where someone is spying on another person remotely, and I realized that I had never seen technology in the form of closed-circuit cameras or video recorders in any of the stories I had read.

 

* How is electronic data stored and transported? This question piggybacks on the first one, but has broader implications.  If events can be recorded and stored, what are they stored on? Tapes? Portable hard drives? Data crystals? 

 

For accuracy's sake, my story takes place in 352 M37, so I think we're pretty solidly in "standard" Imperial tech.  As long as these things exist in the 41st millennium, we can safely extrapolate that they exist at this time too.  

 

I appreciate any help you can give me on these issues - I know they're petty things, but I'm striving to stay as canonical as possible. Nothing takes a reader out of a story faster than jarring detail mistakes, especially in this universe.  Fans can accept seven foot tall armored janissaries fighting space demons, but the mundane events need to be grounded in solid and consistent detail.

 

Thank you again in advance for all your help.

[Carrack]

As far as directly answering your questions, data slates are often described as portable devices for storing data. I can't recall any instances of security cameras being used, but entertainment and news vid feeds show up in the lore every now and then, and I can't imagine the most oppressive regime imaginable using a technology for entertainment and refraining from using it to spy on its subjects.

 

The thing about the Imperium and technology is that there is no consistency in its distribution or understanding. Different worlds are at different levels of technology. A Fenrisian and a Terran are going to have access to different levels of tech, for instance. The understanding of technology is vastly different as well, a manufactorum worker in the mid levels of a hive may come home and simply turn on his favorite vid feed for his daily propaganda, while at underhiver may intone the blessings of the screen, and anoint the remote with sacred oil before doing the exact same thing.

 

In any event, the Imperium is a big place, if you introduce contemporary technology to one corner of it, I can't imagine that being setting breaking.

[Brother Lunkhead]

For some ideas you might want to check out some of the Legio Custodes short stories in the HH series. Being the Emperor's security there's brief mention of different kinds of security sensors.

 

Check out Rob Sander's marvelous Inquisitor Czevak novel, 'Atlas Infernal'. There's a big section about stealing information from a massive archaic data storage unit.

 

These might give you some ideas and inspiration. Good luck