Structure
Surface Detail states that Contact has, within the last few centuries, reorganized and established at least three specialist sub-branches akin to Special Circumstances:
- Restoria, nicknamed "Pest Control", has charge of "the management, amelioration and - if necessary - obliteration" of "hegemonizing swarms", technological (or even cultural) entities that exist to convert as much of the universe as possible into more of themselves, as with grey goo.
- The Quietudinal Service, or Quietus, is tasked with interacting with virtual Afterlives.
- Numina, tasked with dealing with the Galaxy's Sublimed civilizations
Read more about this topic: Contact (The Culture)
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—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)