A kotim is a mental construct that telepaths used for governance. It consists of shared memories to facilitate communication, a record of decisions made, and authentication. The kotim also enables public and private discussions, even when the individual telepaths are not connected.
In terms of telepathy, a kotim is always a passive member of the connection with its own memory address. It can be queried (asked questions) and it will respond immediately.
⚠️ SPOILER: From this point, this page reveals spoilers for Flight of the Scions.
Ruben's eyes glazed over for a moment, and then he nodded. “Yes, but like the kotim, I have to ask for it.” Another frustrated sigh. “He can't volunteer information. And I don't have the right identifiers.”
“You said that the kotim, no, the votim, identifies things that you look at. Can he do the same thing? Say, that hill there,” she pointed to a large hill, “does he know it?”
— Flight of the Scions 31
The kotim and everyone connected to it is frequently called a collective.
Memories
A kotim is a collection of memories which is used to share knowledge. Memories have to be explicitly imprinted into the kotim by an active telepath and are assigned a unique memory address.
New collective members can use that address to experience the imprinted memory, which may take some time based on how abstract it is and how much basic knowledge the member already understands.
This also gives a grading of topics within the kotim, which can be used to determine a certain proficiencies or familiarity with the kotim. The grading can be used as a minimum level for voting on governance or other privileges.
Persistence
A kotim only lasts as long as the active telepaths maintain it. In that regard, it is not much more than a long-lived telepathic connection with a store of memories behind it. The kotim is also viewed as a separate “entity” in the mental communication with the active telepaths having little control over the contents of the kotim, only in maintaining it.
If a longer-lived or reliable kotim is needed, it can be anchored into a physical object. In most cases, this will be some form of crystal as the lattice structure has been found to maintain the memories the best.
Inputs
By itself, a kotim has no ability to perceive the world except what is imprinted into its memories. However, it is possible to connect additional inputs to the kotim that provide it the ability to sense the passage of time via clocks, control doors and egresses, or even control the lighting.
Governance
One of the most common uses for a kotim is to provide governance for the collective. The shared memories include decisions made during the life of the kotim along with continual feedback when a line of thought would violate the rules.
It would be noted that a kotim does not enforce obeying the laws, only providing feedback. It also does not report errant thoughts to anyone else in the kotim, simply because most telepaths understand that everyone will idly think about actions that would violate laws, go through “what if” scenarios, or simply just enjoy the release of fantasy.
The process of making a new rule in the kotim is relatively simple: one of the active members proposes a rule and then the collective decides if it should be accepted. This could result in debate or discussion, split out into different changes, or be rejected.
The rules of what is required for acceptance is based on the kotim itself and is frequently one of the first decisions made by the founding members. Some kotims are closed and will never allow new members to be added or old ones to be removed while others have rules on recently active members, such as requiring a majority vote from all members who have connected to the kotim in the last year.
A good example of this is the shelter Ruben found in Flight of the Scions. It was a kotim created by refugees from the Isle of Vo and required a majority vote from all active members. Since the existing members of the collective had died over the years, Ruben was automatically authenticated and authorized to access the kotim.
Authentication
Depending on the kotim, there may be a system of authentication. This comes down to a decision made (using the above governance) to accept a new member or eject an existing member into the collective. Since every telepath has their own address, identifying if someone is known to the kotim is a simple query into the kotim.
If a kotim has a closed membership but no members, then no one else can be added or removed from the collective. However some kotims are configured that they will accept new members based on majority vote, their grading, or anything else.
Authorization
All memories can be locked using a set of rules that the kotim is able to perceive. This can be as simple as “active member in the last year” (authenticated plus a temporal component) or “was given permission by an existing member” (governance) or any other combination of inputs to provide permission for an action.