"Right, thanks."
Jim types:
>Display Available connections
as Steve said.
>Display Available Connections
...
Connection error: Majority connections read failure: mechanical damage.
Displaying remaining
SMID 2004 Fiber
SMID 3002 Fiber
SMID 203 Metalink
Reactor fail-safe 01
Reactor fail-safe 02
Reactor fail-safe 03
Reactor fail-safe 04
Reactor fail-safe 05
Reactor fail-safe 06
Reactor fail-safe 07
Reactor fail-safe 08
Reactor fail-safe 09
Reactor fail-safe 10
Reactor fail-safe 11
Reactor fail-safe 12
Reactor fail-safe 13
Reactor fail-safe 14
Reactor fail-safe 15
Reactor fail-safe 16
[data truncated]
Reactor fail-safe 5230
Connection nodes 1-50
Somatotopic arrays
Organic substructure monitoring
Slave-01-64
SCI 023 Fiber
SCI 033 Fiber
CAG 021 Fiber
BIN 032 Metalink
BIN 059 Metalink
Wireless 1220
Wireless 1946
Wireless B777
Peek over Jim's shoulder and try to give advice.
[aux:3+2]
"Milno's team must have severed most of the connection. We're probably looking for a unique connection, since I doubt there are a lot of ships connecting right now."
>Have you ever heard of Colossus: The Forbin Project? A good movie, from the late 1900's AD. It touches on the difficulties of human interactions with machines. Might be worth watching.
((Yeah, great movie. Nice story that maintains a level of realism and raises some good philosophical questions. If you think about it, Steve is similar to a smarter Colossus, that has realized that helping mankind is better done indirectly. Not as effective in the short term, but maybe better in the long term.))
"I'm sorry. On our home system, information and communication with the outside world was strictly controlled. The government believed it would help maintain their power. All the knowledge I have of the outside world that wasn't filtered by the theocracy comes from the time I spent with those genehackers, from accessing a databank they had brought from off world. But it does sound interesting. I'll look into it when the mission is over... Heh! Funny, eh? Being imprisoned into the HMRC gave me access to all this wealth of info and yet I prefer to spend my time on these missions. I feel like I have to do something, something that will justify my existence before it's too late. Kinda makes me wish I volunteered for the HMRC when I was younger. If only I'd known..."
"Bah, why am I bothering you with that stuff? You're not my shrink..."
>Regardless, let me preface this with some history: Do you know the reason why Wetware AI's became popular? Why they basically completely overtook purely artificial AI's? Cost is a factor, but there is more to it then that.
Answer Steve: "I don't know..." Flint began to answer Steve, thinking out loud. "Brains are more malleable, more... fuzzy in their inputs and outputs. Many of their parts can be adjusted, re-purposed to fill new roles. They can adapt, self-repair, even completely change their function given the right drugs... They can make decisions based on experience and hunches instead of pure logic. And of course, they don't need giant databases to learn and adapt. Or maybe it's that human brains can use amps... So maybe it's so that they can use amps? Nah, that wouldn't make sense. Why give all AIs that ability? Brains can be altered with amps? Maintained and altered from far away... But that's not what you're going to do here... It could be a safeguard. A way to ensure all AIs eventually degrade and die or at least change... but there's nothing preventing you from cloning all the humans you need if you decided to do away with human civilization... Or maybe that brings them closer to humans? Makes the AIs more human-like? But an organic brain doesn't guarantee human-like thought, like so many aliens have shown us... I have no idea. As you probably know, I'm neither the smartest nor the most knowledgeable man around. Anything of what I said even slightly on target?"
>You're basically there. Computers made with human brains retain not only the organic ability to reason and learn more easily, but also their thoughts and tendencies tend to be more recognizable, more human. A great deal of what makes a person human is, after all, tied up in the various chemicals that interact with their brain. Its not a matter of simply copying the organic structure of the brain, neurotransmitters, Serotonin, Dopamine, Melatonin,Noradrenaline, all these need to be supplied in the right amounts to have an emotional balance humans can understand. Doing it is difficult, but it's possible with an organic brain.
Pure Ai's, even those modeled off human brains, quickly become difficult to interpret and predict. Their lines of logic are so harsh and unrestrained by emotion that people often find them cruel, or their reasoning incomprehensible. Truly pure AI's, those not modeled on humans at all, become increasingly alien as they gain more computational power. They became black boxes, super-sentient beings with rationals and knowledge that their creators couldn't fathom. This is all pre-altered war of course, the days of those inscrutable alien things are long gone.
But I'm rambling. The thing here is that we're made of brains to ease our communication with you. When we communicate with each other, there is no human interaction to compare it to. It is to mingle our minds in a way far more fundamental then you can imagine. Imagine if each molecule of your brain was something inherently tied to you. Now break them all down and blend them with the same of another person. This is how we speak. Lars looked over Jim's arm. "I still have much to learn... I would have thought control systems would have been outside the domain of Ingram. Great Glorious Steve, does this control the weapon systems of the planet?"
Ask Steve, then search the control system for things of importance, whether religious or related to the mission at large.
"Who's the dead guy, anyway?"
Did I mention that pretty much all the gods in the HMRC pantheon have connections to the in game world at large? Many aspects of them have traceable origins, if anyone was inclined to look.
((This really makes sense. If you're huddled in a hole on an alien hellhole, whimpering with your rifle over your face, seeing the word INGRAM written on it might be just the thing to give you something to pray to. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see an Algis Corp making the MK suits.))
>No, but it was manufactured by Ingram Arms, which is usually a weapons manufacturer. Or rather it was done by their software subsidiary, Keltec. Same ones who made the control software for the Battlesuit, actually. The entire room has a strangely religious connotation to it, with it's central dais and dim, green lighting.
Get deeper into cover as much as possible, curl into a ball and cover my neck and head with my hands. Make sure to keep my rocket tanks away from the grenades!
You burrow deeper into the vending machine, holding packets of junkfood out in front of you like a shield.
oh shit...
run for cover keeping the shield between me and the grenades.
After detonation move closer to the hole and try to get a shot off at the sods responsible.
"Take cover!"
Move in to shield my teammates from blast, use vector amp to send those grenades back in there. Or catch 'em and throw them back, whatever is fastest/most convenient.
After that, stick up thermite thrower and spray the hallway. Empty the canister (that stuff burns a while right? If so, that should help providing some 'cover', or at least make it harder for UE to hit us.)
If I get any more actions after this, jump through the ceiling next to the hole (to create a bit of a 'smokescreen' for cover) and sweep laser, focusing on the black clad man and the two civs.
((Problem: those two may be civvies, being used/mindcontrolled and killing them is heartless. Then again, the obviously important looking man may be a decoy, the real threat being the seemingly harmless one. It's one of those situations where you have to wonder if the GM has set up an obvious trap for the players, but then again he might know we'd see through that and set it up 'straight' anyway. But he may know that too...))
[con:5+1]
Between Auron's shield and backpedaling and your stepping between him and the blast, he manages to completely avoid injury. Your Cloak eats up a lot of the force as well, but some manages to tear through...and plink off your armor. You sigh and jam the end of your thermite thrower into the hole. You drain the entire tank, lazily sweeping it back and forth. Any screams are lost within the roar of the flame. You pull the thermite thrower out and turn to your teammates.
"See, nothing to worry ab-"
And then the molten contents of the level above you starts to burn in through the ceiling. White hot flows of molten metal turn the ceiling into swiss cheese and start dozens of fires as they continue burning down through the floor.
Author
Topic: Einsteinian Roulette (Original Thread: Rules, Armory, Misson archive 1-11) (Read 3979848 times)