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[darkpaladin109]

((Whooops, I forgot to post since I waited for something to happen, then just kinda forgot to check up.))
Take a look around the area and think what just happened and is happening.

[Comrade P.]

- Ahem, dock, I'm sorry for my further words, but you just made another me - and I don't care about how you - or I - did it. You ask me to terminate myself - I won't do that. Having brain in a flask in distant bunker or having it surrounding you as a cloud of nanites - it doesn't matter to me.

Hamilton turns to... eh... another Hamilton

- We're gonna get in trouble. They want you dead. And me to live just because we have one brain for two men. Exept I'm linked to it and you are an artificial copy. Right now I refuse to do my orders, so I expect some support from you at least in case it gets nasty. Ok, Hamilton?

[_DivideByZero_]

CNR Laboratory, Ceres
Feb 2nd, 2398
15:15 GMT

Avis-Mergulus AKA Anton "Tosha" Teremnoi

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Piloting (2)
Engineering Technician (1)
Acrobat (1)

Spoiler: Cloud Status (click to show/hide)

Cloud Health: 0%

Noting the volatile chemicals in the air, you back away from the general vicinity. The sound of your movement alerts the doctor, who was just standing around the corner.
"Oh hi! Hamilton doesn't agree with my request... I won't force him to. However, if that's the case, then we need to get out of here. I don't want to know what Hamilton will do when Colonel Sanders orders the copy be taken off to some lab on Mars."

Samarkand AKA Felicia Hasting

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Medic (1)
Botanist (2)
Chemist (1)
Scavenger (1)

Spoiler: Cloud Status (click to show/hide)

Cloud Health: 25%
Nanofabrication [1/3]

Holding off on the vaporization in case the copy's "artificial nerve impulses" set it off, you look around in the darkness for anything that may be useful.

[5] It seems that the missiles inside the launchers are still intact. Their guidance systems might be fried, but a portable EMP device could come in handy. You retrieve both missiles and attach them to your torso, apparently designed with storage compartments that are just the right size.
Scavenger skill learned.
[4] You also figure that the laser turret could be a useful source of material for your nanites. Simply tapping the glass surface with your suit's ceramic fingertips causes it to shatter instantly and send large pieces cascading to the floor. The turret inside is still deactivated and looks like it could easily be taken apart, especially with the help of nanites.

The Two Teromos seem to be planning something.

Comrade P. AKA Hamilton Teromo

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Sidearms (2)
Swordsman (1)

Spoiler: Cloud Status (click to show/hide)

Cloud Health: 0%

You hear the doctor's words in your ears. Out of spite, you play them out on the speakers. He seems to be reconsidering his orders, however.
"'They?' I just don't want the colonel to have access to something like this. If you want to keep you new friend, by all means do so. But we are treading dangerous ground.

Look, if you don't want the colonel to haul Hamilton 2.0 to Olympus Mons, we need to get off this station. The reason I asked you to terminate him is because if the colonel decides to have her scientists do research, things have the potential to go very... VERY wrong. Worst case scenario, we have to deal with TWO outbreaks of rogue, sentient nanites spreading throughout the outer solar system."

Your clone responds.
"I am fine with that... I'd be glad to help you, Hamilton, and the others. Is there a ship we can commandeer?"
The doctor seems unsure which Hamilton said that.
"I have  a private vessel docked here. Your clone will be useful if there is ever a life support failure as he does not require any. He can sustain himself on the ship's power grid, but please... don't let him try to make more of himself. My conscience can't bear the guilt of being the one responsible for a second outbreak of rogue nanites."

Chromatic Wasp AKA Chandler Davis
Comrade P. AKA Hamilton Teromo

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Physician (2)
Marksman (1)

Spoiler: Cloud Status (click to show/hide)

Cloud Health: 0%

((Chromatic Wasp has been missing for 3 rolls now. If he doesn't show up, The Froggy Ninja will be in.))

darkpaladin109 AKA David "Pirate Dave" Smith

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Tinkerer (3)

Spoiler: Cloud Status (click to show/hide)

Cloud Health: 0%
Defender [1/3]

You wake up just a tad late compared to the others. There is one other person next to you in the same kind of body that you have--although you never asked him his name. He never told the group, actually.

This body seems functional. It is designed to mimic a human body and, despite being made of metal, handles quite familiarly. Instead of servos, your limbs move using artificial muscles, allowing for silent actions and swift attacks.

The lab is just as active as it was before with the notable exception being that three of the other subjects and Doctor McDonald are missing. You ask around, learning that Doctor Alexander McDonald is currently running some planned maintenance on the three missing bodies. He should be in the testing control room if you need to find him.
The colonel is currently in the communications booth. There will be a military convoy soon. You remember something about mandatory military service in return for giving you the new remote bodies.

[Comrade P.]

Hamilton walks around the room. It all went horrifically wrong. Since the very beginning of this new life. Since when he lost control of himself there, back in his skytower. He remembers blood all over him. Whose blood was that? His own? Or the ones who resisted him? Or the ones who occasionally popped into his bloody path? How to define? And now that...

- Doc, look here. Maybe we should do the following: You give me another commander body, return my current one in place, then we shoot down commander body that contained non-copied me, then give the body I am currently using to copied Hamilton, and then we pretend that target is eliminated. I lie in wait, and copied Hamilton is acting like nothing happened, then we wait and get real me a new body. Two Hamiltons present, colonel unaware. How that sounds? Okay, a bit complicated, I know, but what if it works?

[_DivideByZero_]

((For future reference, you are in an ENGINEER class body. This body is more suited to standard human tasks. The standard SOLDIER class has both remote and commander variants, and is the one copied-Hamilton is using. The player characters are all currently in Engineer bodies.))

"I don't think you understand, Hamiltons. The colonel wants copied-Hamilton alive. I wanted him dead, but I'm willing to reconsider. If we can easily sneak a commander body surrounded by nanites through the halls, then I wouldn't make it seem hard.
I asked for your help because I can't do it myself, and because I don't trust the military scientists on this rock, nor the guards. I told the others I'm running maintenance on your Engineer bodies, that should give us some time, but not forever. But this is essentially a solo effort. I'm just trying to do what's best."

[Avis-Mergulus]

Anton is slightly unsure, as is evident from his posture.

-And I am, of course, going to pilot our escape vessel..?

[_DivideByZero_]

The conversation is starting to get awkward, so the doctor motions for Anton to follow him to meet with the other three.
He then responds to Aton's comment"
"If our plan involves getting everyone on my ship awake, then yes, I will let you put your skills to use. If not, the computer usually makes up for my own lack of experience."

[Avis-Mergulus]

-Well, if Hamilton has no objections, let's get on with it. Time is of the essence, I believe.

Anton flashes Hamilton an apologetic grin.

Follow the clever person.

[_DivideByZero_]

"We can't get on with it if there's no plan! Hamilton had the mistaken assumption that I was ordered to terminate his copy by some superior, but there is no need to fake copied-Hamilton's death...

There most likely isn't... but maybe... Either way, I can't deploy a commander body as there is no power to the testing rooms at this time. Unless we raid the armory there isn't much of a chance we can get our hands on one."

[Avis-Mergulus]

-Well, Felicia currently has control of the nanites...  Let me see if I understand this correctly. We all, including you, want to get off this station and away from the colonel. Or do we just want to sneak Hamilton Mk.II away? I assume that the colonel is assigned by the military to supervise this project?

Anton pauses for a second.

-Hmm. Yes, the military potential of this... Killer swarms of sentient nanobots, oh my. Not so fine from an ethics standpoint, and bound to bite us in the ass later. Are you sure the colonel cannot be persuaded to leave well enough alone?

[_DivideByZero_]

The doctor considers his options.
"I feel that it is necessary to inform you of what is happening in the outer systems. One of our bases was recently overrun by a cloud of nanites--alien in origin, as far as we can tell.  Reverse-engineering them led to us developing our own, but that is aside the point. This nanite cloud proved to be a massive security threat. Nanites could consume electronics, expand their cloud, and form bodies out of nanites linked together in a lattice of both nanites and metal. The cloud could enter any space that wasn't airtight, then proceed to build an army behind our own defenses. The base was evacuated in short order and the site nuked from a nearby Central Navy vessel. But more outbreaks started popping up across the outer belt, and now they've got a foothold on some bases. We don't know their motivations, nor do we know whether it is even possible to communicate with them.

The colonel wants to find a way to combat this threat. Seeing copied-Hamilton gave her ideas--ideas that I don't want to let her realize. I don't care what kind of conditions the subject will be tested under, but the outer-world nanoplague can't be anything but an experiment gone wrong, and I don't want humanity to repeat the mistakes that led to its release."

The doctor pauses to think.
"The colonel is a good person, and I agree with her motives. She just wants this nanoplague to be dealt with as quickly as possible. I don't think I can persuade her. But there's just so many ways it can go wrong, and I don't want to be the one to say 'I told you so!' when it's already too late.

All we need to do is keep the colonel from getting her hands on copied-Hamilton. We can do that by terminating him. Or we can send him on a ship and run away. We'll have to sneak him through the building if we want to get to my ship, which is going to make things a whole lot more complicated."

[Avis-Mergulus]

-Terminating him is... not my idea of an ethical act, doc. What kind of complications can we expect when sneaking him aboard your ship? I assume you have a system of some sort to detect any rogue nanites..?

[Samarkand]

"I have no interest in the military applications of the copied Hamilton. However, the prospect of an AI which is fully capable of processing human memories in a coherent way is beyond intriguing. The things this could mean for our understanding of the spontaneous generation of consciousness from the previously unconscious... I don't want this new intelligence destroyed or in the hands of a military lunkhead."

Participate in the plan to get both Hamilton's away safely.

[Comrade P.]

- Stop right there. Now, does the Central Navy have exact plans that include us in order to stop that nanoplague you are talking about? Because if they have, we get another me as another soldier and proceed with the current plan. The main point of all of these research things is to stop it, right? So shouldn't we stick to the point then?

[_DivideByZero_]

((The Froggy Ninja, if you are still interested, pm me and we can insert you into the story somehow. Alternatively, I could have you control copied-Hamilton...))

-Terminating him is... not my idea of an ethical act, doc. What kind of complications can we expect when sneaking him aboard your ship? I assume you have a system of some sort to detect any rogue nanites..?

"No active experiments in the hall. Exceptions are made regularly, but anything involving nanites in plain sight is off the table. If we could store him in a crate somehow... we'd need to get him to a storeroom first. It'll be difficult without a distraction."

The ventilation systems noticeably increase in volume. The sound of warm air coming through the pipes briefly interrupts the doctor's thinking.

"I have no interest in the military applications of the copied Hamilton. However, the prospect of an AI which is fully capable of processing human memories in a coherent way is beyond intriguing. The things this could mean for our understanding of the spontaneous generation of consciousness from the previously unconscious... I don't want this new intelligence destroyed or in the hands of a military lunkhead."

Participate in the plan to get both Hamilton's away safely.

"Not exactly spontaneous... the tech has been there for quite a while now. Making a simulation of the human brain is possible--it's called human reproduction. The question is more about how one creates a simulation of the human brain in a non-deterministic system. Otherwise it's not a perfect simulation... there's no room for free will in a system of logic and circuits. As I said earlier, this isn't an accident, it is a shortcut I left in the code that I promised myself I would rectify later... we had a deadline... you know that, right?"

- Stop right there. Now, does the Central Navy have exact plans that include us in order to stop that nanoplague you are talking about? Because if they have, we get another me as another soldier and proceed with the current plan. The main point of all of these research things is to stop it, right? So shouldn't we stick to the point then?

"The Central Navy sponsored my work because it allows for the creation of mobile task forces with minimal logistics requirements. Five of you on-board a starship can fulfill the role of an entire platoon with a hundredth of the life support required. The platform also showed a lot of promises for the military's new nanite research, which is why I had to shoehorn in a control method.

The thing is that it doesn't take much effort to produce new soldiers, no offense. Not much at all in comparison to the amount of research and preliminary testing we had to do. The colonel doesn't want to forgo a valuable opportunity just for some additional manpower."

You turn to face copied-Hamilton to see if he has any input. However, you notice a new development: his legs are missing, with his upper torso floating atop a denser region of nanites.
"I think I might have a solution... watch."
The unit's upper torso immediately disperses into a cloud of shrapnel and fragments of plastic. The unit's lithium ion battery floats within the center of the cloud, surrounded by frequent electrical arcing concentrated around its electrodes.

The body then reassembles itself right before your artificial eyes. A few imperfections here and there, but otherwise mostly intact and able to walk about as usual, as well as speak.
"I'm not stuck inside this body, although I still need a power source. What happens if the nanites run out of electricity?"
The doctor hesitates to respond.
"...Nothing good."