29 days until deadlineThe flawed bodies and brains we humans have gained through billions of years of painstaking evolutionary trial and error, are ultimately merely the starting step. Like a supporting pillar for our eventual greatness that inevitably becomes a restricting chain, that must be cast off so that we can achieve our true potential.
We must go beyond and gain superior, continuously upgrade-able forms.
-Meshanblov on Posthumanism
Continue working on Quantum Brains and Nuclear Reactor
((Could I combine myomers with my artificial muscles?))
((Like Sean pointed, that's something you need to find out in character.))
You work carefully to make improved tools and new type of soldering oven so you can build those extremely dedicate processing units. Since you are basically working on nano scale, the process is slow but should accelerate when you get to point of playing the greatest jigsaw puzzle ever.
Neutrons are best captured with light atoms, so high density hydrogen would be optimal solution. However hydrogen is rather volatile material, and that's why it must be combined with another light materials. The new compound is liquid in temperatures it will be while serving as neutron shield. Building proper containers and production of required volumes should take couple of days.
Research in progress:
Miniature fission reactor
Quantum brain
To be researched:
High density capacitors
EMP hardening
Modular design
Research done:
Armored exoskeleton structure
Artificial muscles
Digital brain copy
Electricity driven cells
Particle beam
Meshanite
Myomers
High capacity fuel cell
Test subjects expired: 19
Disassemble the Terrorizer, and find out why it's more powerful than expected.
Arm has regrown even more now, you almost have a wrist. Also your new lab is ready, so you get your ass hauled over there.
Hmm. Certainly it isn't because magnetic shielding is busted. That would only make effect spherical within predicted range, and obviously range was greater than predicted. And it is not busted. It also isn't because magnetic field generator has greater motion range thanks to few loose screws. That wouldn't have increased range. Only more seizures, which did not happen. Probably. Or actually you don't know if anyone had seizures or not. Certainly cause cannot be your mixtape either, because you mixed it by yourself and you were very careful. And you don't make mistakes. The whole should work exactly as you planned it.
So. It must be external influence. Hesitantly you write "supernatural sabotage" as reason on root cause analysis.
Research in progress:
Terrorizer analysis
To be researched:
Mind to machine interface - canine adaptation
Mind merging
Artificial muscles
Exoskeleton
Mind merging
Advanced medical procedures
Optical camouflage
Overclocked biology
Research done:
Stable weapon attachment point and remote aiming designator
Mind to machine interface
Dreamstream
Test subjects expired: 50 (100)
Other victims: 35
Well, while I'm in transit and settling in, spend all of my time focusing on analyzing the Glory Device.
Breaking the code is fun process. From what you learn it basically have two effects. Indiscriminate one way connection to other brains, something you refuse to call telepathy. It also has some underlaying function whose purpose is not clear. Second effect is related to dealing with matter somehow. Clearly the part responsible damaging your lab.
Your new lab is pretty much like the old one. Different layout, but otherwise same. Employees are fast in unpacking all the important stuff that will permit you continue your work.
Research in progress:
Terrible Glory - Analysis
To be researched:
Hivemind testing
Research done:
Improved coordination
Improved cooperative bonding
Improved learning ability
Improved reaction times II
Terrible Glory
Hive mind
Major Technologies:
NERVOUS SYSTEM DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING
Test subjects expired: 33
Other victims: 7
Test fire can wait. I have an idea. Hook up a dead-man switch to the antimatter containment. If the super-solder goes down, so does everything else.
Dead man's switch is something that may not be needed yet. It's bad if your super soldier dies during testing, but then again if he dies he's useless anyway. So yeah, boom switch is a go. It is fairly simple to rig stored antimatter be released en masse on demand, however the big problem is determining if your soldier is actually dead. You could observe his brain waves and trigger explosion when those flatline, but it cannot blow up when soldier simply removes himself from the suit. Observing his blood pressure could be another way, but sudden bloodloss due lost limb shouldn't trigger it either. Literal switch held in hand would be more safe, but if arm is cut off or wires are damaged it may accidentally trigger self destruction. And then there's to consider enemy interference. Mere EMP is not permitted to trigger it. Radio jamming must be ruled out.
So many options, but so many weaknesses in each...
Research in progress:
Matter annihilation power plant modification - Dead man's switch
To be researched:
Rail-guns
Reverse chemical formulation
Improved exoskeleton
Improved training speeds
Intelligence increasing treatments
Research done:
Layered lighweight armor
Matter annihilation power plant
Test subjects expired: 6
Work on project Dazzleball, but see if it's possible to incorporate the hypnotic effects into either the drones or the suit.
I should also try to make the suit stealthy against things other than eyes, like matching ambient temperature and silencing any noises and being camouflaged in colours off the visible spectrum and stuff.
The dazzleball itself is rather simple thing; modified and strengthened holo projector with auto orientation and floaters to prevent it from sinking into enviroment. Most of the work goes for figuring out most effective pattern without being succumbed to it in mid development. Most hypnotic things known to man are dance of fire and flow of water. It all stems from certain types of movement, predictable in its maximum motion range, but unpredictable in smaller details. You work out a model that is really nice and soothing to stare at, but not quite the attention stealing level you need it to be.
Theoretically the effect could be included for camo cloak and holodrones. Camocloak has beneficial effect of being harder to see for user, ensuring he won't be so easily captived by it. However the hypnotic dance of light must be customized for the cloak because of its uncertain shape and different method of producing light and colors. Same goes for holodrone. Dazzleball is more about dancing light where as holodrone is shapes. Doable with minor effort.
Making the camo cloak match ambient temperature requires little work. It needs both circulatory system for cooling specific areas and more simpler wiring for selective heating. However cooling will be eventually overwhelmed by all the heat soldier and very systems of the cloak produce. Some kind of one time instant cooling cartridges must be included.
Research in progress:
Dazzleball
Extended camouflage
To be researched:
Brain integrated chips - Improved reaction speed
Brain integrated chips - Imprinted knowledge
Killing emotions
Associate obedience with joy
Researched done:
Reaction time study
Optical camouflage
Mobile holoprojector
High density battery
Test subjects expired: 15
Naw, man, the brains in jars are being used to test the computer simulations. No sensory deprivation there. a bit of boredom perhaps, but they have things to do.
I gotta admit, I was originally intending the brain in a jar to be the centerpiece and was planning on building robo supertanks, space ships, and fighter planes, but the nanotech kinda changed my direction a bit. And now I am struggling to decide on the most efficient path for fully implementing that, including weapons and protections.
Could you include the various nanobot functions in my "done" category? Well done keeping track of all that stuff though, it's hard keeping a running total of player stats like that. SOme gms make the players include their status in a spoiler at the bottom of their actions, to reduce the workload.
Okay we have nanites, which can be used as ablative armor, can build and destroy, and can coordinate with larger building blocks to form strong structures for robotic bodies. we have brains in a jar which can interface and direct them.
to do list: camouflage, swarmbots, hunter drones, railguns, lasers, large scale modular robot forms (i.e giant spiderbot that can assemble out of smaller bots).
for now: continue studying the Meshanite - developing the corrosion resistance, and testing it's application as fuel.
and: put a few more of y guys into brain jars and link them in two groups of three. install each group into a prototype nanorobobody and run them through the basic tests - coordination, control, communication, et al.
Done.
Botting two groups of brains gets done without complications. Producing enough strictly limited nanites for their bodies takes about a hour. They are understandably very scared and bemused about these events. It's hard to get them cooperate but threats of death and unimaginable pain seems to do the trick. Testing you decided to leave for assistants.
What about Meshanite? Formulas and production methods all seem solid.
Corrosion is not easy problem to overcome. Nanites are small with relatively large surface area, which means they get to experience full power of any corrosive substance. Making counter measure appears to require trade offs, lose something to gain something. You think electric manipulation is least important feature, so you opt to gain reduced reactivity by sacrificing ability to form electric circuits. Nanites probably can still relay high voltage power, which should be enough.
The fuel thing has very high energy potential, but being mixed with fluorines and nitro- compounds makes it far too volatile for any normal combustion engine. You believe it can be most effectively used only in very small quantities, which doesn't make it very lucrative choice for large robots. Those myomers don't require that much of power, however, so it is possible it is intented for powering only small number of myomer muscles. Surely your rival doesn't intented to make their soldier into tiny spiderbot swarm? Using such corrosive fuel seems weird choice even in that case.
Assistants report in with test results. They got subjects walking in humanoid body, which works nicely as long as only one is in control. They don't seem very coordination inclined, because giving one arm to each backup brain, makes them mess up walking cycle. More coordination tests require, poorer they perform. Coordination also appears to get cumulatively worse over time. Assistants are not entirely sure if brains are really even communicating with each other. They suspect it may simply be lack of experience and are trying tune each other out, which is easily corrected with training.
Research in progress:
Nanobot functions: Corrosion resistance
To be researched:
Robotic body
Nanobot production: Extended raw materials
Armor
Distributed neural networks
Camouflage
Swarm bots
Hunter drones
Railguns
Laser
Large scale modularity
Research done:
Nerve interface
Brain in a jar
Meshanite
Myomers
Highly volatile fuel
Robotic body
Multibrain control systems
Major Technologies:
Nanomachines
Self construction
Self destruction
Electric manipulation
Kinetic shielding
Structural support
Gray Goo Limited EditionTM
Test subjects expired: 19
No pleading. Detonate the explosives and try to haul ass, even if it kills me. Do not return to the boss if I do survive.
Well you did get caught. There's no running from that firing line. Even bigger dissapointment is that charges did not explode. Was that because your squadies fucked up hasty placements or because the building is shielded from radio signals. So you leg it. Too bad that fails with your knees being shot out, suicide attempt doesn't go well because pain makes you faint.
So, unknown time later you wake up somewhere. Alone. Tied up. Gagged so you can't bite your tongue. Your legs are apparently treated well enough and you are feeling fuzzy, most certainly drugged docile. Eventually you are interrogated. Drugs make you talkative. Can't keep your mouth shut and you let them know your problem with it. They don't care.
Eventually your boss comes. Not the researcher, but The Company man. He's annoyed with your interence. He tells you in no uncertain terms that they are trying to make profit here, and putting their valuable assets into risk simply is not acceptable. He gives you options. One: your employment will be terminated in very permanent manner. He makes sure you understand what termination really means here. Two: you return to your post as a volunteer like you are supposed to be, get modded into ultimate killer bot, and win final testings. Or die trying. Capiche?
Gah. I hate wasting time fixing my own fuckups.
I dedicate as much of the day as necessary to creating the counter-virus to prevent this from happening. If I complete it I give it to the Agent for this mysterious individual. If I have more time left today, I see what I can do for renegadelobster.
Gorillaman dies. Complete organ failure due cancer.
You finish the counter virus in record time, manufacture pair of a doses and send them to your agent with notes and formal apology. Now your soldier. Your counter virus won't help him. Panacea already got rid of the original virus and damage is done. What is needed is damage control. First thing is to halt progress of cancer in his brain. If you manage that then it doesn't matter if you can't save rest of his body; you can implant his brain into another body. Alright, you still have time. You can do this!
And you do it! After long hours you finally have a virus especially designated to repair damaged division control on cells. It hijacks cancer cell division mechanism for duplicating itself limited number of times, repairs division control and then self destructs. This means some cells will die because they cannot do cell division, but also means patient is left with already formed cancerous growths. But it gives you more time. More time to operate your patient. First injection goes into renegadelobster's brain directly. That's most important. Second near his heart. Third in his guts. With this primary organs should be salvageable. Limbs can be always replaced.
Last injections are given to your siamese triplets, whose symptoms have just surfaced. You can use them as practice subject later.
Research in progress:
Rapid healing, counter agent
To be researched:
Fleshcraft
New nerve pathways
Research done:
Targeted hyper cancer
Inline DNA manipulation
Artificial Siamese Twins
Monster maker
!!Rapid healing!!
Extra bodypart attachments
Panacea - Immune system replacer
Major Technologies:
?
Test subjects expired: 34
Contemplate the importance of socks.
The man does have a point. A computer specially designed for the purpose would be much more preferable to a collection of standard hardware. And the final design was allowing for the presence of secondary processing units. The problem, however, is time. With so many more things to do before the project has its first prototype, and the doubtlessly large pile of things to do afterwards to perfect the training and work out the kinks, there might simply be not enough time left before the project is due for its evaluation.
Well, we can always hope for speedy progress.
Let the horde of assistants work on assembling the Knowledge Database. It's mostly just lots of tedious work - quite well-suited for their large numbers and relatively benign intellectual abilities.
It's optimistic to expect results so soon, but check on the progress of the molecular sim and the regenerative/ablative wear protection.
Continue working on the MMI, but drop the consciousness sim for now in favor of developing some new hardware for it to run on.
And send my thanks to the security team. Nice work.
Temperature detected by feets affects how rest of the body feels ambient temperture. Warm feets make you feel warmer than cold feets. Feeling warmer means body won't rely on shivers for warming muscles, which is energy efficient. To summarize it; socks are for energy effiency.
News come from your agent. Your proposal was rejected on grounds being too risky for now, though they agree with agent's opinion of potential range of applications. Separate work contract may be available after this one. But for now you have to design and build your own supercomputer.
Assistants begin their work. And it is as you feared. Nothing good yet from cloud computing.
Extended MMI design sees its first chips for reading neural activity and brainwaves. The easiest part basically. Suitable locations for them are mostly figured out too. Theoretically person could manipulate very simple devices with these alone. But that's hardly enough for your ambitious plan.
Custom hardware for simulating brain has less good start. But you would say it's decent start at very least. Having something very fast and compact enough to outmatch best supercomputers in the world on all fields is not particularly fast task. Production of superiour electronics, paraller processors, fast memory, mass storages... it's a lot of work.
Don't mention it, they are only doing their work.
Research in progress:
Wear protection - outsourced, Molecular simulation
Knowledge Database - outsourced, assistants
Man Machine Interface
Customized personal supercomputer
Research to do:
Consciousness Simulation Engine
Bionic Brain Matter
Wetware AI
Research completed:
Structural skeleton
Myomers
Muscle layout
Cooling
Molecular simulation
High capacity fuel cell
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Topic: Roll to create a supersoldier! Bloody air resistance (Read 138981 times)