NationStates Jolt Archive

a small ship leaves Yagdrassil. it crosses central Sisguardia and the sea of Aerona finally approaching the coast of Valakia it brodcasts a message to ground controal of the Dominion of the Lab Mouse

"This is the Tarran Vessil Unicorn, carrying Teo Holtzman-Wisewood, learned counciler for sciences, and Ja'annas Tolin, we seek permission to speek with your leader The Brain, please respond as soon as possible, we are on a tight schedule"

the small ship circles near the coast awaiting the responce form DLM

#Tag#

it was business as usual in the control tower at the cupertino memorial airport/spaceport. the 2 traffic controllers were relaxing, an monitoring the the Air Traffic Control System, ready to take over incase something unexpected happened.

a little green light started to flash and john got up to check it out

"hey bill"

"yo"

"i have a tarran vessel seeking permission to speak to the chairman"

"that's odd, normally Bakersfield Central takes care of diplomatic arrivals"

"they claim to be on a tight schedule"

"hm, well, we cant just let them sit out there can we? give them permission to land, and i'll get ahold of bakersfield, and see if they can get a hold of the Chairman"

"ok"

john turned back to the console and pressed a few buttons

"Tarran Vessel Unicorn, you have been cleared to land in sector Alpha-9-0. we are contacting the Chairman now and expect to receive a reply by the time you touch down. Untill then, Welcome to the DLM"

a much relieved teo answeres

"Thank you, thank you very much!"

the Unicorn makes best speed to the landing coordinates and sets down in Alpha-9-0, it is a small vessil, bairley 20 meters in length, which a crew compartment which couldent hold more then 5 people, it is in the tarran design, beautifully sleek and apears strangly biological, all is quiet outside, its a slightly different story inside...

"I dont care if you dont like Ithus, i dont care if you dont like travelling, if the brain comes to meet us you will be courtious and respectful"

"so we can give that spoilt bratt more of our money and equipment, i dont think so"

"so youd rather sit in your little office and work on your pet computer then, save one of our best scientests and our three ships, that, might i add are responcible for saving all our lives?"

"he isnt in any danger.. your making it up"

"you know him better then i do, if he cant find a way round the problem he will change the question... he will stake off failsafe after failsafe, and test them and die, along with 3 full crews and some of my best work, in the shape of the ships."

silence, she responds, quieter

"you wouldent understand"

"evidentally not, please... enlighten me..."

"he went ahead with the project withought council backing, he lied, minipulated and blackmailed his way into project manager position... The man thinks its his way or the high way"

"and you think we should brake with 20,000 years of tradition and leave him for dead...."

"i think somthing should be done about his lack of respect"

"he dosent respect authority, you respect authority?"

"i respect my elders"

"good, then as your elder, and as i Significantly out rank you in the council you WILL be CIVIL AND CORDIAL TO THE BRAIN. regardless of your opinions of the Sysguardian nations, of which we are now one may i add"

she sighs, knowing she is beaten, she turns and walks into the bridge to try and get some piece, her hopes are shattered as Teo shouts after her

"The brain in Very important, he runs this entire country"

"i dont care"

"he sent food and supplies to the flotilla during the Schizm"

"i dont care, he is a foriginer, there fore violent and unpredictible"

"DLM have specilised computing upto and byond the quantum level"

"..... i dont care.. they have nothing like LAMMAS"

"they will when you give them the blueprints"

"HA! not until the ancients have returned!!"

"Do you want to be banished, your going the right way about it"

"you wouldent dare"

"disrespecting and dishonering a member of the high council. People Walked for that back on Cairn 'na' Lea"

"which is now a smoking creater"

"irrelovent, the rules dont change. besides how many has Isthus broken"

"FINE! we will banish you boath, i dont think the council have ever banished a Courpse and a Bitch beaofre"

up in the control tower, john and bill were busy directing other traffic.
just then a phone rang. bill lazily reached over his head and grabbed the receiver and tossed it into the air, sending it spinning in an arc towards the direction he was facing where he deftly catches it upright in his other hand.
"Hello?" said bill as john gave him a look that could only mean, 'do you ALWAYS have to do that?'

ignoring him, bill continued to listen to the person on the other end of the line.
"uh huh, yea, ok, sure. alright then, i'll relay the message"

"so who was that" john asked

"the chairman's office",replied bill "we have an answer to the tarran's request. toss me the headset, will you?"

with a deft little toss, john tossed bill the headset mike.

bill quickly adjusted the boom mike and hit a few buttons on the panel in front of him

"This is DLM Control to Tarran Vessel Unicorn, Over"

a female voice replied "this is the Unicorn"

"copy that, we have just received word from the Chairmans office. The Brain extends his deepest apologies that he cannot welcome you in person, as he is in council with the the ministers of defense and national security at the moment. however, The Brain will see you today at the capitol. he is sending his limo to pick you up, and will be out of council by the time you arrive. the limo should arrive in about 5- 10 minutes, if you wish i can hail you again when it does"

Ja'annas closes the channel, perhaps she is doing it out of hate, perhaps she is doing it because she wants to get back at Teo, she says

"that was the forign scumm, there sending a limo"

unphased he replies

"Right, get your things together, close down the ship, put it to charge, we may need to make a jump today depending on how this meeting goes... and if you have anything to do with it going less then perfectally smooth, i will recoad your genome, and dont think ill be nice about it"

Teo Holtzman-Wisewood and Ja'annas Tolin exit the ship, sure enough, within 10 minutes a large limo pulls up and the dore is opened by the driver, Teo lets Ja'annas get in first, she scouls at him and at the driver, Teo thanks the driver and sits down beside Ja'annas

the car streeks through the streets toward the capitol buildings and the meeting with the Brain, Teo looks out the window at the wonderful archetecture and people while Ja'annas fixes her gase at the flore in a scowl, ocaisionally giving Teo a dirty look.

infront of the partition the driver finds all this most ammusing


"in its way, this place is beautiful"

"....... it makes me feel sick"

"thats cus your a Xenophobe."

"why did i have to come, couldent you have taken Earthson, this is his field after all"

"he dosent know LAMMAS form a Lamma, you designed the thing,"

"her"

"what?"

"Lammas is a her... all the genetics were coaded from femail material, god sake man you worked on it"

"oh... fair enough then"

"and im not Xenophobic, i just dont like other nations"

Tio desides to stay silent for a short while, otherwise he would burst into laughter

after 8 minutes of scowling, and looks that could quite possibly kill the two of them sensed that the limo was starting to slow down. As they looked out the windows, they could see that they had turned off one of the main streets and a 2 lane road with trees on both sides that arched over the road forming a tunnel of greenery. the sun shone through the leaves in such a way that you could actually see the the sunlight in little columns. after a few minutes on this road, an end became apparent.

"Sir, Maddam," said the driver through the intercom system in the car "We are approaching the capital"

"Thank you" replied Teo, Ja'annas just scowled

just then, they cleared the canopy of trees and the capitol came into full view. it was a stunning sight to behold, even if you lived in cupertino. the exterior of the circular capitol appeared to be all bright white limestone. polished white marble columns with deep veins of black ringed the out side of the building, and a rotunda towered out of the center of the structure.
the driver pulled up a flight of stairs that lead to a set of large polished redwood double doors, parked the limo and hurried to open the door for his guests.


"Thank you" said Teo, Ja'annas, again, just scowled

[1]The limo driver hurried around to the drivers seat and drove away leaving the 2 of them standing on the steps. Ja'annas opened her mouth to make a disparaging comment when she was cut short by a woman who had apparently walked up to them while they got out of the limo[/i]

"You must be the visitors from the free land of CairnTarra." said the woman

"yes, yes we are" replied Teo

"Excellent. I am Mary Luscal, current minister of foreign relations for the Dominion of the lab mouse. Brain asked me to show you to his office when you arrived. Follow me please"

minister Luscal, lead the pair into the building. as they entered, they noticed a stark change from the outside of the building. The inside was done up totally in marble, the floor out of polished granite boldly streaked with veins of red, and the the walls were covered in black marble with names and dates chiseled into them. noticing teo's apparent interest, minister luscal spoke

"chiseled into the walls here are the names of every alderman, alderwoman, or minister who has ever served the dominion, along with the position they held and the years that they held it. it is possible to trace back the very first council members simply by reading the walls"

Luscal pushed an elevator button and waited for the car to arrive

"The Brain's office is on the 14th and top most floor, above all the different council chambers, the high council is located right below his office, and below that each of the councils that the aldermen and women preside over"

They entered the elevator, which was paneled with polished wood (and had a notable lack of elevator music) and watched the doors close. ja'annas simply looked at the floor indicator and wondered how soon that this could all be over with, she was jolted out of this state of self pity and anger boy an offhand comment from minester Lescal

"you must be here on some highly important business, The brain has canceled the rest of his appointments and council meetings for the day, and all appointments for the next 3 days have been listed at tentative."

before any response could be made, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. minester Lescal stepped out and lead them to a a large oak door. she knocked on it

"come in" responded a rather unique sounding male voice.

Minester Lescal opened the door and lead the 2 into the room.

"Chairman, these are the guests from the free land of CairnTarra that wished to see you"

"thank you mary." Replied brain
with that, mary lescal exited, closing the door behind her

Ja'annas Tolin had built a computer from a tree, watched a boat fly, attended a meeting of a councel held in the canopy of a kilometer high tree, but never had she seen anyone like the brain, she just stared

Teo Holtzmann-Wisewood, however, had already guessed moast of the Brains chromosome shapes, plus he had lived in a cabin with Isthus Treeson during the Schism Sailing. nothing could really shock him any more

"Chairman Brian it is an absolute Honour, I am Teo Holtsmann-Wisewood, and this is Ja'annas Tolin, our information technology specilist. We wont take up too much of your time, but please first give me your word that nothing said withn theese walls goes byond them, unless we agree uppon it"

"I suppose it can do no harm"

the Brain swiched the survalence system over to the privite mode, any curious security personell would now see the synthesised viedo composit and audio rendition of a standard meeting between the dignatarys, while the real feeds were recorded for his own eyes only

"there, no one is listening or watching"

Teo smiled. and removed a small furry creacher from his pocket, if you can set that on your projecter interface.. the small hamster ran towards the Brain and paused at his feet, the Brain regarded it somewhat oodley beafore it dawned on him what it was, he lifted it onto the projection interface, as it was 'speeking' to one of the input ports, Teo spoke

"one of our techno hamsters, not very advanced, not very powerful, but cute"

behind him Ja'annas shifted her gase form the Brain to Teo, regarding him with a look that sugested she was ready to stick a knife in his back ay any moment, she snorted slightly. but was interupted by the projection that appeared on a large screen in the left of the beautifully decorated office..


Project Effector (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77401&start=40), Gravametric Pulse Alteration by Proton/Antiproton Decay
images of the technologies being used, there development, vast pages of sientific equasions, statistics and finally freezing on an image of the three capitol ships of Cairn Tarra.
The Brain was glad he had kept the cameras in record mode for that

"As you can see we have been hard at work with our mutual allies the Vortex Corperation, however, our project head has hit a bit of a brick wall, the computational power needed by theese Effector Arrays is far byond anything we can create"

again there is another snort from Ja'annas, Teo continues regardless

"this is where we have to ask your nation for help, we need you to help us redesign the Large Area Metric Mathmatics Algorithmics System... LAMMAS, so that we can make 3 'children' out of her and install them in the three ships... theese are fulley sentient biological computers we need you to help with, using techniques your people have probably not even thought of. Using interfaces based on the Electrochemical systems of the Nural Interation Network, this needs done as soon as possible and i gaurentee you it is going to be very difficult,"

he pauses

"in return for your help, you can keep the reaserch we do, and use it as you feel, for profit or advancement or whatever"

this extracts an audible Snort from Ja'annas

"as we said we are in a hurrey, Isthus, who is in charge of the reserch spaceside, has a notoriously short attention span and dosent tolerate problems for long, he is also, very predictible.... he may,.... skip.... some safety procedures in the intrest of getting the system working... and is somthing goes wrong with an Effector core. it could theoritically create a black hole, and we dont want that to happen"

there is a pause, the brain turns and walks onto the balcony overlooking the city ((ooc.. i did reaserch nar nar)) deap in thought, beeds of sweat run down Ja'annas's head, and even Teo clamps his hands to his sides to stop them shaking...

eventually the brain turns and says.............

"i see... yes, creating a black hole would be rather detrimental to life on this planet now wouldn't it" said brain in a rather light hearted manner. seeing that his comment did not have the intended effect of relaxing his 2 guests, he quickly attempted to recover "i'm sorry if i appear insincere, it's just that it's been so long since we have had a computing problem that we have not been able to solve within a few short weeks, that i'm sure that out scientists would love to take on a task such as this"

"Then you'd be willing..."

"Absolutely. We've tried some biological computers in the past, but nothing compared to the achievement that you have accomplished with LAMMAS. let me see here....."

brain trailed off as he picked up what appeared to be a clipboard.

"if we slow down the time line on the cerebra project... and then divert some of the scientists from the bioneural computing devision... "

brain said mumbling to himself and tapping the surface of the now glowing surface of what appeared to be a budget report.

"no, no, then that would stall Raptor too much. perhaps if we slowed down development on the chronos initiative...yes, that would work."

brain looked up from his musings to find 2 rather confused faces staring back at him. figuring it best to explain what he had been doing.

"well" brain said, setting the tablet that was now covered with many red scribbles and x's.
" i can get a team of 30 of our best scientists and computer researchers, including the entire core team that did our research on bioneural computing, this would of course include our share of the funding , any facilities that are needed for the project, and housing for any scientists that you wish to bring in on the project. we can provide the raw talent and processing power, but as you said, this is a rather new field for us. any experienced personnel, or specs to work from would be most appreciated. since you have already created one of these systems, it would be rather pointless for us to rediscover everything you already know "

Brain paused to take a sip of tea from his mug on the desk

"you mentioned before that we would be able to use the research the we did as we saw fit. however, as i see it, Lammas is the creation of the people of CairnTerra, and as such, to take the core research behind it and use it to create copy to be sold would be morally questionable at best. instead i would propose something different. we have been having trouble interfacing computers with the human brain, but the way they work is so fundamentally different that the models that we have now for neural interfaces, are so mentally straining that it is only possible to use them for 10-15 minuets before the operator has to disconnect. it takes a full hour for the operator to recover before it is possible to safely connect to the machine again. what i ams asking is for your help on our problem, in exchange for our help on your problem.

if you so wish, i can have a facilities tour arranged if you wish as well. it would also give me a chance to explain what no doubt produced that incredulous stare from your compatriot."

Brain paused to let what he had said fully sink in

"Are these terms acceptable?, if so i can have our facilities ready to take on the problem and receive any personnel by this time tomorrow"

Ja'annas had a rather large smile on her face after the brain had said "nothing compared to the achievement that you have accomplished with LAMMAS."
she kept mouthing the sentence fragment, she stared at Teo's back is if to say "never in your remaining days will you live this down Wisewood"

Teo smiled warmley, he looked back at Ja'annas briefly when the Brain had stoped talking, noteing her gloating smile

"Dont mind Ja'annas, she's a Xenophobe, with no manners, if she didnt grow up beside it, she dosent like it"

there is a nort form behind him again, Teo tries very hard to prevent his smile from widening

"anywhay, your terms are more then aceptible, it has been a while since i have embarked on any Groundbraking reserch, last few years i have been working on Yagdrassal, or lecturing people on working on Yagdrassil. This is a challenge.
I dont think we will need to bring any other Tarrans in on this, Ja'annas here built LAMMAS from the ground up, and I, well... i have the human genome memorised,
the equipment however, i think we will need to fly in a Maker, otherwise it will be very difficult to synthesise the biological components. With your permission ill send word to the council to get underway"

"Of cource, we will be very interested to see how this all works! ill send the coordinates of the lab to Yagdrassil, and i may aswell get you two on a toor aswell"

Ja'annas's swolen ego gets the better of her Xenophobia, she speeks

"I think the key is Where we intograte the interface"

the Brain is somewhat ammused that she is speeking

"pardon"

"the Bio-computer interface"

"yes?"

"its Where we input the data feed, we could give them a feed into the optical center, so thay could 'see' the inside of the system as it were... or we could intograte the entire body image... there armes would become process requests, there legs, would... access the system buss network... the rest of there sences would precieve the I/O ports on the computer... its the operating system thats going to be trickey, very trickey"

Teo smiles again, glad the girl is takeing initive, but once again decides to deflate her Ego somewhat

"Thats all well and good. but the Chairman is a very buissey man, we will be abel to talk shop later, when were in the reaserch groupe."

Teo Smiles at the Chairman

"I believe she is keen to start the reaserch... i for one am keen to see theese labs, and get word to the concil to send a Maker, shall we?..."

"certainly."

Brain flipped the budget report over and moved it to the side of his desk, pulled out a little panel and pressed a few buttons on it. the area under the budget report glowed for a second and then went out. a few seconds later the area under the report glower again. Brain then picked up the budget report and examined it. now there was no sign of the myriad of red scribbles, just a neat little green check near each item that the Brain had altered, and the addition of one new item: Project Kinship

"excellent, it seems that all of the funding changes have been approved and implemented. That means that personnel should start being transferred within the hour"

Brain pressed other button on his desk

"Minister Luscal?" asked brain to nobody in particular.

"yes, chairman?" replied Minister Luscal's voice from the desk.

"yes, Mr. Holtsmann-Wisewood needs to make contact with his government, would you be willing to show him to the communications center"

"Certainly sir, i'll be there in a minute"

Brain pressed the button again and slid the panel back into his desk. he then had a rather embarrassed look on his face as if he had just committed a massive faux pas

"Dear me, where are my manners, would either of you like some tea?"

Both Teo and Ja'annas politely refused.
brain got up and proceeded to the corner of the room, and poured himself another cup of tea. just as brain was returning to the desk, ther was a knock at the door.

"Come in"

minister Luscal opened the door

"Ah yes, Mr. Holtsmann-Wisewood, Minester Luscal will take you to the communications center, where you should be able to contact whoever you need to. Oh, and minester Luscal, after he is finished, will you please take Mr. Holtsmann-Wisewood down to the south entrance? Miss Tolin and i will be waiting in the Limo"

"yes sir. Mr. Holtsmann-Wisewood, this way please."

as Teo and Minester Luscal were leaving, brain reached for the phone and hit the speed dial

"yes, i'm going to need the limo down by the south entrance in 2 minutes, we're going to be going to the valley, thank you"

brain hung up the phone and got up from the desk

"This way please Miss Tolin, perhaps you can further explain your solution for the bio neural interface while we wait for Mr. Holtsmann-Wisewood"

Ja'annas's confidence is shaked slightely when she is spereated from Teo, she did so hate the smug git, but at least he was tarran, she was now being led down a corrador in a forign country by an oversized lab mouse, at least she knew the DLM had its name for a reason. she stuttered slightly as she spoke

"i... I am thinking on my feet here, but.. perhaps going through the hy..hypeo-conshiosous part of the mind is not the best idea. we could build the interface to target the sub conshous, it in meny ways i...is a lot more basic, and in other ways a lot more advanced then the sentient area."

"i see, you will have to forgive me, my understanding of biology is... suficient for my posting.. please continue"

they enter the lift again, Chairman Brain enters the code for the bottom flore as Ja'annas continues

"if we simpally presented the subconshious center of the brain.... wi.. with the information, it might act as the intermeditary between the computer and the conshous mind... which, would have to be asleap interface p.. properly"

"so they would dream the interface... interesting... i think we would get a Lot more applications for systems based jobs if all it involved was sleeping,"

Ja'annas smiles and nodds as the lift dors open, it is several minutes beafore Teo joines them

--------------------------------

Teo followed Minester Luscal down the lush and beautifully decorated corradors of the building, Teo is distracted by the potted plants he sees adorning the sides of the hall in ornate marble pots, he mutters to himself

"6 months... 3 months, cancer,.... pot bound... erm... 18 months.... oh.. paracitic infection... and another.... no, no, its fungal, one of the family Inn'is - an'raphantos if im not mistaken....... mabey a year if its luckey.... Thats quite interesting, its adapted to the temperature here...."

"Mr Holtzman-Wisewood"

"must have mutated... porteen cote, probably, a GA-ATATCC-CC or somthing....."

"Mr Holtzman-Wisewood"

"yes?"

"the communications sweet"

"oh! thank you!"

he walks into the room where an administrater meets him

"erm, id like to make a radio brodcast to Yagdrassil"

"radio!!?... hold on"

the administartor leeds him to a room with a microphone and a screen desplaying options for type of brodcast, Teo sits down and sets the coordinates, he speeks to the Micropohne

"LAMMAS? are you there"

"YES, THATS TEO, I RECOGNISE YOUR VOICE"

"it is Teo, i need you to do somthing, id like you to pack Maker 7 in one of the spair transport ships and send it here with a crew of technisions,"

"DONT THE COUNCIL NEED TO VOTE ON SOMTHING LIKE THAT"

"erm.... its under article 6b of the Effector program"

"AH..... YES, FAIR ENOUGH, IT WILL BE DONE, LOVE AND PIECE TEO, SEND SAME TO JA'ANNAS"

"i will, see you soon, close..."

"CLOSE"

Teo leaves the room and finds his guide, who leads him to the front where the Chairman and Ja'annas are indead waiting in the car, teo gets in aswell, muttering to himself

"its a mirricel, she hasent killed him, and shees not under arrest, ancients be praised"

.
.
.
.
back in the Brains office, the Techno Hamster has found the sugar the Chairman uses in his tea, and is happely munching away

*bump... i believe is the term*

(ooc:homework is the other term... Meh I hate the stuff, and sorry about the length too, but i had to put my back story somewhere, and i figured i better do it before i forgot again!)

As Teo closes the door, brain breaks off the ever-budding conversation about the neural link and the subconscious interface with Ja'annas.

"AH, Mr. Holtzman-Wisewood. I hope everything you needed to do was able to be taken care of?"

"Yes, the necessary arrangements have been made. Ja'annas, LAMMAS sends love and peace"

Ja'annas nodded.

"So, you said before that timing was critical." said brain "I hope now that the maker you requested is being sent, that time isn't as tight as it was earlier?"

"Yes, Mr. Chairman" replied Teo

"Please, just call me Brain"

"Yes, of course."

Brain pressed a button in the side of the of the limo

"Dan, to the valley please, take the scenic route"

"Yes sir"

As the limo started to roll, brain poured himself a cup of tea, and offered Teo and Ja'annas some as well. They politely refused.

"So, I'm sure that floating around somewhere in your minds is the question of how does a mouse happen to come to be the size of a human, let alone the leader of a nation. It was most evident on Miss Tolin's face when you first entered my office."

At this Ja'annas had a look of both shock, and embarrassment. She thought she had been able to hide her initial reaction quite well

"No need to be sorry Miss Tolin, I’ve seen much worse, and have frankly come to expect it, in fact, Mr. Holtzman-Wisewood's reaction, or more accurately lack there of, caught me by surprise. I suppose that you both being geneticists would be more interested in most in my story, so I hope you don't mind if I babble on for a while"

Teo and Ja'annas made gestures that indicated that it would be no trouble, in reality, Ja'annas couldn't wait for him to start the story, and Teo was more than mildly interested.

"I see then. Well, my first memory was being in a cage in what was acme genetics laboratory. I was a test subject for research involving growth hormones and drugs that were to improve mental capacity and ability and lengthen the human life span; I also had a roommate if you will who was a subject in the same battery of trials as I.

Apparently the drugs and hormones injected into me reacted with a unique genetic mutation I had. This resulted in an enlarged cranial cavity, and superior mental faculties, and by superior, I mean by human standards. Also the drugs given to me have lengthened my life span considerably longer than the normal life span of a lab mouse. Apparently, these changes were a fluke. Every other animal involved in the battery of tests experienced no change in lifespan, and a general retardation of the mental functions to sub-normal for their species. Because of my obvious physical deformity, I was nicknamed The Brain, and my cage mate was given the name pinky for reasons that to this day I cannot fathom.

As I slowly became aware of my surroundings and the general level of awareness about my status amongst the scientists, as well as the general intellect of the world as a whole, I decided that I was destined to be their ruler; A conclusion that I now realize was highly egotistical. Because of my arrogance, I attempted each night to sneak out (which for me was a ridiculously easy task) and take over the world with my cage mate. I tried for several years and got nowhere.

It eventually dawned on me that taking over the world was far too big a task to accomplish in one night. I then began to hatch a plan to take over a small country and start from there. After several weeks I had found an ideal target: A nation of just under 50 million people with a corrupt government, but a democratic election system. I set a target date for 1 week later to launch the plan.

I had determined that I could use the Internet to create a cyber business that specialized in communication and computing design solutions. I had been able to scrape up enough parts to build a working terminal and on it I coded or ‘borrowed’ programs that I needed to run a business, over the next month or so, I used the lab’s net connection to create NeuroSpan enterprises, and my virtual avatar became a millionaire within weeks. Consequently, I had to become a genius in these fields, doing what a fully funded research division does by my self.

It was about then that the scientists started doing a different battery of tests with a new growth hormone. It killed all the other mice in the lab except for me. Again I was saved due to genetic differences. This hormone caused me to grow abnormally large, and disproportionate to the way a mouse would grow normally. I was growing as a human would. One night I decided to run my blood through some of the lab’s equipment. The results amazed me. I had the genetic makeup of both a human and a mouse. By my calculations I would be the size of a human with 16 more doses of the drug, but I was sure that I would be terminated well before that would happen. The next night I left the lab for good taking 15 doses of the drug with me. I proceeded to move to the ‘target nation’ and found a home in the slums. I kept my head hidden at all times out doors, and lived by buying everything I needed online.

I several years had passed decided that I tired of the existence I had then. I decided that The first election cycle I was eligible in, I was going to be elected leader by the people. Since I was 25 at the time, I had 5 years to prepare. I rigged up a clever holographic device to make my face look human and always wore gloves. I used several puppet corporations to bribe officials and make a record of those bribes so that I could expose the dark side of the government to the public.

I on the presented myself as the clean candidate, opposed to all form of corruption (which for the record I was). In the end, the old government was swept aside and I was elected to the high council by a landside. I continued to root out corruption wherever I could find it, and eventually I was elected to the chairmanship 6 years later. I’ve held the position ever since. It was at that time that the country’s name was officially changed to the Dominion of the Lab Mouse and the flag changed to symbolize the end of the reign that corruption had held on government

The first few years were hard, as I still had to root out the last bastions of corporation bought politicians and corrupt officials, but they eventually were removed from office with the help of the public. Since then, I’ve been able to relax a bit. I’ve taken up an interest in genetics actually; trying to figure out what exactly spared me and gifted me with my intelligence. I also still try to maintain my positions in the computer science and communication fields, in fact a large percentage of our innovations are ideas I hand down to the research teams for further investigations. I’ve also tried to pickup at least a basic understanding of all the other sciences so I can have a basic understanding at the very least of new ideas and developments when they are presented to me. As for taking over the world, I’ve given up on that. I have found a much greater satisfaction as a ruler who has been put there by the will of the people, rather than his own will”

With this, brain took a final drink for his cup of tea, and reached to refill it

“So, do either of you have any questions”

At this Ja’annas spoke up

“So, do the people know about the bribery in your effort to get elected?”

Teo shot her a look as if she had just stabbed him in the back. Brain looked unfazed. in fact, he looked rather pleased that she had asked

“Yes, I made all the records public during my election run, I was also careful to let the politicians proposition the bribe and I never acted on any benefit that a bribe would have allowed me”

Teo then figured that he had best try and change the subject

“Um, Brain, how long have you said you have held the chairmanship?”

“I’ve held it for 215 years now”

At this, a stunned silence filled the car. Brain figured that it would probably be best to let them recover a bid from the shock before further inquiring about LAMMAS and Ja’annas’s neural interface.

Finally the Brain enquired about LAMMAS...

Ja'annas took the initive, as Teo now seemed to be the one staring blankley into space, looking confused.

"LAMMAS was commisioned by the High council in the days beafore the Schizm war, the wholsale slaughter that drove our people to flee Norn Iron, 7 of the greatest scientests were geathered together, I was chosen because half of my blood is Zethkurian, i was educated in there system had had a lot more experience with computing then moast of tarrra. When i joined the project it was already 7 years old and the Nural Interaction Network protocalls had already been designed and were being used as Tarra's telicom network....
the NIN functions just like any other network except pulsed are carried by adapted nurons and contain electro chemical markers, which serve as 'adress' bits if you will, a Swicher is a primarly biological interaction area, where the electrochemical marker is anaylised and reassigned and the electronic pulse containing the data is sent on to the next swicher with a new marker, quie efficant really.
I decided that, seing as we already had the electro chemical backround and infastructure, the way was clear to make a model of a human brain and apply it to the network, over time we improved the efficancy and complexity of the design, she is nothing like a human mind now"

Ja'annas smiled

"I dont think anyone counted on her becomming sentient, that was an ethical problem we didnt really want to get into, but she developed conshious, and we embraced it, she is not like any AI... because she isnt artificial, she isnt a model of a nural network, she is a full biological Nural netork. And, she is quite immune to computer viruses, much like I am immune to computer viruses, her 'brain' is bio-electronic, but there are large redundancey systems which are built using totally chemical meens, enzymes and organs and the such like, Teo made them.
Currentally LAMMAS is the brain, and the NIN is the body, she can effect any tarran equipment attached to the NIN, the three ships we are outfitting have small versions of the NIN but no LAMMAS to deive them, we cant just copy her, and we need somthing with more power for the ships anyway."

she pauses, in thought

"I think we can interface the human mind to a computer in much the same way as LAMMAS interfaces with NIN, through the subconshious... well in LAMMAS's case the SPPU but ill spare the deatils for now, we just need to grow some new nural receptors in the target brain and link them to a computer, as i have said beafore, the formatt we get the information from the network, to the operator is crucial, but the subconshious will do most of the processing 'brainside' if you will..."

ooc: "my cage mate was given the name pinky for reasons that to this day I cannot fathom." its soo true... NARRF!
any way, i have to get to university, i may edit this tonight... possibally...

*bump* :D

OOC: i know, i know, but the power went out yesterday and i saw gone all day today, and frankly i'm not doing this at 1 am.... i'll have something by 2 pm EST

ooc: your forgiven :D .. i just had to stop it falling off the bottom of my serch page.. i dono why.. just keep the important ones up top

I am an official uninvited guest..


Privite ?

OOC: bookmark it, that's what i did

back IC now...

"i see..." murmured Brain catching the general gist of what Ja'annas was saying "about LAMMAS though...you said she?

"yes, LAMAS was original coded with female DNA"

"i see..." murmured brain again obviously half lost in some idea which he indicated from his ponderous expression was still only half formed

just then the drivers voice came over the intercom system. "Chairman, we have entered the valley"

"snapped back to reality, brain quickly responded "oh, right... to the NCRC, main offices"

"yes sir"

"so, where exactly are we?" asked Teo politely

"We are now entering silicon valley, the home of head offices of many major computer company headquarters, and the National Computing Research Complex, one of the 2 largest lab complexes in the nation. the other being the National Telecommunication Research Complex. the NCRC is where you will likely spend most of your time while working on this project"

Teo, nodded politely, Ja'annas had taken to looking at the office complexes of the many corporate headquarters, each attempting to out do the other in what could be accomplished with steel, glass, and landscaping. this resulted in a view of what could be best described as what buildings and arcologies might look like some 500 years in the future. as they continued to weave through the curving tree lined streets brain continued his explanation

"now, while i have arranged accommodations for you here, you are free to consult and visit any of the other labs that you believe may be of use, particularly, i have informed the national genetics lab of this project and they will assist you in any way they can."

as the limo began to take a long sweeping curve in the road, the brain spotted a familiar shape in the corner of his eye. Ja'annas had taken an interest in it as well

'What's that?" inquired Ja'annas

she was referring to a geodesic dome that rose several hundred feet in the air that appeared to be supported by 5 fountains around it's base, each with a large granite base that the water splashed down on and cascaded to a collecting pool around each one. underneeth the center of this structure was a black marble dome shaped structure with 5 entrances cut in it, each corresponding to an opening between the fountains. as best as Ja'annas could figure that had to be the entrance

"Oh, that's the headquarters for NeuroSpan enterprises" explained Brain

"you're old company, right?"

"Actually, i'm still technically on the board"

"But doesn't that go against the whole anti corruption platform you campaigned on?"

"it would appear to, but in reality it doesn't because according to DLM election laws, any government official holding voting stock in a corporation, has that stock treated as nonvoting stock and if they are on the board of directors, their position is frozen so they can't be voted off the board. in addition to this, government officials are under observation for any sort of breach of the trust of the people"


a few minutes later, they turned off the main road into a side road, and then turned off onto a loop in front of a long low square black building. on each of the 4 sides there were 5 grey cylinders that went about all the way up the building,with the exception of the center one on their side which went halfway up the building and then went into the building.

"This, is the National Computing Research Complex" said brain as the limo slowly rolled to a halt.

brain got out of the limo, and opened the door for Teo and Ja'annas, and then after they got out, walked over the the driver and whispered something to him.

as the driver drove away, Brain gestured for the pair to follow him.
"this way please" he said as he started to head for the center cylinder. teo and Ja'annas followed closely behind.

when they finally approached the shiny cylindrical pillar, the doors slid open silently revealing a small airlock like chamber (presumedly to keep out inclimate weather) and an elevator. after stepping through the second set of doors, brain pushed the call button, in a few seconds the elevator arrived and the 3 of them filed in.
brain pushed the only button on the panel and the elevator began to rise.

"this is actually a security measure", explained brain to nobody in particular. by keeping access only on the 3rd floor and through the private rail station underground, it becomes much easier to keep our research secret until it is completed. Now then, our first stop will be to security to get the 2 of you appropriate clearance for the labs that you will be using"

with that a pair of doors opened opposite the set they entered the car in and brain strode out leading the 2 scientists through the corridors of what could easily pass as a high class office complex. as they neared the center of the complex, the sound of walling water could be heard. when the reached the center, they saw a magnificent 6 story sun room, with a fountain in the middle. there were also benches sitting around it where various people were talking and gesturing trying to explain some new concept or idea

As teo was busy determining the gene structures of the plants, brian explained a little more about the room.


"see the fountain down there?" the pair nodded
"that's actually the cooling system for the mainframe of this building. the water is maintained at 15 degrees centigrade so that the chips, which are encased in plastic and arranged around the central column don't melt. it also creates a restful atmosphere for the researchers to try and discuss new ideas and designs. any way, security is this way, follow me please"

the three of them continued around the atrium to the hall way across from where they came in, and about half way down the corridor, they entered a door on the left. they entered the office and there was a man sitting in a clerical style cubical. upon entering he turned around, and said "new arrivals?"

"researchers form the free land of cairn tarra, they'll need level 6 gamma access and also clearance for the genetics labs and the cerbera project"

"all right"

Brain then spoke to teo and ja'annas" will you 2 excuse me for a moment, i'll go take care of you other arrangements"

the man turned around, and entered several rapid keystrokes and then looked at Ja'annas

"ma'am, name please?'

a bit hesitant, ja'annas stuttered a bit "um.. ja.. Ja'annas Tolin"

"Can you spell that for me?"

"j a ' a n n a s t o l i n"

"thank you" the man pointed to a smooth , dark blue keypad with the numbers 0-9 on it. "please enter a passcode that is 8 to 10 digit's long that you'll remember, that will be your access code to all the labs you'll have access too.

ja'annas typed 9 digits in rapid succession

"again please for confirmation"

ja'annas did so again, this time when she hit enter the pad displayed a green box with the words 'passcode accepted' in it.

the man repeated the process with teo, and when he had finally finished brain came walking back from the back part of the office

"ok, i've just finished making arrangements for accomedations for you do for when you decide to get started. i suppose that you'll want to take a look at them now so that we can change things to your liking before you move in."

teo nodded

"good good", follow me please."

brain lead them out of the office and further down the hall way towards what appeared to be another one of the cylindrical elevators. when this one arrived, teo and ja'annas noticed that instead of a putton panel, that it had a keypad exactly like the one in the security office. brain reached out and entered a rapid string of 15-20 numbers and then hit enter. the little green passcode approved box appeared and then was replaced with a 'select floor' message. "living quarters" said brain aloud and the elevator slowly began to move upwards.

at the 5th floor they stepped out into what appeared to be a hotel, and a classy one at that. the floor was well carpeted, the walls were painted a light tan and there was a blue keypad by every door. brain pulled a small palmtop computer out of his breast pocket of his suit, and turned it on. he tapped it a few times and soon had a map with 3 dots on it and the floor plan. he studied it for a few seconds and then looked up
"this way please" he said as they started to head down the hall.. after a few turns, the eventually stopped.

"here we are, rooms 594 and 594. Miss Tolin, you have room 594, Mr. Holtzman-Wisewood, you have 595"

they both entered their codes and the now familiar green box came up. in side was a spacious and well furnished apartment with a small kitchenette and dining area, bedroom, full bathroom, and coffee/tv room with plush leather couches and chairs, there was also a small palm top computer sitting on the night stand next to their bed.

after inspecting their rooms they both came out

"if you have any requests or alterations that you need done, simply talk to mike in the office where you were registered. kevin, the man who registered you can show you where he is.
now to continue with the tour, this way please."

Brain lead them back to the elevator, entered his passcode again and this time said "sublevel 6"

on the significantly longer journey down, brain explained that there were 8 sub levels, and each one worked on projects with a differing level of security or importance. foreign projects were automatically level 4 or higher, and sfn/wte work was automatically level 6.
when they reached level 6, they stepped out in to a well lit office complex with spacious hall ways. as brain lead them around the complex teo and ja'annas could see men and women in different meeting rooms discussing scribbles and abstract concepts that meant nothing to either of them. brain stopped in front of a door labeled bio computing lab. he entered his code and pushed open the door. inside were many many sample trays and specimens, some human neuron cultures, elsewhere there was a computer screen with the words quantum/neural integration simulation that by the looks of the progress bar seemed to be about 75% done on whiteboards there were rough sketches of the human brain, and nerves along with seemed to be computer logic flowcharts. there were state of the art tools everywhere, and ja'annas and teo were hard pressed to find any piece of equipment that looked to be more than 3 years old. between all this equipment, 10 people were going to different pieces of equipment, jotting down numbers on little palm computers just like the one's teo and ja'annas were now holding, and vigorously explaining ideas to one another

Brain whistled sharply.
"your attention if you will please" at this 10 people, both men and women poked their heads out from various pieces of equipment and generally stopped whatever they were doing.

"Gentlemen, ladies. i'd like you to meet the 2 specialists from Cairn Tarra. They are the customer you are designing for. speed is of the essence on this project, but remember not to compromise on quality. we have our reputation on the line here people, it's up to you not to let our entire nation down"

brain turned to Teo, and Ja'annas

"so, now that you have seen the facilities you will be using, and that you are registered in the security database , you can begin your research when ever you are ready"


(ooc: those keypads are also fingerprint scanners too, so if you want to have fun with that, go for it)

Teo glances at Ja'annas, then, feeling it was expected of him he made a quick speech

"Ladies, Gentilmen, im sure you have all been well briefed on the purpose of our visit here, but im just going to go over it,
The tarran Triumverate, that is, the three ships which compriese the tarran navey are being refitted at the stratos shipyards by the vortex coperation. they are being fitted with garvametric effectors, capible of projecting huge gravity wells to defend the ship and deflect any incomming wepons fire.
However, the processing poiwer onbord the ships is no where neer efficant enough to cope with the mathmatical and tactical strain of syncronising the 7 projecters installed on each ship.. this is why we have come to you.
Though you may think this is easy, i have one further bombshell to drop on you, the ships use the Nural Interfacing Network, i dont know if anyone is familiar with LAMMAS

there were a few nods

LAMMAS is the primary, and only computer of Cairn Tarra, it is a biological design incorperating a compleetly electrochemical nural networking system, interfaced at all points with the NIN. We need to take the design of LAMMAS, improve and alter it so we can use it to operate theese ships. makes it sound a bit more challengeing, now we are here representign the formost reserchers/scientests in tarra, i designed Yagdrassal and i am an expert in bio engenering, Ja'annas built LAMMAS from the ground up, so that makes things slightly easier.

Teo ends his speech, to his amazment Ja'annas speeks up,

Now of cource you expect some payment for this, servace you are providing us, and though we Tarrans know little of money, or corruption we know a lot about honour, and so, using the technologies we develope here we will also set up a side project to engineer a human / computer interface. a challenging task, but one that should provide entertainment

Teo is shaking his head and wispers to the Chairman "I appologise.. she really is a bit of a Xenophobe, she meens no offence really" he turns his attention back to Ja'annas

to add even more pressure to the entire thing, as the.. Chairman said we are on a tight shcdule, but then again im sure your used to working to tight shedules

teo interjects

thank you Ja'annas, As she and i mentioned this project will require methods of construction and computation you have had little experience of, to aid the fabrication of the parts we require, the council has arranged to dispatch a biochemical 'Maker' to produce the parts for the system...
i would like to give you all a short while to discuss the issue, and please feel free to ask any questions about the scheeme to me.

the silent room remains so for a few seconds, while peoples mouths catch up with there mindes, finially they start talking, formulating questions and hypothesies, Teo casts Ja'annas a dirty look and turns his attention to the Brain

Thank you very much for this sir... when all this is over, if there is anything you wish to ask of Tarra, ask so, we are honourbound to aid you in times of strife. as we will be with all nations in the SFN

Teo glances at Ja'annas, then, feeling it was expected of him he made a quick speech

"Ladies, Gentilmen, im sure you have all been well briefed on the purpose of our visit here, but im just going to go over it,
The tarran Triumverate, that is, the three ships which compriese the tarran navey are being refitted at the stratos shipyards by the vortex coperation. they are being fitted with garvametric effectors, capible of projecting huge gravity wells to defend the ship and deflect any incomming wepons fire.
However, the processing poiwer onbord the ships is no where neer efficant enough to cope with the mathmatical and tactical strain of syncronising the 7 projecters installed on each ship.. this is why we have come to you.
Though you may think this is easy, i have one further bombshell to drop on you, the ships use the Nural Interfacing Network, i dont know if anyone is familiar with LAMMAS

there were a few nods

LAMMAS is the primary, and only computer of Cairn Tarra, it is a biological design incorperating a compleetly electrochemical nural networking system, interfaced at all points with the NIN. We need to take the design of LAMMAS, improve and alter it so we can use it to operate theese ships. makes it sound a bit more challengeing, now we are here representign the formost reserchers/scientests in tarra, i designed Yagdrassal and i am an expert in bio engenering, Ja'annas built LAMMAS from the ground up, so that makes things slightly easier.

Teo ends his speech, to his amazment Ja'annas speeks up,

Now of cource you expect some payment for this, servace you are providing us, and though we Tarrans know little of money, or corruption we know a lot about honour, and so, using the technologies we develope here we will also set up a side project to engineer a human / computer interface. a challenging task, but one that should provide entertainment

Teo is shaking his head and wispers to the Chairman "I appologise.. she really is a bit of a Xenophobe, she meens no offence really" he turns his attention back to Ja'annas

to add even more pressure to the entire thing, as the.. Chairman said we are on a tight shcdule, but then again im sure your used to working to tight shedules

teo interjects

thank you Ja'annas, As she and i mentioned this project will require methods of construction and computation you have had little experience of, to aid the fabrication of the parts we require, the council has arranged to dispatch a biochemical 'Maker' to produce the parts for the system...
i would like to give you all a short while to discuss the issue, and please feel free to ask any questions about the scheeme to me.

the silent room remains so for a few seconds, while peoples mouths catch up with there mindes, finially they start talking, formulating questions and hypothesies, Teo casts Ja'annas a dirty look and turns his attention to the Brain

Thank you very much for this sir... when all this is over, if there is anything you wish to ask of Tarra, ask so, we are honourbound to aid you in times of strife. as we will be with all nations in the SFN

OOC: wewt! double postage!
IC:

"i assure you Mr Holtzman-Wisewood, this is not the monumental inconvenience that you make it out to be, but if we do call upon you in the future, i'm sure that it would be a challenge for us of equal in magnitude to this, for we wouldn't want to burden you with anything less.

i'll see to it that the maker is sent here as soon as it arrives. now if you will excuse me, i have my office to return to. i leave you in the capable hands of the science team here. oh yes, i forget to mention this earlier, a cafeteria is situated on the 4th floor if you do not feel like preparing something your self.


now, i shall leave you to your work. Mr. Holtzman-Wisewood, Miss Tolin, i wish you the best of luck"


Brain reaches out to shake teo's hand and whispers
"oh, and about Miss Tolin, i assure you that it's quite alright...some of the dominion's greatest minds haven't a shred of etiquette in their bodies. she has great potential, worth proper guidance, i'm sure that things will turn out all right for her in the end."

with that brain turns and starts to head for the door. half way there he half stops in his stride, as if having a sudden burst of inspiration. he quickly pulls aside one of the science team, whispers something to her, and then strides out the door whistling as the rest of the team busily got to work
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back at his office, brain began the daily grind of governing a nation

"Debbie"

"yes mr. chairman?"

"Please resume all my normal appointments"

brain strode over to make his usual cup of tea when he noticed the techno-hamster munching on the last of his sugar cubes.

he sighed a sigh of resignation and walked back over to his desk.


"Debbie?"

"yes mr chairman?"

"i need 2 more things done. first, if someone can get a hamster cage so we can send Mr. Holtzman-Wizewood's hamster back to him. he's currently at NCRC"

"and the second thing?"

"I'm going to need more sugar cubes, the hamster at them all"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

back at the lab, ideas we coming in quickly enough that teo and ja'annas couldn't quite keep track of them all

Using non linear processing was d brought up by one team member

"well, apparently the system has already achieved sentience, so nonlinear processing wont help, besides it guesses wrong on something like this, the results can be catastrophic" replied another

how about using the temporal acceleration processes?" proposed yet another

"no that wont work because biological matter cant survive the processes and energies involved, besides even if it did it would deteriorate at an accelerated rate as well. that's why almost everything in the chronos project was solid state"

murmurs of agreement came from the scientists.

then the scientist who brain had approached stepped foreword.
her name was Dana Ellington

"who said that we had to do this in one computer, or all at the source, let's give the system reflexes, or maybe sub-processors at the emitters."

what about programming these sub processors, surely multiple sentient entities on a single network cant be good for efficiency or cooperation through out the system"

"true" replied dana "but how bout if we inserter a basic reflexive control program into a bio-bag and integrated that into the system, then only major changes and criteria need to be handled by the central computer reducing it's load considerably"

"what about a bag tossing out data that might prove critical?" qustioned another member

"you can send it to the main unit anyway and have it make the determination. either way, since we are not dealing with quantum wiring here, our path length matters. a response node right at the data input point will certainly have a much faster turnaround than if the data needed to go all the way to the core"

with the rest of the team not coming up with any obvious objections at the moment, Dana turned and looked at Teo and Ja'annas

"Well, what do you two think?"

"Synapses"
said Ja'annas,
"pardon"

teo answered this time
"Subprocessers, dealing with some of the data load beafore it is sent to the core, Synapses are the biological equivlent.... the problem i see is one of balence, make the synaptic processers too intelligent, and they will disagree and waste valuble processing time making the desisions, make them too basic and the main core may not be abel to prevent the synaptic responce."

Ja'annas spoke up again
"no.... Synapses, we can streem the data between the digital interface and the electrochemical interface using lots of small synapse nodes, they wouldent influence the data, mearly convert it... we could ask LAMMAS how she deals with incomming network traffic from standard digital networks"

there is a puase beafore Teo answrs.
"ok, in a brake from all forms of common sence and good lab practice, we will be ruinning boath projects at once"
he glares at Ja'annas,
"get lammas to provide us with a current systems blueprint, and please ask it any questions about the interface reserch"

Ja'annas storms out of the room to a network access point in an ajoining lab..
teo smiles and continues
"nice girl, headstong and arrogent, but nice... Anyway. Your idea is a sound one, upgraiding the LAMMAS architecture will only do so much for the porocessing ability, but if we share the processing tasks, we should imrove efficency... we could even use a RAID type...... , "

teo is interupted by an incoming message with a high priority

"Excuse me a moment"

he reeds the message, walks to a termanal and brings up a site.... he mutters "godess bless you Isthus"

VTX NEWS HISTORY (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=78958&highlight=)

he lets the other members of the lab reed the page

"is anyone else thinking what im thinking?... Two Birds, One Stone?, and half the work is already done"

*bumpige*

Ja’annas was starting to get really pissed off at Teo. She didn’t even say anything that time, in fact, she was agreeing with Dana. She was ready to physically slap some sense (at least of her version of it) into Teo by the time she reached the network access node. After bumbling her access code a few times due to frustration (and this certainly didn’t help her calm down at all) she finally got to the communication section. She hastily entered the address to connect to LAMMAS. She was still brooding as the connection went through, so she didn’t notice the connection box show up on the screen.

“UNIDENTIFIED CONNECTION DETECTED. IDENTIFY YOURSELF”

Snapped out of her train of thought, Ja’annas tried to remember why she was here in the first place

“LAMMAS, this is Ja’annas” she still had a small hint of anger in her voice
“YES JA’ANNAS, I RECOGNIZE YOUR VOICE.” There was a slight pause “IS THERE SOME THING WRONG? YOU SOUND ANGRY.”
“No, nothing major. Just research headaches, that’s all”
“I SEE. I ASSUME THERE WAS A REASON FOR CONTACTING ME?”
“Yes. We have an idea on how to make the Effector project work, but we need some data from you”
“WHAT DO YOU REQUIRE?”
“Um…” stalled Ja’annas trying to remember, “We need a blueprint of your current system layout, and also any information you have on neural/digital interfaces”.
“I ASSUME THAT THIS IS AUTHORIZED…”
“Article 6b.”
“TRUE ENOUGH, IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL SECONDS FOR ME TO GATHER THE NECESSARY DATA, PLEASE WAIT.”

As LAMMAS went about gathering the data, a thought began nibbling in the back of Ja’annas’s mind. Well, it wasn’t so much a thought as it was instinct. Something wasn’t quite right. Something was different. Something was…

“DATA COLLECTION COMPLETED, WHERE SHOULD I SEND THE DATA?”
“This terminal will be fine. I can download it and bring it back to the main lab
“UNDERSTOOD. BEGINNING DATA TRANSMISSION………TRANSMISSION COMPLETE. DID YOU REQUIRE ANYTHING ELSE JA’ANNAS?”
“no… but I do need to ask you one thing.”
“YES?”
“Is something wrong?”
“NO JA’ANNAS. ALL MY SYSTEMS ARE OPERATING WITHIN…”
“That’s not what I meant. Something is bothering you, I can tell. You seem…worried”
“YES, THERE HAS BEEN SOMETHING OF CONCERN TO ME”
“What is it?”
“IT WOULD BE EASIER FOR ME TO SHOW YOU”

LAMMAS began to transmit all available data of the Grey Phage that was ravaging the Community of Pilon as well as several sisguardian nations and many of the nations on mars. It did not take Ja’annas long to realize why LAMMAS was worried. If the phage were introduced into any part of the neural interface system, it would inevitably infect the whole thing, killing LAMMAS. It appeared that some CairnTarran scientists were attempting to research the disease, but what they had found raised many more questions that it solved, not to mention the fact that any biological components of the analysis equipment were quickly destroyed by the virus.


Ja’annas could only read on in shock and horror
“Why haven’t we heard of this?” Asked Ja’annas
“APPARENTLY THE DOMINION OF THE LAB MOUSE HAS NO REPORTED CASES OF THE GREY PHAGE”
“that would explain why it isn’t front page news”
“What can we do?” thought Ja’annas to her self.

Then she remembered something the brain had said when they were signing into security “they'll need level 6 gamma access and also clearance for the genetics labs”

“THAT’S IT!” exclaimed Ja’annas
“I’M SORRY, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND”
“Don’t worry LAMMAS, I’ve got a plan. I need to go now though.”
“UNDERSTOOD. LOVE AND PEACE, JA’ANNAS, SAME TO TEO”
“Ok. Close”
“CLOSE”

With that, Ja’annas was out of the room like a shot. Hoping that they might just be able to use the genetics labs to find the cure that the rest of their nation could not

Ja'annis runs through the corridor until she finds the genetics labs, she pulls up a sewuencer and a network termainal and starts typeing

>>LAMMAS Concet, sysadmin J >>*****
>>Connection up, hello again Ja'annis, how can i help

>>I want a networked connection to the maker working on the pahge reserch... this screen will desplay everything they see.
>>It will be done.

>Link: |data to Windowmanager
>Link: |data to Sequencer interface @ COMMST 1
>TTYTP: TTY2 on screen 4b
>Ececute
linking... processing.... updateing....

Connection Established... PWD is /temp/homebound/Maker7
>Access history
-------Anaylis -Grayphage------
type:Viral Ester... class 1
size.. 3 uM
surface: class 7 tps *Fractil*
PPM: None
Spm:None
contents: Unknowen: guessed as RNA-g7 class 5b
----------that is all----------------

>Synthesise one class B2, reliece and allow Phage to clone
>... ... ... ... .. .... .... done
>seperate origional virus shell, and one copy of the virus.
>.... ... .... ... ..... .... .... done
>activate Blue
>Blue virus relieced

gathering results
>?
---------
15/15 synthisised virus particles destroyed,
>anaylise virus shell
>print results on all hardware moniters. send one copy here
>exicute

>processing... eta 5 min

------------------------------------------------------------

Teo did wonder where Ja'annis had gone, but the lammas blueprints had arrived.
the groupe stood round two tables, there transparent displays had the lammas blueprints on them, numerous ideas were arriving every minute to improve efficency of the core. some simuulations were already running. Teo was formatting a letter to his old friend

Isthus,
Thankyou for your idea... it was a damn good one at that. were working round the clock on the three units. we could do with the reaserch documentation... get it heer as soon as poss...
Teo

in one of the corners a group of scientists were going over the current LAMMAS blueprints. on another table they had some of the more recent innovations that the DLM had made in computing.

"hmmm" murmured one of the researchers, "i like how the neural structures are arranged, but i don't really like how there often appears to be only one data path to the core"
"good point. if these are going to be used on capitol ships, we can assume a high probability of failure. one data path may be good for an entrenched main frame, but this is a totally different animal"
" how bout if we call for extra neural paths in the design schematic?"
"no, that wont work. the difference in path length will cause a difference in the time when the signal arrives at the core"

one of the scientists wandered over to another section of the room.


"so right now our current plan has a maximum delay of 20 microseconds from data output from the emitter to the core and then another 20 seconds back, not counting processing time?

"yea, and we need to cut that in half at least. just to cover our loop times. in quarters if we even have a hope of maintaining the level of accuracy we need in the calculations"

"what are the transmission delays on these digital to neural converters installed in the current system?' he asked to nobody in particular

another scientist looked at the tech specs that had been supplied

"0.05 micro seconds"

"hmmm" pondered the scientist who was now pacing around the room. "i'm thinking that if we take those adapters and modify them to accept quantum wiring..."
another scientist piped in "we can solve our loop length problem, and take care of the redundancy delays"
"exactly. and then we can use digital processing stations at the emitters, which will solve the problem of relevant data being discarded. also we can put a more powerful station with the core to act as a calculator for the biological segment so that it doesn't have to handle every single calculation by itself."

there was a brief pause, and then the wandering scientist spoke up again

"hey, run the numbers for me. assuming a maximum load scenario, what are we looking at for a loop time."


a few of the other scientists took put their palm top computers and began scrawling equations on the screen

"5 microseconds, max load. 2 microsecond average" came the reply
the others nodded in agreement.

"great!" the wandering scientist went to one of the white boards and erased it. " looks like we have a working idea, now let's plan it out"

the scientist drew a rough sketch of the ship and the emitter locations in one corner of the board, and started drawing a rather cryptic diagram on the white board that was getting erased and rewritten as the group critiqued an optimized the layout

Teo could only manage to watch what transpired and wonder what they had just come up with that seemed so promising. "I'm a geneticist not a computer engineer" he thought to himself

he thought of interrupting them, but then thought better of it. after all it is never a good idea to interrupt someone with a brilliant idea who is trying to put it on paper so to speak.

instead his thought's turned to Ja'annas. "she could understand this." he thought "but where in this bloody nation is she?

Just then Ja'annis walks back into the room. She is looking unuasilly smug and walks over to the tabel to examint the planns. Teo gives her an ood look, but checks his messages... nothing... damn... Ja'annis looks at the tabel, deep in thought

"ok...good work!.... Can we streach to one process buss per array, thats 9 on Stormcaller, 7 on the Voidstakler and Shadowseeker, the processing load may still be too much for her..."

teo smiled and looked round...

"Ja'annis?"

"What!"

"I remember you saying that Isthus Treeson was a waste of space, and had no use other then as biomass.. is that true"

*hesitation*
"what are you getting at"

"reed that"

the tossed her his communicator, with an overview of the Vortexes newest advance.. the consolodation of there council inside one living being... a smile crossed her lips... she went back to the tabel, and the groupe of now somewhat confused scientests

"ok.... im going to make some changes here...."

she alters the blueprint until there are 9 effectoral uplinks, and a box labeled Biological co-processor connected in line with the processing core..

"teo? when can that usless generilising capitolist get me some facts, figures and blueprints... i can build technologies out of news reports you know.."

"...."
teo says nothing and begins to type another message on the communicator.

"the rest of you, start getting the labs in order... were going to have to get to work.. ill get Maker 3 ready"

*bump*

OOC: meh what??? *rubs eyes* oh, sorry. swamped with homework recently.... expect something by Wed.

*poke*

the files had arrived, Ja'annis had more or less compleetly rewritten the system, each effectorial node would have one person controlling it via the nural interface system, that persons conshious would be merged with the ships conshious intelligence and the other people connected to the effector system, the combined conchious and intelligence of the gunners and the ship would be truley formidible.
The plans were set in stone, all that was needed was the actual nural interface, this, mercifally she left to Teo, who had more or less locked himself into the genetics lab with a few aids and an up-link to the maker (which was too large to fit inside the complex withought demolishing half of it) he was gradually building a genetic structure, for a new cell, a pro virus....

"So basically, what this will do is enter the immune system of the person to be fitted with the uplink, and moove to the centril brain stem, ok?"

"emm.. yea"

"the cell then rendivoux with the main nervous system and gathers information about the host..."

a cautious nod

"then grow transmission nurons down and out to... here"

Teo touches a patch of bare skin on the back of his neck

"and how is the data transferreed"

"thats the clever bit... whenever an uplink wire is connected it will pass a syncronisation signal allong the wire to the brain, this is called the 'Timecode', the presence of the Timecode will be noticed by the host as a tingeling sensation on the back of there neck.
they then just relax and clear there mind as much as possible, as nural activity drops the uplink stem sell sends a contering time code to the computer, once thats done..."

"data transfer"

"not quite.... first a fail safe... once the person has gone into the 'trance' the connection needs to be stabel but safe... if timecode goes more then three pulses out of synk the connection is broken,
if anomlous data is recieve, broken connection...
if the total voaltage goes over the limit... same..
only then is there any data transfer... which is the responcibility of the ships ai,"

"what will it be like"

"ask the vortex coorperation"

"ah,, have you tested it?"

"simulation only... but its good to go for a full test"

"thats goin to be an ehtical minefield"

"yep!"

teo smiles

ooc: just moovin this whole thing along a bit.. its been sitting doing nothing for ages

ja'annis enters the genetics lab

"wheres teo?"

several scientests shake there heads, on speeks up,

"he has been ill for a few days now, he is in his quarters"

ja'annis is already running for the dore shouting as she runs

GET 20 MM OF ADRENILINE, AND A NURAL STIMULATOR, AND THEN GET TO HIS QUARTERS.. damned impatent irrosponcible immature Tá lannaí dár bhurr armaí slisoeigh agus cabaireacht, tá oighear do bhurr hairtí leáighfidh ar.......

the voice fades down the corradore towards the accomodation bloack.. several scientests grab the equipment and follow her at a run

Ja'annis burst into teo's room, she gasped atwhat she saw.
Teo sat on his bed in the lotus position, a ganglous mass of wires was leeding from his head to a plethora of biological machenes he had obyously built for the job. though his eyes remained closed he spoke

"Hello Ja'annis, guess what?..
..
it worked"

there ware a few gasps and one screem as the scientistists arrived with the medical supplies, mainly dew to the fact that they haddent seen much Tarran technology, espically no tarren technology designed by Teo, and not edited beafore being synthisised... He was a genious, but his asthetic tastes wer abouyt as subtle as those of H.R.Giger...
Teo spoke again

"now, now, no need to worry, its all under my control"

some of the lights on one of the devices flashed. Teo's eyes opened, and the cabel fell from the patch on the back of his neck, his voice sounded a bit less etherial now

"Well... Job done i think?...
also, i think ive worked out how to present the data to the connected person... we will need to use a biological processor to act as an intermediatarry, it will process the data, and send it to the quellent in the form of subconshious data packets. The quellent will experience a waking dream.....
of cource it will require a good deal of training to get an operator/quellent to understand the imagery his sub conshious presents, and it will be drastically different for each person, but its just a matter of practiceing it on a local system beafore mooving to the network.
and because its the biological unit doing all the translating, theres no chance of injury from anything the operator finds on his journey, unless its designed to malishously seek him out and target him, and im sure Ja'annas can put together a virus scanner to prevent that..."

ja'annis looks, jelous, amazed, happy, shocked, angry and annoyed all at once, teo stands

"right, i need breakfast, the rest of you, get this stuff to the main lab and start work on the real uplink... oh and Ja'annas, the interface growth molecuse has been tested in accordence with the principles of the learned council, and on that grownd, as the first speeker of that council i declare it safe for use on humans... you may want to tell the lab techs that. they may want to get some test subjects in

oh, and get a signal to Isthus, tell him to bring the Triumvrate to orbit over Sisguardia, iva already contacted the council about getting somwhere temport to moor them....
.."
his voice goes momentally darker

"and were going to have to birth the new minds soon"

ja'annis, who was staring at him pretenshously for the first part, nodded somumly at the last part of the conversation

"I Will send word to the makers."

the setting changes, ja'annis is in a darkned room with 7 DLM volunteers, they sit in comfortible chairs, there eyes closed, eylids moove rapidally, what appears to be a string is hanging from the napes of there nacks and falles in a line to a inconspicous box in the canter of the room. she stands by what appears to be a control consoul on the box, she speeks into a microphone

"is everyone ready?"

"a flash of green comes from the consoul"

"activating network buss"

Mike Chrosson had been a scientest with the computer core of the DLM for most of his life, he had a family, 2 girls, a nice house in the subburbs, and a government pension. He had seen and experienced meny strange and wonderful things in his time, he had councilled AI's, manually calculated Quantum-Hexadecimal data words, he had even been present for the activation of the Sysguardian RAID array. But he wasnt prepaired for this......

he was in a small green room, with a chair in the middle. to his left was a dore. When he mooved the room fluttered and contorted, as if a dream, which, of cource.. it was.... in a sence.

once he had found his feet he started to moove to the dore, a painting on the opposite wall caught his attention, it hadent been there a second ago. It was a picture of Ja'annis, holding a microphone, the image seemed to moove toward him, splitting into blacks and whits as it progressed, it looked like a audio waveform now, 3 foot from him it seemed to stop in space.. frozen... suddenly it fell to the flore, and shattered like water.

"are you ok in there? remember the exit sequence, and dont panic!"

he was standing next to the picture now, it was more like a window, he somehow knew what was to be done, he lifted his hand and started to trace the outline of leters on the picture. The inks smeared as if it had only been painted..

...

"are you ok in there? remember the exit sequence, and dont panic!"

Ja'annis took a step back form the consoul in shock, no sooner had she spoke the messege. then the desplay of the macheene turned black, and in white writing scroled the message...

"im ok... Mooving into primary network now..."

the desplay flickered then was back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened

...

Mike took a step back from the picture... as he did, the green of the walls seemed to liquify and flow over the picture.. then all was solid again.
Somewhat more reassured by his apparent sucess, he turned to the dore, walked camily toward it, and opened it.
Suddenly he found himself in a white corridore, about 100 meters ahead of him was another dore, and 100 meters behind him was a dore. He turned right and started to walk down the corradore, his passing seemed to somhow disrupt the hall, whites turned to blacks, to reds to blues and greens. but only for the smallest precivible moments beafore returning to the clynical white of the hall. Every once in a while he felt a serge of energy pass by him, appearing to him as a distortion, he mooved faster then he thought he mooved, as he was now at the dore.

"past this is the labaratory mainframe" he spoke to himself, nervous, but pushed the dore open

he steped out of the corradore into what appeared to be a guardin, no... a forrest the sky was a bright clynical white, though uppon further inspection he saw it to be made up of an incountible number of dors, some open, some not. He spun on the spot and saw the dore behind him close... in a nondescript font on its surface was the ledgend

192.0.0.1
(267.773.353.121)

he smiled, now he had a context to judge where he was in the netowork, the central proxy router... not far from the firewall...
he turned again and saw that there was a path through the forrest now. He took a few steps along it, all arround him the forrest seemed to team with life, birds and squirrils and all sorts, the seemed to be mooving along a line with the path... eather two or from its destination, he quickned his pace and again time seemed to pass quicker. he found himself standing in the middle of the forrest.

the structure in the center of the clearing that greated him was marvelous... it was like an inverted fountain, raining droplets of energy to the sky... the routing plexus chip... probably... he figured here would be a good point to return... he pictured himself back in green room... he was... then he sat back in the chair and closed his eyes....

....

Mike Chrosson opened his eyes to a startled looking Ja'annis, he had an immidate question....

"How long was i in for.?"

"about 3.97 seconds....."

"i... i ... i was in there for at least 40 minutes..."

"an unexpected, and positive side effect?"

"It was strange"

"ill bet"

".... and though at present most haxsors can only stay connected for about an hour, there subjective view of the passing of time means that thay can fit up to a months worth of network activity into that hour... drastically increasing performance, also as our graph shows there is a gredual up ward trend in expoisure duration... 1 hour is just the figure we have at this stage"

teo stood to the back and right of Ja'annas as she was adressing the collected reserch teams, and the test subjects.... who had come to be knowen as -hacksors- for reasons Teo couldent fathom...
the training of the hacksors was progressing well... they were now well versed in how to survive and effect the network from the inside, though it would be some time beafore they honed there abilities to attack or defence duties, any better then the software the DLM used already provided could.

Teo himself had spent the past week teaching a few teams the principls of the biological engineering they would need operate the system. But one problem remained... the sets themselvs.. the interfaces.. couldent be bulit withought the use of a tarran Maker... nothing the DLM possessed could approach the level of specilisation that the maker had been built to....
The short term solution was to synthisise as meny interfaces as he could beafore he had to take the maker back to the see of kelp surrounding yagdrassal... the maker was allready showing some signs of deterroration, it had been away from the presicely controlled conditions of the tarran sea flore.

Teo was loking forward to getting home

Ja'annis was in her element.... all theese people, listening to her, obaying her words... it was lake a strancge dream... and it was such a shame they were all forigners, she knew that they wouldent get much rest after they left DLM, they would have to fit out those tarran 'piece ships' she nearly spat at the thought of a tarran craft with wepons.... then there would be the council 'external relations tribunal' which was going to be tough... she hated every member of the council, and was pritty sure they hated her.

[ooc: dontdeleetmebump]