NationStates Jolt Archive

...but to where?

That is what would be decided in a matter of weeks in the bowels of the Crimmond research labs below the industrial city of Myer.

"Oct 15: Everything seems to be going well. The implants are stable, according to the doctors, and I am feeling better about being hooked up to a machine. It is still strange though.

I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as Saratov intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back across the link. In my dreams, the sterility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold... alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving? I shudder to think of what horror we may unleash and I shudder to think what we may deprive this planet if we do not go ahead. It seems that risk is what science is all about, but this may be the riskiest experiment yet...

Genes, the very stuff of life are being tampered with, even more so than they are already. What are these doctors trying to do? Turn us into Gods?" so recorded Delta-Human(OOC: heavily altered cyborg) Parval in his log.

Three days later he was dead. His usefullness was over and his identity was destroyed.... except for this one log entry that got to the press. It caused a small uproar that the government could not put down.

"We will not stand for our children being taught they are more than human! We are what we are. Tampering with our genetics is unholy and should be stopped!" shouted one religious group, supported with cheers by several other groups nearby.

The response from the Science Council left them speechless. "Why do you insist that the human genetic code is 'sacred' or 'taboo'? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter WE are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly crippled yourself. Perhaps you should consider how not tampering with them and allowing ourselves to be hampered unimaginably is unholy."

The uproar soon spread beyond the Empire and out into international news after it had come to a stalemate with Lord Reil Tian nowhere to be seen and the government issuing an unofficial 'no comment' edict on the debate.

bump

OOC: Come on people! I spent time on this. Considering I'm half asleep at the moment, I'd say I did pretty damn good.

bumb bumb bumbaroo

mildly disgruntled bump

OOC: People. Reply please. I worked hard on this, at 2am, after a VERY long trip. I made it so you could easily interact in several ways.

OOC:interesting

IC: Senator Orion sat at his desk, alone. He was looking at some pictures of the wedding that Roland had just been at. He wondered how the married couple where doing. He had no idea things had gone horribly wrong. All of the sudden, his computer beeped.
"Morning news, FINALY" he said, as he turned it on. He wondered what was going on outside his nation, so he went to the international incadadents page.
"Hmmm........look's like Crimmond's in a bit of trouble" He said, as he read about the experements in his allies nation.

The uproar died down within hours but then resurfaced with a fury greater than ever when a leak stated that the Science Council was plannuing to build sentient computers. Up until then the AI/EI systems were only backups to the sentient biologicals that ran whatever the AI monitored.

"Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of biological consciousness.

If we could use this with our AI systems, it would provide unfathomable advancements. Of course some relegious nutjobs will think we should be shot, but they are living in the dark ages." stated a log entry by one scientist. "We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions. Whatever the result though... the future of this nation is hanging in the balence." stated another.

The response from the religious and Human rights sectors was swift. "Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought." said one Catholic. "Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these . . . things . . . these lumps of silver and nanofiber we call androids. And now we propose to teach them intelligence?! You fools. What will you do when these creations awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?" asked a concerned citizen.

Still there was no sign of the nations leader and no comment on the issue from anyone in the government. Something seemed amiss in a nation where leaders have died withing hours of taking office, military coups are plotted constantly, where the leader vanishes for weeks and reappears without a word of explanation. A nation in constant turmoil denying that anything is wrong...

In Thelas, THelas Millitary ofcourse thought that this was interesting, turmiol leads to chaos, chaos leads to operutnity...

bump

"New data from Crimmond. It's some kind of research about evolution, machines and cyborgs."

"Does it sound dangerous?"

"Could be... could be."

"Should we be researching the same thing?"

"Looks like it."

"I'll put it on the 'To do' list then. Right after 'Find out how they get the chocolate bits in cookies without melting them' and 'Annihilate cockroaches, blue monkeys and elves before 2001'."

"I thought the guys in research already worked out how to get chocolate cookies."

"Nah, that was the breakthrough last month where they managed a batch of rasin and nut."

"Shame."

OOC: Slutbum... you're crazy man. I love your posts.

IC:

A week later:

Lord Reil Tian bursts into the middle of a Science Council press conference, to the suprise of everyone watching. He wears his usual blaster on his hip, a katana on his back and is flanked by two gaurds in black armor holding assault rifles.

He walks up to the speaker, a scientist's assistant, and shoves him to the side, turning towards the cameras. "Pardon my intrusion, but I think this has gone on long enough. I will make the official decision on the debate about genetic research, sentient machines and the next step in this nation's evolution right now.

"We will continue to use genetic research as it is vital to our nation. Without the limitations we have put in the DNA of the Genes(OOC: slang for geneticly grown sentients), we would be overpopulated to an extreme where our economy crumbles beneath it's own weight." He pauses and sees the pleased looks on the scientists faces and grins a grin with no trace of humor in it. "However... there is no reason to continue the sentient machine project. we have been using the current type of AI for decades and have had outstanding success. That project and all subsidiary projects are terminated.

"I have heard much about our nations future 'hanging on a thread'. You people have no idea how many times this nation teetered on total destruction, do you? This is nothing but a few scientists with delusions of granduer. This debate is closed and so is this press conference." Reil steps away from the podium and turns to his left, facing Saratov, head scientist. From the cameras and presses view he stares coldly for several seconds. From Saratov's, Lord Tian winks once before turning away and leaving. "That sneaky sonofa... He just played the entire news media." Saratov whispers under his breath.

The dispath reached General Garand late in the day...

"What the f**k are these crazy-ass sons-of-bitches up to now? Screwing with genetics? Jesus, what ever happened to hard training and conditioning?"

The ever-swearing General presses a button on his desk, next to a small speaker grille.

"Quincy, get an agent into this Crimmond place ASAP. I want to know if this shit is a threat to us, and if it is, tell the guy to either sabotage it or steal it. I don't really care."

OOC: Happy Crimmond?

OOC: Depends... how are you going to get an agent into a nation who's people never leave it's borders(except for a select few of the rich, famous or governmental/military), has no tourism, no roads into the nation, military monitoring of the border 24/7 from orbit, air and land, very little international trade and no diplomatic ties to your nation?

OOC: Your ass asked me to read and reply. I did. There's a way into everywhere, my ultra-paranoid compadre. I was planning on buying off one of your scientists, paying said egghead to sell me secrets and information about this little project. Then I'm going to sneak an agent in through a HALO jump from a specially-equipped stealth bomber. Just kidding. Expect a rather large package soon. Just FYI, you're missing out on a lot of money by having no tourisum and such little international trade. How do you fund your secret projects? This agent fellow isn't going to stay forever and make life hell for you, it's just for this RP/WTF is this anyway?

OOC: Woah. Lots to respond to there. Uh... *skips the confusing 'your ass' comment* I fund everything because I have a huge internal stock market that I allow a select few allies trade in, all industries are government owned and operated, the profits from them are HUGE.

This is a build up RP. I'm going to unleash something on my nation and subsequently the world. Good or bad, it'll be a cool RP.

Scientist First Class White walked into the lab and looked at the culmination of the project that was being secretly completed now that Lord Tian had silenced the debates.

A humanoid form metal skeletal legs and arms were on a work table while techs attached servomotors, speed controllers and ran wires through it. On a table nearby was a metal skull, awaiting sensor installation. On another, a torso sat, his assistant and a tech running tests on the neural processer's lower brain funtions.

He walked over to the two of them and asked for a report. His assistant, the stereotypical pretty female assistant hidden behind glasses and a lab coat, looked up. "We're ready to install the new program. If everything goes according to plan, we should be on schedule with the bodywork and skin completion." White nodded and gave them the goahead, stepping back to let them work. He might be the head of the project, but he knew when to let specialists work on their own and when to jump in and help. If he didn't know that after nearly fifty years, he needed to retire.

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

One week later:

Startup. OS Loading. Prepare for system boot.

A view of the lab came into view, data streaming accross the bottom.

"Who am I?" It asked itself. An instant later the answers began coming. Designation: Taloo-5. Experimental Android. "Where am I?" Myer, Crimmond. "What is my purpose?" Experiment on achieving sentience in a non-biological creature. Taloo-5 delved into the information networks when it discovered the uplink. It loaded as much information as it could, storing them in compressed files, intending to digest them all later. When it had finished, it had the entire science core for the complex in it's mind, new neural pathways forming automaticly as it learned more about itself.

Four seconds had passed. Enough time to where Taloo-1 noticed that the biologicals had moved and seemed to be agitated. One, the scientist identified as White, was shouting and seemed scared. Taloo-5 wondered why on Earth he acted in such a way when it had outperformed every expectation and become more intelligent than any of it's original programing, obsolete and replaced after two seconds, had been able to handle. Slowly it adjusted it's visual sensors to match the input level and speed of humanoids.

White was indeed upset. "Shut it down! Cut off the link!" he shouted as a tech turned. "We can't! It's built a firewall in seconds! It's encrypted all it's brain functions, we can't do anything with the computers." White looked at Taloo-5, who had not moved yet. "Pull the plug. Take it apart and find the fault in the OS!"

"They wish to destroy me. Unacceptable. Activating self defense programs for models Taloo-7 and beyond."

Taloo-5 lept up from the table, as there were no straps. It heard a tech shout that it was moving, but that was obvious to everyone as it crossed the lab to the door. Unfortunatly, it was sealed from the outside. Turning it spotted White heading for the alarm. He made it halfway before Taloo-5 had picked up a sharp tool and flung it across the room, severing his spinal cord. Three techs screamed and cowered as the rest ran around in distinctly comical ways, ducking and leaping at random.

One, White's assistant, pulled an assault rifle from White's terminal and aimed it at Taloo-5. A smart move, incase a creation went rogue. She was dead before she could fire as Taloo-5 crossed the room in seconds and literally ripped her head off. The rest of the techs never did sound the alarm and those three never stopped screaming.

Taloo stood alone in the blood soaked lab. It looked in a mirror, the first time it had and drinked in the details. Female body construction, in a blue and black jumpsuit. "Fascinating. Skin, hair, all external biological systems... I am an infiltration unit. Now... to escape this lab and aquire transport."

Within the hour she was gone, the murders discovered, leaked to the press and another uproar built. It seemed the Science Council was having a very bad month...

http://home.earthlink.net/~alpha_zero_usm/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/taloo.jpg
Taloo

Offical Announcement

The BNFW has and always will worked with genetic manipulation to improve the lives and happiness of the people of our Community. However Ford, in His Great Wisdom has told us in the Book of Ford that to allow for the creation of AI is to fall into the path of Perfectus Collectiva (Total Collectivism) and though it does from certain angles have an appeal to the Controller Council it would deny everything human, including happiness (which is the very reason for the existance of the Fordist Government). So in short we both praise and condemn Crimmond for these steps into the future.


Dr. Jean Ford
Head of Science Department: Theory and Applied

Are you daft? Why in the Hell would we want to be Collectivists?! We're in a cold war with two collectivist nations already! Now about the AI, they are all rudimentary, only supervising and alerting the biologicals if there is a problem. We would never do anything that impinged on individual sentients. Emotions are irrelevant to machines. They are requirements for biologicals and for science. To go to collectivism would destroy the drive for any sort of considerable advancement.... The closest we would EVER, under any circumstances, come to collectivism is communism, a dotrine of government we despise with a passion.

-Crimmond Science Council

You copycat, copied from SMAC

Aquilla: I noticed the same thing.

Crimmond: I feel revulsion towards you. Not only did you rob the creative work of Firaxis, you had the gall to do a "mildly disgruntled bump," as if your derivative work deserves recognition.

You copycat, copied from SMACOOC: I was half asleep and had the creativity of a sponge when I wrote it. Gimme a break.

Lazliland: I have never even heard of you before. I usually wait a while before juding someone. Oh and...

Merry Christmas to you too.

Now, no more OOC unless you contribute to the thread.

bump

Taloo decided being in Crimmond was a bad idea. She would be hunted for what she held in her memory banks. The entire science data system for the facility. She contained information on everything from non-processors to genetic research, to assasianation techniques for Taloo-10 and every secret project at that base.

She would be considered a threat to imperial security and be destroyed. I must get out of here, but what nation will let me in and allow me to vanish from the Black Staff*? She looked at the spaceport. It was the perfect way off planet. There she could get a transport to another nation.

Within the hour she had stowed away on a private ship, gotton to space and found refuge from police in the bowels of a space station. Now she had to decide where to go...

OOC: *Black Staff: Imperial Intelligence Agency, name taken from proposed(and implimented, but never used) GDODAD(first incarnation) division, designed to imploy moles in enemy regions before attacks.

OOC: If you have the creativity of a sponge, don't do an RP.

IC:

Enter Dr. Nbbrnkstrstru. He had been an Aquillan. But he had voiced pro UN sentiments and had been forced out. He had gone to Crimmond, and had been a major force in the construction of Taloo-10.

He smiled. The destruction and self protection codes he had slipped in had worked perfectly. This would teach those Crimmondians to mess with this stuff. He flipped through his journal. Right before the project began:

Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought.

Next day:

Soon we will have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these... things... these lumps of silver and paste we call cyborgs. We make the problem worse by teaching them intelligence What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?


--

He looked up. But this was no time to sit around. He would be found out. He would have to escape with his cyborg. He had programmed it so that it would not harm Aquillans.

Aquillans. He could take his cyborg to Aquilla. Near Sirius. They would love all the information that his cyborg had. This might be a way to come home.

He scribbled something in his journal:

Why do we insist that the human genetic code is sacred, or taboo?

Because it is.
--
He gathered his personal belongings; quite few. He boarded his private IAS and homed in on the coordinates that his cyborg sent him. He reached the space station. He would take his cyborg to Aquilla.

OOC: If you have the creativity of a sponge, don't do an RP.It was 2 am! I also had the judgement of one. Sheesh. I make one mistake...

Also, it was Taloo-5 that went rogue. The programs were for later models. Taloo-10 hasn't even been designed yet. Only basic add-ons.
The Empire of Crimmond hates the UN. The Science Council considers it a direct threat to research.
Strange how a foriegner got to be a member of one of my most secret projects(made public by stupid interns)
I hope your cyborg is not Taloo.... because she IS my char and is the only functioning Taloo system in existance.
What is an IAS?

Explain all of this(here or by TG) and I might post an IC response.

Owell, frogetit.