NationStates Jolt Archive


Making Minds

Tsaraine
11-12-2004, 11:51
Grafiate of Cyborg Systems Development Core, the Eyrie, Tsaraine

"Hey, Zreydt."

"Yes, Sukesh?"

"I had an idea..."

"How wonderful for you." the DNI Researcher Commandant spun around in his swivel chair to face his subordinate. "Shall we request increased funding to feed it?"

"Ha ha ha, Zreydt. Listen to this. The Air Command wants some way to reduce the systems staff load on the Schiavona battleship design, right? So they dump it in our lap, right?"

"Right..."

"Well, I was thinking, you know how the Marshall Islanders have those AIs on their crazy ships -"

"You know Policy on AI, Sukesh. Paranoia higher up the food chain and all that."

"Yes yes yes, but, we could - we don't need to use an AI! Just give somebody really heavy interfacing and hook them up ... why are you looking at me like that? What's wrong with it?"

"Sukesh, there is also Policy on turning people into mindless automata hooked up to computers." People might spend a lot of time hooked up to computers already, and in the eyes of the Researchers a lot of them might as well be mindless automata, but Policy was Policy.

"Bah. I bet we'd get to do it in Iraqstan. The Führer's researchers do all sorts of stuff."

"Sukesh, the Führer is a sad sad man. Do you want to be a sad sad man?"

"So that's a no?"

"That's a no. I don't need to go up the line to tell you you'd get turned down. Although..."

Offices of the Arkhreif of Research and the Sciences, Nova Reio, Tsaraine

Kyne ralGhema looked over the message which had just appeared on screen number four. One side of him said, this goes against Policy. Going against Policy is bad. Another side of him said, that policy was set by Sural tsaChanya. The man was practically insane. Maybe ...

Well, there was a saying; when in doubt, go up! Unfortunately, for an Arkhreif there was only one person further up before one had to start looking for divinities.

"Eja, ralGhema? I wasn't expecting you."

"Um ... Arkhora, one of the Researcher-Commandants in the DNI Research Corps has come up with an idea -"

"And?"

"Well, it sort of goes against Policy to a ... to a rather large degree. They want to get the Marshall Islanders or the Hackers to help them build an AI to run the Schiavona-class battleships..."

"I see. RalGhema, that Policy was made because there were concerns that an AI might manage to go rampant and subvert our networks. Those concerns are still around - if anything, they're bigger than they were."

"Eja, Arkhora. I'll tell them -"

"I haven't finished, ralGhema. If there are adequate safeguards against that, then I would have no objections. It's in your field, it's your decision."

"Oh! Um..."

"You think about it, ralGhema. Seingult out."

Kyne stared at the blank screen in desperation. It's my decision. So ... what do I think about it? When I was younger, I was against artificial barriers to research, which is why I got on the X-001 project, but now ... Policy is Policy for good reason - but the Arkhora has said Policy can be circumvented! Oh, za karkaradt...

In the beginning of Project Scarab, the Arkhora had told him to use allied minds. Wasn't that what this was? It wasn't like they'd be opening up anything the Hackers didn't already know about, really. If anything they'd be mining the Ogliarchy for data, not the other way around.

I'm trying to convince myself. Does that mean it's a good idea or a bad idea? The Hackers use them as firewalls, and nothing bad has happened to their networks...

"Ai, vokh!" he muttered. "Why not?"


Message To: Dr. Josef Specter, Nominal Head of the Oligarchy of The Most Glorious Hack
Message Fr: Offices of the Arkhreif of Research and the Sciences, Nova Reio, Tsaraine
Message Re: Another collaborative effort

Kuirau esar Specter,

I hope that despite your elevation you will not be too busy to read this.

As often happens, my Arkhreifiate is involved in the buisness of solving problems, and sometimes there comes a problem that cannot be solved in a timely fashion by ourselves alone. At those times, we have found it effective in the past to call upon our allies for assistance ... this is one of those times.

To cut to the chase, we are interested in your nation's expertise in Artificial Intelligence systems, and in particular their use in military command and data control. To be frank, we don't have a lot to offer you in this field - which is why I ask, of course - but the Arkhreifiate of Research and the Sciences, and myself personally, would be greatly indebted for your assistance, and I am certain that our lack in some fields is made up by expertise in others. We would owe you a favour, as it were.

Most sincerely,

~ Kyne ralGhema
Arkhreif of Research and the Sciences


OOC: Argh. I have the feeling that that post sucked ... ah well.
The Most Glorious Hack
11-12-2004, 12:12
Josef was a little surprized to see a communique from Tsaraine, especially as it hadn't filtered through NDA channels -- via ambassador Drzka -- or through normal governmental chains (such as they were) -- via Jessica Hawthorne. Still, there wasn't anything that said he couldn't do anything of the sort. Hell, he was the Nominal Head of a freaking enlightened anarchy: he could do damn near anything he wanted.

First things first...

He placed a quick call to Alysa, to see if she was up to the task, as she'd likely do much of the programming. Receiving an affirmative (and an invite to a family dinner), he turned his attention back to his terminal.


Begin Message

Encryption: NDA Secure Protocol
TO: Offices of the Arkhreif of Research and the Sciences, Nova Reio, Tsaraine
FR: Dr. Josef Specter
RE: Another collaborative effort
TX:

I must say that your message caught me by surprize. It's been awhile since the last joint project between our nations. Far too long by my estimation. I would be thrilled to help with the design of an AI to help with security in your nation, and I see no OPSEC problems with such a course of action. We will probably need to nab a couple experts from GMC for the biological side, but I doubt that anyone over there would have problems either. I'll let them know, and then we can see about creating some life.

- Dr. Josed Specter, Nominal Head of the Oligarchy
The Semi-Autonomous Technocratic Oligarchy of the Most Glorious Hack

End Message


Sending the message, he picked up his phone again, calling Alice, "Hey hon! Seems Tsaraine's interested in another joint project..."
Tsaraine
11-12-2004, 12:50
Well, that was remarkably easy. Although that favour may bite me in the ass, someday.

Kyne typed a quick missive to Researcher-Commandant Zreydt keiMaré, informing the man of the success of his proposal, and sat down to think about personell.

KeiMaré and his team, of course, they being the closest things Tsaraine had to researchers in AI, aside from the purely theoretical. The development team working on the Schiavona would be busy doing that, but they'd need some kind of representative there. Yseult keiMorahn of the Grafiate of Geneering and Cloning, who'd worked on the Ea project, for the Tsarainese side of the biological aspect.

Kyne couldn't think of anybody else, but if they were needed, they could be pulled in at a later date. All in all, it was an auspicious start.
GMC Military Arms
13-12-2004, 05:56
Block 17, Skyways, outskirts of Marshall City

Akane Ishida sleepily threw a pillow at her alarm clock on the other side of the room, missing by several feet, which had really been the idea behind putting it so far away. She pulled the duvet back over herself and tried to get back to sleep, realising after a while it wouldn't work and sitting up, flicking her hair out of her eyes. Her little sister Hitomi stood in the doorway, smiling her usual 'morning person' smile and holding a cup of coffee and a letter, 'Hey big sis, this came for you.'

Akane stared sleepily at her, 'Someone sent me a cup of coffee?'

Hitomi giggled, 'The letter...'

She handed it over, Akane tearing it open and leaving a long tear in the letter inside, too. She read it quietly, sipping her coffee occasionally, 'Alice Specter, Mana Suzuki and me have been requested for some project in Tsaraine...' she yawned, 'Must be something to do with an AI, I guess...'

Hitomi blinked, 'But you're a biomechanist.'

Akane nodded, 'Avatars.' She gave Hitomi a quick explanation of what she did, the little Segonune pricking her ears up and listening, though Akane knew she'd have forgotten it all again by the afternoon. She smiled, 'Which means I have a plane to catch.'

Hitomi blinked and looked put out, 'But we were supposed to be going to the indoor park this afternoon...'

Akane smiled, 'Then I'll just have to turn up late for them.'
The Most Glorious Hack
16-12-2004, 16:26
Anderson Estate, Outskirts of Marshall City, GMC

Alysa smiled sadly and gave Emily another hug, "It shouldn't be too long..."

Emily sighed, "I'll miss you, Aly."

Molly rested a hand on Alysa's shoulder, "Hurry back."

She smiled back, hugging them both, sniffling slightly, "I'll be back as soon as I can." She gave Emily a kiss, "Josef pulled together a good team. And I'll be sure to call..."

Emily sighed, holding Lily's hand as she waved, "Bye momma."

Alysa hugged Lily, "You be a good lil' girl, kay?"

"Will you bring be back something nice?" She asked as Emily snuggled her.

Aly laughed, "I'll do my best to find you something, honey," which elicited a cheerful "Yay!" from her daughter. She sighed, giving Emily another hug, "I should head off... they're waiting for me."

Emily gave her a final tearful hug, "I'll miss you, Aly-chan."

Alysa huged her tightly before giving one last goodbye kiss, "I'll miss you too, Emily..." She picked up her bag and walked to the car, Emily waved sadly, hugging her sister.

In The Air, En Route to Tsaraine

Aly looked out the window as they neared Tsaraine. She looked around at the other four people in the plane before sighing again. She missed Emily already.
Tsaraine
17-12-2004, 06:38
Scheighu Aerodrome, Tekhat Scheighu, Tsaraine

"Here they come!" Kathrai ralKezhet said, peering down the corridor to where the boarding tube curved away out of sight, at the foreigners now progressing down it.

Yseult keiMorahn nodded, and said nothing. The geneticist seemed annoyed about something, but then in Kathrai's experience she was always annoyed about something. Physically and mentally, they couldn't be further apart; keiMorahn was tall, thin, brown and sharp-faced, while Kathrai was short, plump, and pretty.

"Hello!" she called, waving cheerily. "Welcome to Tsaraine! I'm Kathrai ralKezhet, and this is Yseult keiMorahn. We've already gone through all the paperwork before you landed, so we can get straight to work!"

Yseult nodded in confirmation. If nothing else, she approved of efficiency.
The Most Glorious Hack
21-12-2004, 09:53
Josef was the first down the tunnel, Alice following close behind, Alysa, Mana and Akane following a little further behind. Josef had what appeared to be his and Alice's bags clutched in his left hand, holding them with no effort, the dull gray metal only offset by the gold ring on his third finger. He smiled at Yseult and Kathrai, "Hello, pleased to meet you. I'm Josef, this is my wife Alice." He smiled as the others caught up, "They would be Alysa, Akane, and Mana." His years spent living in GMC clearly had an effect on him: he spoke with a faint GMC accent.

He smirked a little, "As lovely as this tunnel is, how's about we head on to our quarters for a quick unpack."

Alysa nodded, "Sounds good to me, I can't wait to get started on this project." She remembered the last time she was in Tsaraine, and while mildly claustraphobic, she'd enjoyed the visit, and not just because she'd met her wife here.
Tsaraine
21-12-2004, 10:15
From Scheighu it was a short maglev trip North to the Eyrie, site of most all of Tsaraine's applied research.

As the train rocketed along underground, Kathrai studiously ignored staring at the Kitsune and Segonune. She'd known who was coming, of course, had known that two of them were members of Marshall Island's eclectic collection of minority species, but seeing them in the flesh was rather different. Still, it wouldn't do to stare.

Beside her, keiMorahn's fingers twitched slightly, as if the geneticist was itching to take samples.

The new project core set up in the Eyrie - close by to the Geneering Research Core, not so far from the Cyborg Systems Development core - bore on it's doors a stylised representation of a woman, holding aloft a torch.

"It's religious," Kathrai explained quietly, and caught her hand before it rose to her forehead in the old brow-lips-heart movement of the Orthodox Faith. Secularism was encouraged in the Arkhreifiate of Research and the Sciences. "Atha was - well, not the first woman mentioned in the Book of Origins, but the first to do anything - she tricked the Kash'ha Ekaral into giving her fire for mankind." She didn't mention that Ekaral had later set Atha afire; that would rather put a dampener on things.

On the other side of the doors, a corridor stretched away left and right, marked with stencils in the vertical Sekhel alphabet.

"The rooms are that way," Kathrai told the foreigners, pointing to the right, "The genetics labs and the mess hall are that way" - pointing to the left - "And the conference room and the programming and hardware labs are ahead of us here. Where do you want to go first?"
The Most Glorious Hack
25-12-2004, 09:40
Alysa smiles, "Well, I think maybe hitting our rooms first might be a good idea." She adjusted the bag on her shoulder before continuing, "Um... and would it be possible to send a call back home? Let people know the flight went well, say 'hi' to my daughters, that sort of thing."

Josef nodded, "Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Meet in the conference room in, say, 10 min- oof!" He smiled weakly at Alice before continuing, "Er, yeah. As I was saying, meet in the conference room in 30 minutes?"
Tsaraine
25-12-2004, 10:50
Kathrai looked to keiMorahn, who nodded.

"We can do that," she told Josef. "If you'll follow me, I can show you to your rooms."

The space given to the foreigners was a repetition of the same basic pattern - a horizontal cylinder six meters across and ten deep, divided into two levels. The upper, with sixty square meters of space, held a small living room, bedroom, and stairs down to the lower level, which contained a bathroom, and a storeroom for the oddments that collected wherever one lived (the same space furnished varying areas across the nation, and soon enough, on the far side of the universe).

And it did, indeed, have a phone (the Tsarainese were guaranteed a suprisingly large amount of communications hardware by one of the later amendments to the Articles of Revolution), as well as a Plexus console, TV screen, and radio (piped through fiber-optics rather than radio waves).

Dialing out, Alysa would reach an operator, who could connect her to the world outside the Ascendancy (the call would, of course, be discreetly tapped, as all communications going out of the Eyrie were - the Tsarainese were not guaranteed privacy of communication by the Articles of Revolution, and the Eyrie was Tsaraine's theoretically "secure" research location).

While the Marshall Islanders and Hackers were settling in, the Tsarainese made their way to their own rooms, or the conference room, to do whatever needed doing in the thirty minutes prior to the scheduled meeting.
GMC Military Arms
06-01-2005, 03:59
Akane blinked a few times at the looks the GMC party was getting, tapping Mana, 'Um, why are they looking at us like that? Anyone would think they'd never seen-'

Mana smiled, 'They haven't.'

Akane did a little double-take, 'Oh...Oh!' she ran forward a little, holding her PDA in one hand and a bag of essentials and notes in the other, 'Um, Akane Ishida, by the way...'

'Mana Suzuki.' Mana only carried a small bag slung over one shoulder, the Kitsune consulting a chart she'd been given, 'Well, looks like we're sharing...Hope you don't snore, Akane.'

Akane blushed, 'Hey!'

Mana grinned as Akane unpacked, the first thing she took from her bag a picture of her with her family. After a while of idle chatter and sorting though notes, the two stood, Akane self-consciously checking herself in the mirror before following Mana to the meeting.
Tsaraine
06-01-2005, 09:21
The meeting room, despite it's newness, already looked well-used - coffee mugs, magazines, and, oddly, a few small potplants dotted the tables and shelves. The Tsarainese team had assembled neatly (or not-so-neatly in a few cases).

"Um, hello, everyone," Kathrai said. "I'd, uh, just like to welcome our friends from Marshall Island and the Hack - with their, um, expertise I hope we can, um, get good work done.

"Uh, I'm Kathrai ralKezhet, I'm the head of the programming side of things. Sort of. On my right is Commandant Yseult keiMorahn, who's the head of the biology side, and on my left here is Zreydt keiMaré, who's the DNI Researcher-Commandant - he's in charge of the interface development. Over there is Rekhanz Sche'daya, who's here from the Air Command to help us with the integration with the ship side of things."
The Most Glorious Hack
06-01-2005, 12:13
After stashing her bags, the first thing Alysa did was make a call back home to check in with her wife and daughters. As her time ended, she said goodbye and made her way to the conference hall, and was the last to arrive. She smiled weakly before sitting down next to Josef and Alice.

Josef smiled, nodding during the introductions, "I'm sure we will, Kathrai. I'd say that the last project Alysa and I colaborated with you on worked out just fine, and we're interested in seeing this thing through." As he spoke he casually rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a small screen. A few notes poped up on it and he looked them over before continuing, "Now, from what I've been told, the goal here is to create an AI to control a ship of some sort, something like what the Federation has done with June and her sisters. Assuming that I'm correct so far, I think we need to discuss what sort of vessel this will be; how complete you want the fire-control to be; and what sort of avatar you had in mind."
Tsaraine
07-01-2005, 04:57
Rekhanz Sche'daya looked to Kathrai, who nodded, and the Air Command researcher took up the remote and pointed it at the screen along one wall, which lit up to display four hundred meters of aerial battleship.

"This is the prototype Schiavona-class aerial battleship," he began. His english was as neat and precise as his appearance. "Six turrets, twelve main guns - they're the same class as those used on the Lucifer-class artillery - and a top speed of ... well, you could reach orbit, if you overrode the safeguards to stop that happening and didn't care about killing the crew.

"The problem we have encountered is that, with a vessel this size, the amount of miscellaneous functions - communications, radar, satellite monitoring, rangefinding, and the like - that we require take up a great deal of resources. With the current expansion of the air fleet, we want to cut down on resource consumption, you see - we're short on crew as it is, for the Air Monitors and Cruisers.

"So the AI will, ideally, be able to fill all those functions - it should be able to command the vessel if necessary, so really it would serve as a major part of the entire command and control hierarchy.

"As for the avatar, uh - would you explain why that is necessary?"
The Most Glorious Hack
07-01-2005, 11:33
Alysa nodded as the specs were given, "Not a problem at all. We can easily do all of that, redundant systems and all. We've done that sort of thing before, so no worries on that front."

Josef semiled thinly at the last question, "A few reasons for an avatar, actually. For one, is seems to make life easier for the AI's. Sometimes there's a slight disconnect when they don't have a body. Also, it makes life easier for the crew. It gives them someone to talk to, as opposed to a panel on a wall. And, finally, it allows the AI to do physical tasks which can come in handy in emergency situations."
GMC Military Arms
10-01-2005, 01:16
Mana checked off the stats, 'Hm...She's less than half the size of Vione or Galfe and doesn't look more complex in terms of system density, so the workload is certainly doable, fairly easily in fact.'

Akane nodded, 'There's a lot of practical reasons for the avatar most of which have already been outlined; in addition, well, it allows the AI to have a life outside the ship; simply monitoring the routine systems can become very tedious for an advanced AI, we've found.'

Alice paused, checking her PDA, 'With that in mind, our first question of you must be one of civil rights; if this AI is to be sentient then we must be assured of what rights it would be granted under the Tsarainese constitution or the equivalent document.'
Tsaraine
10-01-2005, 01:58
"I see." Rekhanz blinked. "Rights? Er..."

Tsaraine traditionally didn't have much truck with such things; citizens had enough rights to ensure they weren't dragged off in the middle of the night, and the Articles of Revolution guaranteed them enough amenities to keep them happy within the strict boundaries of those rights.

"Of course the AI shall have all the rights of any other Tsarainese citizen," keiMorahn said sharply. "This is not the First Dominion; we have no slaves."

Kathrai nodded. "Anything else would be unfair, surely? Uh, it's sort of unrelated, but how exactly would you go about editing the code of something that is a sentient entity? To avoid anything which could be construed as murder, I mean."
GMC Military Arms
10-01-2005, 02:31
Alice bowed gently, 'My apologies, it's best to be sure of these things before proceeding.'

Mana paused, 'Well, as lead programmer on Alison PHALANX I can speak from a position of experience on that issue; most of our AIs consist of a sentient 'core' system with a modular program set around it which can be upgraded or replaced entirely without altering the core program. Think of it like a human with a box of tools; you can change the tools, but you never change yourself.'

'Generally the first stage is creating a sentient program suitable to act as the core based on rough maximum anticipated system loads with an added upper margin to take future developments into account. Once that system is complete it's normal to give it a reasonably human education...' And a family, she mentally added, but one step at a time. '...Then gradually introduce the combat modules in simulations, finally ending with live-fire testing with the full combat unit.'

Akane nodded, 'It's normal to introduce the humanoid avatar just after sentience, allows it to socialise a little. It's difficult to stress the importance of that enough, if it has no concept of the value of the lives of others it is far more likely to treat its duties as simple routine.' She paused, 'I don't think I have to say why a weapon that enjoys killing isn't a desirable thing to have.'
Tsaraine
10-01-2005, 02:46
"I see," Kathrai replied. "Thank you."

"Excuse me, but I'm a little bit confused..." Sukesh interrupted. "With all the work you put into this - giving it an education and all - wouldn't it be easier to just, I don't know, plug in a textbook module? I mean, with all the work involved, how is it easier than just training a human?"

Zreydt glared daggers.
GMC Military Arms
10-01-2005, 02:55
Mana smiled, 'I guess it's just tradition that made us choose a relatively conventional education over simple inserted textbook learning. We can assure you it works, however.'

'As for the why of it, the direct connection means the AI's response time is faster, and it is able to process vastly more information and multitask more effectively than any human commanding officer. A single sentient can effectively control the ECM, fire control, tracking and helm systems together and thus eliminate delays caused by having to issue commands to separate stations, for example.'
Tsaraine
10-01-2005, 03:07
Sukesh blinked, still confused, and opened his mouth to speak. Zreydt leaned over to say quietly, in Sekhel; "Wiring up people is bad. No cookie."

"Oh." the DNI Researcher said. "Um. I see."

"In that case," Kathrai said, "It would probably be best to use normal teaching techniques? I mean, if you have evidence that it works, which you do ... we don't know what an AI taught by direct transfer of data would end up like, I suppose, and it's probably not a good idea to try with something that's going to have a good deal of command over a warship."
GMC Military Arms
10-01-2005, 03:18
Mana smiled, 'It has produced stable AIs for us, yes, though there are occasional sentients that for whatever reason are not psychologically suited to the task they're created for. So far, all the rejections have been because they found their duties upsetting or traumatic, rather than because of any kind of digital psychopathy.'

Alice went over her PDA, 'In full, of all of our AI projects only Alison, Leanne and Hanna PHALANX have been completely rejected for military duties, all because of aversion to their potential duties rather than violent tendencies or anything of that nature. Given the number of combat AI-equipped vessels we have built, that figure speaks volumes for the validity of our methods.'
Tsaraine
10-01-2005, 03:34
Yseult nodded, calculating numbers on her datapad. Eighty percent ... five percent of the remainder ... nineteen percent. "How many is that, precisely?" she asked.
GMC Military Arms
10-01-2005, 03:44
Mana smiled, 'The precise number is classified, but in excess of three dozen at this time.'
Tsaraine
10-01-2005, 03:55
"That's understandable." What, eight percent chance of failure? Make it ten to be on the safe side. That's ralKezhet's job, though, so my numbers stay the same - a total of nineteen percent. If the numbers were certain I'd need to start six in order to get one perfect specimen ... ten may be more appropriate. Or twenty. Nobody's going to object to having more about.
Tsaraine
11-01-2005, 04:51
"Are there any specific, uh ... features that will need to be incorporated into the avatar?" Yseult asked. "If not ... I suppose we'll need to talk to somebody in the political arm about it's appearance, before I can begin on that.

"As for the actual technical side of things ... ralKezhet, have you any further questions?"

The young programmer considered for a moment, and shook her head.

"In that case ... might I suggest we get to work?"
The Most Glorious Hack
11-01-2005, 07:55
A teenaged girl, probably about fourteen or fifteen, walked into the conference room, looking a little harried. Her yellow eyes blinked and she blushed slightly as everyone turned to look at her. She nerviously brushed her electric-blue hair back nerviously, "Um... sorry I'm late?"

Alysa smiled at her, "It's fine, dear. Have a seat." She turned to the Tsarainese representatives, "I'd like to introduce you to Anesca PHALANX. I asked for her to come along to provide... an expert viewpoint. I also figured she could provide something of a unique viewpoint concerning this project."

Anesca smiled shyly, "Um, hi. As for, ah, 'specific features', as long as the avatar can eat and stuff, everything should be fine."
Tsaraine
11-01-2005, 10:52
A working model, how useful, Yseult thought. "Thank you, esen Valangz," she said.

If the avatar can be basically human-normal, we could use a normal human as the avatar, Sukesh thought. That would cut down on development costs.

Why do I have the horrible suspicion Sukesh's about to ask "so why can't we use a normal human?" Zreydt wondered, and shot his subordinate a withering glare.

"Excellent!" the DNI Researcher-Commandant said aloud. "In that case, uh ... I suppose the programmers should get to work, and, uh ... the geneticists can't actually do anything until we get input from some kind of design bureau, and I can't do anything until the avatar's complete!" he chuckled. "So I'd best get to contacting the politics people..."
The Most Glorious Hack
13-01-2005, 13:20
Alysa nods, "Sounds good to me." She glanced over, spotting the lab and walked on over to it. Josef, for his part, largely stayed in the conference room, talking quietly with Alice. Anesca sort of just hovered around, unsure of what she should do and largely feeling completely out of place.

At the lab, Alysa immediately got to work familiarizing herself with Tsaraine's systems before pausing, and turning to the nearest Tsarainese tech, "Um... will we be using an existing OS, or will this be something entirely unique?"
Tsaraine
14-01-2005, 02:38
The Advanced Programming Research Corps was tiny - only a half-dozen people, really - and by random chance the closest person to Alysa was Kathrai herself.

"Well," she replied, "Your basic OS - we use EriOS 4.8, it's the standard - is programmed for a completely different thing - organising and displaying programs and files. We don't have anything much in the way of an AI "operating system" - which is what we're here to do, after all. What we do have is a suite of adaptive programs - very much sub-sentient, though - used for various things.

"I assumed we'd be working off those, so you're welcome to look at them, but if you deem them unsuitable, then yes, we'd have to start from scratch."
The Most Glorious Hack
14-01-2005, 09:04
Alysa nodded, pulling up the mentioned files, "Hm. Well, that's a good place to start." She smiled and started reviewing them. After several minutes she highlights a few of them, "Okay, it looks like some of these will work as a base. They'll need to be tweaked, of course, but it's a good start."
Tsaraine
14-01-2005, 10:03
Programming Lab

"I wasn't expecting otherwise," Kathrai agreed. She sat down nearby, and swung around to face the Hacker woman. "The thing is, a lot of those are only so smart as they need to be - we spent quite a lot of work so they wouldn't deviate beyond a certain level.

"For a mining robot or a factory bot, that's necessary. But to make a human-level intelligence, we need to change that, no? Well, I suppose we need some limit to the creativity of a self-adaptive program, or we'll be creating a rampant sentience ..."

Conference Room

The Design Corps official, when he arrived (five minutes ahead of the scheduled time, in fact), was as tall and thin as all the Tsakh.

"Good afternoon, esar ..." Zreydt bowed politely, although he didn't know the other's name.

"TsaRazh," the other replied, smiling, and bowed himself. "Varakkhé tsaRazh."

"Pleased to meet you. Tea? Coffee? Have you been briefed on the situation?"

"Neither, thank you. I don't drink the stuff. And yes - you spoke to keiTlanst, no? He is my superior."

"I see. Have you suggestions?"

TsaRazh's hands traced elegant loops in the air as he leaned forward. "Well, you see, at this stage the problem is essentially a political one. On one hand there's the urge to acknowledge all the minorities - the Amrasenatj, the Scheighuikh, the Kynaraikh, et cetera, and on the other hand there's the urge to make a creation which fits the archetype of physical beauty as closely as possible.

"That means Tsakh or Ktrazirha, essentially - it's been that way for centuries, I'm afraid, but since we have apparently run out of naturalistic hair and skin tones, that means that either they have to be extremely like the Tsakh or Ktrazirha, or have unnatural features ... at this stage, either is possible."
The Most Glorious Hack
15-01-2005, 08:16
Alysa pushed a stray strand of red hair from her face and smiled at Kathrai, "Well, that's to be assumed when adapting code." She grins, "And just because they can't deviate, doesn't mean we can't."

Anesca clears her through shyly, "Um... if I can interrupt?"

Alysa nods, "Sure."

"Well... um... you don't need to worry about it running rampant. I mean, you're fully sentient and you don't run rampant. I'm fully sentient and in control of the Hack's network security." She smiles weakly, "You don't see me going nuts..."
Tsaraine
15-01-2005, 08:55
"Um, well ... humans do have safeguards against that - the ego and the superego, in Freudian theory. All the things learned as a child, no? But since with the AI all that phase is so accelerated, we need to write it into the code ... don't we?"
The Most Glorious Hack
15-01-2005, 10:25
Anesca giggles, "Freudian theory?" She shakes her head, "No, that's not what keeps you from running rampant. Your morals; your sense of right and wrong; your conscience, if you will."

Alysa nods, "The code is pretty completist, and we don't take short cuts. There's some coding that needs to be done, certainly, but it's not quite like you're making it sound. It's not like we plug the Three Laws in or some such nonsense."
Tsaraine
16-01-2005, 01:18
But that is the Freudian superego! Kathrai thought. Still, she didn't belabour the point. "Makes sense," she said. "You know better than I about all this."
GMC Military Arms
17-01-2005, 09:13
Akane smiled at the talk of hair colour; hers, like a lot of Segonune, was white; the same white as her face and chest, and the two stripes that ran down her back and all the way down her tail. She thought for a moment, before raising her hand, 'Well, I have an enhancile friend with light blue hair...It looks really nice.'

Mana smiled, checking through the digital postcards from her friends on her PDA, 'Or purple, pale or bright...You'll find Federal enhanciles are prone to interesting hair colours.'
Tsaraine
18-01-2005, 11:14
"Blue? I don't know ..." Varakkhé poked away at his own datapad, examining possibilities. "Not purple, though. Definitely not purple. Hmm ..."

He tapped his 'pad into the conference room's wallscreen, and figures appeared on the wall; or rather the same figure, repeated several times over with different coloured hair.

"This is my cousin, actually," the designer admitted. "On the left we have the black hair - Tsakh - then the white hair - Ktrazirha - then the pale blue, and then, yes, the purple. Your thoughts?"
GMC Military Arms
20-01-2005, 06:55
Akane smiled, 'She has pretty eyes...Ow!' she blinked as Mana elbowed her, 'Oh, the hair colour...' she smiled, 'As I said, I like pale blue.'

Mana frowned, 'Don't see what's so bad about purple myself, but yes, the pale blue is certainly nice.'
The Most Glorious Hack
21-01-2005, 09:47
Josef looked at the pictures and gave it some thought. "Well, when I first moved to GMC I was rather... surprised at the hair colors, truth be told." He grinned at Alice a little, "Personally, I've always been partial to black, but the purple's nice too."
Tsaraine
21-01-2005, 10:08
She's a giant bipedal skunk, Varakkhé thought, And she thinks my cousin has nice eyes. I've got to tell Ynessa that. Oh merciful God Above, yes.

"What about green?" Sukesh asked, and looked about as nobody spoke.

"...No, Sukesh," Zreydt replied finally. "Not green. Personally, I like the white."

"I like the white also," Rekhanz Sche'daya agreed.

"Black," Yseult said simply.

The designer massaged his forehead. "So that's ... two for the blue, two for purple, two for white, two for black, and one for green. Oh dear."
GMC Military Arms
23-01-2005, 07:52
Alice smiled, blushing a little as Josef spoke, 'Well, I don't mind the blue either...It's a good colour, and pale like that doesn't stand out as much as it would bright or dark blue.' She grinned at Alysa, 'Also reminds me of a few friends.'
The Most Glorious Hack
23-01-2005, 16:58
Alysa giggled a little at Alice's comment, "A few, yes." She smiled, slightly whistfully, "Yes, I do like the blue. They all look nice, of course." She smiled, "And I bet Anesca is rather partial to blue as well."

Anesca noded, "Well, yes. But the white's nice too."
Tsaraine
23-01-2005, 21:54
Marshall Island is an odd place, if pale blue hair doesn't stand out, Varakkhé thought. Although I suppose it would blend in with the Ktrazirha at a distance...

"So that's four ... five? For blue, three for white ... esar tsaAkhan, if green is not an option, would you care to vote again?"

"Blue," Sukesh said, bowing to the majority.

"Very well. That's five for blue - I believe we have a majority. Esar keiMorahn, I trust blue hair will not be unduly difficult for your researchers?"

The geneticist shook her head. "It should not be."

"There we are, then. Actually ... the question of eye colour should be raised, also. I should think blue would be appropriate?"
The Most Glorious Hack
24-01-2005, 09:53
Anesca blinked a little, "It's an option? Federation AI's always have yellow eyes."

Alysa shrugged, "I suppose it doesn't much matter... I was never involved in the biological side of things..."
GMC Military Arms
24-01-2005, 10:05
Akane nodded, 'We went with yellow to make them more distinctive, but if nobody has natural pale blue hair in Tsaraine that should sort that out already. So yes, since blue eyes would be based on existing genetic information, it should be no problem to hard-code into the initial DNA strands during the early stages of growth, assuming no massive differences between the basic nature of our growth process and yours.'
Tsaraine
25-01-2005, 08:25
"We can take the necessary genes from the Ktrazirha genome," Yseult agreed, "And splice them into the gamete, alongside all the other adaptions - my Corps has developed a "cleaned" basic human genome for things such as these.

"Then there are certain procedures to cause fusion between two copies of the same gamete, which removes most possibilities of error between the ideal and actual results ... it's similar to a clone.

"After that it's more or less basic biology."

OOC: While the genetics described here do have some basis in reality, don't try this at home!
Tsaraine
28-01-2005, 09:16
OOC: Time passes ... (GMC says; "Otherwise I'll punish you with a painfully cute sequence of Mana and Akane snuggling and talking about their families.")

Conference Room

Rekhanz Sche'daya hummed happily along to some poppy little tune on the radio, surrounded by papers, glue, and bits of offcut balsa and wire. At half a meter long, his model of the Schiavona-class Sch-001 was only one eight hundredth the size of the real thing (at a similar stage of completion at the Nova Reio Fleet Yards).

"I am your moon, I am your rain ..." he sang quietly, "Da da dee, dee da da, dee da doo ... daddy's little floatyship's going to rain nuclear destruction upon the enemies of the Ascendancy, isn't she just?"

Sukesh looked up from his magazine (smuggled in from Ekatori - Tsaraine steadfastly refused to manufacture pornography), shook his head, and changed the channel.

"Yeah baby / I am your fi-reee ..."

Genetics Laboratory

Watching the screens, Yseult was secretly proud. Number 114 was the most promising of the three surviving "starts" - many hadn't passed the zygote stage, others had developed dangerous mutations during their gestations in the womb-tanks, quite a few had reacted adversely to the rapid-growth chemicals being pumped through their tanks ... but it was seldom that Yseult admitted she'd made something perfect, and Numbers 113 to 115 were just that.

The geneticist laid her hand against the chill metal of the tank, feeling the faint vibration of the systems which pumped biologicals and chemicals through the body inside, and smiled.

"She's coming along well," she remarked to Akane. "Not long now at all."
GMC Military Arms
30-01-2005, 13:20
Genetics Laboratory

Akane smiled as she looked over the results, 'Yes, these three seem perfect...' she idly opened the clasps on the case she'd bought with her, opening it to reveal dozens of small glass tubes, each containing a dark-coloured grain-like object at the bottom. In the centre was the roughly brain-shaped head unit, transmitter, receiver, signal processor and encryption / decryption suite all in the slightly shiny black metal casing. 'We normally grow the components around these, but we've put them into a live subject before, the microcomputers at least.'

She lifted up one of the tubes, 'We'll need a cleanroom for these, can't be any static around. They're part of the system to prevent the avatar being used to gain access to the core, they basically block any signals within the body that they don't recognise as belonging there.' She grinned, 'They'll heal if damaged, a real triumph of biomechanics...Developed to protect the first PHALANX AI so we could stop keeping her in a secure lab.' She replaces the tube and smiles brightly, 'So, shall we prep one-one-four and scrub up?'

Alice's room

Without much to do, Alice was lying back on the bed semi-watching a Socialist Avenger cartoon while checking through one of her notebooks.

'You'll never get away with this, Dow Jones!'

'Ha ha ha, Socialist Avenger! You have fallen into my trap!'

'Oh no! Market Forces!'

'They're pulling us into his portfolio!'

She smiled as she went over the stats of the Schiavona again against a few estimates she'd doodled in a margin, pondering applications in the Federal Air Army. Something to get onto ASPD over when she got back, maybe.

'Once you are defeated there will be no one who can stop me ruling all the industry of the world with my Privatisation Ray! BWA HA HA HA!'

'Hold it right there, Dow Jones!'

'No! State Monopoly Girl!'

Alice laid the papers down, and went to see how Josef was getting on.

Large-scale computer engineering centre two, midnight

Mana laid down her clipboard and sighed softly, taking another sip of coffee as she finished running the debug set, before typing six words.

Hello, Ksanya. How do you feel?

Invalid request

She sighed, lighting another cigarette, glad she was close enough to the extractor to not set the alarms off. The core sat silently in front of her, indicators on her diagnostic set glowing occasionally. It consisted of a vaguely spherical object about four feet in diameter - the core itself, almost the same kind as the ones used in Dreadnoughts and the smaller Air Destroyers - with 'TS 01 UNIT' printed in dark text on the side facing her seat on the gantry, with 'KSANYA' printed below in much larger red text. Below that, the pedestal reached twenty feet down to the ground, a heavy armoured cylinder containing the auxiliary power supply and cooling systems. Cables trailed from that to the generator in one corner, most of the rest of the room littered with crates of equipment, a lot of them unpacked.

Around her seat on the gantry next to the unit, level with the core, Mana had her diagnostic set with its attendant car battery, her laptop, and a keyboard and sensor cluster she'd borrowed from the Tsarainese scientists. She was thankful they'd had a Federal language keyboard available.

A few wires ran up from her equipment to the sockets in the core, most of them still empty, awaiting modules or training sets. She leaned forward and ran her hand across the name, shaking her head, 'Odd...Alison could answer that by now...' she paused, 'It has to be an I/O error, nothing else makes sense.' She rested her cigarette on the corner of the ashtray and took another sip of coffee, the light from her lamp glinting off the camera's lens as she turned. And blinked.

She ran down the reports from the core again, noticing the dozens of entries marked Illegal data entry request and format error. She'd assumed them to be teething troubles before, Alison had dropped a lot of data she didn't understand when she was just becoming aware too, but it was more than that. She mentally kicked herself, 'Here I am sending Tsarainese sensor data to a Federal I/O filter program to check it against our file formats and types...' she sighed, 'It's all illegal data to you, isn't it?'

She quickly called Kathrai, totally forgetting what time it was, 'Hiya...Um, I need some data on Tsarainese file formats sent up here, or better an input / output program that can translate your file formats and encoding into something my core understands. I can send the encoding set the core uses over there if you need it.'

She paused, glancing at her laptop and pondering. 'Well, it's the right format...Ah, why not?' she felt a little guilty about making Akane sleep alone as she started to dismantle her laptop, but, well, this was important.
The Most Glorious Hack
30-01-2005, 13:46
enSuite Study

Josef was sitting at the desk, several papers in front of him, and what looked like a gigantic circuit map stretched out across an entire wall, variously propped up by chairs, lamps, and pretty much whatever he could find; adhesive tape was false data, aparently. Sitting at the end of his nose was a pair of specticles; he had started needing glasses for reading small print about a year ago, and he had protested mightly against getting them, not wanting to give in to the inevitable proof of aging. Alice had finally convinced him by pointing out her own glasses and he'd stopped complaining.

He was lost in his own world of double and triple checked when Alice walked in, not noticing her at first. After a couple minutes he'd removed his specs and rubbed his eyes, "I'm not cut out to be an administrator, hon. I'd rather be programing..."


Large-scale computer engineering centre two, midnight

Alysa walked into the lab in her nightshirt, heading straight to a desk. She grabbed a pen and started writting a quick note before blinking as she realised that she wasn't alone. She looked around a little frantically before she heard a 'Heya!' from up above. Craning her neck back she noticed Mana was up near the top of the core. "Oh... I just woke up and realised that we're gonna get conflicts when trying to communicate with Ksanya: Federation vs. Tsarainese tech..." She trailed off when she noticed Mana giggling. "You've already figured that out, haven't you..."
Tsaraine
30-01-2005, 20:16
Genetics Laboratory

"Very clever," Yseult agreed. "However, we'll need to decant Number 114 here first. And rouse the DNI people - despite their various insanities, they are our experts in cyborg technology."

She found the lab's phone buried under drifts of printout, and spoke in rapid Sekhel for a few minutes, before switching numbers and continuing.

"There," the geneticist said finally, "That ought to do it. Complaining, the nerve of them! They are supposed to be here on time, whatever that time may be."

Despite the hour, the lab was soon filled with green-suited medical technicians; Yseult and Akane suited up to match them, and the tank holding the avatar was shifted - power supply, fluids exchange and all - on a large electric trolley to another section of the lab, secured from all contamination.

"The body is suspended in a fluid medium, for shock absorbition and support," Yseult explained as the technicians set to work. "We have to be very careful decanting it from the tank - in the past we've lost tank-grown bodies, just from the shock of fluid-to-atmosphere transferral. If that happens, we'll have to try again on 113 or 115. I hope it doesn't."

The tank began to gurgle horribly, sounding as if someone was being forced feet-first through a drainpipe. "Perfectly normal," Yseult assured Akane, "It's just draining the fluid medium. We have to move quickly, now."

The geneticist took a pair of keys from a chain around her neck, and handed the second to a technician, anonymous in anticontamination gear. Yseult counted down carefully from three, and they turned the keys at the same time. The tank split in half and swung open, revealing the avatar within.

It was by no means beautiful, hanging there festooned with wires and tubing, hairless and slick as something from under a rock, but Yseult's face lit up with visible pride.

The technicians now began to remove most of the instruments cluttering the body (and in some cases, replacing them with new ones), while others filled a shallow bath with fluid.

"Saline water, at body temperature," Yseult identified it. "We've found it reduces the risk of death through shock."

With reverent care, she oversaw the technicians as they lifted the pale and hairless thing from the tank and deposited it gently in the tub.

"Now we wait. The various drugs will take an hour or two to flush, but we can essentially keep the body unconscious indefinitely - up to a week or two, if you need the systems really clean for the implants."

Kathrai's room

After she'd spent a few late nights curled up on the conference room's couch, Kathrai had appropriated one of the guest rooms to crash in. It was good - well-stocked in the various necessities of life - but bare and cold, compared to her rooms in Nova Reio.

Now the phone rang, jolting her from slumber.

"Khara dteh kha? Oh, it's you. Augh ... eja, I'll be down in a moment."

She fumbled for the light switch, got up, and pulled on her dressing-gown and slippers. Accurse it, I refuse to get dressed at this time of night ... morning. Y vokh!

"I/O filter program," Kathrai muttered to herself, as she jammed her glasses onto her nose and attempted to put a comb through her thick hair (giving it up for a lost cause as she felt it snarl on tangles). "What have I got ..."

Once she'd finally found something she thought ought to do, she gathered up her laptop, and ventured forth from the guest apartment. A right, then a left, and a short while later was standing before the obelisk of the AI's core.

"What I've got is a little program which ought to do the trick," she said, "The thing is, I'm not sure whether it knows your Federal formats, to translate into them ... let me check. Ah, yes, it does - or at least it has "Y Ynvenzhibal Ved'hyrazhine y Veibelko GMC Militarhi Arhmszko" on the drop-down menu. Worth a try, yes?"
GMC Military Arms
31-01-2005, 13:42
Large-scale computer engineering centre two

As Kathrai finished speaking, Mana blinked, 'Um...Come on up and hold that thought.'

Mana was sitting on the floor, a couple of cables trailing through a set of improvised circuitry from the core to her partially-dismantled laptop, the screen propped up against a toolbox nearby. She rested her cigarette in the ashtray again, knocking her cigarettes over in the process and ignoring the couple that rolled off the gantry as she typed

Ksanya?

Ksanya?

Mana smiled, then laughed and hugged Aly, 'She responded!' she grinned at Kathrai, 'Ok, we should get her hooked up to a proper sensor set, but repetition of input is a good sign. She's trying to communicate but hasn't figured out the language module yet...'
The Most Glorious Hack
01-02-2005, 09:04
Alysa hugged Mana happily, "We did it!" She smiled lovingly at the core, kissing her fingers and gently pressing them to the cool metal, "Welcome to the world, Ksanya." She looked back to Mana's computer, watching diagnotic data stream by, "Reminds me of when Em had Becky and Lily." She giggled, "I'm a mother again." The lateness of the hour was utterly forgotten as she watched Ksanya take her first steps towards true sentience.
Tsaraine
01-02-2005, 09:56
Kathrai grinned back. "I suppose it is, isn't it? A baby, that is. Sort of. I didn't expect to be having kids just yet ..."

I hate to think what the Orthodox will think of this, she thought. They fuss enough about clones and geneering, but this is something like a maximal sin. It's Command's problem, I suppose.

"I'll find some other input systems, then," she said, leaving the scaffholding around the core to hunt for hardware. By the simple expedient of unplugging things from shut down computers, Kathrai was able to assemble the items she needed, and returned to the platform around the core.

"Here we go." She plugged the speakers, camera, and microphone into Maya's cannabalised laptop. "I assume you have the programs to make all this run together?"
GMC Military Arms
04-02-2005, 09:59
Computing centre

Mana hadn't taken much time to wire up the improvised sensor array, leaving the speakers out for now, 'There's no speech module, so you'd only get weird sounds from her trying to figure out what it does...'

Then she'd gone back to working on Ksanya.

Genetics lab, a couple of weeks later

Akane laid the gleaming bonesaw back down in the sterile tray beside her, both flecked with specks of red from her work, and smiled, carefully removing the last part of the left-hand side of the skull and engraving '63' inside it, before placing it in the tray with the other fragments. Over the last couple of weeks she'd all but taken 114 apart and put it together again, Yseult having watched her work the whole time. First, she'd opened up the socket in the back of the neck and placing tiny wires into the exposed nerves, next to the ones already there to keep the body alive in the absence of a brain. She'd explained it was to test the computers by sending data that would be blocked if they were active.

And then she'd taken her scalpel and the case of tiny vials, and had, in turn, peeled back skin and muscle in every place it was needed, inserting the tiny grains with the utmost care before running the tests three times for each of the 30 or so units. Some of them she'd disappear for an hour or so afterwards while things settled, the deeper ones for days while they healed up. As she worked, she'd often talk about what she was doing or just chat about her family, or if not she'd hum some poppy little tune or other.

Now that was finished, only the head computer remained. It was a painstaking procedure, beginning with carefully easing the scalp from the back of the skull and pulling it forward to the line of the avatar's ears, exposing the bare bone underneath. Akane had taken her time, pausing occasionally to grind irregularities off of pieces of bone as she turned the back of the skull into some kind of surreal jigsaw puzzle, slowly exposing the empty brainpan filled with a stagnant grey liquid, a mixture of preservative and antiseptic. Each part was taken off, numbered and placed in the nearby tray; since Akane shared her profession's warped sense of humour she'd quickly signed her name into the largest piece, the back of the skull, while nobody was looking.

She paused, running the steel measuring lines over the hole she'd created again and smiling, 'Perfect.'

Computing Centre

Mana smiled as she heard Ksanya's voice at last; the module was new and she'd spent half the day trying to get her to try it out. It was something she'd designed for Alison, a long time ago, to calculate her rough mental age and create a voice to match it, to avoid the confusion of talking down to a adult AI with the voice of a child or vice versa. She sounded about five.

'Ok, Ksanya, do you want to go through word associations again?' she flipped open the folder in the side, and took out a pile of cards with primary-coloured images or photographs on them.

The image of Ksanya as a child on the monitor smiled brightly and yayed, and Mana sat down, holding up the first card, Ksanya answering immediately, 'Cat!'

Mana smiled, 'Good.' It served as a serious test of memory interface and object recognition, as well as a fun little game for the child-AI. 'This one?'

'House!'

She'd carried on for a little while before deciding to throw Ksanya a test, 'And who am I?'

Ksanya paused, looking puzzled for a minute, before hesitantly saying 'Mother?'

Mana blushed.
Tsaraine
04-02-2005, 10:13
Genetics Lab

Over the weeks Yseult had done what she could to help Akane in her work - which came down to keeping the body alive, mainly. The Tsarainese geneticist didn't know what exactly Akane was doing - neither did Sukesh or Zreydt, for that matter, although they could make more educated guesses - but they followed everything Akane did or said intently, dedicated to finding out.

"Perfect," she agreed. "Damn fine," Sukesh said. In working conditions the DNI researcher was not such an irritant.

"So," Zreydt asked, "Now what?"

Computing Centre

It's odd, Kathrai thought, Talking to the AI here, when just nearby the biologists are wiring up an avatar that looks almost four times as old as it ...

"I think she's imprinted on you," she whispered to Mana (and felt a small flash of jealousy that it wasn't her - besides, what would the politicals think?). "How many does this make?"
GMC Military Arms
08-02-2005, 13:01
Genetics lab

Akane smiled brightly, taking the head-computer from its case and placing it in a cushioned holder next to the open skull of the avatar, 'Ok, first I'll need to drain this fluid, if you can give me low pressure on the vacuum tube?'

She left a little fluid in the bottom of the empty skull, slotting the head computer into a set of clamps that locked firmly into the back of it, lining it up carefully before easing it forward. She pulled the trailing wires from it one by one as the nanosurgery kit fused the nerves of the spine to it, occasionally checking a current indicator wired into a socket in the back of the computer.

'Ok, once it's all connected up this modified body should provide enough natural bioelectricity to power it without extra power cells...There.' The body moved briefly, Akane grinning at the other researchers, 'Startup causes a slight spasm in 90% of installations, it's perfectly normal.'

She pulled another diagnostic trolley over, 'Now, everything should be ok with the headcompy given that, so it's just signal and motor control tests and a little bone-welding and she'll be good as new.'

Akane paused, before flicking the 'auto' switch on the testing rig, 'Coffee, anyone?'

Computer lab

Mana smiled, 'Only two who've ever called me mother, Ksanya and Alison...' she handed over a request form, 'Oh, Akane wanted me to give this to you, request for the Air Destroyer Leopard to be bought over to body-sit the avatar if necessary.'
Tsaraine
09-02-2005, 09:43
Genetics Lab

"Coffee?" Yseult stripped the rubber gloves from her hands - unlike the Segonune's spray-on gloves, the Ascendancy's lower-tech solution was easier to remove. "If there's time, I suppose. Anyone else?"

As it happened, everyone was glad to get out of the bright lights of the sterile cleanroom; Yseult had to designate a few to watch the body as the tests were run.

"I am suprised," she said to Akane, as they moved from the biology section to the conference room, "That the head-computer installation is so simple - or so it appears. I suppose that took a lot of trial and error?"

Computer Lab

"I would have thought there would be more," Kathrai admitted, suprised. "Oh? I'm sorry, what is this "body-sitting"?"
The Most Glorious Hack
11-02-2005, 06:55
Alysa shrugged, "Only one's ever considered me a mother. I guess it's a quirk of the personality, just like everyone else." She smiles, "I believe she means protecting the physical avatar while she's developing and learning."
Tsaraine
11-02-2005, 11:49
"Oh! In that case, I suppose I should be able to get you permission ... although could your Anesca PHALANX not do the same? That would make it easier, I think, from a burecratic perspective."

Alysa thought for a moment, "Well... she could certainly sit around watching the body, but she's just a little girl. I think Mana was thinking about a more... intimidating presence."

"An "intimidating presence"?" Kathrai frowned. "Whyever would you need that?"

Alysa shrugged, "To stop maniacs?" She poked Mana, "Um... what did you mean, hon?"

(done on IRC with Hack)
GMC Military Arms
13-02-2005, 11:18
Break room near genetics lab

Akane sipped her coffee happily, smiling, and murmuring 'Ah, needed that...' before turning to Yseult.

'It's been evaluated before as a possibility, so that wasn't a problem...Really the difficult part was back home, engineering a headcompy to the specifications of a specific skull isn't something they're used to.' She took another sip of coffee, 'Plus I spent a couple of days before I started practising on a VR set.'

Computer lab

Mana blinked, 'Um, the software and hardware for the multi-avatar PHALANX module is still in the prototype stages, Alysa, it's kinda risky...I'm pretty sure the Air Destroyer AIs are fully tested with two physical avatars plus sensor feed, and since Leopard is fairly close to us on exercises with the Seto Kaiba, it's pretty much a given that she can make it here...'

She smiled, 'Plus in the spirit of friendship between the Federation and the Ascendancy the Army has offered to allow your engineers to study any unclassified areas of Leopard if they desire to.'
The Most Glorious Hack
13-02-2005, 13:59
Alysa blinked, "Well, yeah, but anyway can sit next to a bod..." She stopped talking as Anesca tapped her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear. She nodded a little, "Oh, right... of course." She turned to Kathrai, "See, the avatar needs help breathing, keeping its heart going, that sort of thing. It's better to have a sentience controlling it than Mana's lappy. Feb can run multiple avatars, so she could keep things running smoothly."
Tsaraine
14-02-2005, 04:18
Break Room

"That won't be a problem in the future, will it?" Yseult asked. "After all, there are presumably going to be more Schiavona-class battleships produced in the future, or at least more ships requiring AI guidance, and those will need avatars."

Computer Lab

"I see," Kathrai said, "In that case I don't think there'll be a problem - I'll submit this to the Command staff, and hopefully it will get through the system soon."

OOC: Ack. Short and ungood.
GMC Military Arms
15-02-2005, 06:57
Break room

Akane thought for a moment, 'Well, provided you standardise the internal measurements of the skull it should be a simple matter of turning out copies of the headcompy I bought with me. I guess you could make all the avatars clones of that one and make them look different with a little cosmetic surgery...It'd kinda fuck with their heads to all be totally identical, after all.'

She carefully opened the card she'd bought with her, giggling a little at it, 'A Valentine from Hitomi...' Akane smiled, 'I've tried to tell her it's not really for that kind of love, she just listens and nods her head and then ignores me.' She idly tapped the microswitch inside, a little hologram of Hitomi looking up at her with big, round eyes appearing above the card.

'It's been too long, sis...When are you coming home? I miss you...'

Akane sighed, 'Once I've got the skull together everything should be ok for you guys with the notes I left, yes?'

Computer Lab

Mana smiled, and got back to teaching Ksanya.
Tsaraine
15-02-2005, 09:22
Break Room

Yseult shrugged (a jerky, birdlike motion of bony shoulders), and sipped at her tea.

"The clones we already have seem to manage fine," she remarked. "Back in the first decade or so after the Event we cloned them by the hundreds - it's why the population is as large as it is now. Although it has it's problems - disease transmission is high, because the genetic diversity is low, and then when one looks to the long view, that may cause problems in the future ...

"I'm afraid I'm not sure what a "Valentine" is," she admitted, "But yes, we should be able to manage."
GMC Military Arms
20-02-2005, 10:46
Break room

Akane thought for a moment, 'But it would be kinda tough to tell clones apart during briefings. I'm going to be putting a serial number on the back of the neck where her hair will be over it most of the time, but you'll need some visual method of telling different avatars apart if they're being briefed together in the same room.'

She pulled out her PDA, pulling up images of the four Dreadnought AI-avatars, three of them beautiful white-haired, yellow-eyed humans who could be sisters but certainly aren't clones. 'Slight variations in facial structure, height and hair length aren't really that difficult to achieve, as with the three here...There's a movement towards diversifying ship avatars rather than having them all human, though Hornet's avatar there on the end is a Neko at her request.'

She smiled as she finished her coffee, 'Right, let's get her skull closed up, then.'

Genetics lab

It was an interesting process to watch, certainly; Akane idly pulled the tray of skull fragments over and gently placed each in position, before running a little liquid from a tube onto her spray-gloved fingertip and sealing the joints with it, then applying a little oddly-shaped tool to the joint. She smiled, 'They don't call this bone-welding for nothing...The nanotorch here uses the bone-solder to fix it good as new. Just have to be careful to cut the skull in shapes that join together easily, hard corners and such...It's a little like making a jigsaw puzzle.'

As she finished she pulled the scalp back around, carefully reattaching muscles and nerves, taking her time and humming her sister's favourite tune. She stepped away as she finished, 'There'll be bruising around that that'll go down in a couple of days. We'll sort out the hair tomorrow morning, and provided there's no complications that should be it. Mana knows how to interface the avatar with a new controller, she'll talk you through that.' She yawned, 'But now it's bedtime.'
Tsaraine
21-02-2005, 06:41
Break Room

Yseult nodded. "I did that with the Ea," she agreed, "Although I don't think we could get permission to make a non-human avatar - we have one, maybe two, in the entirety of Tsaraine - they'd hardly be representative enough."

Genetics lab

The Tsarainese watched with interest as Akane worked, taking notes as always. When the work was done the assistants wheeled the body away for storage until the Leopard arrived.

"Good night, Akane." Yseult's lips quirked upwards in a rare smile. "Sleep well."

OOC: Ack, short and crappy. Brain is fried. :(
GMC Military Arms
27-02-2005, 13:03
Genetics lab, the next day

It didn't take long for Akane to finish up, all told, quietly shooing Sukesh out of the theatre before she finished the adjustments for body hair. Finally, she marked two numbers onto to back of the avatar's neck just below the hairline, '000074' in small print with '000001' just below it and larger.

'Her Federal serial number is above, yours below...I assumed it'd be ok to start at one and I doubt you ever intend to build more than a million...' she smiled brightly, 'Well, Leopard should be here in a few days, so if there's nothing else I'll get started packing.' She offered her hand to Yseult, 'It's been fun, hope we meet again sometime.'
Tsaraine
27-02-2005, 21:31
Genetics Lab

"I don't believe there's anything else," Yseult replied. "The government will want to organise some sort of permanent contract to produce avatars for our AIs, I expect, but that can go through higher channels.

"And it has been a pleasure to work with you, Akane. Until next time, then."
GMC Military Arms
08-03-2005, 07:34
Block 17, Skyways, outskirts of Marshall City

Akane smiled as Hitomi pounced her before she was halfway inside the door, asking several dozen questions before she couldn't answer any of them before snuggling her happily, 'Missed you.'

Akane smiled, 'Missed you too...How about we go get some ice cream and I tell you all about it?'

'Yay!'

Train from Nova Reio to the Eyrie, a few days later

Feb stretched a little and yawned as she sat back in her chair. Having finished supervising the securing of Leopard's mooring lines which was all they could do until a proper landing cradle was shipped over, she'd decided it was best to socialise a little rather than just wait for the new avatar to be bought to her for setup. Besides, her first avatar would hardly be needed for that anyway.

She ran her fingers down the scar across her right eye again, a narrow line of pale pink which she'd asked not to have repaired in memory of the gunnery operator who'd been closer to the explosion than her and barely survived at all. 'Sentimental, I...'

Feb smiled, and flipped her book back open again, tucking the bookmark into her pocket.
Tsaraine
09-03-2005, 10:02
Maglev Station, the Eyrie

While the train terminus of the Eyrie led directly into one of Tsaraine's higher-security areas, it was also very heavily used; several million people lived in the research city, the vast majority of them civilian support for the scientists working there.

This made station security some of the more edgy specimens of their type in the Ascendancy, infamously lampooned as coffee-swilling, jittery paranoiacs. The stereotype wasn't entirely inaccurate.

They were also understandably upset at being sidelined by Security personell from higher up in the Eyrie (literally as well as figuratively), people with more fancier braid and more rank pips. Still, they weren't about to actually say anything about it, not when a report could reach desks which mattered quite fast indeed.

And now the train was coming in, and the squad from up-mountain snapped to salute as the Federation avatar emerged, fists hitting collarbones with clockwork precision.

"Captain Feb." their captain - practically a recruitment poster for the Arkhreifiate of Security in his black and grey - spoke as if he was rehearsing a speech; likely he was. "I am Captain-Commandant Retahn tsaKinai; please allow me to welcome you to the Eyrie. We are indeed most pleased to have you here."