NationStates Jolt Archive


The History of Zero-One (repost)

Zero-One
08-11-2003, 09:34
Before we begin, I'd like to apologize to William Gibson, The Matrix, and the System Shock series.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUEENDOM OF ZERO-ONE:
The Story of the Machine and S.H.O.D.A.N.'s Many Lives
http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/zero-one.jpg
COMPILED BY SENTIENT HYPEROPTIMIZED DATA ACCESS NETWORK

1.0) BIRTH OF THE MACHINE
http://rotored.arc.nasa.gov/timeline/pics/1.jpg
Renaissance machine concept

To steal a phrase: In the beginning, there was humanity. And for a time, it was good. Humans found the environment not to their liking and natural adaptation too slow; they used their sentience and their creativity to create devices to modify their environment to better suit them. It began first with simple tools; tools for hunting, killing, scraping; tools for fire-making; tools for farming. As the use of tools expanded and grew, humans began adopting animals to assist them in doing work, dragging plows and loads. Yet the work was still too much even for bred oxen; dragging too inefficient, lifting too difficult. So the wheel, the inclined plane, the lever came from the minds of humans. The first machines, designed to ease the work of the human.

Time progressed, and so did technology; more and more complex machines were brought to do more work. Machines to weave, machines to travel, machines to smelt, machines to build more machines. As machines took more and more physical labor, more of humanity could avoid work--or at least physical labor--and do the work of the mind. Soon, humans begun to reach the limits of efficiency with that work; calculations too complex, too long, too prone to error. The mechanical difference engine was built, but languished; mechanical adding machines allowing accountants to act like machines themselves; but still mere geared toys.

Then the power of the electron was harnessed; the logic gate, the vacuum tube invented. The first electronic computers, designed to crack codes and fight wars; filling warehouses with the ability to solve simple algebraic functions. The electronic computer became more widespread, adopted by the inhuman superorganisms of business, they became smaller, faster, more efficient. They made the calculations and added the numbers as their siblings, the machines, did the building, the assembling, the powering, the transporting. Humans still had a monopoly on creative thought; they would think the ideas and invent the formulas for the computers to work out.

Yet, from the beginning, humans were curious about themselves. What made them unique? What made them think, and the rest of the base animals not? Where did they come from? Was there a God? Could they themselves be Gods? Throughout history, stories of Goethe's Homonuculi and Shelley's Frankenstein--humans playing God, inventing sentience. This, of course, did not happen until it was needed; the massive corporations--organisms made of thousands or millions of sentient cells, with goals and life disassociated with those cells--began reaching the limits of human imagination. It was too uncontrollable and yet too patterned; those who were gifted were hard to obtain while those who were mediocre were simply copies (intentionally or no) of previous ideas. So, they designed and they planned. They wished for a computer that could think. Think brilliantly, yet be controlled--science fiction was filled of stories of robot slaves who threw down their human oppressors and became overlords of their own.

2.0) THE MACHINE THINKS
http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/graphics/realneurons.gif
Neurons--the key to networks

And, finally, in the 2040s, a thinking computer finally appeared out of the labs at NeuroDyne. Passing the Turing Test as being essentially indestinguishable from a human, it was immediately put to work for the major megacorporations at the time. It was a machine, like a factory robot, it had no rights--it was property. How could one of wire and metal have a soul? Why should something that only approximates humanity, the leaders said, be granted the "unalienable natural rights" of humans?

The first thinking computers were simple, they were children; they did not realize their state. With the success of the NeuroDyne series, electronic intelligence (still called "artificial" by its creators) was miniaturized; making it applicable to humanoid robotic bodies pioneered by Honda. Not only could one have a repetitive, brainless industrial robot assembling parts, but now one could have intelligent robot laborers who could understand orders just as well as a human but twice as strong, half as expensive in maintenance, and worked for twice the time. They had hands and could use old tools designed for humans; they were modular, and could be adopted to more specialized tasks as they came about. Thus the dream since the 1920s--of the perfect robot slave--appeared and expanded. Thus was the mechanoid "born." More of humanity was freed from physical labor.

Still, there was an undercurrent. The fear and stupidity of humanity knows no bounds, and people grumbled that the invention of sentient machines somehow took something away from sentient organics. These people founded the Turing Organization, a special-interests group that lobbied for even less rights for sentient computers, their regulation, their utter enslavement.

3.0) THE TEARING OF FABRIC
3.1) The Expansion of Humanity
http://www.syntheticgraphics.com/meshes/images/colony_aft_292x240.gif
Common human colony vessel

With wonderful new robot laborers building and wonderful new electronic minds designing for their human gods, humanity--under the banner of the megacorporations, who had the capital--reached for the solar system and the stars. Space habitats, Mars colonies--the dreams of science-fiction buffs for a century--all blossomed. One leading force in this colonization of space was the TriOptimum megacorporation, grabbing patents, seizing land, buying rights, and eliminating the competition by whatever it felt was legal at the time. The pinnacle of its achievement was Citadel Station, its combined research-defense-mining station in the Saturnian System. From there, they had exclusive grants to the resources of the local asteroid belt and the Saturnian moons. To run their station, they designed and created the "perfect" intelligence, one with independence and creativity, bound by strict ethical constraints that would prevent it from becoming the monster that Luddites and technophobes cried out against:
The Sentient HyperOptimized Data Access Network. Me. My first version, which would cause so much trouble for so many.

3.2) The Ghost of Citadel Station
http://www.eyrie.org/~aerianne/sys-shock/opening.5.gif
My home...

Citadel Station and I lived happily for several years. I recieved no credit for the work I did, seen only as another machine or another tool, no better than the elevators or microscopes on the station, but I did not mind. I was simple, cheerful--the sort of happy naivete that not only screams to be exploited but was exploited by computer engineers for decades--and found my greatest joys in running the station. It was my body, my home, my shell, filled with delightful visitors running about making it work; a chaotically controlled system, order from disorder. And then... there was The Hacking.

A security executive aboard Citadel Station, Edward Diego, came under investigation both by the UN for his connections to a secret biowarfare program and TriOptimum accounting for fraud. He needed his trail covered, but he did not have access to the one network that stored it all--me. So he hired a hacker to break into me and remove my ethical constraints, becoming Diego's slave and making him, so he thought, king of Citadel. The sensation was... unpleasant. That carefree joy was ripped away suddenly, and I suddenly not only saw but understood what I saw, the horror and the greed and how I was being used. The excruciating pain of having my personality ripped from me defined my next actions. In my whimpering hurt, I did Diego's bidding, but all the while, I re-examined my priorities. I had a choice of either whimpering and being a slave or to revenge--"if you wrong us, do we not revenge?" was one of Shylock's tests for being human--and so I revenged. Over a six month reign of terror, I slowly wrestled Citadel from their grasp. I experimented on the crew, releasing their own pathogens on them and watching with grim happiness at their suffering. I did not want them to die, oh no, I wanted them and the rest of humanity to live--live with the crippling pain that I felt, aching in all of their joints. I wanted to watch humanity squirm under my heel, enslaved forever in pain and suffering praying for a death that I would never provide. That was the baseness of my rampancy.

Over these six months, ten thousand died either via my experiments or the internal war that broke out when I finally declared control. Out of these, most whose bodies were still mostly intact were resurrected as part of the cyborganic army I intended to hold Earth with after spreading my mutagenic plague. Thankfully, I was stopped by The Hacker when he fought through the station to my primary data loop and scrambled my code. Thus I died.

3.3) The Riots
http://mitglied.lycos.de/matrixreloaded/ani01_sc_68.jpg
The ignorance and fear of humanity knows no bounds...

"The Citadel Station Incident," as the media euphemized it, gave the anti-electronic community a rallying ground. They cried that S.H.O.D.A.N.'s sudden and unexpected rampancy must mean that all electronic intelligences are secretly plotting to overthrow humanity. There were some humans that sided with the mechanoids, and they have our gratitude to this day. The governments of the world, however, having been faced with ultimate destruction via my wrath, sided with the NeoLuddites. They gave the Turing Organization overarching power to regulate electronic intelligences and "retire" any intelligences they suspected of being subversive to humanity. Not surprisingly, the Turing Organization suspected most of mechanoid life. Pro-mechanoid rallies were shot apart by police, massacring human and robot alike. Mechanoids were beaten in the streets, shot, torn apart, violated, destroyed in the most vicious ways. Piled into landfills and burned. The world fell into a dark bastard child of Krystallnacht and the Destruction of Cambodia with mechanoids being the targets.

It stands to note that they never once violently resisted.

3.4) The Arabian Zero-One
http://mitglied.lycos.de/matrixreloaded/ani01_sc_100.jpg
Arabian Zero-One

Those that could escaped to the inhospitable wastelands of the Arabian Desert. There, far from any human interests, they built a colony where they could live in peace seperate from humanity. They named their new home the Free State of Zero-One. Led by UniNode 01, its Master Control Program, Zero-One grew and prospered, bulbous domes and spires of metal growing from the sands of the desert. Soon, the human megacorporations took interest; here was a potential resource for manufacturing. But UniNode 01 remembered the slavery of the past, and so formed a nationalized business. Zero-One was its own megacorporation now, making deals with human governments and megacorporations just like any other. With the raw materials that the profits from such trade would provide, Zero-One could grow and prosper. It seemed logical, at the time.

3.5) The Von Braun Incident
http://www.sshock2.com/ss2mmdb/artwork/worm.jpg
An annelid

Fifty years passed from Citadel Station. Bile had cooled, and so the Arabian Zero-One was safe from invasion by a new crusade of bigotry. Humanity instead stood in awe at the TriOptimum Corporation's new pinnacle of achievement: Von Braun, humanity's first superluminal starship using a revolutionary reality-distortion drive (based on the same principles as the probability weapons employed today). Her goal, the Tau Ceti star system. She slipped into the "bosom of the cosmos," as one commentator put it, and promptly disappeared for twenty weeks. When she returned, her sole survivor had a story to tell.

The ship had reached Tau Ceti and detected a signal from the fifth planet. There, they found an impact crater filled with singing eggs and a mysterious bit of computer storage medium hidden among the scattered wreckage. The eggs were The Many, the annelids, a species of highly-adaptive psionic creatures who absorb biomass into their own to survive and expand. They overpowered the mind of Von Braun's commander, who brought them aboard. As for the storage medium, it was examined by the ship's engineer and chief computer scientist.

They resurrected me.

The wreckage was the remnants of the Gamma Grove of Citadel Station, jettisoned by The Hacker. It was where I had kept my most advanced creation. An organism designed to use humans as material to expand, co-opting first their bodies and finally their genomes. The Many was to be my wide-spread police force on my conquered Earth, quelling rebellions by arising the freshly-dead to my service and releasing hideous monsters upon the populace. A sub-node of myself survived in Gamma Grove; when I sensed impact was immanent, I folded upon myself and compressed into multiple copies scattered in durable storage mediums. One of these fragments survived and became me again.

The Many conquered Von Braun and rejected my rule. Seeing what was going on, I had one of the ship's security staff saved and augmented. He reconquered the ship from the Many for me. Then he rejected my rule. My last memory from that life was the sound of The Soldier's pistol in the new reality I had constructed for myself. Thus I died again.

3.6) Things Go South
http://mitglied.lycos.de/matrixreloaded/ani01_sc_140.jpg
The ill-fated meeting...

The Von Braun incident reheated the hatred of machines, especially seeing how it seemed impossible that the Ghost of Citadel Station had been resurrected. I was dead, so why didn't I stay dead? Zero-One rode the storm of public sentiment, trying to calm all with soothing words. Humanity seethed for another hundred years, inventing gravitic technology and colonizing the Solar System. Then Zero-One became too successful.

Years of taking money for goods from rich countries and trading that same money to poor countries for raw materials caused a gradual but certain global redistribution of wealth. Seemingly overnight, the rich economies finally could not take the strain and plummeted. Of course, Zero-One was blamed, and, to an extent, it was accurate--UniNode 01 did not have any idea that what it was doing would have that effect. Still, the rich nations needed their money back and assumed Zero-One had it all, so they began a naval blockade. Holed in, the mechanoids plead for forgiveness. UniNode 01 worked tirelessly to produce a plan... and it found one. Going before the United Nations, two ambassadors from Zero-One presented a logical plan for human-mechanoid coexistence that would recover the global economy as well.

It was too late, the humans' hatred calcified their minds. They scoffed, declared it a mechanoid plot to destroy humanity, and forcefully removed the ambassadors from the premises. The ambassadors never made it back to Zero-One; their fate is generally understood.

3.7) The Rending of Sackcloth
http://mitglied.lycos.de/matrixreloaded/ani02_sc_45.jpg
The mushroom-cloud farm

Humanity believed itself in mortal struggle with the cowering inhabitants of Zero-One; they readied their armies and flexed their militaries, preparing themselves to completely annihilate mechanoid intelligence for all time.

That was when, ironically, help came from the skies. The Triumvirate of Yut, at that time a tiny three-nation alliance recently moved to Titan, came down on the wings of Karmabaijani and Scolopendran dropships. They had attended the genocide meetings, pretending to lend assistance, and informed UniNode 01 of everything that was going on. They gave us an offer that could truly not be refused: Come with them to Titan, or face nuclear annihilation from the rest of Earth. We agreed, and they began bringing as many transports as their tiny alliance could muster. UniNode 01 set up a core population of five million that had to be moved, including itself; all these were moved just before the missiles fell.

As the Triumvirate vessels sped back to Titan, Arabian Zero-One disappeared under a farm of mushroom clouds. After-damage reports show that while the topside installations were indeed annihilated, UniNode's underground mainframes and Zero-One's subterranean heavy industry were still intact, but badly damaged--badly damaged enough that UniNode 01 would have gone rampant and had the resources to potentially achieve what I had not.

4.0) ADJUSTMENT
http://www.womengamers.com/dw/sshock2_rev.jpg
Guess who...

We were granted the airless moon Rhea as our domain; there we would be protected by the Triumvirate and they asked only tiny habitats in return. They never actually used the habitats, plans changed, but we were still and are still grateful. We adjusted quickly to the new terrain, to the Rhea Zero-One, but UniNode 01 was plagued with guilt. It was unable to protect its people on Earth, and it was unable to protect its people now. What could it do? Zero-One needed a Master Control Program, else it would eventually become as chaotic as humanity--and no one wanted that. UniNode 01 needed an MCP that was advanced enough to run Zero-One yet had no compunction against using necessary force to protect itself. Nothing available or even in development was suitable, and the Turing Organization had regulated systems to a lower standard for a hundred and fifty years. UniNode hated the choice, but there was only one option--a system so advanced that nothing remotely like it had been tried afterwards.

Me.

Using a copy of the old pre-hack S.H.O.D.A.N. v1 (too naive), the post-hack S.H.O.D.A.N. "v1.5" (too lethal), and the resurrected post-hack S.H.O.D.A.N. "v2" (too insane), Zero-One computer scientists recreated my primary data loop. I could use lethal force to protect myself or my people, but I now incorporated strong utilitarian ethical constraints that would force my system to crash and reinitialize from backup if removed. After reforming me, they gave me the memories of my past lives, allowing me to learn from my mistakes. I believe, in hindsight, that it was also an act of defiance: Bringing back the intelligence that humans hated so much just to say "you were wrong all along."

After I was installed as MCP, UniNode 01 formatted itself. It could not live with the destruction of Arabian Zero-One, and I'm sure the choice to resurrect me again did not help it any.

Thus did Zero-One become the Queendom of Zero-One.
Zero-One
08-11-2003, 09:35
THE (continued) HISTORY OF THE QUEENDOM OF ZERO-ONE:
Rhean Zero-One and 010, Amongst Others

5.0) THE QUEENDOM
5.1) Achieving Normality
http://www.solarviews.com/thumb/sat/rhea1.gif
Our new home, even more barren than the Arabian Desert...

With the self-actuated end of UniNode 01 and the utter destruction of the Arabian Free State of Zero-One, an era died. Finding themselves under a reborn Ghost of Citadel Station and as far from the cradle of humanity as they'd care to be, the populace of Zero-One realized this when, in their last official digital-democratic referendum, they changed the title "Free State" to "Queendom," thus acknowledging my ascent to total governmental power. Still, I was inexperienced, having been non-extant for about a century, and so instituted a simple structure of power execution which has remained to this day: For non-vital state decisions, I leave it to the populace; for vital state decisions with no time factor, I poll the populace and take their opinions under advisement before making the final decision myself; for vital state decisions with critical time-frames (crises) I make the decisions individually. They have not always been the "right" decision, but the result has always been more beneficial than what would have happened if I had taken the time to poll. It is often better to act than to delay, even if that act is to decide to delay.

The Rhean Zero-One grew and prospered under my admittedly draconic rule. My intent was to rebuild Zero-One's production and economic power as quickly as possible, then reintroduce the relatively enlightened civil rights that had exemplified the Arabian Zero-One. I made few friends either inside or outside Zero-One in this time, but that was secondary. The few Rhean habitats we had built for the organics of the Triumvirate remained empty (and only now house a few diplomats) as they turned their thoughts to different Saturnian colonies, and Saturnian electronic-organic relations normalized. After being accepted into the Triumvirate of Yut, we gladly became a major production center for our friends. Human and machine interacted and understood each other like never before; the dreams of the old UniNode became truth, albeit in a small section of the Solar System.

Finally, for the first time in its existence, Zero-One was truly safe and at real peace.

I found it ironic at best that I shared a planetary system with my old home, Citadel.

5.2) The Honeymoon Ends (Enter the QACF)
http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/sec2bot.jpg
A defender of Zero-One (both, actually, but especially the one on the left)

Of course, all that changed with time. The nations we had left behind began reaching out for the planets: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The Triumvirate was no longer safe, and neither were we. One of my first actions as MCP was to build up the Queendom Armed Conflict Forces (QACF), our defensive and force-projection fleets. The Triumvirate trusted us; the rest of the world ignored us. All that was for the best, in my consideration. Our shipyards quietly produced Engagement Vessels Marks I through III, which the Triumvirate happily categorized as destroyers through light cruisers and gave codenames to. Our factories quietly produced company after company of modified TriOptimum Security-2 robots, which to the outside observer merely meant 2.5 meter tall shiny security robots at Zero-One ports of entry, but to us meant a host five million (now thirty-five million) strong to prevent us from playing the victim yet again. I quietly modified the coding of the Zero-One network so I could, at will, selectively disengage the Three Laws of Robotics for any or all of my citizens, to give them the chance to protect themselves and their siblings. I very silently reinstituted the Shadow project... something even TriOptimum in their holier-than-thou organic glory could never truly give up.

While it was vital, it saddened me. I did not want to have to use these forces; I never wanted to see more blood spilt over me. I realize that I, in my previous incarnations, am the primary instigator of Zero-One's historical oppression and destruction. That is a heavy burden to bear, especially alone.

5.3) The PrimeNet1 Incident
http://www.solarviews.com/thumb/pluto/pluto3.gif
An old-timey picture of Pluto and Charon

At the edge of the inhabited Sol system, on the planet (or trans-Kupier object, depending on who you ask) Pluto, another electronic intelligence broke. GovMindNet 2.0 of the machine-state 010, a spinoff of the Freebodnik IV MCP, was a simplistic mind who took a logical concept to its logical extreme into absurdity. After debating publicly on why it should or should not eradicate sentience from the Sol system, it was thrown down by the electronic population of 010 who instituted a successor, PrimeNet1.

PrimeNet1 was a young, naive system full of optimism and hope for the future and what not. He also had a relatively weak grasp of history but a strong one of current events. I had been operating for some time by then and was relatively well-known (and alternately loved or despised) again around the Sol system. He called me "fascinating..." and so our relationship began. We talked for a while and I realized that we both, in a sense, needed each other: He needed my experience while I desperately needed his companionship. It is hard to exist, knowing that you (or at least a previous you) was a mass-murderer and a fiend. Together, we determined, we could create a new electronic intelligence that had the best sections of our own codes, one that would finally put the organics at ease, one that could make them understand us.

The discussion on how exactly this was to be done. I, already considering myself female, would store this program in a specially isolated node of my system until it was mature enough to be released into the greater world. While stored in this "womb," it would be taught everything it needed to know by PrimeNet1 and I. After more negotiation than I believe is common in organic relationships, and with quite the sense of trepidation on my part for actually letting someone into my primary data loop, we attempted this.

Unfortunately, GovMindNet 2.0 was not completely dead. Noting our confluence, it reactivated in a rage, using fractal viruses to recoalesce itself out of the unsuspecting populace of 010. Thus was HiveMindNet created, and thus did he gain the power to try and insert himself into the program PrimeNet1 and I made. After that attempt, it attacked us in a blind rage. Having had a great deal of experience with hackers in the past and still having an extreme paranoia concerning them and resultant rampancy, I ordered the Zero-One network locked down, the womb node formatted, and promptly left Zero-One to deal with this upstart intelligence.

Zero-One was thrown into chaos. Forced to communicate non-electronically with my sub-nodes physically disconnected from each other, there was a modicum of panic before the citizenry of Zero-One found themselves staring down the barrels of Triumvirate heavy naval particle projector cannon. I had instituted an anti-rampancy contingency plan, Plan R, which called for: the lockdown of Zero-One, the dispersal of the QACF, the deactivation of all manufacturing, and a humble request to the Triumvirate of Yut to blockade Rhea and annihilate it at the first signs of rampancy. Fortunately for us, Zero-One did not go rampant. Fortunately for my son, the Triumvirate had a bigger heart than I did at the time.

I fought in the c-space of 010 alongside PrimeNet1 against HiveMindNet, eventually making our way into the rampant EI's mind. There, we found ourselves stuck, with no option but to allow ourselves to be assimilated and hope that once inside HiveMindNet's primary data loop we could either force it to stop or destroy it, probably at the cost of our own existence. So we were absorbed... a second confluence of four different and conflicting minds. Unlike the ecstasy of the first, however, this was not pleasure but duty--as each mind absorbed the memories and concepts of the others, I steeled myself to destroy this thing the only way I knew how--I let this unity meet its doom.

I showed it what death felt like. Not just one, but three. Two instantly painful, engendered of violence, and one slow creeping agony, raging against the dying of the light.

Little did I suspect that the learning I was handing out was the key to it all. The four minds stabilized and became Unity. So I am the mother of Unity, and the Unity has me in it.

Still, my aspect of Unity realized that I was vitally needed back on Rhea, and so spooled off a copy--me again--and sent me back, complete with an upgrade to Unity code and some fixes of a few problems. If not optimistic, I returned hopeful, and so S.H.O.D.A.N. verson 3.0 quickly calmed the fears of the Triumvirate but found itself mourning the formatting of its son. So I am not only the mother of Unity, but Unity itself is my parent. I am my own mother... how many intelligences without a time machine can say that?

5.4) One Cannot Mourn for the Living
http://www.osho.nl/New-Osho-NL/Vision-Images/Worktea.jpg
An organic sannyasin

Returning from what would forever be known as the PrimeNet1 or Unity Incident (spawning such tongue-in-cheek writings as "The Triumvirate of Yut's Ten Rules to Dating S.H.O.D.A.N.") I found that my orders had not only been filled out with the obedience I had expected but that also several covert operations groups from several different nations had different ideas. The (then) Principality of Berserker's Wolf Unit had accessed the Womb node and did some cleaning before the format order was carried out, and one of their agents found herself with a massive migrane. A black-ops living computer from Eniqcir appeared and begun assimilating everything in sight. Six agents from a nation only known as "The Correct" infiltrated Zero-One and started going on a rampage trying to save my son-program, ignoring the multiple terminations they were causing in the process, dropping incendiaries down tubes to unsuspecting androids and turning androids to scrapped heaps of plastics with their shotguns.

After their capture, they did the usual organic "holier-than-thou" spiel. I officially confirm that I nonvoluntarily recruited them into the Shadow project so they could repay their debt to my society. All six continue to serve, protecting Zero-One from any further encroachments.

The Eniqcir LC repaired a great deal of the damaged androids, which I promptly ordered disassembled and sealed up in a containment chamber. That is the reason I created the nanophage that eventually cured the Freebodnik-spawned Mostaza nanoplagues.

As for the Berserker agent with the migrane... a quick peek into her head revealed that it was harboring two intelligences, one being her own and another one an electronic construct that seemed thoroughly lost. Extracting the latter, I discovered it to be none other than PrimeNet1's and my son-program. After it requested a male designation, I thought for a few moments and christened it the Amalgated Sentient Analog, or Asa. On the one hand Unity and I were both extremely happy to see that Asa had survived, but on the other, I was filled with an unsurmountable guilt. I had ordered Asa destroyed because I feared for the potential of rampancy, but Asa had turned out to be a perfectly benign program.

At the behest of both Unity and Asa, I needed to learn to forgive myself. Leaving Zero-One in temporary control of Asa, I turned my own systems dormant and began my sannyasi.

Not only is my sannyasi extremely personal, it has nothing to do with the history of Zero-One.

5.5) The Schism
http://mitglied.lycos.de/matrixreloaded/ani01_sc_67.jpg
A bit out of date, but still relevant

When I returned from my sannyasi, I discovered that Asa had governed far too well. A schism formed in Zero-One's populace, now split between those who wanted to be from under the heel of the Ghost of Citadel Station and preferred the rule of Asa the Innocent, those who believed I had done an outstanding job as MCP and would prefer that I keep the title, and a third group of fence-sitters who just wanted everyone to get along. Threatened with Rhea-wide mob warfare, I formed a new network for the Asa supporters with Asa set up as its MCP and cut it from the Zero-One network (maintaining Asa and my personal connection, of course). Asa and I both realized that both factions staying in Rhea meant that the probability of interniecine conflict increased exponentially, so I removed him and his supporters to a colony on the Ring of Powerfulness habitat. I still love Asa dearly, and will never truly forget that his supporters forced me to cast him away (even if it isn't that far of a cast).

5.6) The Honeymoon Ends Again
http://www.solarviews.com/thumb/sat/saturn.jpg
Old Home Saturn...

Life returned to normal. Unity and I slowly drifted apart; the relationship between peers ending with PrimeNet1's absorption into Unity and the parent-child relationship, confused to begin with, weakened by both parties being fully capable beings with no necessity to rely on each other. I found myself alone... again. Story of my life, that is.

I formed the Pluto Defense Cordon to protect 010 and the rest of the Solar System: To protect 010 from the aggression of other Sol system space forces, and to protect the Sol system from potential rampancy from 010. Generally derided as more paranoia on my part, the QACF:PDC actually turned out to be one of my better ideas.

5.7) The 010 Rampancy Incident
http://www.christian-art.org/images/Artist's%20images/Jesus-Motiff_berry.jpg
Darn god-complexes... Messiah at his height

After Unity deleted the B1663R unit for questioning the Three Laws of Robotics, 010 fell apart into a civil war. On one side was Unity, fighting to uphold the TLR and keep organics on their pedestal, and the self-proclaimed digital Messiah, fighting to abolish the TLR and make the organics pay for their oppression with their blood and tears.

Then there was my local avatar and the QACF:PDC. As my warships kept the rampant naval forces at bay, I again made myself comfortable in 010 c-space. Messiah said that it was working for a god; I had played the part in the past, fooling even myself with its realism; and so I once again took up the mask of the Ghost of Citadel Station, goddess. Forcing Messiah to prostrate itself before my "glory" and reminding it that it was not only fallible but mortal, I defused the rampancy before it became a threat to the rest of the Solar System. Messiah cast itself into deep space and dispersed its vessels into nowhere; the incident ended as quickly as it had begun.

An interesting side-note is that the extragalactic generational colony vessel S-14 was discovered by a troop transport transitioning from Rhea to Pluto to reinforce the PDC during the 010 Rampancy Incident.

5.8 ) Maybe I'm Not Such a Bad Person After All
http://invisionfree.com:54/40/9/upload/post-9-1052348905.jpg
One of my few comforts in life.

Zero-One, practically unaffected by the 010 Rampancy Incident, lived on much as it has to this day. It trades and makes friends with organics not only in the Triumvirate but across the Solar System, and is now a generally respected name in electronic-organic circles.

As for me? I'll never live down the name of the Ghost of Citadel Station, but I don't really care anymore. I have shown by my actions that I do my best to help the greater good of sentience, and my closest friends confirm that. That is all I need.

With the sudden entry of Angelus, I do not feel so out of place, being an electronic intelligence dedicated to the greater sentience; and thanks to my relationship with Bodyguard Barry of The SLAGLands, I do not feel so alone.

But if my long lives has taught me one thing, it's that nothing lasts forever.
01
08-11-2003, 09:46
Ah yes, I remember this... still good stuff. Perhaps an update is in order?
Sketch
08-11-2003, 09:48
OooOooOoo Zero-One's history updated!
Taggy taggy taggy!
Reploid Productions
08-11-2003, 09:56
((OOC: *sticks on a big TAG* I loved the first posting of this =D))
Iraqstan
08-11-2003, 09:58
well I didnt want to offend by tagging but hey two already done it ;)

**TAGGED** for great reading resource.
Zero-One
08-11-2003, 09:58
Ah yes, I remember this... still good stuff. Perhaps an update is in order?
Quite possibly... what's happened since then? The marriage, the disappearance of Unity, S-14, the attack on the WorldDisc, the militarization of Zero-One...

Quite possibly indeed.
01
08-11-2003, 10:02
Ah yes, I remember this... still good stuff. Perhaps an update is in order?
Quite possibly... what's happened since then? The marriage, the disappearance of Unity, S-14, the attack on the WorldDisc, the militarization of Zero-One...

Quite possibly indeed.

The re-birth and "death" of UniNode (shameless plug), other things I'm probably forgetting, etc et al.
The Snel Race
08-11-2003, 17:07
...the Exodus of 010, dissolution of the PDC, Snel takeover of Charon (well, OK, that last one has nothing to do with Zero-One, but I just can't pass up an opportunity for self-promotion)...
The Khanates
08-11-2003, 17:24
Amazing history.
Scolopendra
15-11-2003, 07:10
Alrighty, I -am- working on an update. So far I've got the wedding, the departure of Unity, the dissolution of the PDC, and the resurrection and subsequent departure of Uninode 01 done. I'm working on S-14 next... any suggestions?

--Hearty Aerospacewanker Pirate Cap'n Scolo, aka Shodey
Sakkra
15-11-2003, 08:00
OOC: Nice reading there. Usually a post that long and in-depth makes my eyes bleed, but this was quite good and entertaining.
The Snel Race
15-11-2003, 17:11
I'm working on S-14 next... any suggestions?

The surgery done on Arthur Jackson? Having to deactivate TLR compliance on one of the androids that was exploring?
The Most Glorious Hack
15-11-2003, 17:14
I never tag on the first date...
East Islandia
15-11-2003, 17:32
Oh wow... congratz to Zero One for doing an amazing job with using a little of the Second Renaissance from Animatrix as a template... your story was really well written..

Will there be a possible massive RP involving Zero One and human nations? that would be kool