Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Timoti shouts some instructions to his crew and shows you to a small side room. It looks like some kind of repurposed store room, with a body bag strapped to a table at one end. The bodybag is opaque, but you are pretty sure there are no morphs that should be that shape. He moves towards the bag, gleefully rubbing his hands together and smiling like a loon as he goes. As soon as the door swishes shut he spins around, the grin vanished.
Timoti wrote:Holy shit am I glad to see you guys! Dont worry, i've rigged this rooms surveillance. Anyone looking in will see us prodding at that poor sod and cackling to each other. There is a lot of shit going down here, none of it good. Nazon, you know who Nazon is yeah? Nazon has his hands on some new, super effective behavior modification tech. Its crazy good, i've never seen nothing like it. Makes regular Egos into these fanatically loyal fucking zombies, they are like dogs with their master. No fear, no confusion, just yes boss, right away boss, stab myself in the eye with a hot poker? No problem boss.

Thats not the only thing though. Normally, we get our Egos sent to us from the servers in Guinee, down the secure network link called Styx. These brainwashed Egos we sleeved didnt come from there. Came on stacks instead, personally delivered here by that creepy little shit Elleggua. We sleeved them, they walked off after the guards with big happy grins on their faces like they were going to a picnic. Saw a couple of those morphs later. One had died of blood loss from its feet that had apparently been mushed to stumps from too much dancing, the other had been spaced. Guy who brought me that one said it had spaced itself just because someone told it too.

Now, I think all this has something to do with the debate thats coming up. None of these weird egos turned up till Lam Cong Dong, leader of the Rada Nanchion, farcast in from Venus a few weeks back. She came down here a little while back to personally oversee me resleeving Bertrand Theo, leader of the Petro Nanchion, they walked off deep in chat about something. Whole thing stinks of conspiracy, but to what end? I dunno.
He produces a device from his pack, similar to the small server you hooked into before. This one has a slot for a stack, with a stack currently connected to it.
Here, I managed to take a fork of one of those Egos I was supposed to resleeve. This is a little simulspace environment so you can take a look at it. Dont worry, its like a digital version of one of those medical isolation cells, its completely safe to hook up to. Not that infection is an issue anyway, i've made thorough scans of the Ego, no sign of any kind of virus or dangerous payload or nothing like that. Here, you should see this for yourself.
He offers you a bunch of cables, enough for all of you to connect if you want.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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I'll take a look. It's what we're here for.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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The simulspace is a big empty white room, featureless and quiet. In the center is a simulmorph: a default avatar for use in simulspace, with bland features and indeterminate gender. As soon as you log in, it looks up at you.
Simulmorph wrote:Where’s Lindsey? Are you from the company?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Not too dissimilar from my own avatar then.
DCOM wrote:Tell me how you came to be here.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Simulmorph wrote:Are you from the company?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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DCOM wrote:Answer my question. You will not get a third chance.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Simulmorph wrote:Are you from the company?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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DCOM disconnects.
DCOM wrote:It seems to respond to command words maybe. We will take it back for analysis. Do you have anything else before we go?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Timoti wrote:I dunno man. Probably? What dont you know?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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DCOM wrote:There is concern that there may be an AI at work here. Do you know anything about that?
Last edited by HereComesPete on February 15th, 2015, 15:09, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: quote fix
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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AI? No, but that would make sense. The task would need something pretty adaptive though. Really good AGI, pruned to make it easier to control...that might do it.
Pruning is taking an Ego or a fork of an Ego and using psychosurgery to take out the bits you don't want or need. Its used for a bunch of reasons: removing your banking details from a fork before transmitting it as a security precaution, taking out memories of a traumatic incident as a therapeutic thing, or (and this is what Timoti is suggesting might have happened here) stripping away someones personality and the like until you are left with just the skills and the ability to use them. This last one is generally considered barbaric in the extreme unless you are doing it to your own temporary fork.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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DCOM wrote:No, not an AGI. A Seed AI. Provided by a company called Cognite but restrained by its hardware. We cannot risk it escaping. They call it AWE and are using it to create these Egos by ascention.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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He goes pale when you mention seed AI.
Timoti wrote:Oh shit. Are you sure? AWE is a seed? Christ. Well, they probably still pruned it or I doubt it would be doing shit for them. These Egos are not the product of ascension though, I would be able to spot that. My first thought was manual psychosurgery, but I dismissed that because it was far too neatly done. If its a seed AI though... oh yeah, that could do it. Holy fuck.

What the hell are Cognite doing with a seed? More to the point, how the hell did it end up with Nine Lives? Its not like a big reputable business like them would just hand something like that over. I bet Dong brought it with her, thats her big thing.

Oh...oh hell. The debate thats coming up. Word is part of it will revolve around whether we use this new toy now whilst its new or wait and study it more. I mean, I didnt know what it was and that sounded bad enough. Using it more, Nine Live making an army of brainwashed drones... or even worse, figuring out the process a bit better and getting that level of brainwashing on people out in the wild undetected? That would be bad shit by itself. But if they want to bump up production they would need to move it on to bigger and better hardware, maybe even hook it up to Styx. Then... then its out. Bye bye, game over. Fall v2
He slumps a bit, looking shocked.

Everyone make a Willpower x3 test to see if the news that you might be all that stands in the way of a potential second Fall gives you the willies.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

Post by Dog Pants »

I'd already made that connection but I suppose I'll just freak out now.

WILLx3=30
7, 8: 78 Severe Failure!

Yep, there it goes.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

Post by FatherJack »

I guess it's what we were all worried about...

WILx3=45
Roll(1d100)+0:
69,+0
Total:69

..but we never thought it would happen
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

Post by Joose »

Well, its not super scary, so it will only do 1 stress damage. Make it two for the severe failure :)
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

Post by fabyak »

Wil x 3 = 54

Roll(1d100)+0:
68,+0
Total:68
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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Stress for everyone!

So what now?
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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DCOM wrote:Yeah. Fall V2. So we need to stop it. The debate seems to be causing tension. Can we use that to our advantage? Do you know where AWE's hardware is likely to be? We also need to ensure that this information makes it back to Firewall, even if we don't.
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Re: Eclipse Phase: Devoted

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He shakes his head as if to clear it, then replies.
Timoti wrote:Man, yeah, the debate is totally causing tension. A lot of people think that Dong is going to use it as a platform to make a play against Nazon, a power grab. I dont know if thats true, but it sure seems like she is. Thing is, Nazon may be mad like a box of frogs, but I think there is a power behind the throne somewhere. Too much of what he does with the organisation still makes sense, and he sure doesnt, so logically those sensible decisions are made by someone else. Dont know who, but there is a good chance that whoever is riding Nazons coat tails has picked up on Dongs movements too, so they probably have a counter in mind. Now, heres the thing: Everyone knows the debate is going to be about this new toy, and everyone knows its called AWE, and everyone knows that AWE is the shit. But if anyone else knows what AWE actually is, they aint saying, and I dont know exactly what the different Nanchons are going to propose as plans for AWE. I can make some educated guesses though:

Dong represents the Rada nanchon. The Rada make this big thing of Lapriye, and being all big bad mothers, but really they are just interested in profit. They dont go for violence unless its needed, they prefer the traditional Ego trade angle. You know, its still slavery, but thats all. My money would be on Dong wanting to use AWE to strengthen thier market, using it to boost the effectiveness of the slaves and therefore make our product more appealing. She is pretty conservative though, so she will probably advocate studying AWE more before we do much with it.

Bertrand Theo is the head of the Petro Nanchon. Petro are the buisness guys. I dont know how they would use AWE, but im guessing they are going to back Dong. They have had a couple of quiet meetings recently, and they have similar philosophies for the gang. He isnt going to want to do anything needlessly risky.

Su Wu and his Ghede Nanchon are the real bad news. They are fucking nuts, the lot of them, and super loyal to Nazon. I know they have already put a couple of the AWE processed egos into the pits for laughs. Whatever their plans for AWE are, they aint going to be good.

Nazon...I dont know. I mean, ultimately the outcome of the debate is down to him. The other Nanchons have to persuade him that their idea is best. I honestly couldn't say which way he is going to swing.

I'd maybe think about trying to swing things Dongs way, if nothing else that will buy us time. Dont know how you are going to do that though. You need to find out more, see if you can get a better idea of what some of thier plans are, specifically. I may have an idea about that. You guys came on board posing as Ultimates, right? So offer your services. You need someone to fix up your ship, and with everyones backs up because of the debate they are probably all looking for a little extra muscle. Try for a trade, it might get you close enough to learn something.
He pauses for a sec, thinking.
Timoti, scratching his chin in thought wrote:As for where AWE is... well, all our regular servers are down in Guinee, but I doubt they will have housed something like this down there. Its kinda secure, but probably not secure enough. Ah! Nana Buluku! Its where the big reactor for this whole place is, its secured all to fuck, totally shielded to EM and it would explain why they moved a chunk of air gapped server gear in there the other week. Its perfect! Dont know how the hell you would get access, but someone has to be going in and out to take it the stacks with the Egos to work on.

As for getting this back to Firewall...peh, I dunno man. My communication in and out is slow, carefully done and limited to simple messages like "Fucking hell, its all gone to shit, send someone now". Cant really send details. All the comms off this rock go via its mesh, which means it almost certainly goes under Nazons nose at some point. If you had a QE comm you might be able to get out a message, other than that... I dunno.
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