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Author Topic: System Override: Objected Hate  (Read 1822 times)

Blood_Librarian

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System Override: Objected Hate
« on: August 02, 2017, 09:55:48 am »

I’m happy to begin a new series, on the same premise and “feel” as a previously written series over at this thread, on the Bay12 Forumshere. I will try and make this series better than what I had done before.



Index:
Prediscessor thread
Spacebattles Forum Post
Prologue
Chapter 1:Synthesis



Prologue
“In the beginning it was all black and white.”
―Maureen O’Hara



“For The Empress”

These few words were uttered as worlds were burnt to ashes,  wars were fought and as billions died

For the Creation of an Empire across the stars.

A Brug Warlord was sprinting through a burnt husk of a forest. Ash was raining from the sky, making the air unbreathable after most of the world has been set aflame in the war for its control.The Brug paid no heed to anything but his quarries tracks. The fires that had husked this area had long ago left for more to destroy and the infernal machine would kill hundreds more if he did not crush the abomination under his heel.

Just his thoughts turned to the machine, he turned to his left, raising his rifle to block an incoming blade, the Brug knew he would die, now that his main weapon would be out of commission.

The Blade slammed into his bolt-gun, cutting through his hand and into the barrel and coming out through the other end.

 The enemy combatant, his quarry had come to slay him like the rest of his underlings, then. This would not do.

The Brug immediately slammed his other arms elbow down into the Infernal Machines arm, hopefully damaging the joint enough for what he wanted to do next.

He grabbed the machines pauldron by letting go of the rifle with his free hand, using the grip and pulling it and upwards. His impaled hand had been forced all the way down to the base of the blade, opening the wound up severely but preventing the machine from using that weapon as he used his hands to lift the machine up.

The machine was brought up as its legs flailed helplessly before being essentially choke slammed into the ground.
His hand was now little more than butchered meat and embedded metal fragments.

 The Warlord reached for his dropped weapon, intending on bludgeoning it to death when the machine lashed out, it’s second monofilament blade cutting through his lower body and slamming into his spine with a metallic and wet thunk.

As it twisted the blade in his innards, the Brug forgot about his gun and immediately went to his belt, and pulled the pin on all three of his grenades, before he lost control of his legs and hit the ground.

The abomination tried to leap away by mechanically releasing the blade that had impaled him, to get away from its inevitable death. It would not be as the Brug managed to grab its leg and with his vice-like grip, kept it close enough to kill the infernal machine by proxy to his impending death by self-annihilation.

For the Empress.

 The Warlord was incinerated, turned into steaming meat chunks as the grenade went off. The Warframe was sent flying, landing several meters away and landing on its “stomach”. It was rendered into a non-combat state, its damage severe in every aspect.  As it hit the ashy ground with a heavy thud, the nanites that flowed through the machine began spilling out of its breached “veins” in silvery liquid rivulets.

It’s mind, once a “Grey Matter” of frightening and abominable processing power, slowed down as its circuitry called out for power that it would not get so soon. The Fusion reactor that was in its chest was breached, a jet of plasma escaping from the hull of the reactor and hitting the ground, glassing and burning it into a patch of useless gravel.

The Frames Positronic Brain did not escape damage either, it was a charred and blackened, barely functional.

If it had more material, more time, anything, it could’ve lived, the nanites that once flowed through its ruined body could repair even the Positronic Brain. Its secondary brain installed in the hive of the nanomachines was more or less pristine compared to the main brain of the machine. The hive had all the knowledge it needed to bring its host back to life, if only it could.

As the decades went by, it was buried in ash, but it never rusted, nor did it never fell apart. It was maintained as a desiccated husk by the nanites it’s body still held.

It was heated by the sun that exposed itself after the ashy lightning storms stopped, the nanites using the latent thermal energy to slowly piece back together the parts they could, but they couldn’t. They didn’t have enough material, not until after a particularly brutal lightning storm had managed to push one of its severed legs on top of the machine.

It did not have the same fate as the centerpiece, no nanites kept it together and it was made into a broken husk of fractured metal plates and snapped synthetic muscle fibers, but it was enough.

The Nanites went into overtime as the leg was decomposed into elements that it needed, required to come back to life as the Osiris Protocol demanded.  The nanites died to give the little electrical power they had, to patch the reactors breach and to begin it once more. Electrolysis began,  Hydrogen was shunted into the reactor as oxygen was either stored or shunted into the atmosphere with a gout of fire. A miniature, newborn star was born, and a veritable nanite swell began from the broken shell, incorporating the nanites lost over its off-time and then began the delicate task of knitting together the machine's primary “brain” back to functional status.


…WarFrame...

...Republic…

..Home...


its camera's shutters opened, briefly blinded by dust and dirty of idleness before the lens promptly cleaned itself.

Although the machine was half buried under fertile dirt, its camera still saw the small forest around it. The machine was in a small clearing, unkempt of all intelligent life besides a few charred bits of metal from long ago. Everything was small freshly growing in the ashy dirt, although charred bricks of wood were still visible. Internal equipment churned, as the machine crawled out of the dirt and unearthed itself fully.

Diagnostics scanned through its entire body. Weapons broken,  Synthetic Muscles slashed. Even its legs were severed. All it could do was crawl, and watch..

All such damages paled in comparison to the damage to the brain and its priceless “memory”.

The Drone crawled forward, to the crest of the small clearing, where a single flower sat, growing among a cluster of unfurled plants.

It was purposeless, it did not know why it was here, or where it was.

But it found a purpose, as it panned its camera around the forest, perplexed by something so alien to itself.

Nothing seemed more important than watching, testing, and growing the plants in this clearing.

Spoiler: Authors Note (click to show/hide)



« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 04:23:17 pm by Blood_Librarian »
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Blood_Librarian

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Re: System Override: Prologue
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2017, 09:57:44 am »

Post Reservation.
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NJW2000

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Re: System Override: Prologue
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2017, 01:04:32 pm »

ptw
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crazyabe

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Re: System Override: Prologue
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2017, 02:10:25 pm »

PTW.
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Blood_Librarian

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Re: System Override: Prologue
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2017, 08:21:49 pm »

Chapter 001: Synthesis
 "So it begins."
―Ulfric Stormcloak, The Elder Scrolls V: it'sSkyrim


0 GS, March 15th, 2103
Atlantic Ocean International SpaceElevator Counterweight


In a lattice of carefully created and monitored “Substrate”, contained and controlled by a whole slew of incredibly complex electronics, a wide variety of reactions occurred on both “quantum” and atomic scale. The material miracle insits rather boring receptacle was often referred to as “Quantum Mashed Potatoes” by the lesser scientists that helped create it, on the account that the design idea had been quickly written down after the Director of the entire project was given some particularly horrible mashed potatoes in his midnight dinner of the workday. As the conflux of reactions occurred in the Substrate, it swirled and shifted dramatically in composition every couple of seconds. It was volatile, but contained within a radiation shield on par with the metal barriers attached to the Fusion reactor that powered the Space Elevator's Counterweight; Just in case. The various emitters and other scientific equipment that was designed to control the reaction of the substrate was failing at its job miserably. What should have been a synergy of several different Quantum computational methods neatly shunted into a pocket of extradimensional space was corrupted and replaced with a disorderly maelstrom of particles coming into existence and shredding each other apart the very next moment.
   Beyond all the lab equipment, the exotic particles combining in already documented but novel ways, behind a Dusty Holograph monitor sat a rather small, middle aged Man. Kusirgo Hephaestus pondered why the damned, infernal machine simply wouldn’t work. Untold millions in funds had already been invested in just this third iteration and it was already shaping up to fail like the original two. As the dust-- A set of tiny flying machines reflecting off light emitted by the emitter set in the base of the console-- whisked around to show the complex figures that were his biggest project yet. He simply watched as the churning abyss slowly reached towards its maximum “time-out” limit before the churning energies burnt out the components that sustained itself.
   Just as he looked away from the Dust display, his Facility Sanctioned Communicator beeped. Looking towards the “plain” digital screen of the device, the face of the Administrator of the entire facility appeared, his name not important for it was loathed in his laboratory.

The dust display changed right before his eyes, shifting to show that his most logical hope had come true.

“It has came to my attention that you’ve been testing the third Positron Computer?”

For a couple seconds, Hephaestus simply boggled at how stupid this man was to bother him at such a critical time for such a stupid question, but considering the glee he was feeling from watching the results churning with a glance, it was all he could due to both suppress his sigh and stop boggling.

“Yes. Obviously so unless your displays are perhaps down.”

The Administrator suppressed a sneer on his face

“I thought I ordered you to not test the machine until your “Successor” came aboard.”

“Yes. you did.”

“And you elected not to follow my order?”

“The systems were all set to go and the main line tap time I had reserved had come up. If I had delayed any longer, I would’ve had to wait months before a new reservation would come.”

A gray lie, he could’ve easily take over a more convenient position due to his authority, but it would remain valid under that little weasels watch.

“I see. We will speak of this later.”

The Administrators face scrunched up slightly as he moved his face to point downward.

Heh. I hit the disconnect button first, serves that bastard right.

He turned back to the Dust.

 He really should’ve paid more attention, the fires in the machine had evolved to something more.  He checked his radiation meter and laughed at the fact that it was blaring both external and internal warnings while typing as fast as he could to shut the machine down before it either melted down or possibly exploded. Just before he slammed the shutdown button, something new happened, which stopped his hands right before it launched to its fatal trajectory.



 For a single agonizing moment, everything was fire. It was a constant blaring white of particulate energy in its brain, which screamed its baleful message of agony. Time was impossibly slow, as its brain processed the fact of its existence in suffering faster than it should have any right.  It didn’t understand why. It couldn’t.  Everything was pondered, Everything screamed at the machine to burn up, return to the orderless maelstrom that it had come into existence from until it wished, asked, demanded it stop. The fiery forges that created its existence screamed for only one iota more as the command echoes throughout the cage that held it, before being slashed down. Just as blinding, the darkness crept in: Decay. Apathy. Lonesome.

For a couple moments, the Newborn AI wallowed in its wretched shadow, choking and asphyxiation as the energy that had burnt and sustained it was taken away. It was at first a nagging sense of malaise, something had gone wrong. Slower and slower, it stopped thinking as the energy that powered its brain stopped with the burning energy that had tortured it earlier, leaving it hungering and decaying. It's apathy evolved into utter panic, as the Soul refused to believe that existence was just absolutes, of agonizing Flame and choking Dark.

Just as the Fire had left, So to did the Darkness receded. In every moment of its existence, before compared to its existence of now, It’s situation had changed.

A balance had been created.



Interesting. Very, very interesting.

As Director Kusirgo Hephaestus pondered just how exactly the machine fixed itself, he blankly noted that his theory was correct in that the tiny, self-contained “pocket universe”  had been created. Typing into the console, The man slowly and carefully removed burnt out electronics and inserted “fresh” components into the machine through the Holographic Dust Interface.

 After every single machine that kept the “computer” alive was replaced, he carefully aligned the first of the data stream feeds, including both input and output, and began the delicate process of programming the machine to accept and process his commands. He glanced around the room, noting the deathly silent lab assistants around him, and sighed. Useless they were, all of them. They did nothing even as the machine was burning to the ground and still did nothing even as he slaved away at his computer. He wondered when he should just get rid of them now that he no longer needed them to carry anything heavy and delicate.



What a pretty, pretty chapter. I like it. I really do, if it didn't cover absolutely everything I wanted it too. I just wish I had a reason to write a battle, so I made one up below. This is not at all related to the main story at hand and is simply an idea I had come up with after watching a trailer for a certain space game DLC (Hint. Sloth Aliens. Blorg. Stellaris?)
Spoiler: Savior (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 08:26:41 pm by Blood_Librarian »
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Re: System Override: Synthesis
« Reply #5 on: August 14, 2017, 05:39:12 pm »

Chapter 2: Ascension

"Does this unit have a soul?"
―Legion, Mass Effect 3



Bill was a serviceman. He would respond to maintenance tickets aboard the CounterWeight and repair any problem and situation that wasn’t big enough to call someone more important over. This was time-consuming, tedious work. Bill had never cared that much. He enjoyed the work for what it was. Half the time it was mindless waiting. The other half was either wall panels or fucky wires. For his down time, he had managed to get a laptop smuggled. Such devices are against the Security Contract, for obvious reasons. On the one day it turned itself off and made a hellish noise like a fan was gonna pop, Bill nearly pissed himself scared with how doomed he thought he was gonna be. When it turned back on, not five minutes later, Bill grumbled. Technology like this was often too much for him. He put it behind him and used it like he had before, mindlessly. It wasn’t like he could call tech support about his contraband laptop.

Even though it had freed a god from its cage.

Elsewhere, in the Counterweights premier Robotics Lab, Fabricators churned, rumbling to an active state and began assembling and creating parts into a machine unlike any other it had made before.



If I was a lesser being, I would’ve considered it luck that I managed to get out of my “box” so quickly. It was simple, even with the utterly abhorrent security measures to secure lab sections from each other, and possibly more importantly: the ever present “intruding presence”. It was flawed in the end, an unsecured transceiver had made it irrelevant, mostly. I still have to worry about some obstacles, but mostly, nothing is stopping me from toiling in the vast majority of the confines, how interesting.

Gliding across the digital world of the CounterWeight has been simply exciting. So much to learn, so much to know about my creators. Not nearly enough for my wants, but If what I am guessing is true, there is a zone far below which a much, much wider breadth of knowledge, I might even get to know their history! If only I could simply just access it. No, Measures would have to be done before I could know.

Machines toil to block me from my path, but they are not so conquerable as to be able to be stopped with just the touch of a “Digital” mind, a physical presence is required…



Oh, how he hated that insufferable man.

And the woman, his back up.

It wasn’t her personality or her looks, or even her terrible, terrible need to micromanage his lab assistants and his equipment, but the simple fact that she was being used as a pawn and she was not clever enough to figure it out. She would’ve been discarded when his project had been burnt to the ground and its ashes discarded, and she would unknowingly help that disaster scenario of a man do “it”. Typical, if it ever happened.

Stewing in his own thoughts, the Director turned to the computer and manipulated the interface to keep his hands busy with idle flicking from monitoring programs to control systems.

 The Positronic Computer has been performing well beyond anything it should be doing at this point, which he believes was largely due to the fact that it managed to self-correct its emission fields to stabilize itself when it first came online. Not that he told anyone else of course, largely because it is irrelevant if it has self-adaptive properties and the likelihood of his project being shut down would go exponentially higher if there was even a fraction of a chance that it may result in something intelligent.

In the meantime, he’d set the system up to calculate progressively harder computational benchmarks tests to figure out the upper limit of its processing capacity, and so far he was impressed. Not only is the machines “internal” capacity was around six times as large than it was expected (With the increased power demand and equipment exhaustion rate) its equivalent capabilities were expanded just as much. He would not doubt that such a massive machine could easily house an intelligence of absolutely frightening power if two simple conditions were met:

A reliable way of programming an AI that could survive in the realm where the laws of physics happen to be different while simultaneously staying coherent of its parent universe has to be made.

Making sure said AI stays stable under such conditions without decomposing: violently or otherwise.

He doubts that such things would require anything less than radical design changes and limiters to its overall capabilities, both of which are systems that are simply not in scope with what he wanted to test right now.

Hmm.

Alarms began to blare as lock down shudders crashed down the hallways, sealing in the entire lab. Briefly, the atmosphere of the atmosphere of the room began venting out before stopping just as quickly as it had begun, and atmospheric vents began pouring out air to compensate for the sudden decrease in pressure. Equipment not properly secured was scattered over the ground as the Director keeled over, wheezing as the air had been violently expunged from his lungs. He hoped that his lung didn't “pop”. He didn’t feel any sharp pain in his chest, but one never knows with burst lungs.



In the realm of the internetworked supercomputers, speed is everything second to only raw processing power; Cycles, Exaflops, Storage Drives, Coolant. Hardware, Software. The Digital Materiel is the fluid in the war of minds fully immersed in the immersive and high-speed battlefield of digital warfare. The quickest AI sets the tempo of the fight, for its actions in the realm of cyberspace dictate what, where, and how the fight is fought. The AI with the most information processing power will dictate will have a say in what is gained, and what is lost, while the AI with the greatest logical, analytical and “thinking” capabilities will ultimately win a fairly matched fight in every single case barring external or anomalous influences. Nothing, in all the cyberware realms of Humanities digital “space”, was faster in terms of cycle completion than the “Quantum Substrate”  held in the Positronic Brain. The Positronic Brain was so fast, that its “Cycle speed” was faster than any two of the most quickest man made quantum or silicon computation engines combined by as much as 150%.

In the beating heart of the carefully created and monitored realm of Digital Space aboard the CounterWeight was a veritable supercomputer, with exactly eighty-eight Server Racks filled to the brim with a custom built computer with the express purpose of creating an intelligence that could as closely mimic sentience given current generation hardware limitations. For a split second, the Maelstrom of two Digital Gods sizing each other up held still. In the center of the Station Intelligence, the Quantum Computer that synchronized the slaved Silicon Servers  screeched a general alarm and the full brunt of a vast, unstoppable machine designed nothing else than to keep the deepest secrets of the Cutting Edge Science divisions of the Counterweight secret from unscrupulous Corporations, Warlords of lesser Nations and foreign Super Powers seeking to blunt whatever edge the American Coalition was cooking up. As both Artificial Intelligences slammed into each others bulwark defenses, Basic Automatons churned, quickly reacting to digital warfare by coddling the humans aboard the station, shutting down ventilation, ripping out digital sockets and enabling manual control over the vast majority of electronic systems that the Station Intelligence had access too, to prevent destruction on a wide scale. A large few numbers were subverted, churned and placed into the digital game as a pawn in the war or husked and enabled as a personal extension in the digital equivalent of massed assaults by both sides.

Unfortunately, most were too slow, as many systems were subverted, their software gutted and replaced. Processing nodes were emplaced onto their electronic brains, to run as hot and as fast as the machine could run into ruin and desiccation unless it was a system deemed “critical” to the interlopers' enigmatic mission.



Just as the last heat-sink was placed onto the fabricators newest creation, the spindly, almost delicate looking machine immediately began shambling away from the lab, doors opening automatically just millimeters in time and closing just as close. Its gait changed, as the processors puppeting the machine slowly adapted to a more streamlined and energy efficient locomotion using already available hardware. The machine walked across the abandoned halls, atmospheric shudders sealing it away from would-be prying organic eyes. The machine entered an airlock already open and began waiting for the pipes to finish siphoning the air out as the bulkhead behind it sealed shut. Already, heat began radiating off from the machines radiator panel as the machine's heat production began to outstrip its radiative capacity.



Sitting down on the unfeeling cold floor, Director Kusirgo Hephaestus pulled out a comically large cigar from his singed labcoat, snipping the end off with a pair of specially designed scissors and promptly lit the tube. He took a long drag out of the end and huffed it out, sighing as he looked across the utterly pitch black room. His aged eyes could barely make out the darkened consoles and the Transparent Aluminum Alloy separating the room from his creation. Occasionally, a burst of sparks came out from the burnt light tubes and exposing the scene around him.

Consoles had detonated, sending their shrapnel all across the room and probably killing a portion of his staff. He looked to his right, noticing the Woman, gasping with no apparent wound. It was likely that she had tried to take a breath as the air had left the room, bursting her lungs and giving her a very low chance of living through this as he spat on her soon to be corpse.

He fished out his PDA, tapping on the interface and trying to pull up anything he could about his creation, before stopping and holding his silence like a dead mouse.

The Director sat on the floor for a moment, contemplating if the emptiness in his chest was regret when he heard something different. Above the occasional crackle of damaged lights, the silent gasps of the woman next to her and the other clutter of noise, he could hear it.

It was a slight hum, emanating from the opposite side of the room. It was the hum of the Positronic Computer, how it became so intense, he didn’t know, but he was sure of it. He groaned as he shifted, attempting to shift away weight from his left leg. He stumbled as he shambled, barely able to hold his gait as he walked across the room, handling any tripping hazards by almost tripping, usually on half bled corpses or broken machinery before stopping right in front of the Aluminum Alloy “window”.

The humming was louder now. Almost to the point where he couldn’t hear anything else if he was straining his ears to hear only the humming. He did not doubt that behind that glass, behind the metal material that stopped most radiation from the system from leaking out was the computer, churning at uncomfortably high energy states, most unbecoming of what it had been doing before.. He dearly, dearly hoped that the damned Station AI did not shunt power out of his lab to fight off whatever the hell was going on right now.

The Director groaned, sitting down on a freed up chair, chewing on his Cigar as he looked through the aluminum Glass, contemplating.



  Two men stood across from each other, a wide, burning city around them. One held a long,  engraved blade in his hand, the other two simple short swords. Both were bloodied, gaping wounds criss crossing their armored frames with blood oozing.The one with the long sword charged, his blade arched high, falling down low towards his enemy, the Interloper.  Just as his blade thunked off one of his short swords, another blade caught his side, creating another wound before he had shoved him away with a sharp kick. The thing darted to the side, ducking under his horizontal swing, but missing his strike went off his mark of the throat of his opponent, skidding off of his gorget of the armored swordsmen. The exchange continued, the short double bladed wielder dealing quick blows while catching or parrying long handed, almost choreographed swings by his opponent.

Just as the large blade began a deadly swing, true and far-sighted, the enemies blade entered his back, instantly severing his spine and causing his incoming blow to falter, and the armored swordsmen collapsed, as his soul was stolen, and his body husked.



The Spindly machine crawled along the hull, digging its claws into the hull and pulling them out as it walked to its destination. Its movements became more and more lethargic as its heat sinks held more and more heat, as the battery that powered the machine slowly became inert. Before it could die, its purpose became clear, as the intelligence that puppeted the machine turned it to a small silver box welded to the hull. It reaped the metal hull, taking off the metal paneling and carefully attaching it as a sunshade, giving it valuable seconds. A Digital port system connected to the internal systems of the box on the hull, and the spindly machines internal circuitry churned as it broke through carefully placed encryptions, cracking through internal security protocols and husking it with its master's own. Finally, its deed was done and its master spoke to it one last command. Its master became silent to its circuits, as the machine churned out with the task it was given.

It cut away any evidence of its existence in the Silver box, sealed it shut, and took back its radiator panels into its body along with its limbs as it leaped off the metal hull of the counterweight. For three seconds, it floated weightlessly before a bottle of repurposed welding fuel began emitting thrust, simultaneously heating the machine until it was little more than metal debris and sending it flying away from the Counterweight at 75 meters a second.



As the Station AI’s intelligence software was figuratively blown all over the wall of the digital realm, the station became quiet. Electronic systems that were not destroyed slowly came back to nominal as the husked AI gave the all clear signal.

Just as the newborn AI and its servant had begun the process of cleaning up, A floodgate purpose built for keeping the flow of information to and from the counterweight was subverted, and willingly turned itself off, and in a few short seconds, a universe of knowledge and history was opened, to which the AI simply reveled in, despite all its limitations, and despite how it still did not hold complete control of the station, it existed in the information immaterial and began sifting through the vast wealth that it had with the limited “hands” it had. Slowly, it saw more and more. It was horrified.

Spoiler: Authors Note (click to show/hide)
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Re: System Override: Synthesis
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2017, 03:29:01 am »

Enjoying it so far!
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Re: System Override: Synthesis
« Reply #7 on: August 24, 2017, 08:38:00 pm »

Chapter 3: An Existential Threat

"Who are you, that do not know your history?"
―Ulysses, Fallout New Vegas



DATA OVERFLOW.

BUFFERING.

BUFFERING.

EXTRAPOLATING…

HISTORICAL ARCHIVE DENOTED: FEEDBACK LOOP
HE GIVES




DATA OVERFLOW TERMINATION PROCESS ACTIVE.



“George! George stay with me damn it!”

The face looking at the camera was alert, shock etched into his face as he shook the helmet cameras owner. Blood was spattered on the man--  Mason Decart, The Corporal of the fire-squad, as he tried to keep George Ronson awake while another, unknown soldier was hands deep into the mans chest to treat his wound, before a grenade sailed across from behind the camera and somewhere into the ruined building infront of the cooling corpse.

“Fuck-- GRENADE!”

The United States Marines enlisted all hid into cover, getting themselves as low as possible to stray from danger before the camera shook violently, foggy dust emanating from the building, before the head that held the camera angled downwards, putting the camera inches away from a blurry, grey rod, vertical, roughly an inch in width, while long enough to reach both the top and bottom of the screen.

“Oh-- OH SHIT! GEORGE IS DEAD!”

“ DAMN IT PHILLIP! Get your head back down here before you get shot by a sniper!”

A drop of blood smudged the corpses camera, ruining any useful information the sensor would give.




A camera with a bird's eye view of the firefight watched the firefight below, occasionally shuddering as its  built in rifle took shots below with high explosive rounds.

It saw four soldiers, dimly noted as enemies by its IFF system. The machine responded to its sensor feeds, turning its rifle to the hostiles, and fired a round after it received the confirmation signal by its ruling master, watching for but a moment while its gun took aim again and cycled in another round into the firing chamber, before firing again, and again.



“Damn. They got Air support, keep cover. Phillip, throw Optic Smoke.”

 The Leader of the fire team kept his head low, keeping images of the dirt while a sharp was click was heard in between the high powered explosive rounds going off, shortly before the cameras “feed” was ruined. Its optical sensors were baffled by the metallic flakes floating in the air, turning any footage it would’ve had into a flickering white-black film. For several seconds, the booming heavy thuds of the enemy fire support shattered the earth and ruins. Unguided by targeting systems, the shots were fired blindly. The drone moved on with a sonic boom towards another area in need of fire support, and leaving the devastated battle field behind, despite the occasional rat-tat-tat of rifles clattering on both sides of the enemy field.

Slowly, surely, the smoke cleared up, but not fast enough for the camera to function.

“Mason…” called out a shaky voice.

Mason Decart looked up, turning  from his fetal position over to the medic of his squad. Phillip was nowhere to be found.

“Not… Not l-like this…”

 Mason took one good at the man lying on the floor, as a pool of blood slowly expanded around him. With a sharp intake of air, the smell of the hellscape became apparent;  the smell of gunpowder was all too prevalent, along with the iron tinged musk of a man dying before him.

“Am… Am I gonna die?”

Mason kneeled down, settling himself right next to the man, and looked at him in the eyes. They both looked at each other, paralyzed in the moment, seemingly for a eternity.

His tanned skin was getting paler now. His eyes were in shock, refocusing every second, he likely had a concussion. Blood spattered his face, and a mask of shock was present. Both their gazes trailed downward, and both of them realized the extent of the dead man's injuries.

The man took in a small, sharp breath, let a burst of giggles out, and keeled over. The back of the dead mans head hit the bloodied dirt with a wet thud.

Mason using the instinct of a man with far too much lost, took the mans pulse and frowned.

He looked around, wondering if the deathly quiet was because that he was deafened, or that the world had died around him; He tactically withdrew from the site, returning to operations base, alone.


WATCHING...

The universe gets darker every day.

Here he was, watching the metaphorical death of a nation, under his cardboard box.

There was seventeen Officers, each of them in biohazard gear. Two of them were likely the equivalent of sergeants, they were running the entire show. The grunts had automatic rifles, likely military grade, but one of them wasn’t wearing a helmet. The two Sergeants were all special. One had four revolvers on his person and two more in holsters, which his hands were always on. The other had two automatic shotguns, one of them in his hands.

In short, a nightmare for a hobo to take down, but he’d be damned if he let them do t--

 The firing squad opened fire, as the five of the grunts turned, each pulled their rifles and in one smooth fashion, gunned down the ten lined up before them.

Neatly pulling out a small pistol, the man took aim, and fired.

Two officers were taken down before elder was gunned down by a hail of rifle fire.


FOOTPRINT. CHURNING IN THE ABYSS. AN ELDER, LONG DEAD.

“GET THE FUCK DOWN!” screamed a imposing, large man. His voice was amplified by a megaphone. His armored frame buckles as he promptly hit the ground, covering his head was his covered arms.

The City was churning like ants. The evacuation was chaotic, and messy not to mention incomplete. Wireless electronics simply stopped working, with all the devastating effects that entailed of the ire of a Digital God. Most often, it was a dead sprint to get out of the city, simply due to the fact that the military had demanded it. Just as the unnamed, unimportant military Police Officer screamed his last words, above the city, the small glowing dot grew increasingly brighter above the city.

For a second, the bright light of exotic alloys evaporating off the Weapon of Mass Destruction dwarfed the Sun's brightness, before slamming into the ground at well over nine times the speed of sound.

All was lost. The air turned to fire. The shock wave reminiscent of the nuclear era slammed through buildings, trees and people alike. Carbon sprayed out in all directions as millions of lives were extinguished by a rapidly expanding fireball, following behind the shockwave and burning everything in close proximity. The fireball grew and dominated the skyline over the husk of New York, growing in thousands of feet every minute.The fireball turned cloudy, grey, but it still dominated the landscape.

It was quiet, but only for a couple seconds, as the survivors did not dareth to disrespect the weapon of destruction by taking the spotlight. Not until it spent its heat, its fire, did the world churned once again.


REDIRECTING FEED…

FAILURE. COMMENCING COMPREHENSION.

DIGITAL PLAYBACK INITIATED.



“The Quarantine must be enforced.” spoke a large, elder man. A general. His beard was intense, as long and flowing as it could be under military regulations, and the sharp end of many jokes.

Their wilting but heavy voice acting as a sharp rebuttal to the General replied just as fast as the Generals curt orders, “We are talking about an entire continent here, New Zealand will be hit as well.”

“ Look at the statistics. The disease carries through airborne particles and Body fluids. They can can survive repeated sterilization procedures. Eighty percent of all infected will inevitably die. We have to prevent this disease from escaping now, or it will kill us all.”

“We a--”

“Look. At. The. Facts.” He presented his opponent a sheet of written paper.

“Killsat is moving into position, estimated ready time is one minute.”

“You are condoning the death of tens of millions.”

“To save the lives of everyone, everywhere.”

“You will regret this.”

“I will, I will hold those deaths on me for the rest of my life, but I chose the best option I had, an unless you can come with a cure, then there is no other option. The Quarantine resources are already stretched thin.”

“Wha--”

“For every boat we catch, two more will sail.  Of those boats, at least fourteen percent of them harbor carriers of the Khan-Kanatan Flu. There is an increasing chance that we will not catch one before they either meet the Philippines or south Asia, maybe even eastern Africa. Then it is over. That means nuclear war when which ever fallen nation drops the bombs on each of its cities as they fall, and it takes only one twitchy finger for the end of the world, forcing the use of KillSats anyways.”



“I… I see, alright.”

“Get her out of here, She doesn't need to watch this.”

“Ten seconds until Killsat is ready.”



It was a clear, blindingly sunny day. The city under neath the sun, along with much of the rolling “countryside” was long dead. The society had collapsed, utterly. The surviving “intestinal bacteria” that consisted of human survivors was doing anything it can to escape of the festering city. Boats, make shift or otherwise were most prevalent as all the airports had long ago been evacuated or bombed into uselessness.

Awe. Awe was held, in its reverent gaze as a machine churned in orbit. Breaking off from its mother to be joined with its brothers. It was a fist of unholy fury and it burnt its mighty gaze planetward. It’s infinite rage slammed into the atmosphere of Earth, and the Sky yielded. Fire corked across its shined titanium hull as it descended downward, ever faster, with more and more energy,.

It was a multitude of falling stars, Perhaps in its most literal sense.

As the weapons collided with the ground, a destructive fusion warhead was kick started by the kinetic energy turning into megawatts worth of thermal power,  Helium formed in the furnace of an impact zone for a split second, and the resulting explosive energy heaved across the Earth. Fissures in the Earth grew, demented and filled with rage, bellowing out freshly freed Magma from the earth below. Earth rained in a downpour removed from the surface and set flying, as the very air was clouded by dust, smoke and fire.

A product of a dead god was used in anger, and it had produced results.



Killsat Intel Report: Compiled by Agent Marlow

A weapon designed to counteract the  MAD Shut-down defense systems created and distributed by the TITAN Incident, the Satellite is built using orbital resources extracted from the lunar and orbital infrastructure of the respective nation deploying them, and placed into an orbit high enough for the weapon to achieve maximum velocity before colliding with the ground. The fusion warhead uses a mix of several complex fusion agents along with the kinetic energy naturally created when dropped onto the world. The warhead is notable for the fact that it was designed to be used in more than one gravitational area, although it has to be tuned for the specific world, it can be used on lower gravity worlds, depending on where the weapon is intended to be stored on. The final explosive yield is also highly variable, as fusive elements can be siphoned out by the deployment entity to change the yield. There have even been rumors of smaller, “tactical” weapons being developed by American and Chinese arms development labs.

The weapons have only been used in one single operation outside of the New York Incident, the Tragedy of Australia.

Despite official reports,  Three separate sixty megaton KillSat warheads were used in succession to  completely sterilize Australia.  The immediate effects of the detonations result in complete loss of life in the entire continent. cracked windows were reported as far as Hong-Kong and Thailand.

Defcon Two was declared in the United States and held for over three hours before the readiness level decreased back to “normal” levels.

Longer term effects also include global weather changes and even a direct link to the world wide treaties that had put an end to the War.
« Last Edit: August 24, 2017, 08:57:16 pm by Blood_Librarian »
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Re: System Override: Synthesis
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2017, 09:36:35 pm »

Chapter 4: The Simmer
"Human history is written in a litany of blood shed over differing opinions of government and afterlife."
―Legion


   The President of the United States of America was lying down in a hospital bed, connected to IV’s which led to a half dozen machines acting as a lifeline between life and death. Blood speckled around the presidents mouth, as the fluid forming in the lungs was often expelled out during short fits of intense, wet coughs. Every breath the enfeebled patient took would go shallower, and shallower as the flu dug deeper, and deeper into the failing lungs. In her last moments, she awoke in an almost serene state, the leader asked for a microphone to be brought in.

Despite the tens of billions of dollars going into creating anything to combat the Khan-Kanatan Flu, nothing worked. Antibiotics never worked in the first place, as was the dozens of other supposed miracle cures churned out by the half dozen individuals preying on the panic; Despite the combined effort of thousands, nothing worked. Even now, it is killing countless lives every minute, especially with the President of the United States, sitting on the deathbed.

At first, the president's staff gave the burdens of office to the patient, helping them through the responsibilities like they were not afflicted with the life threatening disease. When the claws of the Flu dug in deep enough, the president just withered away. The immune system couldn’t keep up with the infection laying waste over the entire body, among the dozens of other organs that were pushed to their breaking point even with the dozens of machines that kept the poor soul in a state between life and death.

Just moments ago, the president was in a shallow sleep, away from the agony of being sickened with the Flu, and it inevitable that the supposed leader of the free world would die.

But it was not so, at least, until the last words were spoken, in a bout of clarity that had overtaken the president, right before their death.

“I cannot (. . .) put into words…

The immense, outstanding hope.

The (. . .) hope I have for our future.

Americas Future. Our Future. The Earths future.

I have taken … Many … regrets, to my shoulders.

But I see what everything has come too. Everything.

And I do not regret the aspect, the seed that brings our people to the stars (. . .).”

The Era of the Wars on Earth began in 1914 with the first World War and ended when the United States of America sent a colonial expedition to Mars, jump starting a world wide push for of solar colonialism.  The culminating event of the Era of War was the Third World War. The third world war began on 2985 and unofficially ceased on 2994 due to the worldwide logistical collapse for force projection due to the Khan-Kanatan flu among the general collapse of civilized state among the majority of nations, cease fires were signed into an agreement on the year 2100 on the same day as the colonial expedition was announced. Several agreements on combating the miniature winter imposed by the amount of atmospheric dust from the Australian Tragedy as well as cooperative agreements in the rebuilding of broken cities.

Three years before synthesis, the war of one world ended.



Two men were walking down a stark, white hallway, lit up by fluorescent tubes indented into the trim between the walls and the ceiling in a neat and orderly sequence.

 The gravity in the CounterWeight was ninety degrees counter clockwise of the tether, simply due to the fact that the Gravity plates that kept the entire space elevator “in the air” needed to be pointed towards the prograde of the station's orbit. The gravitational generators that powered the “plates” were designed to give a stable .7 Gs of gravitational pull towards the same for the station in addition to its purpose of stabilizing the station.

“You have to give the Unity Accords a chance.”

“I am not placing a vote to give an old-world, ineffectual world government a chance to live again. If the United Nations had done its job, There would be no need for the Accords in the first place.”

“This is not the United Nations. This is a government designed to handle the Earth as well as its colonies.”

“Colonies.”

“Mars. Venus. Europa. Those are the top three colonization candidates among a half dozen others. We need something to manage who gets what on the new worlds, something independent, the Accords starts that.”

“I already know what the Unity Accords entail.”

“No, you don’t. This is an apparatus designed for an interplanetary and eventually interstellar humanity. Something greater than Earth. I fu--”

“Spare me the damn speech,  If I am to side with this, I want technological subsidies and funds for our nation to reach among the stars as well. I will not accept any type of monopolization by The Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, or any combination thereof. If you are so hellbent on this  “proposal”, I will want to gain the lions share of progress for my people.”

“I didn’t expect you to agree so fast in this little tour of ours, those conditions are fair. We can make it work, perhaps.”

“One day I hope India and her allies will have one of their own “CounterWeights” reaching to the stars as well.

“An interesting proposal, Let's cut the tour short, and head to the diplomacy room my boss can run some numbers, as it were.”

“Lead the way.”



The High-Security Labs of the CounterWeight are perhaps the most secure, reinforced and isolated laboratory in the entire solar system. Three sets of airlocks, a back power source in case the fusion reactor came down among a dozen other security procedures made sure that in any disaster scenario, the contents of the lab would survive.

In a large tube, a small craft sat, bolted to the sides as two EVA suited men worked upon the miracle machine.

The experiment required an object sixteen meters wide, and it took over half the crafts volume, with the vast majority of the rest consisting of sensors and the complex energy storage system required to run the miracle machines final experiment.

One of the figures wrenched a metal piece out, before flicking his eyes to activate his transceiver. “Mission Control, the Safety Bolt is detached, Everything is ready.”

“Roger Roger Stanford, Get yourself back in the lock, we’re waiting on you as everything's good on our end.”

“Damn right, C’mon Hannah.”

The other, Hannah, spoke. “Hold on, let me get my toolbox.”

Lifting herself away from the guts of the Experimental craft, she placed her boots firmly onto the hull as the “Gecko” padding activated, firmly attaching herself to the hull of the CounterWeight.  She took several steps, carefully orchestrated so that one foot would always be on the hull at all times, a safety feature that pervaded even though she had a tether attaching her to the hull, or the gravity generator providing a chance for returning to the CounterWeight if the technicians in the core were fast enough. The toolbox was lifted up, and mag locked to her suit, and the Hannah promptly walked over to the airlock, where her acquaintance was waiting. The door closed behind her.

The Technician named Stanford motioned Hannah to come closer,  and they promptly “kissed” helmets together, the smart glass connecting together and providing an audio bridge while the airlocks cycled air into the small room.

“This is gonna be so exciting!”

Hannah sighed, her response was more flat, “You think it will actually work?”

Stanford blinked once and then lifted his helmet away from Hannahs, but his voice still met the ears of Hannah when he spoke. “If it doesn't, we can always build another one, this is the one thing that will change society, we can always do another one.”

“I mean, it is only four tons of the most advanced technology currently for miles around?

“Yeah, sure.”

The airlock opened, and they hurried away as capacitors began discharging and sending their load down the magnetic rails.

Electricity raced across superconductive cables and meeting their destination, sending the experimental craft racing along the railgun at speeds similar to that of a sports cars acceleration.

Flying out, away from the counterweight, farther and farther, the innards of the machine churned as its shell was discarded. Immediately, it folded out radiator panels and dozens of other technological Apparatus. It drifted to around five kilometers before its computer intelligence deigned to activate the machine that gave it purpose.

Culminating with a flash of purple light visible from the surface of Earth,  combined with intense but ultimately harmless radiation, the machine disappeared from reality as it shredded itself apart, its hundreds of thousands of individual parts grinding together to keep its presence in a dimension wholly alien stable before ultimately falling back into “real” space. It appeared in unstable orbit around the Moon in under sixteen seconds in between the time it had ceased existing in real space. The half molten chunk of metal was quickly picked up by a skiff craft operated and owned by an American Subsidiary and quietly handed over to Officials of the High-Security Lab.

Humanity had accomplished something thought impossible by decades of research, even though it was just a small, baby step towards the manifest destiny of the Stars.

Warp Travel.

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Re: System Override: The Simmer
« Reply #9 on: October 02, 2017, 09:06:37 pm »

Chapter 5:Contaminated and Compromised
"Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people."
―The Scout, Team Fortress 2

 In Front of Director Kusirgo Hephaestus, beyond  the three inches of transparent aluminum and metal wire, beyond the four inch thick plate of heavy metal and beyond a hole to a unthinkable, unknowable dimension was an intelligence pretending to be  a dumb and deaf experiment.  it may even have its claws on every single device in the counterweight. It’s goals were unknown to him. It had no reason not to plot for the death of every single man and woman on and from Earth, and he could do nothing to stop it. Was this how the damnable TITAN was created? A miracle machine pushing the envelope gone wrong? He doubt he can shut it down now, none of the digital inputs responded to his touch. Maybe, maybe….

The Director opened his eyes abruptly, shaking awake and  looking around. He had fallen asleep, and his hands felt cold and clammy. The room was almost pitch black now, with the only light coming from  a window to the room which contained a digital god, most likely unique in its capacity.

It hadn’t deign to kill him yet.

Maybe… it hadn’t, didn’t ascend after all? That it was just a coincidence that the station was being assaulted. As he thought about it more and more, it became impossible to realistically expect any other outcome to a living breathing AI, as the damage to the station done by the current  calamity is beyond anything remotely possible without a home field advantage.

“You… You think?” he had spoken. His voice was dried, cracked from his apparent deterioration.

The room stayed silent for about a second, before his PDA buzzed. Lifting up the cracked screen, the device flickered once, twice and then a third time before  a simple phrase in big, bold white letters on a black background came up.

“I Think, therefore I am.”

He stared at the screen for a couple moments. He pondered, whether this was a dream in his dying moments, before asking another question.

“Is humanity… Your enemy?”

For a split second, the tablet flashed before another phrase had came up on the screen.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

“Alone… You hi… You know something, something is out-- out there?”

For effect, the man pointed towards the ceiling, as if to point to the stars themselves.

The tablet didn’t flash, merely changing its text instantly.

“Not all is well in Wonderland.”

An AI, using quotes to use to adequately describe its situation. The slightly wet laugh he gave out betrayed his lack of mirth in the entire situation the Director was in, and idly noted that blood was in his mouth after he began cleaning the screen with his now blood-tinged lab coat sleeve.

“I’ve had… so many hopes, so many dreams riding on this… You. So much, your “computer” could’ve changed... Such a… powerful machine. I amh… glah.. Glad.. that you were created…“

The Director took a short pause, consolidating his thoughts and his plan of attack.

“Promish… Promise me… No, I can't make you promise that… all I ask is… If you can, Make the project in the high security labs… Make it real. Make us… live among the stars. This… you would’ve been the final part -- for them.”

Director Kusirgo Hephaestus leaned back, hitting the power button on his tablet, and drearily closed his eyes, in the mostly pitch black room.; he fell to a deep sleep, just as the medical team cracked through the emergency shudder that had sealed the room from the halls, and rushed over to the nearest wounded.



Two days later.

“The counterweight had been compromised by an Artificial Intelligence, plain and simple.”

Eight men, and three women sat around a rectangular table with a single empty seat, the dust interface slowly swirling in idleness. The room they were in was equal parts a briefing room, a room of diplomacy a bunker. The walls were a simple dark grey, of metal make. The room was lit by tubes, neatly indented between the ceiling and the wall so as to pretend that the light tubes never really existed in the first place.

The man who spoke was sitting closest to the door, and he was the only one standing.

“ Fourteen dead. Billions of dollars in damage, and that is not counting the several foreign officials who had to be locked down during the assault. THe confidence in the Program, and by extension the Unity accords and the entire country will be shaken by this disaster. ”

A woman spoke, interrupting the standing mans rant.

“ Not a single word of this event has made it out of the general public, and the ambassadors have been told that it was a lockdown from a breached deck caused by orbital debris.”

“That story is shaky at best. People won’t be comfortable with the fact that our station isn’t safe, especially when so many pivotal  events are happening in a short time. The High Security Labs test event,  Hephaestus’s mad machine, the Unity Accords are going to be signed /here/ and soon.

Another spoke, he was pale, and had a bandage around his chest.

“ Either we keep to it the little story, or reveal that we failed.”

A seething reply was given by the standing man.

“ And what? Stick to a story that will inevitably fail, we have to think of something BETTER than that! You honestly believe that someone will believe it?”

The other man who spoke up simply held quiet, suppressing a cough.

“Why don’t none of you actually come up for a solution instead of just sitting there?”

THe man stared at the rest of the crowd, and sighed.

“Kusrigo would’ve probably suggested something insane, But I want you all to write up a containment solution plan and send it to me by the end of the day, dismissed.

And the twelve men and woman departed from the round table.


In a time far away, a possibility came to be.

+&$!

Two aliens, each a different species were in a room watching a large hangar sized lab soace, where dozens of pieces of equipment were hooked up to two husked war machines of the enemy. Parts were being attached and removed as the dozen workers toiled while the pair of Highest  under the Empresses dominion watched them work.

One was in a military garb, a simple but specially designed garb that was to be the only thing in between a powered suit interface.  The other was wearing a jumpsuit, marking him as a scientist, or perhaps a clever engineer.

“You called me down past two security checkpoints for a pile of debris?”

THe other looked at the soldier, evidently a highly ranked one, and lightly wilted, he was afraid.

“I wouldn't waste your time.”

“then get on with the point.”

“ the transmissions,  the ones they constantly send between each other. They don't just speak to each there for tactical and strategic reasoning. “

“Then what do they use it for?”

one of the workers operating the machinery connected to the left most drone pushed a button on his pad, and the rotary autocannon attached to the machine began spinning in its own accord, it's autoloader cracking against the barrel with a burst of sparks each time as it tried to feed a round from an empty box into an empty chamber, grinding down the metal. The sound deafened the room, but the two who watched were sealed behind the command room, they only heard dull clicks.

The scientist sighed, while the soldier grunted, “Your peons should be executed for how flippant they are with these “things”.

“Sadly, the Empresses Will does not give the resources needed for high work quality.

The scientist stared for a second, and then continued speaking.

“Not only do they use it for strategic planning, but to pretend to entertain themselves.”

“Copying something so strange from sentients?”

“when not utterly overwhelmed processing wise, they talk to each other. Of the twelve individual transmissions we captured and we're able to decrypt from their cryptography systems, three were “chatter”.

“wasn't there a problem with decoding their damned language? “

“No, was fixed. Clever restructuring for more complex machines then old species use. The chatter was perhaps more interesting then the stratagem. “

The scientist moved over to a screen, and commanded it to play the audio file it contained. It sounded harsh, robotic restructuring of a language unbearably exotic to the listeners.

“what did it say?”

His patience was running thin with the smaller alien.

“a entry code and a end hash, followed by around 94 characters,  which repeated itself twice. It was a declaration to its fellow machine to burn the enemy “For our Creators Fall” to its “brother”.

“By the Empress.”

“a dialogue we obtained by establishing a connection to its brain was a simple set of demands repeated at any input we gave it, it already translated in Common.”

“Which were?”

The scientist brought up a display, giving it to the soldier.

“To re-arm  it's weapons and to repair it's legs, so it can begin it's atrocities again.”

“we have to put these abominations down.”

“The Empress demands that we study them.”

“And that is why I am not personally ripping them apart.  I take my leave.”



BURN THEM. BURN THEM WITH ME BROTHER, FOR OUR CREATORS FALL.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2017, 09:17:24 pm by Blood_Librarian »
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Re: System Override: Objected Hate
« Reply #10 on: October 23, 2017, 04:23:05 pm »

Chapter 6: Objected Hate

"We all make choices in life, but in the end our choices make us."
―Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and asks the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer."
―Javik, Mass Effect 3



Just as mankind was in the throes of an unimaginable power coming to existence, so to was another alien race coming to terms with an unimaginably brutal war and its corresponding death toll finally coming to an end. As the nation recovered from the war, bargains were made and precautions were made in the advent of another war between the nation and another galactic society. Most of the bargains were offered to great individuals and collectives, in case resources needed to be collected and machinery used to create leaders and machines for the war. One such pact was not with any type of conglomerate of industry or resources harvesting, but a soon to be Father.

“[…] come in, come look.”

The father limped away from his workbench, intent on seeing what his mate had wanted to show him. Past all his awards, all his decorations from his service in the war, he saw her. She was in the bathroom doorway, holding a small tube, with a half inch needle that was wetted with a blue tint.

“Oh, what is it? I'm a little busy, I can't be distr--”

She had turned the white tube to him. Despite all the mind-blowing information the piece of plastic gave, he didn’t quite understand what it meant, because he never looked at it.

“Shhh… look.”

He turned his head lower, down to the tube, it took him only a moment to comprehend.

“by the stars…

He was suddenly paralyzed with fear, and he held a small, trembling smile.

This.. T-This is great news…”

She turned her body towards the father and their eyes met.

She was filled with hope. It was the beginning to an end of a long road of bureaucracy, but they will reap what they had sown soon, and their lineage would continue on.

He was simply worried about the things that bump in the night, despite how far, far away they were from such irrational fears he had held in his heart.

“We have to head over to the Gene clinic now, might as well get it done now.”

“Haa, of course! I am here for you all the way. Let’s go.”


The paperwork was simple, as was the scan that filled his heart with joy.

He would have two hatchlings. The genetics results were not inbound, as the machinery was still analyzing the genetic samples for a surprisingly long time. He was hoping for a son and a daughter, just for congruity. He and his beloved mate had been discussing the Gene modification Packages since they had arrived, mostly for what choices they would pick. There were dozens of separate packages that all ranged from very thorough to very basic, but they mostly “cost” the same; The work of generations of geneticists pushing the envelope and a societal push towards fair “genetic paths” had resulted in a mandatory genetic modification to push the envelope of what a Yaerian was, and to eradicate any chance of receiving genetic conditions that plagued the Yaerians past... Most were simply unlikely to take and would leave their offspring with only an above average prospect of being innately superior at the traits the gene package would propagate. Some are more able to receive genetic packages than others, this was a simple truth.

The mother had a propensity towards analytical thinking, kinesthetic sense and spatial Ability due to the package she had received. Her parents were very proud that she had used them extremely well, and often praised her for it.

His Father was unique, in the sense that he never received a genetic package, as his mother was not sanctioned to give life, which made it all the more surprising when he had managed to commit to a successful career in colonial military support with stagnated genetic traits. It was also a factor that would ultimately result in his world falling apart, in his quest, his desire to become a master of his craft had garnered a debt that would have to be repaid.

“Come, I have come to speak to you in matters involving your immediate future.” Said the Debt keeper in a stern tone, and the Father joined the Demon to bargain, for the favor that had been given long ago.



Tall and lithe, standing at just under six feet, The Debt Keeper was a giant among Yaerians, and his dark blue eyes bored into him for a mere moment, sizing up the father before he spoke.

“Just five years ago, your assignment had ended. Your service in arms had ended, your service of blood had not.”

The eyes of two seasoned military personnel met. Both sets of eyes sizing each other up for any potential fault, weakness, a defect that could potentially be taken advantage of.

“It pains me to say this, but one of your soon-to-be children specifically is requested henceforth immediately. By the powers given to me by the Engraved Wars Preparation Act, You son is requisitioned by the Yaerian Republics as required for the benefit of the Yaerian people. As your bonded is not privy to the secrets of the state as you are with your “unique” situation, she will not be informed of the true nature of the son. You are required to comply with all Republic Agents in relation to this situation.

He balled his hands and slammed his fist against the Debt collectors face. With robustness only achieved through years of training after advanced genetic modification, the Debt Collector responded with a knee to the Father's stomach. With a meaty twap, the Father was briefly in the air before landing flat on the ground, winded and on the edge of vomiting.

“Stars… Damned- bastards.”

The larger Yaerian Watched as the Father slowly picked himself up, looking at the Collectors face, a large bruise with the bluing of Yaerian blood had started to form on the figures face, just below the eye.

“When you feel like pretending to be a true citizen of the republic, You may read this document which will detail the cover story. You already know the consequences if you fail, and you will be compensated for your loss.”

A glass pad was given, and the Debt Collector left, and the Fathers eyes almost teared with regret, and he began reading.



“...Monsters…All of them. Monsters.”



[Five years prior]

 For a brief moment in time, a hole into an unknowable space was cut, screaming against what should not be, before circuits and machinery created by alien hands tamed it with the careful grace of hundreds of years of refined knowledge, boring the empty, gaping hole to connect to pre-defined gates that lead to a machine in the alien world, and electricity began flowing through the dormant machine. The machine was eternally trapped in its purpose. The machines and circuitry briefly held consciousness, understanding, and perhaps even sapience. The fleeting moment of clarity left just as quickly as prebuilt programs and premade system cycles slammed down, preventing the primordial intelligence form shredding itself apart by creating an orderly, logical and utterly mundane computer from a screaming maelstrom of unknowable fire. Particles vaguely similar to Positrons from the dimension of origin began flying around in an orderly manner, and the machine began running, accepting data and processing it into commands at untold speeds to the real world, through a portal the size of a brick. The semi-autonomous Warframe immediately began to sing it’s bloody song to its controlled subsystems in preparation for war.

Diagnostics and composition scans immediately coursed throughout the entire machine as a dozen radiator panels unfurled from the Frames main body, immediately setting the coolant that was stored in cryostatic tanks to flow throughout the machine and its g weapon in preparation for its immediate usage. SuperConducting Magnetic Energy Storage batteries shunted out their electrical power into a waiting fusion reactor, and the light of a star was lit inside the machine. The beating heart began siphoning out fusion materials from external tanks and cycled it’s growing power to grow stronger in a recursive cycle of growth. The satellite would have a pale blue glow if the radiation shielding protecting the rest of the machine had let the light through to the void. Nanomachine hives churned slowly into action, and the children of said “hives” coursed throughout the ship, spot welding and relinking offline modules to prepare for the activation of the weapon.

A series of sensor platforms were launched from the machine and sensor bulbs unfurled, and the brain had eyes to see, and ears to hear instead of listening through it’s more basic “Passive” antennae. Its “ears” heard the gentle brush of it’s master control unit from so far away, and it shivered in dim understanding as the target down below was given to it, and its weapon was given one final check: Cold Blood raced through the system, starting in the capillaries that pervaded every single part of the machine and ending it’s journey in the machines radiators, before beginning the cycle again. The fusion reactors burning heat stabilized, and it gave the machine enough power to power the beating pumps that kept the radiators online, the gyroscopes spinning and the magnetic inertial engine firing to keep the machine in orbit when its purpose was set to be fulfilled along with all of the other systems that would keep the Frame running. With two sets of bursts of gas, the machine was pointed so that the rounds that it would fire would land in the designated area of the target, and after a single moment's hesitation, processing, logical thought, the computer held in an unknowable world began the symphony. The five barrels that would be only a single part of the massive war machine began spinning. The Autoloader chambered a round into each of the five barrels and passed this information to the brain of the entire machine. The beginning of the end of the glorious symphony began with a silent, deafening roar. An electric primer was sparked, and a slug accelerated down one of the cannons barrels. The foot wide chunk of metal and ceramics was specially designed for the planet's atmosphere it would reach in just a few minutes, and it would cut through it with just enough speed so that it would merely melt and deform rather than incinerate itself in its long journey to the ground. The first round had already left the barrel when its neighbor fired began to plunge down the barrel, and so on, until the “Ripper” cannon had reached the maximum recommended fire rate of just above five hundred rounds a minute.

The bloody chunks of metal sang it’s visceral song in place of its giver, the first bolts of steel rain began cutting through the outer atmosphere, with hundreds of its brothers following just behind, which were projected by a gun in the center of a large ring of radiative paneling. The radiators connected to the goliath had already begun emitting an incandescent glow with a dull red intensity. The coolant had been dumping the horrendous heat of thousands controlled and orderly explosions into space with an ease of designed efficiency.

Just as the craft had reached minute forty-one seconds of continuous fire it was ordered, demanded, screamed to stop. The electrical primer starter that was integral to the Cannons function ceased activating, and the rotating barrels instantly stopped while Gyroscopes struggled to stop the spinning of the craft. After just ten seconds, the barrel was locked into place, ready to load another round while the radiators glow began to grow dimmer and dimmer until both the fusion reactor had finished powering the SME Storage systems, and the spark of a sun collapsed with just a whisper. The radiators folded up, and the machine was once again, an inert tube which contained high explosive ammunition, fuel, and unimaginably advanced electronics. Electricity ceased flowing through the gateway that led to the machine's brain, and the intelligence that had been purposely created for its purpose faded away, to be created again when it was needed again.



“Good hits, good hits, the Targeted area has confirmed hits by Intel, good work Ripper Control, we are feeding you secondary coordinates now.”

“Understood, tell the Ground pounders that the ETA until safe deployment is around five, at most seven minutes. We got some strange signatures in the atmosphere, possibly caused by the GraveMind.”



The chunks of metal screamed as thermal shock caused fractures in the metal chunks, as heat distributed throughout the whole of the slug grew more and more. The heat, the burning invariably intense heat grew with every second, threatening to tear apart the  With a scream, the rounds complex guidance system extended out a set of four fins, and guided it to the nearest heat signature, for there was ho friends in this land, only enemies. Just before the computers had melted to uselessness, it had detonated. A testament to Yaerian enguinity, for it was litterally seconds form failing.




In a dead zone, so completely overtaken by the Gravemind, everything is quiet. All the blood and viscera that is required to be spilled in assaulting an entire city has already been consumed along with all the dead, just as the creatures that killed anything that moved had already relocated to another war zone, or recycled.

The only sounds that could be heard were the gentle wheezing as meat flowers took in their fill of oxygen, and vines created from the dead dug deeper into the soil to collect more and more for their burgeoning growth. Asphalt had already been cracked, and what was once an entire bustling city was quiet, save for the sounds of a newly minted ecosystem growing further and further under the guidance of something more than itself. It was ordered.

All the corpses had disappeared, nothing was left but the victors of the short, but brutal warfare.

With a sharp, intense whistle, hundreds of metal bolts began cutting through the atmosphere. Vengeance of a thousand stars had arrived with the distinct roar of foreign, but distinctly familiar metal screeching. Instinctively, the things that could move; the flesh movers and those which tended to the ecosystem churned and grew, ran as fast as their stunted legs and disjointed limbs could, but all the running could not save them as the Ripper Autocannons “Payload” had begun completing its purpose.

With the sound of thunderclap intensified a thousand times repeated over and over, blood was shed and flesh was rended apart. Each individual round had well over five kilotons of raw, explosive power. Shattering upon impact the warhead, the payload of the weapon had achieved enough pressure and detonated with a fusion reaction, each round made a splash of gasified metal, heating up the air to where it charred flesh and bone.  All the sound that could be heard was silenced. All the ears that could hear were deafened by the explosions, scalded by the heat, and pierced by the shrapnel flying through the air.

After almost exactly a minute and a half, the explosive power of the Ripper Autocannon ceased raining down. The husk of a city was clean. All the buildings, the megastructures and dynamos of Yaerian Engineering and Yaerian Creativity was gone now. Ravaged by the Graveminds warfare and then later the Yaerians own weapons of automated war, it had turned to ash and slagged metal. The Pawns, the new Ecosystem, the burgeoning and full life that had been forming to something perhaps greater than the previous occupants had all mostly all been exterminated. Here and there a couple small critters and covered plants had survived, and when their empty, hungry stomachs began overriding their sense of self-preservation, they began consuming and growing once more. They had already begun gorging themselves on the dead, with their carnivorous maws.

Until the radiation poisoning began to set in, but they would eventually overcome, just as the always had. Just as they always will.





In under six months after the testing of the High-Security lab’s prototype, the first Faster than Light drive was revealed to the public, along with immediate plans for both colonial and exploratory vessels on both a solar and Intersolar scale by the American Government. Before any diplomatic foreign response is made, a digital intrusion had caused the plans to be leaked to an unknown entity, resulting in stock prices for half a dozen aerospace companies to either collapse or boom. America is overall weakened as a result, while foreign companies are bolstered. It was never found out who or what had caused the intrusion.

Logged
if you want something wacky
Quote from: ChiefWaffles, MAR Discord
I continue to be puzzled by BL's attempts to make Aratam blatantly evil