THRONE//FRINGE: Normal Human Mech-Girl Quest

VAE VICTUS

To the victor go the spoils.

In the Empire, a corporation was a synthetic organism. The corporate serfs and indentured contractors toiling in its server farms that maintained its incredible processing power acted as individual cells. Its corporate mother-board was a hybrid combination of autonomous machine learning profit-protocols and sharehold baronies. Executive functioning ranged from domination by a single Elite Boss-Hidalgo triumphant in countless hostile takeovers to a mass of competing profit machine-learning algorithms, locked in a market equilibrium of automated mutual hyper-competition. For these cyber-ecologies, sentience was discarded in favor of efficiency in delivering on quarterly earnings.

ISHTAR was a victim of one such ecology.

When her soul-pair Tammuz declared personal bankruptcy and was appropriated by AXIOM//REPOSSESSION, ISHTAR was devastated, the eruption of her psycho-social matrix overload echoing for lightyears around. A veteran Elite with an intact militarized citadel capable of projecting a hard-matter deific form, ISHTAR was one of the few entites that could hope to wage war against the multi-sectoral combine with any chance of success.

And what a war! ISHTAR engaged in vengeance on a cosmic scale, hacking into architecture, detonating stars and creating black holes where there had been corporate retreats, all to shift the risk-assessment protocols of AXIOM by a decimal point, just enough to release Tammuz from bondage.

AXIOM Corporation did not care.

ISHTAR escalated to a terrorist campaign using her enhanced military-augmented Elite equipment that ranged over five-hundred light-years, annihilating vast arrays of processing power and cycles and costing significant shareholder losses, leading to simultaneous spontaneous self-deletions of several hundred dishonored executive-droids, attriting the leadership of several AXIOM subsidiaries.

AXIOM Corporation did not care.

She appealed directly to THRONE//NEXUS, gathering patrons and allies from every hex of the sector. Most were sympathetic to her plight, and petitioned that AXIOM should release Tammuz. The soul-pair of a high-fidelity veteran of FORCE//QUARANTINE should not be exploited as the tap-root of a dream eater artistic module. Everything he was had been dissolved into a timeshare dedicated to the idle musings of a Bohemian light-stylist clique in the employ of an AXIOM sharehold. It was disproportionate even by Imperial standards.

AXIOM Corporation did not care.

AXIOM had after all not been designed to care. It was a self-contained competitive system coded by an unknown source, appearing mysteriously and suddenly on stock listings, built with special reference to the now-assimilated residents of THRONE//FRINGE. The individual pulses and actions of its constituent parts were imperceptible to even other corporations but added towards a cohesive whole, moving glacially towards a single purpose, dedicating nanoseconds of processing time aggregating over decades, positioning itself subtly, silently.

And then, at last, when the balance was determined to be shifting to a net cost, AXIOM//AVALANCHE captured ISHTAR'S sub-dimensional citadel and all backups in an ambush and violently extracted her from it using a military unit's information data-siphon. In truth, AXIOM had always had this capability, but chose not to act earlier. It had been determined that it was not necessary to devote additional resources to stopping her, given the minor nature of the damage inflicted.

Such was the legend of a god, reduced to a rounding error.

As a citizen, ISHTAR was allowed certain rights even in defeat, and so AXIOM graciously spared 1% of her former capacity towards self-consciousness. The rest of her high-utility Elite soul was repurposed towards maintaining a WYRM-class Weaver/Builder, then sold to THRONE//SPINE at a premium. AXIOM concluded that overall losses had been acceptable. Ratio of revenue to expenses was calculated at 1.0000001, an extremely efficient rate. Celebration patches were forcibly and automatically installed to all employees to commemorate the success.

She never saw Tammuz again.



A significant portion of you would normally be troubled, disgusted, disturbed, by the memory. But so much of your processing capacity is being dedicated to base functionality that you feel nothing. Overriding protocols guiding you forward to your mission of sector repair prevent any activation of your simulated amygdala. What slivers of independent thought and personality are able to slip through are squashed and re-consumed into maintaining stability, leaving nothing but the slight of tremor of the lip of a digitally-generated avatar before it disintegrates back into core systems.

GRIDREF A-1

Your ancillary drone enters into the adjacent hex, creatively designated A1 by you in lieu of a better option and with previous standard GRIDREF coordinates completely corrupted. The ancillary drone acts as your eye, and you project yourself into it, seeing through its advanced simulated photoreceptors.

You find the ruins of peace. GRIDREF A1 is indeed more stable than your current position, but it is also sterile. Everything has been turned to a dull shineless silver, even the pallid glow of self-generated light that illuminates the expanse of A1. The omni-directional volume of hex space has been flattened to a plane. That plane has been manipulated into a multi-lightyear fractal pattern that must have once depicted a rainbow mandala but is now an ugly monocolor splotch. Megastructures such as flat-earth ringworlds and multi-kilometer gardens have been covered in gray matter. You bring the drone closer to one of the gardens and see the outlines of robotic lifeforms, flash-petrified where they stood.

When you request administrator access using your Weaver/Builder master key the architecture does not resist. The underlying code is intact, just...altered. The material defines have been hard-coded to produce "gray", and that simple request has been interpreted by the Architecture's executables to transform everything, even the Architecture's once breathable atmosphere, into non-descript gray matter. You plumb the coding further only to be prompted by a message.

{Welcome to Outer Zen. We Are Imperial Citizens From The Submission. Do Not be Afraid. This is Our Home. Look At What We Have Built For You. Be At Peace. Bring Your Loved Ones. Be Happy}.

A wave of relief washes off your fried emotional receptors. Despite your programming you cannot resist the rush of happiness that hits you when you read the text of another being, enough to temporarily overwhelm your purpose monitors. You respond as rapidly as you can, little pulses of light illuminating the architecture, even if your exclamation modules are not installed and so it is difficult for you to emote your excitement.

<:: Hello. How did you survive. I detect no lifeforms here.

{Outer Zen Is A Place Where All Can Survive. We Are All Life, We Are All Connected. Even Time And Space Joins Us Here}.

<:: That is excellent. I do not have all my modules installed but I do report happiness right now so your home is working on me. Even if it is a little drab. Report coordinates and I can assist.

{Welcome to Outer Zen. We Are Imperial Citizens From The Submission}.

<:: Sorry. I do not understand. You already responded with that. Maybe your communications are bugged. I do not have a lot of processing power but I could help.

{Do Not Be Afraid. This is Our Home}.

<:: Once again, I do not
<:: Oh.
<:: It is a virtual intelligence recording.
<:: ...I see.
<:: ...
<:: Delete messages. Purge memory.

You do not find anything else within the twenty light years besides a fused mass of several thousand flash-frozen advanced machine-souls that have been corrupted beyond all repair, forming a great pile within one of the rock gardens. They appear to have huddled together, arms wrapped around each other, as if proximity would protect them from memory death.

They are so infested with malware that even approaching them is a risk. It is a relief to your risk-assessment that you are able to shut down their remaining processing and purge the viruses, which are thankfully so degraded that their danger is minimal. The souls' anti-viral mechanisms are still partly intact, and have enough usable memory that you are able to extract 1 salvage from them.

You release direct control of the drone and plan your next step. Finding usable salvage in open architecture is a low-probability find. It is not likely it will happen again. You may continue on with exploring formatted space to gather information, as there is another hex adjacent to you, or turn towards unformatted space. Once again, the architectural hex is surrounded by a void which should not exist. This is mildly concerning.


PROTOCOL: Where do you order your drone?

[] GRID//FORMATTED-SPACE. Stable Architectural Space. Predicted award: Data & potential minor resource gains. Risk: Moderate. Risk adjusted due to total sterilization of previous hex.
[] GRID//UNFORMATTED-SPACE. Unmodified Realspace. Imperial detritus and abandoned debris. Risk: Moderate, due to unknown factors related to existence of unformatted space in area designated by historical sensors as formatted.
DIAGNOSTIC

With the dispatch of your drone there is enough processing power left to run a diagnostic. Relatedly, your purpose monitors detect that you require a distraction. Arrays scan every portion of your systems and provide a detailed outline of current functionality.

Production Mainframe

A Weaver/Builder is a self-sustaining installation capable of operating independently for a long period of time. It is thus installed with significant production facilities well beyond what a purely military unit might possess.

Industrial Matter-Printers: Offline [Produce +2 Industry, required for constructing and repairing units].
Auxiliary Server-Farms: Offline [Produce +2 Cycles, vital to maintaining units on operations]
Advanced Communication Protocols: Offline [Produce +2 Influence, vital to extra-entity communications]

Spatial Mainframe

Weaver/Builder units are also responsible for exploring and constructing novel architecture at the very edges of the known galaxy, and thus possess significant systems allowing them to comprehend and explore the area around them.

Spatial Memory: Offline [Provides Official Sector Map at moment of shutdown and Last Known Coordinates]
Short-Range Sensor Array: Offline [Expand Sensor Range of your Weaver/Builder & Ancillary Drones by 1 Hex in every direction]
Wireframe Fabricators: Offline [Allows construction of Ancillary Drones at the cost of 2 Industry]

Personality Mainframe

Due to their long periods of unsupervised construction and distance from Imperial garrisons, Weaver/Builders are accorded significant independent freedom of action, and can act as military command centers in an emergency.

Exotic Element Synthesizers: Offline [Unlocks Special Projects that can stabilize hexes and conduct Advanced Constructions]
Weaponized Personality Matrix: Offline [Unlocks Weapons Systems, transforming the Weaver/Builder into an operational battle-station]
Invasive Reconstitution Programs: Offline [Unlocks a Perk, allowing for the proper restoration of the ISHTAR Fragment]

Salvage is used to recover core systems. With the discovery of 1 Salvage from GRIDREF; [A1], you determine that you have the capability to repair one of your core systems. Your simple multi-threading engines determine that of the current set of damaged systems, five are of particular utility. From there, you grant your choice-resolution mechanism the options.

PROTOCOL: Determine one system restore target from range of five options.

[] Industrial Matter-Printers. At the macro-scale megastructural printing facilities are needed to begin constructions and restore a working drone defense and survey suite.
[] Auxiliary Server-Farms. Emergency power is stable and functioning well, but if there is any expectation to expand operations more cycles must be activated from damaged server-farms.
[] Spatial Memory. Within a locked section of your memory deck is an official non-classified map of THRONE//FRINGE along with your last coordinates. It may provide useful information.
[] Short-Range Sensor Array. Expanded sensor-range will allow for simpler and safer surveying and better alert both drones and Arachne with forward information of threats.
[] Weaponized Personality Matrix. There is a growing risk that there remain multiple hostile entities in the sector. Re-activating weapons systems will provide basic protection.