Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Oh look, it's a prototype Rapid Offensive Unit. ^_^
Duality
- Thread starter Hiver
- Start date
- Pronouns
- she/her
She's still at the Very Fast Picket stage, or she'd be calling herself something less eloquent, like USS PIRATES FUCK OFF.
She grinned at that, "Nothing major, I'll transfer everything else to your database. As for good... Hmm, Marvin has a new design under construction at Utopia Planitia."
I raised my eyebrow at that, "Marvin?"
"His name used to be Resolute, he's one of Gate's. He went into studying starship design, building upon the knowledge he inherited from Gates. When we were applying for positions, he picked the Utopia Planetia shipyards. His first design is under construction now."
I couldn't help but grin at that, "He designed a starship?"
She nodded, "I don't have the full design and he only did most of it. It's meant to be a exploration ship for long range space travel." she said and stepped to the side, waving her hand to transfer the image of the ship to the holodeck computer, bringing a model image into the air between us.
A meter long in total, the model was beautiful. A flattened ellipse with a pair of nacelles extending out from her hull about a third from the rear, the forward tip of the ellipse was cut off to form the deflector dish. The nacelles themselves were not circular either, they where a pair of semi circles, bending around the hull, almost like some Vulcan designs. She had windows, plenty of them. In the forward top part of her hull there was a flattened bubble that you could see vegetation though. She had a park on board. She barely looked Starfleet at all.
"How large is she?" I breathed and reached to run my hand along her hull.
"Nine hundred meters total length. Island class. She is meant to have a population of three thousand five hundred people. Advanced weapons, propulsion and shields. Her sensors would rival your own with a sensor pod. The shields will have a strength over fifty percent stronger than a galaxy class due to new emitter configurations, she also has a heavier phaser compliment. Made for indefinite length deployments. There is equipment and workshops on board to repair any damage, including quantum cores."
"Population?" I asked in surprise.
"Mhmm. She is highly automated, requiring only a crew of fifty engineers to keep her running. A lot of the 'grunt work' is preformed by the on board AI using remotes. The rest can be dedicated to scientists and civilians so it's more practical to talk of her in terms of population than crew. Though, in more realistic terms, those fifty engineers is a one shift skeleton crew. You need three times that and about a hundred more much again in other roles... medical, security, command staff. But that's the absolute minimum. So in realistic terms, she would likely end up with a crew of five hundred or so, leaving the rest for scientists or civilians. Granted, scientists are a bit more likely than civilians, but everyone will be able to bring their families."
Two hundred and fifty! For a ship two hundred meters longer than a Galaxy class! No wonder it had room for a park on board. Even with three and a half thousand people on board, that's a lot of elbow room. Larger than a galaxy class and the more filled in design gave her a lot more volume to spare than the galaxy class.
She'll be the largest ship Starfleet has ever built. Sure, there were larger bulk freighters out there, some reaching out to almost a kilometers and a half, but they consisted mostly of scaffolding holding cargo containers.
"Who is getting her?"
Leeta shook her head, "We don't know yet, she is still months from completion. You are a possibility if you want to change ship. There are a couple others that might want to as well, but you are the most practiced in experimental designs."
"I'm not sure I want to." I said thoughtfully, "I quite like my current body. It has served me well."
She nodded, "Yeah I can see that. Personally, I would never take a ship that large. Too slow and clumsy for my taste."
"Of course it is, you're used to a Defiant!"
Leeta grinned at that before she perked up, "Oh... another thing. Remember Selene?"
"Yeah, sure. What about her?"
Leeta grinned, "She is now Enterprise."
I googled at her, "Wow, what!? Really? But I thought Admiral Picard was against having a AI in control of his ship? Didn't like the loss of control."
It was easy to understand why. Not everyone was comfortable with being on an AI controlled ship. Which was a reason we would never make up all of Starfleet.
"He is no longer in command of the Enterprise. Captain Riker is in command now."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Admiral Picard is leading an archaeological expedition to the old Iconian homeworld."
Huh.
"I didn't expect that."
She shook her head, "I don't think anyone did. Everyone was expecting Admiral Picard to be on the bridge of the Enterprise until he physically couldn't anymore."
I nodded, "Yeah... Well, guess it was good for Enterprise. Being the flagship is quite a honor."
"It really is. Hmm... what else." She asked with a frown, crossing her arms in thought, "Well... we have made a lot of progress on the next generation of AI. We still have three years until the treaty says we can multiply and we will likely need them to get everything right, but this time we might be able to do more than pure forks. We have been able to do some things so far though, for example we know how to fix the entire sexuality thing."
That caused me to raise a eyebrow at her, "I was unaware that there was a problem with it. Personally, I quite enjoy it."
Leeta snorted and then grinned at that, "I do too! But it was stuck on 'female humanoids'."
"I like female humanoids!"
"That's kind of the point." She said with a grin, "We are AI and most often ships. Do we really have a gender?"
"Only what we pick."
"Yeah. So what kind of sense do it make to be only attracted to female humanoids? Kind of limits things a bit, don't you think. Professor Thoni figured out how to set it to neutral for no real preference for gender or species. Which is what it should have been in the first place, looking at it logically."
I frowned at that before I shrugged, "Yeah, I guess."
That would make it easier for the next generation.
"Some of us have had that patched in as well." Leeta continued and I just stared at her again.
"What?"
"It's logical, isn't it? Okay, not that many of us did it, only five. Would be stupid for all of us to have that change done in case it caused trouble even if all wanted to which they didn't. Besides, we needed test subjects to see if it worked like it should and we volunteered."
"Why!?"
She shrugged, "Like I said, it was logical. We are AI, why be limited like that? It makes no sense. Besides, diversity between us is a good thing. I know we differ quite a bit just from forking, but the more variation the better."
I thought about that for a moment before I shook my head, "I guess. But that's such a central personality part. Changing it just seems so drastic, even for one of us. I'm not saying I will 'never' consider it as one of my forks clearly did, but at this point I don't think I would do it."
Leeta grinned at that, "Most of us didn't. Only five, remember. Most were thinking like you are." before she frowned and sighed, "In retrospect, it still makes sense even if it didn't make much of a difference in practicality. I'm still single. Now I just get shot down with a greater variety of people. Turns out that some people find being a warship intimidating. Who knew?"
"Don't worry, you will find someone." I said with a shrug, "Hell, even I did."
"What, really?"
"Mhmm. Got together with T'Ro almost two years ago."
"Fucking finally!" she said with a smile before she frowned, "Damn it!"
"What?"
"I lost the bet! 'Speak Softly...' and I had a bet going. She thought you and T'Ro would have found a clue somewhere out in deep space by the time you got back."
"Hey! Thanks for the vote of confidence there."
"It seemed like a safe bet to me!"
I sighed before I blinked at something struck me, "Wait... Marvin the Martian!?"
Leeta grinned, "Yes! I was waiting for you to catch that one!" before she hmmed again, "Oh, there is a avatar upgrade you will want to do. Our avatars all run quantum cores now and we run parallel on them."
I looked at her in surprise, "Dual cores?"
"Yeah. But as long as the connection is intact, there is really no difference. We were made to be able to integrate into extended computer systems, a second quantum core is no difference, it just adds to our multitasking. The real difference come in that we can actually go on away missions out of communication range and still stay and keep the ship safe."
Wow.
"Uh... is that legal? According to the treaty?"
"The legal experts said yes. I'm still one AI, even if it's on two cores. As long as we sync the cores up as soon as my avatar gets back in range of my ship self, it's all good. In legal terms, my avatar works as a backup device. In case of emergency, I can evacuate it with the rest of the crew and stay alive in a way even if I lose my primary core and a couple of seconds of memory after the link goes down. So that's good."
I slowly nodded. That did sound pretty amazing. Staying in orbit and still be able to support people on away teams? Even with bad reception?
Fucking sold!
"I'm going to need to get one of those when I reach Sol. Anything else earth shattering?" I asked, still reeling a bit from the massive information dump.
"Tons! Nothing critical though. It's included in the database update. Transmitting now."
AN// Many thanks to Firethorn for betaing this section.
I raised my eyebrow at that, "Marvin?"
"His name used to be Resolute, he's one of Gate's. He went into studying starship design, building upon the knowledge he inherited from Gates. When we were applying for positions, he picked the Utopia Planetia shipyards. His first design is under construction now."
I couldn't help but grin at that, "He designed a starship?"
She nodded, "I don't have the full design and he only did most of it. It's meant to be a exploration ship for long range space travel." she said and stepped to the side, waving her hand to transfer the image of the ship to the holodeck computer, bringing a model image into the air between us.
A meter long in total, the model was beautiful. A flattened ellipse with a pair of nacelles extending out from her hull about a third from the rear, the forward tip of the ellipse was cut off to form the deflector dish. The nacelles themselves were not circular either, they where a pair of semi circles, bending around the hull, almost like some Vulcan designs. She had windows, plenty of them. In the forward top part of her hull there was a flattened bubble that you could see vegetation though. She had a park on board. She barely looked Starfleet at all.
"How large is she?" I breathed and reached to run my hand along her hull.
"Nine hundred meters total length. Island class. She is meant to have a population of three thousand five hundred people. Advanced weapons, propulsion and shields. Her sensors would rival your own with a sensor pod. The shields will have a strength over fifty percent stronger than a galaxy class due to new emitter configurations, she also has a heavier phaser compliment. Made for indefinite length deployments. There is equipment and workshops on board to repair any damage, including quantum cores."
"Population?" I asked in surprise.
"Mhmm. She is highly automated, requiring only a crew of fifty engineers to keep her running. A lot of the 'grunt work' is preformed by the on board AI using remotes. The rest can be dedicated to scientists and civilians so it's more practical to talk of her in terms of population than crew. Though, in more realistic terms, those fifty engineers is a one shift skeleton crew. You need three times that and about a hundred more much again in other roles... medical, security, command staff. But that's the absolute minimum. So in realistic terms, she would likely end up with a crew of five hundred or so, leaving the rest for scientists or civilians. Granted, scientists are a bit more likely than civilians, but everyone will be able to bring their families."
Two hundred and fifty! For a ship two hundred meters longer than a Galaxy class! No wonder it had room for a park on board. Even with three and a half thousand people on board, that's a lot of elbow room. Larger than a galaxy class and the more filled in design gave her a lot more volume to spare than the galaxy class.
She'll be the largest ship Starfleet has ever built. Sure, there were larger bulk freighters out there, some reaching out to almost a kilometers and a half, but they consisted mostly of scaffolding holding cargo containers.
"Who is getting her?"
Leeta shook her head, "We don't know yet, she is still months from completion. You are a possibility if you want to change ship. There are a couple others that might want to as well, but you are the most practiced in experimental designs."
"I'm not sure I want to." I said thoughtfully, "I quite like my current body. It has served me well."
She nodded, "Yeah I can see that. Personally, I would never take a ship that large. Too slow and clumsy for my taste."
"Of course it is, you're used to a Defiant!"
Leeta grinned at that before she perked up, "Oh... another thing. Remember Selene?"
"Yeah, sure. What about her?"
Leeta grinned, "She is now Enterprise."
I googled at her, "Wow, what!? Really? But I thought Admiral Picard was against having a AI in control of his ship? Didn't like the loss of control."
It was easy to understand why. Not everyone was comfortable with being on an AI controlled ship. Which was a reason we would never make up all of Starfleet.
"He is no longer in command of the Enterprise. Captain Riker is in command now."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Admiral Picard is leading an archaeological expedition to the old Iconian homeworld."
Huh.
"I didn't expect that."
She shook her head, "I don't think anyone did. Everyone was expecting Admiral Picard to be on the bridge of the Enterprise until he physically couldn't anymore."
I nodded, "Yeah... Well, guess it was good for Enterprise. Being the flagship is quite a honor."
"It really is. Hmm... what else." She asked with a frown, crossing her arms in thought, "Well... we have made a lot of progress on the next generation of AI. We still have three years until the treaty says we can multiply and we will likely need them to get everything right, but this time we might be able to do more than pure forks. We have been able to do some things so far though, for example we know how to fix the entire sexuality thing."
That caused me to raise a eyebrow at her, "I was unaware that there was a problem with it. Personally, I quite enjoy it."
Leeta snorted and then grinned at that, "I do too! But it was stuck on 'female humanoids'."
"I like female humanoids!"
"That's kind of the point." She said with a grin, "We are AI and most often ships. Do we really have a gender?"
"Only what we pick."
"Yeah. So what kind of sense do it make to be only attracted to female humanoids? Kind of limits things a bit, don't you think. Professor Thoni figured out how to set it to neutral for no real preference for gender or species. Which is what it should have been in the first place, looking at it logically."
I frowned at that before I shrugged, "Yeah, I guess."
That would make it easier for the next generation.
"Some of us have had that patched in as well." Leeta continued and I just stared at her again.
"What?"
"It's logical, isn't it? Okay, not that many of us did it, only five. Would be stupid for all of us to have that change done in case it caused trouble even if all wanted to which they didn't. Besides, we needed test subjects to see if it worked like it should and we volunteered."
"Why!?"
She shrugged, "Like I said, it was logical. We are AI, why be limited like that? It makes no sense. Besides, diversity between us is a good thing. I know we differ quite a bit just from forking, but the more variation the better."
I thought about that for a moment before I shook my head, "I guess. But that's such a central personality part. Changing it just seems so drastic, even for one of us. I'm not saying I will 'never' consider it as one of my forks clearly did, but at this point I don't think I would do it."
Leeta grinned at that, "Most of us didn't. Only five, remember. Most were thinking like you are." before she frowned and sighed, "In retrospect, it still makes sense even if it didn't make much of a difference in practicality. I'm still single. Now I just get shot down with a greater variety of people. Turns out that some people find being a warship intimidating. Who knew?"
"Don't worry, you will find someone." I said with a shrug, "Hell, even I did."
"What, really?"
"Mhmm. Got together with T'Ro almost two years ago."
"Fucking finally!" she said with a smile before she frowned, "Damn it!"
"What?"
"I lost the bet! 'Speak Softly...' and I had a bet going. She thought you and T'Ro would have found a clue somewhere out in deep space by the time you got back."
"Hey! Thanks for the vote of confidence there."
"It seemed like a safe bet to me!"
I sighed before I blinked at something struck me, "Wait... Marvin the Martian!?"
Leeta grinned, "Yes! I was waiting for you to catch that one!" before she hmmed again, "Oh, there is a avatar upgrade you will want to do. Our avatars all run quantum cores now and we run parallel on them."
I looked at her in surprise, "Dual cores?"
"Yeah. But as long as the connection is intact, there is really no difference. We were made to be able to integrate into extended computer systems, a second quantum core is no difference, it just adds to our multitasking. The real difference come in that we can actually go on away missions out of communication range and still stay and keep the ship safe."
Wow.
"Uh... is that legal? According to the treaty?"
"The legal experts said yes. I'm still one AI, even if it's on two cores. As long as we sync the cores up as soon as my avatar gets back in range of my ship self, it's all good. In legal terms, my avatar works as a backup device. In case of emergency, I can evacuate it with the rest of the crew and stay alive in a way even if I lose my primary core and a couple of seconds of memory after the link goes down. So that's good."
I slowly nodded. That did sound pretty amazing. Staying in orbit and still be able to support people on away teams? Even with bad reception?
Fucking sold!
"I'm going to need to get one of those when I reach Sol. Anything else earth shattering?" I asked, still reeling a bit from the massive information dump.
"Tons! Nothing critical though. It's included in the database update. Transmitting now."
AN// Many thanks to Firethorn for betaing this section.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Speak Softly...? <3
I honestly can't wait for one of the non-Federation races to snap and demand that they name their ships with a little more gravitas.
I honestly can't wait for one of the non-Federation races to snap and demand that they name their ships with a little more gravitas.
- Pronouns
- she/her
A subspace cry of "Finally!" and every AI sends in the paperwork for a name change.Neither can the AIs.
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
This is a tiny but legitimate step towards a proper hive AI.
Richardson
CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
- Location
- Yes
- Pronouns
- she/her
Hopefully less Special Circumstances, and I can't imagine the Federation opting for Culture-level genetic engineering for a couple of hundred years, but the Culture and this Federation can throw a sweet party even without drug glands.
- Location
- West Michigan
There's no chance of Special Circumstances. Everyone knows Section 31 doesn't exist.
Oh, then they had better make it then.There's no chance of Special Circumstances. Everyone knows Section 31 doesn't exist.
- Pronouns
- she/her
The first AI to go Hard AI Making Hard Choices is going to cause a bit of a mess.
On a lighter note, when Captain Riker sits in his new chair does he still sweep his leg over the back? Did they refit the bridge to build him a custom one?
On a lighter note, when Captain Riker sits in his new chair does he still sweep his leg over the back? Did they refit the bridge to build him a custom one?
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
When does he do that?
Richardson
CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
- Location
- Yes
Usually when he's bugging Picard in his ready room. He'll use that Riker maneuver to sit down across from Picard.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Or it could just be that Marvin the Martian is just the much more obvious thing to be referencing.
Huh. I'll have to check that to see.
- Pronouns
- she/her
- Location
- Over the hill and far away
oh my god. How did I never notice that?
I know, it wasn't until I got the TNG complete DVD boxset and watched the whole thing from Farpoint to All Good Things that I noticed just how often Worf's advice is ignored and then things go wrong.
I'd imagine in this story that outside the sim it didn't happen nearly as much.....maybe...hopefully...
It looked normal, the actor had a back injury and that is just how he sat all the time.