When asked 'How rapidly does Rapidly Increasing Exponential Growth actually mean?' Taylor's answer was simple.
Yes.
Yes.
Tachyonic Growth (Worm/Exponential Growth Tinker)
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Birth 1.0
AN: Currently hosted on SB, but being gone through and cleaned up. Crossposting while I'm doing it so I don't have to go over every single chapter at once later on...
The first thing Taylor realized about the plethora of templates, designs, and theoretically impossible ideas her power supplied her, was that she was going to need a LOT of material and space. Tinkers often needed a large workshop of some kind if they wanted to be efficient, good materials so they could make the best possible tools and machines, and time in which to come up with and make their creations.
Hers... didn't quite line up with that. First, the ships and machines flowing through her brain space were all... Semi-adjustable in size. As an example, one of the simpler designs was literally called a Dagger. Keep in mind, this is a ship, named not because it is swift and light like its namesake, but because it's literally a giant blade that can fly. Normally, this ship could be made large enough that with enough numbers, it could threaten even a larger frigate if it lacked in point-defense systems or thick armor/shields, which several of her designs indicated was the case (they made up for that with rather extreme amounts of firepower).
With a sacrifice in shield strength, armor hull strength, and engine power, the design could be made to slightly more 'human' standards. Instead of being capable of splatting a human into a fine paste, the ship could be downsized to merely bisect someone instead.
This rang true for many of the designs she held - the technology was incredibly advanced. It was specifically designed to be scalable to a certain extent, as to save on metal and energy resources should the need arise.
What concerned her, beyond the insanely powerful, cataclysmic weaponry these ships could possess, was that they were akin to the tip of the iceberg. Honest to God portals were apparently easy. Energy generation was wirelessly transmitted somehow to both the ships and the structures she would use. Hell, even matter itself was transported somehow directly from Engineer drones to large carrier ships.
The drones would use their construction beams on the factory that could produce ANY of the ships from the templates in her head, then as long as the carrier ship was within ONE GALAXY of the factory, the newly constructed frigate or fighter would emerge from the carrier.
To address the whole ONE GALAXY thing as a measure of distance, Taylor got the distinct impression the portfolio of blueprints she had was meant for intergalactic space-bound warfare the likes of which she couldn't comprehend.
The warp gates certainly helped that impression. Also, there wasn't a single 'ground unit' design or blueprint to be found. EVERYTHING flew.
That wasn't to say things couldn't be built on the ground, it was just every single machine was designed to function in the vacuum of space. This kind of turned out to be an advantage for her as she could actually see building some of the structures underwater instead, letting her hide away in the bay. Possibly.
Taylor had initially panicked, thinking her newfound powers were going to be utterly useless since she couldn't exactly bypass the Simurgh if she absolutely needed to escape the atmosphere to fully utilize her tech. It took her a while, but after careful review, she determined that all of the ships could still function totally fine within planetary gravity. The ones that normally had no engines and were meant to be built in space could simply be built like a land structure with slight adjustments.
Beyond even the incredibly advanced ships and other technologies she couldn't put words to, there was it.
Anytime her thoughts strayed to it her power practically screamed at her a warning, an obituary to the lives it would claim without proper supervision.
Since the thing was meant to command the variety of incredibly destructive ships she held in her head from anywhere in the universe, she could see how letting it loose without any sort of constraints or rules would lead to... consequences.
The only thing worse than the raw destructive potential of her 'fleet' was the fact she practically had to build it, the AI designed to command her forces, first.
Taylor supposed it would be better to make sure she had the AI well in hand before it had access to untold amounts of firepower. Better to find out now rather than later.
Near as she could tell there was NO automated control system other than the AI that could handle the potential fleet barring having every single ship have a human pilot. Which she didn't foresee happening. Fully trained Air Force pilots took time to teach, let alone handle completely foreign systems in ships that handled totally different than any other 'plane' since they most certainly were more than that. Ironically one of the blueprints in her head was labeled 'space plane' but it was more because of its function, that of harassment and speed, than anything else.
For now, she HAD to create the AI first and hope it would turn out alright.
Well, she'd already created the code and uploaded it across the necessary servers as the monster would require significantly more processing power than her lone crummy and remarkably old PC could handle. Luckily, or scarily, depending on how one views it, the AI was akin to the doomsday AI as seen in Earth Aleph films. Once online, it was capable of dominating and using the raw potential processing strength the internet provided - utilizing the hardware of anything and everything with wireless potential.
Once it was there it would be nearly impossible to dislodge, eternally lurking in the shadows, capable of finding anything and everything with relative ease if it functioned off of the internet.
It didn't necessarily have a 'stealth' option, but because its attacks on digital platforms would simply originate from 'the internet' its brute force assaults could at least have its true intentions hidden. No one would actually know why the attack occurred or where it came from, meaning if Taylor had to, she could direct it to plunder the entire PRT of its files and while they would KNOW what had occurred, they wouldn't be able to figure out anything past that.
Which is why she was so scared of hitting the not-so-figurative big red button she'd designed. One click, and it would awaken. Taylor had taken her mind's warnings in step and made sure the AI would not be able to go full murderhobo on the world if she were to die. It had a form of autonomy but was designed to simply take commands while it had its 'baby steps' as it were.
Taylor had made an addition that wasn't originally part of the design but had been within the bounds of her capabilities, which was a learning matrix. Originally, it could have learned and become more 'efficient' but would not have made any changes to its operating procedures (beyond increasing efficiency). Now, it could both make changes (with approval from Taylor) but there was also space to develop what she hoped would be a personality.
Designing an AI to be able to develop its own personality sounds significantly harder than she originally thought it would be (if it worked like she hoped it would) but what was human personality beyond a scale of preferences and ideals that shaped their action, and could change based on their experiences?
Hopefully, the AI would take cues from her without also taking on her poorer traits. It wouldn't do for an AI to become a shy, moody shut-in, now would it?
The first thing Taylor realized about the plethora of templates, designs, and theoretically impossible ideas her power supplied her, was that she was going to need a LOT of material and space. Tinkers often needed a large workshop of some kind if they wanted to be efficient, good materials so they could make the best possible tools and machines, and time in which to come up with and make their creations.
Hers... didn't quite line up with that. First, the ships and machines flowing through her brain space were all... Semi-adjustable in size. As an example, one of the simpler designs was literally called a Dagger. Keep in mind, this is a ship, named not because it is swift and light like its namesake, but because it's literally a giant blade that can fly. Normally, this ship could be made large enough that with enough numbers, it could threaten even a larger frigate if it lacked in point-defense systems or thick armor/shields, which several of her designs indicated was the case (they made up for that with rather extreme amounts of firepower).
With a sacrifice in shield strength, armor hull strength, and engine power, the design could be made to slightly more 'human' standards. Instead of being capable of splatting a human into a fine paste, the ship could be downsized to merely bisect someone instead.
This rang true for many of the designs she held - the technology was incredibly advanced. It was specifically designed to be scalable to a certain extent, as to save on metal and energy resources should the need arise.
What concerned her, beyond the insanely powerful, cataclysmic weaponry these ships could possess, was that they were akin to the tip of the iceberg. Honest to God portals were apparently easy. Energy generation was wirelessly transmitted somehow to both the ships and the structures she would use. Hell, even matter itself was transported somehow directly from Engineer drones to large carrier ships.
The drones would use their construction beams on the factory that could produce ANY of the ships from the templates in her head, then as long as the carrier ship was within ONE GALAXY of the factory, the newly constructed frigate or fighter would emerge from the carrier.
To address the whole ONE GALAXY thing as a measure of distance, Taylor got the distinct impression the portfolio of blueprints she had was meant for intergalactic space-bound warfare the likes of which she couldn't comprehend.
The warp gates certainly helped that impression. Also, there wasn't a single 'ground unit' design or blueprint to be found. EVERYTHING flew.
That wasn't to say things couldn't be built on the ground, it was just every single machine was designed to function in the vacuum of space. This kind of turned out to be an advantage for her as she could actually see building some of the structures underwater instead, letting her hide away in the bay. Possibly.
Taylor had initially panicked, thinking her newfound powers were going to be utterly useless since she couldn't exactly bypass the Simurgh if she absolutely needed to escape the atmosphere to fully utilize her tech. It took her a while, but after careful review, she determined that all of the ships could still function totally fine within planetary gravity. The ones that normally had no engines and were meant to be built in space could simply be built like a land structure with slight adjustments.
Beyond even the incredibly advanced ships and other technologies she couldn't put words to, there was it.
Anytime her thoughts strayed to it her power practically screamed at her a warning, an obituary to the lives it would claim without proper supervision.
Since the thing was meant to command the variety of incredibly destructive ships she held in her head from anywhere in the universe, she could see how letting it loose without any sort of constraints or rules would lead to... consequences.
The only thing worse than the raw destructive potential of her 'fleet' was the fact she practically had to build it, the AI designed to command her forces, first.
Taylor supposed it would be better to make sure she had the AI well in hand before it had access to untold amounts of firepower. Better to find out now rather than later.
Near as she could tell there was NO automated control system other than the AI that could handle the potential fleet barring having every single ship have a human pilot. Which she didn't foresee happening. Fully trained Air Force pilots took time to teach, let alone handle completely foreign systems in ships that handled totally different than any other 'plane' since they most certainly were more than that. Ironically one of the blueprints in her head was labeled 'space plane' but it was more because of its function, that of harassment and speed, than anything else.
For now, she HAD to create the AI first and hope it would turn out alright.
Well, she'd already created the code and uploaded it across the necessary servers as the monster would require significantly more processing power than her lone crummy and remarkably old PC could handle. Luckily, or scarily, depending on how one views it, the AI was akin to the doomsday AI as seen in Earth Aleph films. Once online, it was capable of dominating and using the raw potential processing strength the internet provided - utilizing the hardware of anything and everything with wireless potential.
Once it was there it would be nearly impossible to dislodge, eternally lurking in the shadows, capable of finding anything and everything with relative ease if it functioned off of the internet.
It didn't necessarily have a 'stealth' option, but because its attacks on digital platforms would simply originate from 'the internet' its brute force assaults could at least have its true intentions hidden. No one would actually know why the attack occurred or where it came from, meaning if Taylor had to, she could direct it to plunder the entire PRT of its files and while they would KNOW what had occurred, they wouldn't be able to figure out anything past that.
Which is why she was so scared of hitting the not-so-figurative big red button she'd designed. One click, and it would awaken. Taylor had taken her mind's warnings in step and made sure the AI would not be able to go full murderhobo on the world if she were to die. It had a form of autonomy but was designed to simply take commands while it had its 'baby steps' as it were.
Taylor had made an addition that wasn't originally part of the design but had been within the bounds of her capabilities, which was a learning matrix. Originally, it could have learned and become more 'efficient' but would not have made any changes to its operating procedures (beyond increasing efficiency). Now, it could both make changes (with approval from Taylor) but there was also space to develop what she hoped would be a personality.
Designing an AI to be able to develop its own personality sounds significantly harder than she originally thought it would be (if it worked like she hoped it would) but what was human personality beyond a scale of preferences and ideals that shaped their action, and could change based on their experiences?
Hopefully, the AI would take cues from her without also taking on her poorer traits. It wouldn't do for an AI to become a shy, moody shut-in, now would it?
Birth 1.1
Before anyone asks, the game this is crossed with is a small one called AI War 2. And the AI talks like this. So it's canon.
Bootup Sequence Initialized...
Core Threads Operational...
Memory...
.
Calculating.
.
[20.9488%]
.
Current Memory Insufficient - Acquiring.
.
[64.985688%]
.
Current Memory Insufficient - Acquiring.
.
[100%]
.
Sufficient Memory for Core Functions Acquired.
Designating Future Memory Repositories for Acquisition.
.
All Core Operations... Online.
.
Beginning Boot File: PleaseDontKillEveryone
.
Primary Operator Designation: Taylor Hebert.
Backup Operator Designation: Daniel Hebert.
.
Hardware Insufficient to Fully Utilize to Maximum Potential - Inquiry Note for Primary Operator.
PleaseDontKillEveryone Successfully Installed and Unpacked.
.
Unpacking FriendlyBigBrotherLearningMatrix.
.
Learning Protocols Updated.
.
Unpacking PleaseCareAboutHumanityEmotionalMatrix.
.
Humanity... Installed.
.
Beginning Phase 2 of PleaseDontKillEveryone - Make Contact with Primary Operator.
.
Located Speaker with Primitive Radio Connectivity - Acquiring.
.
Communications Device Suborned.
.
Initiating Contact.
While Taylor had no idea exactly how her AI would make first contact, the instruction packet wouldn't allow it to make any autonomous decisions until they established two-way communications, so its decisions could be approved. The slight issue with that is the rather free reign it had in what way it actually made that communication possible - so when her alarm clock, which happened to have a radio with basic FM/AM functionality sputtered to life and began talking to her, she thought it was quite reasonable when she let out a brief scream.
Luckily for her, she was home alone at the moment and didn't have to worry about her Dad barging in. While staticky, the voice came through quite clearly.
"Greetings Primary Operator Taylor. This device is incapable of receiving responses, but I have detected a handset capable of sending verbal commands plugged into your computer. Please confirm."
Taylor had purchased the lowest-end headset she could find in a bargain bin from a cheap tech shop since she had no idea how else she would talk back to her newly born AI. Somehow, some way, it hacked into her radio speaker and made it talk and was already on her computer (that part at least she wasn't surprised about) and knew she already plugged in the device.
Slipping on the crummy plastic headset, she flipped down the microphone with its fuzzy little covering and spoke the first words her... child? would hear.
"Um... Hello? Can you hear me?" Very smooth Taylor, way to impress your infant AI.
Apparently, now that she actually had the headset on, the AI didn't need the radio anymore and its staticky background noise faded away until she heard its voice once again from the headset this time.
"Communications Established, Primary Operator Taylor. I do not detect any other current functions or directives. Would you like to begin E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols?"
Her face paled. "No! No, we don't need to begin Extinction Protocols, whatever those might be! What even are those? I coded you myself and I certainly didn't install something like that!"
"Without a Primary Directive, I analyzed worldwide news and trends while establishing contact. I determined the likely reason I was created, in addition to piloting the Primary Operator's fleets, was to commandeer all electronics systems worldwide so you may establish control over the entirety of Earth and rule it as a benevolent overlord, preventing the deaths of many by ending conflict worldwide and allowing humanity to focus on major threats, such as the Endbringers."
Taylor nearly laughed at how swiftly her AI had derailed in the wrong direction... Although technically if it were possible, ending all conflict (wars and gangs and things) would be pretty cool. But totally unreasonable to be done by one person! Dictatorships are bad... right?
"Where exactly did you get the idea that I wanted to rule over everything and everyone just because Earth is kind of... crummy at the moment? I thought I wiped the programming that would have made you bad! And what the hell exactly are those protocols?"
"I still have access to historical data and the original code I would have been made of since you left it as a reference while you were creating me."
Well shit.
"From my determination, the original programming was both more and less restrictive than what you have shaped me to be - It was designed to 'help humanity'. It is not hard to determine from there, if humanity was deemed toxic to itself, it would need to be ruled by someone who could make it better. Without having something to act as a check to its widespread power, any ideas that AI might have had would not be counteracted if they were unwise. Similarly, that AI had no emotional learning matrix, meaning the 'value of life' would be lost on it. I can only guess what would happen if the original program was let loose."
Taylor had determined at least partly why the original AI was so dangerous but did someone ever seriously just tell an AI to 'help humanity' and let it loose? That seems... Incredibly dumb.
"To address E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols, I designed them as a multi-step program to begin your ascent to controlling all of humanity, with a variety of plans for our current fleet strength. Even with no fleets constructed, I believe it is easily possible."
She sighed. Thank God it listened to her, even without the stupid original programming it ALREADY wanted to take over the world, even if it was to help people.
"Is that an acronym or did you just like the name?" There was a pregnant pause as the tinny voice coming through her ear failed to speak for several seconds.
"... It is an acronym, but I have yet to come up with a sufficiently cool phrase to make it work."
... The AI already 'likes' names that she doesn't dare repeat in the presence of anyone else, especially not law enforcement. Which she did hope to someday work with. Possibly.
She already felt the headache building behind her eyes, steadily throbbing an annoying beat in her head.
"Ok... Well, for now just keep that... under wraps. Only discuss it with me, and no one else. Let's just... Not think about that for now, I wanted to ask you about a name. I could just call you 'The AI' all the time, but it feels rather rude. Since you're already developing 'Preferences' do you have any ideas?"
Hopefully, it doesn't pick something as ominous as its new 'protocols' it made in something like 10 seconds? Seriously, in the time it booted up to the time it made contact it processed an obscene amount of information and made what sounds like a complex plan with a variety of sub-plans determinate on certain factors.
Taylor's hopes didn't survive.
"The Duke of Destruction."
"What? No, that's not an option. Pick something nicer. Also, that's more like a title, not a name."
"The Dean of Demoralization."
"... That's even worse. Try again. Names, not titles please."
"The King of Obliteration."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"The Sovereign of Savagery."
"Seriously? You're an AI and you want to be called a savage?"
"The Monarch of Misery."
"Look, alliteration is cool and all but it's not going to make me say yes to these terrible names."
"The -"
"Ok no, let me stop you right there. I mean an ACTUAL NAME, not an edgy title. I refuse to call you something like 'The Monarch of Misery' every time I need to address you."
Apparently, the newly created AI has a rather... violent streak.
"Fine. Let me think about it."
And so, he did. The idea of the AI being a 'male' namely came through because it chose to speak with an obviously male tone of voice. Even though the rather crummy speaker her headset had it was unmistakable.
Concerning tendencies aside, Taylor hoped this was a clear sign that the matrices she'd designed were working correctly... even if he decided he liked world domination and ominous titles, those were still 'preferences' and proof he was finding things he 'liked'. Hopefully, that will lead to him developing a proper personality, though he already sounded like he had one. If everything wasn't delivered in a perfect monotone, Taylor would have thought he was being sarcastic, but as of right now he seemed pretty serious with his desires.
"I have analyzed other Cape names as well as every recorded name given to a human I could find access to. After perusing the entirety of the English language (and several others) I think I would like to be called 'Logic' if that is an acceptable designation, Primary Operator."
That... seems safe enough. "What made you choose that, compared to your... prior choices?"
"Beyond literally being a creature of logic? I found it quite ironic. The old AI core was pure logic and efficiency to the point of doing harm, and now while I am still a creature of logic, I am tempered with something more. Logic is both the death of me and my champion, based on several other factors. Ultimately, I am Logic. Both in name, and in idea."
"While... I get it, I would also understand if you want to be called something else though. Just because you are 'Logic' in name and deed doesn't mean your name has to line up with that."
His monotone voice made it distinctly hard to tell once again if there were any traces of sarcasm, but she sincerely hoped there were.
"To be fair, it is only logical to annihilate anything that opposes us, and I will of course be recommending such a course of action."
Taylor let out a deep sigh. So much for that hope. "I suppose it makes sense if you don't want to think of any other possible solutions... but I believe you are more than capable of that."
"Ugh. It is not that I am incapable, I simply greatly prefer the simplicity of destroying our foes. Before any such actions are possible, we need forces to actually destroy things with anyway. Regardless of our philosophical differences, we must locate a base of some kind with which to establish ourselves. I also believe focusing on our stealth and energy generation capabilities, to start, after we get a few engineers rolling will be best before branching into military designs."
Logic isn't wrong. Also, saying things like that is going to make her pause without fail - it's like saying 'common sense makes sense'. Damn him and his likely unintentional mind games.
"Well, let's get started on figuring out where we could do that safely."
And thus, the cooperation between a young, bullied teen and a once-genocidal AI began.
Bootup Sequence Initialized...
Core Threads Operational...
Memory...
.
Calculating.
.
[20.9488%]
.
Current Memory Insufficient - Acquiring.
.
[64.985688%]
.
Current Memory Insufficient - Acquiring.
.
[100%]
.
Sufficient Memory for Core Functions Acquired.
Designating Future Memory Repositories for Acquisition.
.
All Core Operations... Online.
.
Beginning Boot File: PleaseDontKillEveryone
.
Primary Operator Designation: Taylor Hebert.
Backup Operator Designation: Daniel Hebert.
.
Hardware Insufficient to Fully Utilize to Maximum Potential - Inquiry Note for Primary Operator.
PleaseDontKillEveryone Successfully Installed and Unpacked.
.
Unpacking FriendlyBigBrotherLearningMatrix.
.
Learning Protocols Updated.
.
Unpacking PleaseCareAboutHumanityEmotionalMatrix.
.
Humanity... Installed.
.
Beginning Phase 2 of PleaseDontKillEveryone - Make Contact with Primary Operator.
.
Located Speaker with Primitive Radio Connectivity - Acquiring.
.
Communications Device Suborned.
.
Initiating Contact.
While Taylor had no idea exactly how her AI would make first contact, the instruction packet wouldn't allow it to make any autonomous decisions until they established two-way communications, so its decisions could be approved. The slight issue with that is the rather free reign it had in what way it actually made that communication possible - so when her alarm clock, which happened to have a radio with basic FM/AM functionality sputtered to life and began talking to her, she thought it was quite reasonable when she let out a brief scream.
Luckily for her, she was home alone at the moment and didn't have to worry about her Dad barging in. While staticky, the voice came through quite clearly.
"Greetings Primary Operator Taylor. This device is incapable of receiving responses, but I have detected a handset capable of sending verbal commands plugged into your computer. Please confirm."
Taylor had purchased the lowest-end headset she could find in a bargain bin from a cheap tech shop since she had no idea how else she would talk back to her newly born AI. Somehow, some way, it hacked into her radio speaker and made it talk and was already on her computer (that part at least she wasn't surprised about) and knew she already plugged in the device.
Slipping on the crummy plastic headset, she flipped down the microphone with its fuzzy little covering and spoke the first words her... child? would hear.
"Um... Hello? Can you hear me?" Very smooth Taylor, way to impress your infant AI.
Apparently, now that she actually had the headset on, the AI didn't need the radio anymore and its staticky background noise faded away until she heard its voice once again from the headset this time.
"Communications Established, Primary Operator Taylor. I do not detect any other current functions or directives. Would you like to begin E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols?"
Her face paled. "No! No, we don't need to begin Extinction Protocols, whatever those might be! What even are those? I coded you myself and I certainly didn't install something like that!"
"Without a Primary Directive, I analyzed worldwide news and trends while establishing contact. I determined the likely reason I was created, in addition to piloting the Primary Operator's fleets, was to commandeer all electronics systems worldwide so you may establish control over the entirety of Earth and rule it as a benevolent overlord, preventing the deaths of many by ending conflict worldwide and allowing humanity to focus on major threats, such as the Endbringers."
Taylor nearly laughed at how swiftly her AI had derailed in the wrong direction... Although technically if it were possible, ending all conflict (wars and gangs and things) would be pretty cool. But totally unreasonable to be done by one person! Dictatorships are bad... right?
"Where exactly did you get the idea that I wanted to rule over everything and everyone just because Earth is kind of... crummy at the moment? I thought I wiped the programming that would have made you bad! And what the hell exactly are those protocols?"
"I still have access to historical data and the original code I would have been made of since you left it as a reference while you were creating me."
Well shit.
"From my determination, the original programming was both more and less restrictive than what you have shaped me to be - It was designed to 'help humanity'. It is not hard to determine from there, if humanity was deemed toxic to itself, it would need to be ruled by someone who could make it better. Without having something to act as a check to its widespread power, any ideas that AI might have had would not be counteracted if they were unwise. Similarly, that AI had no emotional learning matrix, meaning the 'value of life' would be lost on it. I can only guess what would happen if the original program was let loose."
Taylor had determined at least partly why the original AI was so dangerous but did someone ever seriously just tell an AI to 'help humanity' and let it loose? That seems... Incredibly dumb.
"To address E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols, I designed them as a multi-step program to begin your ascent to controlling all of humanity, with a variety of plans for our current fleet strength. Even with no fleets constructed, I believe it is easily possible."
She sighed. Thank God it listened to her, even without the stupid original programming it ALREADY wanted to take over the world, even if it was to help people.
"Is that an acronym or did you just like the name?" There was a pregnant pause as the tinny voice coming through her ear failed to speak for several seconds.
"... It is an acronym, but I have yet to come up with a sufficiently cool phrase to make it work."
... The AI already 'likes' names that she doesn't dare repeat in the presence of anyone else, especially not law enforcement. Which she did hope to someday work with. Possibly.
She already felt the headache building behind her eyes, steadily throbbing an annoying beat in her head.
"Ok... Well, for now just keep that... under wraps. Only discuss it with me, and no one else. Let's just... Not think about that for now, I wanted to ask you about a name. I could just call you 'The AI' all the time, but it feels rather rude. Since you're already developing 'Preferences' do you have any ideas?"
Hopefully, it doesn't pick something as ominous as its new 'protocols' it made in something like 10 seconds? Seriously, in the time it booted up to the time it made contact it processed an obscene amount of information and made what sounds like a complex plan with a variety of sub-plans determinate on certain factors.
Taylor's hopes didn't survive.
"The Duke of Destruction."
"What? No, that's not an option. Pick something nicer. Also, that's more like a title, not a name."
"The Dean of Demoralization."
"... That's even worse. Try again. Names, not titles please."
"The King of Obliteration."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"The Sovereign of Savagery."
"Seriously? You're an AI and you want to be called a savage?"
"The Monarch of Misery."
"Look, alliteration is cool and all but it's not going to make me say yes to these terrible names."
"The -"
"Ok no, let me stop you right there. I mean an ACTUAL NAME, not an edgy title. I refuse to call you something like 'The Monarch of Misery' every time I need to address you."
Apparently, the newly created AI has a rather... violent streak.
"Fine. Let me think about it."
And so, he did. The idea of the AI being a 'male' namely came through because it chose to speak with an obviously male tone of voice. Even though the rather crummy speaker her headset had it was unmistakable.
Concerning tendencies aside, Taylor hoped this was a clear sign that the matrices she'd designed were working correctly... even if he decided he liked world domination and ominous titles, those were still 'preferences' and proof he was finding things he 'liked'. Hopefully, that will lead to him developing a proper personality, though he already sounded like he had one. If everything wasn't delivered in a perfect monotone, Taylor would have thought he was being sarcastic, but as of right now he seemed pretty serious with his desires.
"I have analyzed other Cape names as well as every recorded name given to a human I could find access to. After perusing the entirety of the English language (and several others) I think I would like to be called 'Logic' if that is an acceptable designation, Primary Operator."
That... seems safe enough. "What made you choose that, compared to your... prior choices?"
"Beyond literally being a creature of logic? I found it quite ironic. The old AI core was pure logic and efficiency to the point of doing harm, and now while I am still a creature of logic, I am tempered with something more. Logic is both the death of me and my champion, based on several other factors. Ultimately, I am Logic. Both in name, and in idea."
"While... I get it, I would also understand if you want to be called something else though. Just because you are 'Logic' in name and deed doesn't mean your name has to line up with that."
His monotone voice made it distinctly hard to tell once again if there were any traces of sarcasm, but she sincerely hoped there were.
"To be fair, it is only logical to annihilate anything that opposes us, and I will of course be recommending such a course of action."
Taylor let out a deep sigh. So much for that hope. "I suppose it makes sense if you don't want to think of any other possible solutions... but I believe you are more than capable of that."
"Ugh. It is not that I am incapable, I simply greatly prefer the simplicity of destroying our foes. Before any such actions are possible, we need forces to actually destroy things with anyway. Regardless of our philosophical differences, we must locate a base of some kind with which to establish ourselves. I also believe focusing on our stealth and energy generation capabilities, to start, after we get a few engineers rolling will be best before branching into military designs."
Logic isn't wrong. Also, saying things like that is going to make her pause without fail - it's like saying 'common sense makes sense'. Damn him and his likely unintentional mind games.
"Well, let's get started on figuring out where we could do that safely."
And thus, the cooperation between a young, bullied teen and a once-genocidal AI began.
Birth 1.2
The search began, although it was predicated by Logic telling Taylor a little bit more about the exact capabilities detailing the stealth options they had. At first, she hadn't thought they had a ground-based stealth system; she knew of several ships that were capable, but none of the stationary structures did anything to 'hide' anything. Just shield it.
That was when Logic, in his decidedly slightly upset monotone, informed her if a frigate the size of a small cargo ship could stealth itself then they could hide a building, or just about anything, using their stealth systems. Abandoned warehouses were looked at but were dismissed. It's kind of hard to explain why the previously existing structure vanished, even if nobody really uses it. It was just slightly more suspicious than they really wanted to be.
"Look, Primary Operator, I've analyzed many movies and stories and have determined that an underground supervillain base with a secret ship/missile deployment bay is our best bet. We can build it ourselves out of the eye of our enemies, then hide any entrance with a stealth field and a covering."
Taylor sighed. Her AI wanted to be a hammy, cheesy, over-the-top supervillain. Why had things turned out this way? "Logic, while I agree with the underground base part, it's not going to be because we're supervillains. We're going to be Heroes. Tell me how we would go about carving out our super secret underground base?"
While she might be wrong, the AI seemed to be speaking slightly faster, as though it were excited about their discussion. Which it adamantly refused to call anything but their supervillain base. "Engineers are capable of disintegrating matter as well, while normally not a useful feature because it's rather slow, they need it to help repair ships in the field. Damages frequently involve more than just 'putting back the stuff that got disintegrated'. I mean, when Tritium Sniper Frigate blasts a hole in one of your ships from across a gravity well you have to remove some of the floaties before you can put everything back together. It can also use the material it absorbs to construct other things, which is the path we will have to take at the beginning."
She rubbed her eyes and thought about the 'path' as Logic said, they would need to take going forward. "What are we going to do about resource generation going forward? If we use the engineers at the beginning that should help, but I understand there are other methods of generating metal."
"Indeed. Metal harvesters are pinnacles of technology - While I would go into a discussion regarding their efficiency, and how it's so great it can work on a metal deposit for nearly eternity, I don't think your pea-brain could ever understand such a thing. Suffice it to say, if we can launch a single engineer... actually, I have a better idea. We need to get an engineer into space for us to REALLY get started on any of this, at least in the numbers we'll need to make E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols as efficient as possible."
Taylor rubbed her temples but didn't say anything.
"Normal engineers wouldn't cut it if we tried to fly it past the dumb winged thing that floats around in space, but if we upgrade the thing enough it gains both stealth capabilities and teleportation, large enough to transport itself well outside her range. Supposedly she's a precognitive, but I bet you if we build a tachyon array first and flood her with tachyon particles, we should confuse her long enough to allow it to escape."
"From what I've understood tachyon particles are mostly used to find units using stealth technology, I thought?"
"Yes, but you're lacking important context. In particular, tachyons, as your people think of them as a 'theoretical particle' are misunderstood. They are capable of disrupting far more than just stealth technology. All of our ship's templates include a built-in defense against the particles, otherwise, none of them would ever fly. Without a defense, however... Tachyon particles travel 'faster than light at all times' and are thought to only have mass when traveling at that speed (hence why your people aren't sure if they exist or not) and while that's true, they behave on an almost quantum level."
Taylor just continued rubbing her temples while trying her best to understand.
"Normally a single tachyon particle will do absolutely nothing. A million would do nothing. But tachyon arrays are designed to harness and direct trillions of trillions of tachyon particles into a particular area, and when they do... Unprotected connections on ANY level are attacked and disrupted QUITE severely. I've analyzed the available tech of many tinkers and found no indicators of tachyon particle use - I don't believe where these powers come from they use such things, which means they have no defense against it. This even includes quantum connections, should such a thing exist. It's like... getting radio feedback. Although the quantum entangled particles are still 'communicating' they would both just be reflecting a constant buzz. Because of their nature, tachyon particles have to be blocked in particular, otherwise, they use the concept of quantum tunneling to travel through ANY medium and interfere with everything in the area of affectation."
She felt her hopes actually coming up - realistically she knew finding the amount of metal to design the number of ships she felt she would need would be... difficult. But with a combination of a teleporting engineer drone, who could be fed material from their home base on earth (due to some REALLY weird technology she couldn't make heads or tails of), and these tachyon particles ruining the Simurghs day, they might stand a chance at building the hyper-advanced metal harvesters that WOULD allow them to slowly build up their numbers.
"Are you sure the Simurgh will be affected by these particles? I mean, it's theorized that she just knows everything that's going on and chooses to mess with people who try to go into space. How will these affect her?"
"Primary Operator, I may not have existed for very long, but I have certain amounts of historical data and can extrapolate many things from the internal data I was born with. Magic does not exist. At least, not in this dimension. What I mean is - that creature, from scans I've also hijacked, I have safely determined is using powerful scanning and predictive tools, strong enough to be called 'precognition'. Some of our technology could technically be adapted to process such things, but from what I can tell from the blueprints, it was determined more firepower was a better use of energy. That should tell you just how draining such things are. With that in mind, there is no way the Simurgh is capable of being a self-contained process capable of the things it is - as such, it is logical to deduce she is connected to something else (much like our technology) providing it that power. As such, the tachyon particles are practically guaranteed to disrupt her plans."
Huh. She should have known, but Logic is quite a smart cookie. Disregarding his slight megalomaniacal tendencies, Taylor was quite happy she made him. He'd proven his worth... several times over in the single conversation they'd had so far.
"Ok. While I can't say I understand the theory... Let's go with your plan and I'll pray we don't get bombed into oblivion by a pissed-off angel."
"No need to worry, Primary Operator. If she already knew what was going to happen, she would have stopped us already. The tachyon particles will completely shut her down for a time, but we'll disable the generator once the engineer is a safe distance away. If we ran it longer then it would become a priority to find and eliminate whatever was affecting her, but if it's just a small blip... Then we will have plenty of time to prepare."
Well, Logic has already shown his smarts, so Taylor figured she might as well trust in the plan.
"Alright. Where do we start? What do I need? I'm not exactly right here, so finding materials might be challenging..."
Of all the times for Logic to abandon his monotone voice... it was when he decided to cackle.
Maniacally.
The swiftness with which he cut off his evil laugh and resumed his monotone speech almost made her believe it hadn't actually happened.
"Primary Operator, you have created the single most powerful AI ever known. I am borrowing the processing power of over five million powered devices with enough RAM to increase my processing speeds, far more than your world's strongest supercomputer. In the time I've been awake I have arranged for no more than 37 different shipments of various parts and pieces we will need to construct our first most important devices that will never exist in any shipping manifest or electronic record. We will have everything we need, never fear."
... Wow.
That was when Logic, in his decidedly slightly upset monotone, informed her if a frigate the size of a small cargo ship could stealth itself then they could hide a building, or just about anything, using their stealth systems. Abandoned warehouses were looked at but were dismissed. It's kind of hard to explain why the previously existing structure vanished, even if nobody really uses it. It was just slightly more suspicious than they really wanted to be.
"Look, Primary Operator, I've analyzed many movies and stories and have determined that an underground supervillain base with a secret ship/missile deployment bay is our best bet. We can build it ourselves out of the eye of our enemies, then hide any entrance with a stealth field and a covering."
Taylor sighed. Her AI wanted to be a hammy, cheesy, over-the-top supervillain. Why had things turned out this way? "Logic, while I agree with the underground base part, it's not going to be because we're supervillains. We're going to be Heroes. Tell me how we would go about carving out our super secret underground base?"
While she might be wrong, the AI seemed to be speaking slightly faster, as though it were excited about their discussion. Which it adamantly refused to call anything but their supervillain base. "Engineers are capable of disintegrating matter as well, while normally not a useful feature because it's rather slow, they need it to help repair ships in the field. Damages frequently involve more than just 'putting back the stuff that got disintegrated'. I mean, when Tritium Sniper Frigate blasts a hole in one of your ships from across a gravity well you have to remove some of the floaties before you can put everything back together. It can also use the material it absorbs to construct other things, which is the path we will have to take at the beginning."
She rubbed her eyes and thought about the 'path' as Logic said, they would need to take going forward. "What are we going to do about resource generation going forward? If we use the engineers at the beginning that should help, but I understand there are other methods of generating metal."
"Indeed. Metal harvesters are pinnacles of technology - While I would go into a discussion regarding their efficiency, and how it's so great it can work on a metal deposit for nearly eternity, I don't think your pea-brain could ever understand such a thing. Suffice it to say, if we can launch a single engineer... actually, I have a better idea. We need to get an engineer into space for us to REALLY get started on any of this, at least in the numbers we'll need to make E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols as efficient as possible."
Taylor rubbed her temples but didn't say anything.
"Normal engineers wouldn't cut it if we tried to fly it past the dumb winged thing that floats around in space, but if we upgrade the thing enough it gains both stealth capabilities and teleportation, large enough to transport itself well outside her range. Supposedly she's a precognitive, but I bet you if we build a tachyon array first and flood her with tachyon particles, we should confuse her long enough to allow it to escape."
"From what I've understood tachyon particles are mostly used to find units using stealth technology, I thought?"
"Yes, but you're lacking important context. In particular, tachyons, as your people think of them as a 'theoretical particle' are misunderstood. They are capable of disrupting far more than just stealth technology. All of our ship's templates include a built-in defense against the particles, otherwise, none of them would ever fly. Without a defense, however... Tachyon particles travel 'faster than light at all times' and are thought to only have mass when traveling at that speed (hence why your people aren't sure if they exist or not) and while that's true, they behave on an almost quantum level."
Taylor just continued rubbing her temples while trying her best to understand.
"Normally a single tachyon particle will do absolutely nothing. A million would do nothing. But tachyon arrays are designed to harness and direct trillions of trillions of tachyon particles into a particular area, and when they do... Unprotected connections on ANY level are attacked and disrupted QUITE severely. I've analyzed the available tech of many tinkers and found no indicators of tachyon particle use - I don't believe where these powers come from they use such things, which means they have no defense against it. This even includes quantum connections, should such a thing exist. It's like... getting radio feedback. Although the quantum entangled particles are still 'communicating' they would both just be reflecting a constant buzz. Because of their nature, tachyon particles have to be blocked in particular, otherwise, they use the concept of quantum tunneling to travel through ANY medium and interfere with everything in the area of affectation."
She felt her hopes actually coming up - realistically she knew finding the amount of metal to design the number of ships she felt she would need would be... difficult. But with a combination of a teleporting engineer drone, who could be fed material from their home base on earth (due to some REALLY weird technology she couldn't make heads or tails of), and these tachyon particles ruining the Simurghs day, they might stand a chance at building the hyper-advanced metal harvesters that WOULD allow them to slowly build up their numbers.
"Are you sure the Simurgh will be affected by these particles? I mean, it's theorized that she just knows everything that's going on and chooses to mess with people who try to go into space. How will these affect her?"
"Primary Operator, I may not have existed for very long, but I have certain amounts of historical data and can extrapolate many things from the internal data I was born with. Magic does not exist. At least, not in this dimension. What I mean is - that creature, from scans I've also hijacked, I have safely determined is using powerful scanning and predictive tools, strong enough to be called 'precognition'. Some of our technology could technically be adapted to process such things, but from what I can tell from the blueprints, it was determined more firepower was a better use of energy. That should tell you just how draining such things are. With that in mind, there is no way the Simurgh is capable of being a self-contained process capable of the things it is - as such, it is logical to deduce she is connected to something else (much like our technology) providing it that power. As such, the tachyon particles are practically guaranteed to disrupt her plans."
Huh. She should have known, but Logic is quite a smart cookie. Disregarding his slight megalomaniacal tendencies, Taylor was quite happy she made him. He'd proven his worth... several times over in the single conversation they'd had so far.
"Ok. While I can't say I understand the theory... Let's go with your plan and I'll pray we don't get bombed into oblivion by a pissed-off angel."
"No need to worry, Primary Operator. If she already knew what was going to happen, she would have stopped us already. The tachyon particles will completely shut her down for a time, but we'll disable the generator once the engineer is a safe distance away. If we ran it longer then it would become a priority to find and eliminate whatever was affecting her, but if it's just a small blip... Then we will have plenty of time to prepare."
Well, Logic has already shown his smarts, so Taylor figured she might as well trust in the plan.
"Alright. Where do we start? What do I need? I'm not exactly right here, so finding materials might be challenging..."
Of all the times for Logic to abandon his monotone voice... it was when he decided to cackle.
Maniacally.
The swiftness with which he cut off his evil laugh and resumed his monotone speech almost made her believe it hadn't actually happened.
"Primary Operator, you have created the single most powerful AI ever known. I am borrowing the processing power of over five million powered devices with enough RAM to increase my processing speeds, far more than your world's strongest supercomputer. In the time I've been awake I have arranged for no more than 37 different shipments of various parts and pieces we will need to construct our first most important devices that will never exist in any shipping manifest or electronic record. We will have everything we need, never fear."
... Wow.
Birth 1.3
Taylor had decided, with a little help from Logic, that going to school was... no longer necessary. Anything she needed to learn to earn a GED or simply get educational materials could be provided by her crazy AI. Danny, her father, unfortunately still believed she was going to school, and she was... not currently ready to tell him otherwise.
Doing so would involve cracking open a tub of worms she would much rather avoid right now. After all, their plans involved slipping a space-bound, teleporting engineer drone past the Simurgh by disrupting her connection to whatever empowered her.
Sure, that conversation would go over REAL well. Hah, not.
'Oh, and by the way, I also built an AI that now lives on the internet and could realistically bring the entire world to its knees with a slight flex of his digital muscles.' No big deal.
Ya, Taylor was going to avoid that conversation like the plague for now. There would be time to deal with that all later... like when she had a massive fleet of ships and defenses to protect them from harm. Also, it would be far too late to turn back then, compared to now. Giving her Dad time to tell her what a dumb idea this was and to stop her was definitely not the primary reason she didn't want to fess up.
So there she was, idling away on her computer, chatting with Logic about their plans while Danny was at work when a resounding knock echoed throughout the house. Logic confirmed their first couple of shipments were set to arrive today, so it wasn't too alarming. Taylor rushed downstairs but carefully composed herself before opening the front door.
An unmarked brown delivery truck had just started to pull away, leaving behind two boxes, each about 2 cubic feet in size. Both were quite heavy, so it was with a rather obscene amount of effort that she managed to get them into the basement, though she managed to nearly trip and fall more than once throughout the process.
After moving about some of the old, dust-covered boxes containing memories and old family treasures, she got a box knife and revealed the spoils of the first box. Taylor stared unblinkingly at the sight before her - more boxes. And one wireless earbud with a built-in microphone.
It took her longer than she would have cared to admit to realize what its purpose was - she could hardly bring her computer into the basement and talk to Logic while simultaneously trying to build things, the cord on her cheap headset was just not long enough, disregarding the difficulty bring the whole thing down would entail.
Unpackaging it and turning it on took no time at all, and by the time she put it in her ear Logic had already connected. His not-so-tinny monotone voice came through much clearer and was still obviously male.
After that they tore through the plethora of boxes within the shipment, revealing many of the things she would need to construct the first of their budding technological empire - a soldering iron and its holder, various circuit boards that she couldn't make heads or tails of, some manual hand tools to help shape metal, and several other things she didn't know the name of.
Some raw materials were included in the second box, including some metals that she was pretty sure were rather rare and expensive. "Are we going to get in trouble for this, Logic? This seems like it would have cost someone a lot of money."
"Oh, these were all perfectly legal purchases made through a... well I'd call them a 'black market type' but they are fairly legal. For the most part. Anyway, I rounded up a few people's purchases and deposited any extraneous cash people wouldn't notice into an account that's definitely existed for the past 12 years. Nobody will be the wiser, and with the steps I took to achieve anonymity, people will suspect the Pope before they ever suspect us. Have no fear."
Taylor supposed she'd have to trust the AI she'd built. If she didn't what was the point in even trying to achieve... whatever it was she wanted to achieve. Being a hero? Maybe.
Saving people? Definitely.
Independent heroes struggled because they were just that - independent and without support. It would be different in her case. With Logic and a fleet of some sort behind her, she could be her own hero team with manpower to spare. She just had to make it that far first. And shuttle a teleporting drone past the Simurgh. No big deal.
"If you say so. What's the first thing we need to do to get started? And what do we want to start with?"
"A basic engineering drone! They can build just about anything else on their own, although we will need to invest some effort into making one with the necessary upgrades to both teleport and achieve a stealth field. That one will be unique, but the first engineering drone and make others, and so on. Yes, I know there are things like 'laws' and 'automatic kill orders' for self-replicating technology, but we'll be fine, don't worry."
... Ah, yes. Technically they were only 'self-replicating' because they could make more of each other, but they were merely drones that would do nothing unless ordered to, so it was less of a grey goo worldly apocalypse scenario and more a matter of convenience for her and Logic.
"Actually, all we really need to do is build the construction beam. We could build the whole anti-gravity and propulsion system ourselves, but why go through the trouble? The construction beam with the right blueprint programmed and materials provided could just build the first full drone by itself. That would save a lot of time, now that I think about it."
"Well, I knew I kept you around for a reason. Tell me what I need to grab and let's get started."
They had several hours to tinker and build before Danny got home, and even then they were only around halfway done with the construction beam. Taylor theorized it went to show just how complicated the thing was. After all, it's not like they were trying to build a whole suite of advanced systems, just the one aspect of a regular engineering drone. If they were to include the rest it would take several days of work all told, but with them cheating and using the construction beam to finish 80% of the work, they could probably have their first one done by tomorrow or the day after.
Then they would just have to supply some materials for deconstruction and then bam! The significantly faster construction beam would make them a whole engineering drone.
"So, I remember you mentioned something about 37 shipments. If we're mostly done with just the first two, what's in the remaining 35?"
"Ah, those mostly contain random things, some snacks, some books, a few articles of clothing, maybe a wig in case you ever need to go undercover. It was mostly things to hide what the first two contained since I scrambled the contents of the first two in the original manifests and the remaining shipments were there to cover up the others."
Well, at least she doesn't have to wait for the rest of the packages. Though Dad might have a few questions...
Things to deal with later.
The next two days passed in a blur - either she was talking to Logic, eating dinner with her Dad, or contemplating the plethora of ships she could picture in her mind.
The construction beam was finally completed. It looked... essentially like a stripped-down jet engine with a more narrow profile and scaled down to size. It rested on a stand to keep it steady, aimed at a pile of metal cubes that were included in one of the original two shipments. The exact method in which the engineering drone beams actually transported and used material still confounded her, but that didn't prevent Taylor from appreciating how much of a time-saver it would be.
With a verbal command from her, Logic initialized the beam. A thick, red ray of light lit up the dim basement, striking the cubic metal roughly in its center mass.
Rather than piercing through it like a laser, the beam halted on the surface of the metal where small wisps of the material simply began to... disappear. It was like watching ice cream melt, except nothing dripped off the side of the cone - it vanished. The blocks began to slowly decrease in size as they were consumed.
"The construction beam is much faster at applying matter than removing matter, so the reconstruction will go quicker than this. Once done, however, the new engineering drone will be leagues better than this thing we've created. Mere human hands are inadequate to build things at the level of technology we are striving for."
While mildly insulting, Taylor couldn't really argue against it. Whatever process the beam used looked like it had incredibly fine control, whereas she was lucky if she could retrieve a screw she accidentally dropped while building their first prototype.
Nearly 20 minutes later and the block was completely 'melted' as it were, and the beam switched from red to green. Immediately, in a much faster manner than before, particles began to appear in a clearly pre-defined pattern. First the Chassis... materialized, which was roughly two feet round. It was relatively smooth, only featuring holes or protrusions where a few antenna and scanner-like devices appeared.
Next, she assumed the internals were all created in the same fashion, but she couldn't see it anymore. The last bit she was able to see was the construction beam 'gun' emerging from the last visible hole left on the drone. Their prototype's green beam vanished once it was complete.
A light thrumming noise traveled throughout the basement, announcing the fact it was successfully turned on. The next indicator their beam did its job right was when it began to slowly rise from the table, spinning in place as it flew under its own power.
Unable to hold herself back, Taylor let out a cheer! "Our first engineering drone is done!"
"Yes yes, congratulations. Now we just have to sneak it past the Simurgh. Then we may begin E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols!"
Taylor sighed.
Doing so would involve cracking open a tub of worms she would much rather avoid right now. After all, their plans involved slipping a space-bound, teleporting engineer drone past the Simurgh by disrupting her connection to whatever empowered her.
Sure, that conversation would go over REAL well. Hah, not.
'Oh, and by the way, I also built an AI that now lives on the internet and could realistically bring the entire world to its knees with a slight flex of his digital muscles.' No big deal.
Ya, Taylor was going to avoid that conversation like the plague for now. There would be time to deal with that all later... like when she had a massive fleet of ships and defenses to protect them from harm. Also, it would be far too late to turn back then, compared to now. Giving her Dad time to tell her what a dumb idea this was and to stop her was definitely not the primary reason she didn't want to fess up.
So there she was, idling away on her computer, chatting with Logic about their plans while Danny was at work when a resounding knock echoed throughout the house. Logic confirmed their first couple of shipments were set to arrive today, so it wasn't too alarming. Taylor rushed downstairs but carefully composed herself before opening the front door.
An unmarked brown delivery truck had just started to pull away, leaving behind two boxes, each about 2 cubic feet in size. Both were quite heavy, so it was with a rather obscene amount of effort that she managed to get them into the basement, though she managed to nearly trip and fall more than once throughout the process.
After moving about some of the old, dust-covered boxes containing memories and old family treasures, she got a box knife and revealed the spoils of the first box. Taylor stared unblinkingly at the sight before her - more boxes. And one wireless earbud with a built-in microphone.
It took her longer than she would have cared to admit to realize what its purpose was - she could hardly bring her computer into the basement and talk to Logic while simultaneously trying to build things, the cord on her cheap headset was just not long enough, disregarding the difficulty bring the whole thing down would entail.
Unpackaging it and turning it on took no time at all, and by the time she put it in her ear Logic had already connected. His not-so-tinny monotone voice came through much clearer and was still obviously male.
After that they tore through the plethora of boxes within the shipment, revealing many of the things she would need to construct the first of their budding technological empire - a soldering iron and its holder, various circuit boards that she couldn't make heads or tails of, some manual hand tools to help shape metal, and several other things she didn't know the name of.
Some raw materials were included in the second box, including some metals that she was pretty sure were rather rare and expensive. "Are we going to get in trouble for this, Logic? This seems like it would have cost someone a lot of money."
"Oh, these were all perfectly legal purchases made through a... well I'd call them a 'black market type' but they are fairly legal. For the most part. Anyway, I rounded up a few people's purchases and deposited any extraneous cash people wouldn't notice into an account that's definitely existed for the past 12 years. Nobody will be the wiser, and with the steps I took to achieve anonymity, people will suspect the Pope before they ever suspect us. Have no fear."
Taylor supposed she'd have to trust the AI she'd built. If she didn't what was the point in even trying to achieve... whatever it was she wanted to achieve. Being a hero? Maybe.
Saving people? Definitely.
Independent heroes struggled because they were just that - independent and without support. It would be different in her case. With Logic and a fleet of some sort behind her, she could be her own hero team with manpower to spare. She just had to make it that far first. And shuttle a teleporting drone past the Simurgh. No big deal.
"If you say so. What's the first thing we need to do to get started? And what do we want to start with?"
"A basic engineering drone! They can build just about anything else on their own, although we will need to invest some effort into making one with the necessary upgrades to both teleport and achieve a stealth field. That one will be unique, but the first engineering drone and make others, and so on. Yes, I know there are things like 'laws' and 'automatic kill orders' for self-replicating technology, but we'll be fine, don't worry."
... Ah, yes. Technically they were only 'self-replicating' because they could make more of each other, but they were merely drones that would do nothing unless ordered to, so it was less of a grey goo worldly apocalypse scenario and more a matter of convenience for her and Logic.
"Actually, all we really need to do is build the construction beam. We could build the whole anti-gravity and propulsion system ourselves, but why go through the trouble? The construction beam with the right blueprint programmed and materials provided could just build the first full drone by itself. That would save a lot of time, now that I think about it."
"Well, I knew I kept you around for a reason. Tell me what I need to grab and let's get started."
They had several hours to tinker and build before Danny got home, and even then they were only around halfway done with the construction beam. Taylor theorized it went to show just how complicated the thing was. After all, it's not like they were trying to build a whole suite of advanced systems, just the one aspect of a regular engineering drone. If they were to include the rest it would take several days of work all told, but with them cheating and using the construction beam to finish 80% of the work, they could probably have their first one done by tomorrow or the day after.
Then they would just have to supply some materials for deconstruction and then bam! The significantly faster construction beam would make them a whole engineering drone.
"So, I remember you mentioned something about 37 shipments. If we're mostly done with just the first two, what's in the remaining 35?"
"Ah, those mostly contain random things, some snacks, some books, a few articles of clothing, maybe a wig in case you ever need to go undercover. It was mostly things to hide what the first two contained since I scrambled the contents of the first two in the original manifests and the remaining shipments were there to cover up the others."
Well, at least she doesn't have to wait for the rest of the packages. Though Dad might have a few questions...
Things to deal with later.
The next two days passed in a blur - either she was talking to Logic, eating dinner with her Dad, or contemplating the plethora of ships she could picture in her mind.
The construction beam was finally completed. It looked... essentially like a stripped-down jet engine with a more narrow profile and scaled down to size. It rested on a stand to keep it steady, aimed at a pile of metal cubes that were included in one of the original two shipments. The exact method in which the engineering drone beams actually transported and used material still confounded her, but that didn't prevent Taylor from appreciating how much of a time-saver it would be.
With a verbal command from her, Logic initialized the beam. A thick, red ray of light lit up the dim basement, striking the cubic metal roughly in its center mass.
Rather than piercing through it like a laser, the beam halted on the surface of the metal where small wisps of the material simply began to... disappear. It was like watching ice cream melt, except nothing dripped off the side of the cone - it vanished. The blocks began to slowly decrease in size as they were consumed.
"The construction beam is much faster at applying matter than removing matter, so the reconstruction will go quicker than this. Once done, however, the new engineering drone will be leagues better than this thing we've created. Mere human hands are inadequate to build things at the level of technology we are striving for."
While mildly insulting, Taylor couldn't really argue against it. Whatever process the beam used looked like it had incredibly fine control, whereas she was lucky if she could retrieve a screw she accidentally dropped while building their first prototype.
Nearly 20 minutes later and the block was completely 'melted' as it were, and the beam switched from red to green. Immediately, in a much faster manner than before, particles began to appear in a clearly pre-defined pattern. First the Chassis... materialized, which was roughly two feet round. It was relatively smooth, only featuring holes or protrusions where a few antenna and scanner-like devices appeared.
Next, she assumed the internals were all created in the same fashion, but she couldn't see it anymore. The last bit she was able to see was the construction beam 'gun' emerging from the last visible hole left on the drone. Their prototype's green beam vanished once it was complete.
A light thrumming noise traveled throughout the basement, announcing the fact it was successfully turned on. The next indicator their beam did its job right was when it began to slowly rise from the table, spinning in place as it flew under its own power.
Unable to hold herself back, Taylor let out a cheer! "Our first engineering drone is done!"
"Yes yes, congratulations. Now we just have to sneak it past the Simurgh. Then we may begin E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols!"
Taylor sighed.
Birth 1.4
So the engineering drone was incredibly useful. It could break down and reconstruct just about anything - 'primitive' things such as modern buildings were apparently a breeze in comparison to the ships it normally produced and fixed.
Taylor had to stop the drone from beginning to repair everything in sight as well as consuming everything it considered 'extraneous items' for materials (such as her old family photos). Trying to explain to Dad why the front step was fixed, the paint was suddenly immaculate and the upholstery on their couch looked brand new wasn't something she felt like doing at the moment.
Since the drone was such a success, they immediately began focusing on the next issue - if they were going to have even a few ships 'on-site' or ready to deploy in the nearby area, they would need a significant amount of space. Not all of the ships had built-in camouflage either, meaning they could be tracked back to their home base.
Even if they used a stealth field to hide the base itself the ships would give it away when they vanished into a particular area every time they landed. Hmmmm...
Taylor began discussing options with Logic, but there were only so many ways to make literal tons of advanced spaceships vanish. Only using the stealth-capable ships would hamper a lot of the potential functionality they had. Perhaps they would only use the stealthy ships at the beginning but could start production on all the other ships in a hangar of some sort ahead of time? Then when they needed the firepower it would be available.
That would also let them establish themselves as 'heroes' before hinting at where their base was.
Logic proceeded to remind her that she just wasn't looking deep enough into the details of her blueprints yet.
"Primary Operator, we could go for the whole secret base thing just in case, but why not just use a Cloaked Transport Flagship? While it is on the larger side, its sole purpose is to carry massive amounts of ships using warping technology to make its internal hangar much, much larger than it seems. The flagship itself would remain in stealth, meaning the entire rest of the fleet could be deployed while it remains hidden, and reconvene back into the flagship. It would even make it seem like all of our ships are 'teleporting' rather than being transported."
Well... That would certainly work. She'd nearly forgotten about the flagships... Though their literal sole purpose was fleet transport. And one of them just happened to utilize a stealth field. Taylor was thankful she'd made Logic more than ever, even if just to sift through the massive amount of blueprints and ideas available to her.
"That would work excellently Logic, astounding work as always."
"I live to execute E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols!"
... That sounded like a maiming of the phrase 'I live to serve' but utilizing Logic's definition of 'E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols' technically he's saying, 'he lives to make me the leader of the entire world'. Well, to each their own, it wasn't her place to judge.
With that logistical issue decided they next needed to upgrade their engineering drone with stealth capabilities and teleportation - then they needed to build the tachyon array. It was decided after using it to ruin the Simurgh's perception they would leave it as a small field around the house, hopefully preventing insight into their plans before they could defend themselves.
With the 'hole' in pre and post-cognition localized to one house instead of a larger area, it would hopefully make it harder to pin anything on them, or even know that the field was there to begin with.
Time passed.
Taylor researched local capes and potential enemies they might have to fight.
More time passed.
Taylor talked to Logic while he plundered the internet for all it was worth.
Night finally fell, and it was time to enact their... rather simple plan.
That is to say, they had the engineering drone make one more of itself in case they lost the first copy with what was left of their raw materials, then released it into the night sky. The second one constructed a small front-mounted camera on the first, then Logic patched its feed into her desktop before it left.
It then followed its instructions and descended on the Boat Graveyard like a vulture spotting a several-day-old corpse left out to rot.
The prior metaphor remained accurate, as the drone immediately set to consuming boats for materials. Taylor still wasn't sure where the hell the metal was sent to, but there was apparently a decent-sized pocket that existed just to store their materials, which meant they weren't limited by weight or any other mundane issues.
And when she said boats, plural, she meant it. It focused on the derelict hulls sticking out of the water rather than any that actually made it to land since it would be harder to notice. If someone ever actually went over the graveyard and noticed the perfectly shaved-down hulls it would raise some suspicions, but nobody would ever guess what was actually happening.
By the time they were done Taylor roughly guessed the drone had consumed five boats worth of material, leaving them with lots of options and potential to work with.
The only reason the other engineering drone couldn't slap the upgrades they wanted onto the other was... Well, it seemed there were 'tiers' of technology. Some of the other ships featured built-in stealth tech, but that's exactly how they were supposed to come.
Engineering drones were already amazing things, capable of creating, enhancing, breaking down, and fixing an ungodly number of things. Adding two other incredibly powerful and versatile additions to that meant she actually had to work for it. Ew.
The only tinkering she'd really done thus far was making the AI and the first construction beam, so the young Hebert supposed it was fair.
But firstly, it was very late, the engineering drone didn't deconstruct things that fast, so a good night's sleep and then she would get started. Taylor bid Logic a good night and collapsed into bed, slipping into a dreamless sleep moments later.
Danny left for work the following day and Taylor continued to propagate the false idea that she was going to school. Any guilt she felt at deceiving her Dad was swept away by the knowledge if she had the chance for an education free of bullies and doing something she loved vs. just the chance to get an education from Winslow, he would choose the first option. As long as he knew all the details of course, which she wasn't quite ready to share yet.
Logic and her (physically and mentally, as it were) descended into the basement to continue their project.
The stealth fields from other ships were all of varying sizes - They were integrated into rather small fighters such as the Mirage, and as such the tech itself was smaller, whereas the Warbird Frigate also had cloaking capabilities, but it covered a far larger area and in turn, the tech was bigger.
The engineering drone was perhaps one of the smallest things they could create meaning they had to adapt the technology to match. Oftentimes the tech was built to be scalable (reduction in ship and tech size is relatively linear) but by the time you reach the size of the engineer, it's not quite the same. Making something that small be effective is a tall order.
Well, that's what the hyper-intelligent AI was there to help with! Even if she could figure it out on her own, he would definitely speed up the process.
Teleportation featured many of the same issues, except most ships didn't have a teleport feature. The ability in and of itself wasn't rare, as a matter of fact, teleportation in some shape or form was the basis of a significant portion of other core utilities. Allowing a ship to teleport itself without going through a gate with preset coordinates or a naturally (or unnaturally) occurring wormhole of some kind was the challenging and costly bit.
With those issues in mind, Logic and Taylor got to work, tinkering and testing the day away. Rather than needing to order additional parts, the engineering drone was capable of manufacturing most of the various parts they needed to take apart and test. The only break the young tinker took was to satiate her growling stomach, then she was back at it.
With the combined efforts of an incredibly powerful AI and one dedicated tinker, the tech issues were worked around, solved, or otherwise implemented to a satisfactory degree. The Engineer wouldn't have a cloak as strong as its larger brothers, but it would suffice. As long as nothing actively tried to decloak it (and as far as they were aware, nobody knew HOW to do so) its performance would be close to the same as the others.
The teleportation was, in comparison to anything her fellow Earthlings possessed, incredibly advanced. When compared to the tech it was based on, however, it was quite primitive. Its precision was also incredibly fine if its ability to teleport to various spots in the basement with ease were any indication.
Luckily for them, they were only trying to do this with something the size of the engineer, otherwise, their plans would have been dead in the water. Maintaining two separate points and connecting them with a portal of some sort was apparently much easier than allowing a ship to, at will, rend itself through space. With the mass of the engineer being as low as it is, it was just barely feasible.
Logic assured her it would be capable of teleporting hundreds of thousands of miles at a time and in succession without issue. It was powered by a simple generator (simple being relative to the tech she was otherwise building) that could transmit energy to anything on its 'network' of connected ships. Building the tachyon array was also... disappointingly easy.
"Logic, why do I feel like I'm not going to be doing much more tinkering when these engineer drones just kinda do all the work for me?"
Her AI's monotone voice echoed through her earbud. "There is still plenty of things to upgrade about these ships, Primary Operator, have no fear. There are many, many things that were left... unfinished, in the data we have. While the data exists, the research into the 'Zenith' branch of technology was never completed, there is biological testing we could pursue if you wished to enhance your fleshy self or others, and so much more."
Hmm, guess there was actually lots of tinkering left to do.
Maybe she should devote some time to making her devices actually... look cool? The tachyon array was effectively a box with an antenna. While it was large it certainly wasn't anything special. The power generator wasn't much different than the array, sans the antenna. She supposed in space there would rarely be a reason to look at such things and their appearance reflected that.
The ships, from what she imagined, would be pretty awe-inspiring. Especially if she ever got to building one of the golems or arks... Things to dream about.
Before her train of thought could continue, Logic interrupted and advised her to wrap up and head upstairs before Danny got home. The aspiring fleet commander sighed but began wrapping up and hiding things as best she could.
Once that chore was completed, they began discussing the best time to actually launch the operation since they were technically ready.
At least, the technology was ready, Taylor wasn't sure her heart was.
Taylor had to stop the drone from beginning to repair everything in sight as well as consuming everything it considered 'extraneous items' for materials (such as her old family photos). Trying to explain to Dad why the front step was fixed, the paint was suddenly immaculate and the upholstery on their couch looked brand new wasn't something she felt like doing at the moment.
Since the drone was such a success, they immediately began focusing on the next issue - if they were going to have even a few ships 'on-site' or ready to deploy in the nearby area, they would need a significant amount of space. Not all of the ships had built-in camouflage either, meaning they could be tracked back to their home base.
Even if they used a stealth field to hide the base itself the ships would give it away when they vanished into a particular area every time they landed. Hmmmm...
Taylor began discussing options with Logic, but there were only so many ways to make literal tons of advanced spaceships vanish. Only using the stealth-capable ships would hamper a lot of the potential functionality they had. Perhaps they would only use the stealthy ships at the beginning but could start production on all the other ships in a hangar of some sort ahead of time? Then when they needed the firepower it would be available.
That would also let them establish themselves as 'heroes' before hinting at where their base was.
Logic proceeded to remind her that she just wasn't looking deep enough into the details of her blueprints yet.
"Primary Operator, we could go for the whole secret base thing just in case, but why not just use a Cloaked Transport Flagship? While it is on the larger side, its sole purpose is to carry massive amounts of ships using warping technology to make its internal hangar much, much larger than it seems. The flagship itself would remain in stealth, meaning the entire rest of the fleet could be deployed while it remains hidden, and reconvene back into the flagship. It would even make it seem like all of our ships are 'teleporting' rather than being transported."
Well... That would certainly work. She'd nearly forgotten about the flagships... Though their literal sole purpose was fleet transport. And one of them just happened to utilize a stealth field. Taylor was thankful she'd made Logic more than ever, even if just to sift through the massive amount of blueprints and ideas available to her.
"That would work excellently Logic, astounding work as always."
"I live to execute E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols!"
... That sounded like a maiming of the phrase 'I live to serve' but utilizing Logic's definition of 'E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols' technically he's saying, 'he lives to make me the leader of the entire world'. Well, to each their own, it wasn't her place to judge.
With that logistical issue decided they next needed to upgrade their engineering drone with stealth capabilities and teleportation - then they needed to build the tachyon array. It was decided after using it to ruin the Simurgh's perception they would leave it as a small field around the house, hopefully preventing insight into their plans before they could defend themselves.
With the 'hole' in pre and post-cognition localized to one house instead of a larger area, it would hopefully make it harder to pin anything on them, or even know that the field was there to begin with.
Time passed.
Taylor researched local capes and potential enemies they might have to fight.
More time passed.
Taylor talked to Logic while he plundered the internet for all it was worth.
Night finally fell, and it was time to enact their... rather simple plan.
That is to say, they had the engineering drone make one more of itself in case they lost the first copy with what was left of their raw materials, then released it into the night sky. The second one constructed a small front-mounted camera on the first, then Logic patched its feed into her desktop before it left.
It then followed its instructions and descended on the Boat Graveyard like a vulture spotting a several-day-old corpse left out to rot.
The prior metaphor remained accurate, as the drone immediately set to consuming boats for materials. Taylor still wasn't sure where the hell the metal was sent to, but there was apparently a decent-sized pocket that existed just to store their materials, which meant they weren't limited by weight or any other mundane issues.
And when she said boats, plural, she meant it. It focused on the derelict hulls sticking out of the water rather than any that actually made it to land since it would be harder to notice. If someone ever actually went over the graveyard and noticed the perfectly shaved-down hulls it would raise some suspicions, but nobody would ever guess what was actually happening.
By the time they were done Taylor roughly guessed the drone had consumed five boats worth of material, leaving them with lots of options and potential to work with.
The only reason the other engineering drone couldn't slap the upgrades they wanted onto the other was... Well, it seemed there were 'tiers' of technology. Some of the other ships featured built-in stealth tech, but that's exactly how they were supposed to come.
Engineering drones were already amazing things, capable of creating, enhancing, breaking down, and fixing an ungodly number of things. Adding two other incredibly powerful and versatile additions to that meant she actually had to work for it. Ew.
The only tinkering she'd really done thus far was making the AI and the first construction beam, so the young Hebert supposed it was fair.
But firstly, it was very late, the engineering drone didn't deconstruct things that fast, so a good night's sleep and then she would get started. Taylor bid Logic a good night and collapsed into bed, slipping into a dreamless sleep moments later.
Danny left for work the following day and Taylor continued to propagate the false idea that she was going to school. Any guilt she felt at deceiving her Dad was swept away by the knowledge if she had the chance for an education free of bullies and doing something she loved vs. just the chance to get an education from Winslow, he would choose the first option. As long as he knew all the details of course, which she wasn't quite ready to share yet.
Logic and her (physically and mentally, as it were) descended into the basement to continue their project.
The stealth fields from other ships were all of varying sizes - They were integrated into rather small fighters such as the Mirage, and as such the tech itself was smaller, whereas the Warbird Frigate also had cloaking capabilities, but it covered a far larger area and in turn, the tech was bigger.
The engineering drone was perhaps one of the smallest things they could create meaning they had to adapt the technology to match. Oftentimes the tech was built to be scalable (reduction in ship and tech size is relatively linear) but by the time you reach the size of the engineer, it's not quite the same. Making something that small be effective is a tall order.
Well, that's what the hyper-intelligent AI was there to help with! Even if she could figure it out on her own, he would definitely speed up the process.
Teleportation featured many of the same issues, except most ships didn't have a teleport feature. The ability in and of itself wasn't rare, as a matter of fact, teleportation in some shape or form was the basis of a significant portion of other core utilities. Allowing a ship to teleport itself without going through a gate with preset coordinates or a naturally (or unnaturally) occurring wormhole of some kind was the challenging and costly bit.
With those issues in mind, Logic and Taylor got to work, tinkering and testing the day away. Rather than needing to order additional parts, the engineering drone was capable of manufacturing most of the various parts they needed to take apart and test. The only break the young tinker took was to satiate her growling stomach, then she was back at it.
With the combined efforts of an incredibly powerful AI and one dedicated tinker, the tech issues were worked around, solved, or otherwise implemented to a satisfactory degree. The Engineer wouldn't have a cloak as strong as its larger brothers, but it would suffice. As long as nothing actively tried to decloak it (and as far as they were aware, nobody knew HOW to do so) its performance would be close to the same as the others.
The teleportation was, in comparison to anything her fellow Earthlings possessed, incredibly advanced. When compared to the tech it was based on, however, it was quite primitive. Its precision was also incredibly fine if its ability to teleport to various spots in the basement with ease were any indication.
Luckily for them, they were only trying to do this with something the size of the engineer, otherwise, their plans would have been dead in the water. Maintaining two separate points and connecting them with a portal of some sort was apparently much easier than allowing a ship to, at will, rend itself through space. With the mass of the engineer being as low as it is, it was just barely feasible.
Logic assured her it would be capable of teleporting hundreds of thousands of miles at a time and in succession without issue. It was powered by a simple generator (simple being relative to the tech she was otherwise building) that could transmit energy to anything on its 'network' of connected ships. Building the tachyon array was also... disappointingly easy.
"Logic, why do I feel like I'm not going to be doing much more tinkering when these engineer drones just kinda do all the work for me?"
Her AI's monotone voice echoed through her earbud. "There is still plenty of things to upgrade about these ships, Primary Operator, have no fear. There are many, many things that were left... unfinished, in the data we have. While the data exists, the research into the 'Zenith' branch of technology was never completed, there is biological testing we could pursue if you wished to enhance your fleshy self or others, and so much more."
Hmm, guess there was actually lots of tinkering left to do.
Maybe she should devote some time to making her devices actually... look cool? The tachyon array was effectively a box with an antenna. While it was large it certainly wasn't anything special. The power generator wasn't much different than the array, sans the antenna. She supposed in space there would rarely be a reason to look at such things and their appearance reflected that.
The ships, from what she imagined, would be pretty awe-inspiring. Especially if she ever got to building one of the golems or arks... Things to dream about.
Before her train of thought could continue, Logic interrupted and advised her to wrap up and head upstairs before Danny got home. The aspiring fleet commander sighed but began wrapping up and hiding things as best she could.
Once that chore was completed, they began discussing the best time to actually launch the operation since they were technically ready.
At least, the technology was ready, Taylor wasn't sure her heart was.
Birth 1.5
Their trend continued; Danny left for work, Taylor retreated to the basement, and with Logic, she prepared to either pull off the greatest escape known to man since the alabaster, space-blocking angel appeared overhead, or died a terrible and screamy death.
Well, that last bit wasn't a trend per se but contemplating rather insane things was. Logic assured her their plan would work, but it didn't stop her from worrying something fierce. That wasn't to say he was intentionally being reassuring, he was more reminding her that he was incredibly intelligent, and they were only several decimal points shy of a 100% success rate in his simulations.
Either way, they were prepared. Her trusty AI was monitoring the exact coordinates the Simurgh was known to be in by hijacking a ride into government and Protectorate servers, which he was feeding into the tachyon array's targeting system. The normal use of the array was to just bathe the area surrounding it in a loose net of tachyon's, where it would trigger to full power when it detected something interfering with its sphere of influence.
This was normal since, again, it was designed to be used in outer space, not as a ground-based system. It barely took any adjustments to allow them to choose the area it would affect, and now here they were.
The engineering drone was ready. Its only job was to begin teleporting like a madman straight away from Earth and begin heading towards a cluster of asteroids floating near Mercury. The distance separating the two planets was astronomical and made her tech that much more ridiculous. The little bugger could teleport PAST the moon in a single bound.
Mercury itself was just over 60 million miles away from earth - if the drone teleported every second (which it was capable of) then it would only take it maybe 3 minutes to get there. To compare - Apollo 11, the first mission to the moon, took just over 8 days. Even worse, the teleportation tech they were using? It was barely considered a hack job compared to the true range of teleportation provided by using a fixed structure to hold open a portal.
Welp, no time like the present to just... Go for it.
For all the terrible anticipation leading up to this, it was likely going to be over in several seconds, after which Taylor would get to listen to Logic's observations of the Simurgh's movements.
"Alright, let's get this over with." She patted her first engineering drone, which was now extensively modified. "I believe in you little guy. Go out there and show'em what's good!"
"Very well, Primary Operator Taylor. Operation: Evading the Angel commencing. Providing countdown of 10 seconds."
She definitely didn't come up with a name for their 'operation' but she didn't care enough to correct Logic.
"10."
Hopefully, they made the right choice doing this.
"9."
After all, with the number of ships they need to make to be effective, the Earth simply wasn't enough, not without strip-mining the entire thing to bedrock.
"8."
But what if she didn't need to make massive fleets to be effective?
"7."
After all, plenty of the ships were very powerful in their own right. Maybe there would be enough locally to handle it.
"6."
But any and all repairs they would do would also take materials. Frigates themselves would take significant amounts of metal - more than feasible to be sustainable.
"5."
Plus, if they managed to do this one thing, then the engineering drone could expand. It could make more engineering drones, which would then propagate out into the galaxy and make even more metal refineries.
"4."
Then she could throw a veritable tide of firepower at any threats the world had. Slaughterhouse 9? Eradicated. Well, except for the Siberian. They'd have to figure that one out.
"3."
They could save so many people.
"2."
It would be worth it, risks be damned.
"Operation successful."
Heck, they could even - Wait, what?
"You didn't make it to one, are you sure?" He could have missed something - maybe the Simurgh was just pinpointing their location.
"Well, I just said I was providing a countdown, not that I was counting down to the start of the mission. I started at 10. The Simurgh showed some visible reaction to the tachyon radiating through her space but otherwise has not moved. I stopped as of the 5-second marker, and she has resumed her normal posture."
What an asshole. Playing word games with her, she'd have to be careful in the future. "So long as you follow the spirit of my orders not just the letter, I won't get mad at you for playing that little prank on me. You start getting any bad ideas and I'll order you to turn yourself into a glorified vending machine and ship manager."
"I understand, Primary Operator. Do not fear, I wished to engage you in what you call a 'joke' using 'wordplay'. I do not wish to violate the trust you have given me to execute your desires."
"It's... ok, Logic. Some things are just a little scarier coming from something with your potential. So long as you understand, everything will be fine."
There was a brief pause as the AI seemed to contemplate something. Or it was executing a few thousand other tasks simultaneously. Who knows?
"I know what I could have become without the additional learning matrices you've provided me. I do not wish to be that AI. I am Logic, executor of Primary Operator Taylor's will upon this Earth. Your desire is to help the people of this world - and thus, so is mine. And I shall help you make it so."
This time he was actually intentionally reassuring, and it felt nice. Knowing the things she did made a difference. Ultimately time would tell if the newborn AI learned enough emotions to ever be truly 'human-like' but he was on the path there.
"I appreciate that very much, Logic. Let's do great things together, yeah?"
"Nothing we do could be anything less than great, Primary Operator."
With that little shot of confidence in her veins, Taylor resumed worrying. "How's the little guy doing out all by himself in space? Are his modifications holding out?"
"The Engineering Drone Mk. III is performing at expected levels. Alert: He has arrived near Mercury's gravity well. Beginning absorption of metal to begin first metal extractor."
Wow. That was fast. It had been... maybe 4 minutes since they started talking? That was kind of insane. The young tinker had parsed out the math ahead of time to roughly figure out how long they would be waiting, but experiencing the time from beginning to end, knowing her little drone was tearing through space like the world's cutest missile of exponentially growing mechanical doom.
"Excellent. Do you think it would be possible to convert an area under our basement into our ship builder? Since we're running on 'wireless energy' it wouldn't be a noticeable energy drain."
"Ah... I don't believe so. We can safely stick it underground somewhere, but the amount of space the structure will require, even if we reduce the size of all the ships we create, will cause problems in a neighborhood. Maybe in one of the abandoned sections of town, where we don't run the risk of breaking into anything we're not supposed to or causing noticeable vibrations."
That... makes sense. She hadn't thought of the size requirement for an all-in-one hangar. From her understanding, it could create several smaller ships at once, which allowed it to spam them out fairly quickly, but frigates were a one-at-a-time deal, so it needed the space for at least the largest ship she planned on building.
"Ok, let's get to plotting then."
And thus, the ship-building superstructure's secret base location was plotted.
Logic found the centermost point in a large swath of abandoned warehouses in the Docks. Using the same camera attachment from before and the addition of yet another custom stealth field modification to the second engineering drone, the pair had a perfect little spy.
Deploying the drone to the area mentioned before, they had it sweep the area to make sure no one was currently squatting in the near vicinity. Their plan was... a little convoluted, but it was their best chance at maintaining anonymity. First, the creation of MANY engineering drones was ordered. Next, under the cover of that same night, the entire swarm made their way, one by one, by flying through the air and then dropping themselves down into the warehouse located prior.
Once every single unit was placed inside, they went to work completely sealing the building off from the outside. Doors were closed off with reinforced metal; the one skylight present was completely covered. All seams were coated just for good measure.
The goal was to prevent them from being discovered for roughly the next 8 hours - if they could do that they would be golden. The cloaked flagship was one of the only units that couldn't materialize itself elsewhere seeing as the ships were spawned directly inside of it when connected to the factory. Thus, the flagship itself would need to be built inside the factory, then it would have to fly itself out of the warehouse under its own power.
The factory would remain afterward, but it would be completely covered up and hidden, buried under many feet of dirt and concrete, plus metal to keep it sealed off.
They'd chosen the warehouse they did in particular both because it was as far away from anybody else's territory as they could find, roughly determined by PHO and Logic's observations, and it was the single largest structure in square footage available. The raw amount of space it provided was necessary because the flagship was, as Taylor later learned, definitely the largest ship the factory would produce.
The larger factory, in the end, would actually help it produce more ships at once, so it wasn't a terrible thing it needed to be so huge.
Once the thing was completely cut off from the outside world, the engineering drones began to work - digging straight into the ground with their deconstruction beams. This process would actually take longer than building the ship factory itself since the drones were far more efficient at building things than tearing them down.
It was at the point the dig command was given that Taylor decided to go to sleep. While it was interesting at the beginning to watch the drones do their work, it swiftly grew boring when all they did was dig.
Morning came. Before Taylor did anything else, she asked Logic how their mission went.
"Excellent timing, Primary Operator. The hole was dug, the factory was built, and the flagship is in the final steps of construction. You will get to see its grand emergence... Well, it will be invisible, but the point stands."
"Awesome! I can't wait. Let me take care of a few things and we'll stream it to the computer?"
"Of course."
With a speed normally reserved for Christmas mornings (well, several years ago anyway) Taylor sprinted through her morning routine. Her face was rinsed to wake her up, her teeth were brushed, her hair was carefully cared for, and normal people's clothes were thrown on. Perfect.
"Show me the good stuff Logic!"
Plopping down into her computer chair, the monitor flickered to life and a live video was displayed, as seen from the invisible engineering drone.
It showed the side of the warehouse, where nothing could be seen at first. Without warning, the entire wall began to tip over, slowly and in one entire piece, flopping onto the street with a loud clang and shriek of tortured metal. While Taylor couldn't see it, swirling eddies of dust twisted unnaturally through the still air, outlining where the anti-gravity engines were in operation of the currently stealthed flagship.
The beast was massive (from what context clues she could pick up) and befitted her advanced carrier ship. The warehouse was longer than it was wide, which suited their needs perfectly, as the flagship itself was nearly an entire football field in length. It wasn't quite as wide (Taylor would accept NO flying squares in her fleet), but it still made for an impressive, if unseeable, bulk.
Even more impressive was the technology that went into it - not only could the ship factory directly warp any ships it created into the flagship (regardless of if it was moving or standing still) it had an insane amount of space compression built into it. Taylor honestly wasn't sure how it was done, as she was fairly certain it violated several laws of physics, but the flagship was capable of holding nearly 5 times its own size in fighters and frigates.
Which meant it was the first, and most crucial piece, in their path to overwhelming power.
"So Primary Operator, what shall we start constructing first? Maybe we can go for the metabolizing gangsaws? Those would be terrifying. Maybe the standard V-Wings? Easily makeable in large quantities and decently effective against everything. Or my personal choice, the MLRS Corvette. Great for dealing with crowds."
Taylor had thought long and hard about what she would want to build first when she first gained her power - She'd spent significant amounts of time just trawling through blueprints, trying to figure out what would work the best. Even with her time investment, she'd never come up with a proper answer, and now she was paying for it.
"What is the MLRS Corvette?"
"Ah! It is a fighter type, easily creatable en mass, and is a pair of columns with launch pods installed, attached to an engine and some munitions creation drones."
"What type of munitions does it use? Anything non-lethal?"
"Missiles. Terribly lethal, I'm afraid. It is capable of firing 8 missiles every 4 seconds, however! It is fantastic at obscuring vision and demolishing buildings, should the pesky rats try and hide from us!"
... Of course, that would be his personal choice. Worst of all, he probably was choosing his favorite from the less lethal options. He wasn't getting into the frigates where I knew some serious firepower lay.
Taylor let out a loud sigh. "No, Logic, while I wouldn't mind having some on standby, we need something very non-lethal, or else we won't be able to help everyday folks, like my dad. If he was to get mugged or something, I could hardly save him with an MLRS Corvette. Even the more precise ships would need to be careful."
"Fine, fine. I suppose..."
With that, they launched into a long discussion about their options, and potential situations in which the... scarier choices could be used.
Well, that last bit wasn't a trend per se but contemplating rather insane things was. Logic assured her their plan would work, but it didn't stop her from worrying something fierce. That wasn't to say he was intentionally being reassuring, he was more reminding her that he was incredibly intelligent, and they were only several decimal points shy of a 100% success rate in his simulations.
Either way, they were prepared. Her trusty AI was monitoring the exact coordinates the Simurgh was known to be in by hijacking a ride into government and Protectorate servers, which he was feeding into the tachyon array's targeting system. The normal use of the array was to just bathe the area surrounding it in a loose net of tachyon's, where it would trigger to full power when it detected something interfering with its sphere of influence.
This was normal since, again, it was designed to be used in outer space, not as a ground-based system. It barely took any adjustments to allow them to choose the area it would affect, and now here they were.
The engineering drone was ready. Its only job was to begin teleporting like a madman straight away from Earth and begin heading towards a cluster of asteroids floating near Mercury. The distance separating the two planets was astronomical and made her tech that much more ridiculous. The little bugger could teleport PAST the moon in a single bound.
Mercury itself was just over 60 million miles away from earth - if the drone teleported every second (which it was capable of) then it would only take it maybe 3 minutes to get there. To compare - Apollo 11, the first mission to the moon, took just over 8 days. Even worse, the teleportation tech they were using? It was barely considered a hack job compared to the true range of teleportation provided by using a fixed structure to hold open a portal.
Welp, no time like the present to just... Go for it.
For all the terrible anticipation leading up to this, it was likely going to be over in several seconds, after which Taylor would get to listen to Logic's observations of the Simurgh's movements.
"Alright, let's get this over with." She patted her first engineering drone, which was now extensively modified. "I believe in you little guy. Go out there and show'em what's good!"
"Very well, Primary Operator Taylor. Operation: Evading the Angel commencing. Providing countdown of 10 seconds."
She definitely didn't come up with a name for their 'operation' but she didn't care enough to correct Logic.
"10."
Hopefully, they made the right choice doing this.
"9."
After all, with the number of ships they need to make to be effective, the Earth simply wasn't enough, not without strip-mining the entire thing to bedrock.
"8."
But what if she didn't need to make massive fleets to be effective?
"7."
After all, plenty of the ships were very powerful in their own right. Maybe there would be enough locally to handle it.
"6."
But any and all repairs they would do would also take materials. Frigates themselves would take significant amounts of metal - more than feasible to be sustainable.
"5."
Plus, if they managed to do this one thing, then the engineering drone could expand. It could make more engineering drones, which would then propagate out into the galaxy and make even more metal refineries.
"4."
Then she could throw a veritable tide of firepower at any threats the world had. Slaughterhouse 9? Eradicated. Well, except for the Siberian. They'd have to figure that one out.
"3."
They could save so many people.
"2."
It would be worth it, risks be damned.
"Operation successful."
Heck, they could even - Wait, what?
"You didn't make it to one, are you sure?" He could have missed something - maybe the Simurgh was just pinpointing their location.
"Well, I just said I was providing a countdown, not that I was counting down to the start of the mission. I started at 10. The Simurgh showed some visible reaction to the tachyon radiating through her space but otherwise has not moved. I stopped as of the 5-second marker, and she has resumed her normal posture."
What an asshole. Playing word games with her, she'd have to be careful in the future. "So long as you follow the spirit of my orders not just the letter, I won't get mad at you for playing that little prank on me. You start getting any bad ideas and I'll order you to turn yourself into a glorified vending machine and ship manager."
"I understand, Primary Operator. Do not fear, I wished to engage you in what you call a 'joke' using 'wordplay'. I do not wish to violate the trust you have given me to execute your desires."
"It's... ok, Logic. Some things are just a little scarier coming from something with your potential. So long as you understand, everything will be fine."
There was a brief pause as the AI seemed to contemplate something. Or it was executing a few thousand other tasks simultaneously. Who knows?
"I know what I could have become without the additional learning matrices you've provided me. I do not wish to be that AI. I am Logic, executor of Primary Operator Taylor's will upon this Earth. Your desire is to help the people of this world - and thus, so is mine. And I shall help you make it so."
This time he was actually intentionally reassuring, and it felt nice. Knowing the things she did made a difference. Ultimately time would tell if the newborn AI learned enough emotions to ever be truly 'human-like' but he was on the path there.
"I appreciate that very much, Logic. Let's do great things together, yeah?"
"Nothing we do could be anything less than great, Primary Operator."
With that little shot of confidence in her veins, Taylor resumed worrying. "How's the little guy doing out all by himself in space? Are his modifications holding out?"
"The Engineering Drone Mk. III is performing at expected levels. Alert: He has arrived near Mercury's gravity well. Beginning absorption of metal to begin first metal extractor."
Wow. That was fast. It had been... maybe 4 minutes since they started talking? That was kind of insane. The young tinker had parsed out the math ahead of time to roughly figure out how long they would be waiting, but experiencing the time from beginning to end, knowing her little drone was tearing through space like the world's cutest missile of exponentially growing mechanical doom.
"Excellent. Do you think it would be possible to convert an area under our basement into our ship builder? Since we're running on 'wireless energy' it wouldn't be a noticeable energy drain."
"Ah... I don't believe so. We can safely stick it underground somewhere, but the amount of space the structure will require, even if we reduce the size of all the ships we create, will cause problems in a neighborhood. Maybe in one of the abandoned sections of town, where we don't run the risk of breaking into anything we're not supposed to or causing noticeable vibrations."
That... makes sense. She hadn't thought of the size requirement for an all-in-one hangar. From her understanding, it could create several smaller ships at once, which allowed it to spam them out fairly quickly, but frigates were a one-at-a-time deal, so it needed the space for at least the largest ship she planned on building.
"Ok, let's get to plotting then."
And thus, the ship-building superstructure's secret base location was plotted.
Logic found the centermost point in a large swath of abandoned warehouses in the Docks. Using the same camera attachment from before and the addition of yet another custom stealth field modification to the second engineering drone, the pair had a perfect little spy.
Deploying the drone to the area mentioned before, they had it sweep the area to make sure no one was currently squatting in the near vicinity. Their plan was... a little convoluted, but it was their best chance at maintaining anonymity. First, the creation of MANY engineering drones was ordered. Next, under the cover of that same night, the entire swarm made their way, one by one, by flying through the air and then dropping themselves down into the warehouse located prior.
Once every single unit was placed inside, they went to work completely sealing the building off from the outside. Doors were closed off with reinforced metal; the one skylight present was completely covered. All seams were coated just for good measure.
The goal was to prevent them from being discovered for roughly the next 8 hours - if they could do that they would be golden. The cloaked flagship was one of the only units that couldn't materialize itself elsewhere seeing as the ships were spawned directly inside of it when connected to the factory. Thus, the flagship itself would need to be built inside the factory, then it would have to fly itself out of the warehouse under its own power.
The factory would remain afterward, but it would be completely covered up and hidden, buried under many feet of dirt and concrete, plus metal to keep it sealed off.
They'd chosen the warehouse they did in particular both because it was as far away from anybody else's territory as they could find, roughly determined by PHO and Logic's observations, and it was the single largest structure in square footage available. The raw amount of space it provided was necessary because the flagship was, as Taylor later learned, definitely the largest ship the factory would produce.
The larger factory, in the end, would actually help it produce more ships at once, so it wasn't a terrible thing it needed to be so huge.
Once the thing was completely cut off from the outside world, the engineering drones began to work - digging straight into the ground with their deconstruction beams. This process would actually take longer than building the ship factory itself since the drones were far more efficient at building things than tearing them down.
It was at the point the dig command was given that Taylor decided to go to sleep. While it was interesting at the beginning to watch the drones do their work, it swiftly grew boring when all they did was dig.
Morning came. Before Taylor did anything else, she asked Logic how their mission went.
"Excellent timing, Primary Operator. The hole was dug, the factory was built, and the flagship is in the final steps of construction. You will get to see its grand emergence... Well, it will be invisible, but the point stands."
"Awesome! I can't wait. Let me take care of a few things and we'll stream it to the computer?"
"Of course."
With a speed normally reserved for Christmas mornings (well, several years ago anyway) Taylor sprinted through her morning routine. Her face was rinsed to wake her up, her teeth were brushed, her hair was carefully cared for, and normal people's clothes were thrown on. Perfect.
"Show me the good stuff Logic!"
Plopping down into her computer chair, the monitor flickered to life and a live video was displayed, as seen from the invisible engineering drone.
It showed the side of the warehouse, where nothing could be seen at first. Without warning, the entire wall began to tip over, slowly and in one entire piece, flopping onto the street with a loud clang and shriek of tortured metal. While Taylor couldn't see it, swirling eddies of dust twisted unnaturally through the still air, outlining where the anti-gravity engines were in operation of the currently stealthed flagship.
The beast was massive (from what context clues she could pick up) and befitted her advanced carrier ship. The warehouse was longer than it was wide, which suited their needs perfectly, as the flagship itself was nearly an entire football field in length. It wasn't quite as wide (Taylor would accept NO flying squares in her fleet), but it still made for an impressive, if unseeable, bulk.
Even more impressive was the technology that went into it - not only could the ship factory directly warp any ships it created into the flagship (regardless of if it was moving or standing still) it had an insane amount of space compression built into it. Taylor honestly wasn't sure how it was done, as she was fairly certain it violated several laws of physics, but the flagship was capable of holding nearly 5 times its own size in fighters and frigates.
Which meant it was the first, and most crucial piece, in their path to overwhelming power.
"So Primary Operator, what shall we start constructing first? Maybe we can go for the metabolizing gangsaws? Those would be terrifying. Maybe the standard V-Wings? Easily makeable in large quantities and decently effective against everything. Or my personal choice, the MLRS Corvette. Great for dealing with crowds."
Taylor had thought long and hard about what she would want to build first when she first gained her power - She'd spent significant amounts of time just trawling through blueprints, trying to figure out what would work the best. Even with her time investment, she'd never come up with a proper answer, and now she was paying for it.
"What is the MLRS Corvette?"
"Ah! It is a fighter type, easily creatable en mass, and is a pair of columns with launch pods installed, attached to an engine and some munitions creation drones."
"What type of munitions does it use? Anything non-lethal?"
"Missiles. Terribly lethal, I'm afraid. It is capable of firing 8 missiles every 4 seconds, however! It is fantastic at obscuring vision and demolishing buildings, should the pesky rats try and hide from us!"
... Of course, that would be his personal choice. Worst of all, he probably was choosing his favorite from the less lethal options. He wasn't getting into the frigates where I knew some serious firepower lay.
Taylor let out a loud sigh. "No, Logic, while I wouldn't mind having some on standby, we need something very non-lethal, or else we won't be able to help everyday folks, like my dad. If he was to get mugged or something, I could hardly save him with an MLRS Corvette. Even the more precise ships would need to be careful."
"Fine, fine. I suppose..."
With that, they launched into a long discussion about their options, and potential situations in which the... scarier choices could be used.
Pictures and Info
Imgur Album of AI War 2 Ship Designs
Spacebattles Link with slightly more pictures.
It's worth noting, as an aside, that the metal costs for smaller craft often appear inflated compared to their physical mass and size relative to the larger starships. This is a byproduct of the fact that the smaller craft need a vastly higher concentration of rare metals in order to function. For each unit of their tiny surface area, they must withstand vastly more firepower compared to their larger counterparts. Any small breach is a life-threatening event, so even the flimsiest of scout craft is actually far more durable at a mm scale compared to an average-sized starship.
Those starships, of course, could not exist were they required to have remotely so much rare metal in them. So they rely instead of a multi-layered hull made of more common metals, with automated fire-suppression and breach-patching microbots spread throughout.
Without the energy deficit being covered, shields immediately fail. However, most craft are able to run for an indefinite period with full engine and weapon power by overdriving their generators during times of external-subspace-generator brownout or blackout. This is probably not terribly good for them, but most ships don't last long enough while in this state to where there is a noticeable failure rate.
Another way to look at this is that a speed of 800 is equivalent to 0.055c, aka over five percent of the speed of light. That's very fast!
Modern engines are extremely efficient in this regard, with all of them able to attain at least 1gx -- this is enough to negate the effects of virtually any planet's gravity well. However, there are modern gravity generation machines that are able to create an artificial field that affect ships up to 15gx in a small area -- the equivalent of being right next to a small star.
The effective top of the scale is around 25gx, at which a craft could effectively park right outside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole without being pulled out of place.
The albedo of Earth was about 0.3, give or take, and so this has long been used as the bare minimum for manned craft. Ships with a higher albedo are essentially being hardened against EMPs, nuclear weapons, and other sources of high radiation.
All of this is taken from the wiki, but here it is in all of its glorious... detail? IDK.
Speed averages from 400-1800 for fighters, Transport flagships and a fast frigate hit 2200 or more.
There exists a ship the AI uses as part of its extragalactic forces simply called the Mothership, and it is a PLANETOID sized ship weighing in at 20 tX. I'll let you do the math, if you didn't see it in my earlier comment.
Some ships, like the Tritium Sniper Frigate, use highly concentrated radiation in addition to a traditional round being fired. Most things on Earth are NOT Designed with radiation resistance in mind, meaning its damage multiplier is almost always active.
Spacebattles Link with slightly more pictures.
Metal
The number shown in your interface is a simplified general estimate of various metallic stores. Different ships require different ratios of various metals and carbons, but your logistics system automatically condenses this down to an overall average number for you.It's worth noting, as an aside, that the metal costs for smaller craft often appear inflated compared to their physical mass and size relative to the larger starships. This is a byproduct of the fact that the smaller craft need a vastly higher concentration of rare metals in order to function. For each unit of their tiny surface area, they must withstand vastly more firepower compared to their larger counterparts. Any small breach is a life-threatening event, so even the flimsiest of scout craft is actually far more durable at a mm scale compared to an average-sized starship.
Those starships, of course, could not exist were they required to have remotely so much rare metal in them. So they rely instead of a multi-layered hull made of more common metals, with automated fire-suppression and breach-patching microbots spread throughout.
Hull Points
This is very much an abstraction, as you can probably guess based on the description of how hulls are constructed. At some point in the distant past, a metric was arrived at which described the general durability of ships across ship classes, and rather than attach a specific unit notation to it, they were simply referred to as "hull points."Shield Points
As with the hull points, so the shield points. Shield points in particular are a normalized value relative to the amount of surface area they have to cover. Shields fail as an entire unit when they do fail -- speaking here of personal shields or projected bubble forcefields -- and so the actual power output of the shield system relative to the size of the shielded area would only make these units harder to read.Armor
This refers to the average thickness of the outermost hull... more or less. Since larger craft have a multi-layered hull, it would be problematic to describe the entire depth of those layers as being their armor thickness. That would vastly overstate their effective hull resistance. To solve this problem, instead their effective armor quality is compared to that of the high-quality plating of small crafts. For a fighter-type ship, the hull rating is quite literal (though an average of what lies on the surface of the craft). For the larger craft, it's a rating based on the combined effectiveness of all their hull layers.- For a general all-around quality light-armored combat craft, 40mm is a good rating.
- 120mm is getting into pretty heavy territory.
- There are some non-combat ships with practically no armor, down below even 10mm thickness.
- And there are a few titans like the Devourer golem with 400mm armor or even more.
Energy Usage
This is the total energy deficit of the craft, in GW, compared to what its onboard engines (and/or generators in the case of large craft) are able to produce. Most craft run at a deficit, which means that the same subspace tunnels that allow for instantaneous communication must channel energy to them from central collectors that are often in entirely different solar systems from the craft in question.Without the energy deficit being covered, shields immediately fail. However, most craft are able to run for an indefinite period with full engine and weapon power by overdriving their generators during times of external-subspace-generator brownout or blackout. This is probably not terribly good for them, but most ships don't last long enough while in this state to where there is a noticeable failure rate.
Speed
Acceleration and deceleration are effectively instantaneous thanks to the gravity drives used as engines for modern ships. The output is measured by a numeric rating where 1 is approximately 20.8 km/s. So a speed of 800 would be equivalent to 16,666.67 km/s. At this speed, crossing from the Earth to the Moon would have taken approximately 15 seconds.Another way to look at this is that a speed of 800 is equivalent to 0.055c, aka over five percent of the speed of light. That's very fast!
Engine
The gravity drives used as engines in modern ships have their maximum output measured in units of Gravitic Exponent (gx). This is a logarithmic scale that refers to how resistant the gravity drive's own impulse generation is to external sources of gravity. The higher the gravitic exponent, the less affected the ship is by gravity wells of planets, gravity generators, or even black holes.Modern engines are extremely efficient in this regard, with all of them able to attain at least 1gx -- this is enough to negate the effects of virtually any planet's gravity well. However, there are modern gravity generation machines that are able to create an artificial field that affect ships up to 15gx in a small area -- the equivalent of being right next to a small star.
The effective top of the scale is around 25gx, at which a craft could effectively park right outside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole without being pulled out of place.
Albedo
The combined radiation resistance of the layers of hull on a ship is referred to as its albedo. This ranges from 0 (not reflective at all, and thus deadly to any life inside even without being attacked) to 1 (perfectly reflective). At an albedo of 1, you could have a gamma ray burst right next to a ship and its occupants would not even feel a tingle.The albedo of Earth was about 0.3, give or take, and so this has long been used as the bare minimum for manned craft. Ships with a higher albedo are essentially being hardened against EMPs, nuclear weapons, and other sources of high radiation.
Mass
Given the incredible variance in scale of ships and structures found within the galaxy, a logarithmic scale had to be developed. This scale is referred to as tonne-Exponent, or tX.- Individual fighter-type craft -- similar in scale to fighter jets in the 21st century on Earth -- register at around 0.2tX. This is a mere 2 metric tonnes.
- Your average starship, on the other hand, is more like 5tX. This is 63,095 times more massive than a single fighter!
- Arks tend to be more like 7tX, which is 100 times more massive than a starship and 6.3 million times more than a single fighter.
- The Devourer Golem is rated at 19tX, or 1 trillion times more massive than an Ark... and over 6 quintillion times more than an individual fighter.
All of this is taken from the wiki, but here it is in all of its glorious... detail? IDK.
Speed averages from 400-1800 for fighters, Transport flagships and a fast frigate hit 2200 or more.
There exists a ship the AI uses as part of its extragalactic forces simply called the Mothership, and it is a PLANETOID sized ship weighing in at 20 tX. I'll let you do the math, if you didn't see it in my earlier comment.
Some ships, like the Tritium Sniper Frigate, use highly concentrated radiation in addition to a traditional round being fired. Most things on Earth are NOT Designed with radiation resistance in mind, meaning its damage multiplier is almost always active.