I think that was more the general Web of humanity, though how much of that was Amanda forged is up in the air too I suppose.
The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Sign points very strongly to the existence of the Circles being a major factor in Amanda being able to do what she did during Second Sol, yes. There's been previous suggestions of investigating them for the purpose of making that effect stronger, but up until now there's been no real push for studying what made them do what they did.
- Location
- Florida
I do feel like the Web of humanity would have been... less robust I suppose, if the Circles hadn't been as heavily focused on early in the quest.
I'm definitely in favor of studying it. It's such a gamechanger, and it'd be dumb to have this tactical nuke option but not knowing how or why it works as it does.
- Location
- Ekaterinburg, Russia
Then you will probably find both ironic and appropriate that in the first main stage of the quest (the Presidency prior to Second Battle of Sol) we never really did invest all that much into the Circles and their development, which we got called out on.
Because from a certain point of view, Amanda had more or less put all of her Workings on the backburner - the Circles, the Concert Set, the Multitool etc - to focus on the task at hand.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Jessica was rather unimpressed, yes.
Kufufu
Adequate at best
- Location
- What's it to ya?
More then a bit unreasonable on her part I should think, no one else could have done what we did.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Not...really. She had her focus, and Amanda had spent decades focusing on the Circles. Then she just...stopped. At a time when the Circles needed her help most. Remember she founded the Circles, she helped them grow and become better and poured herself and her Practice into the process. For that to then just vanish, cut off like a knife, when humanity needed a stable social construct most? Jessica's reaction hit as hard as it did because she was right. Amanda was there to try and fix things, yes, but humans have emotions and drives and they feel hurt and betrayed when their role models appear to abandon them.
- Location
- Florida
Can't believe I forgot about that. There's probably some pithy comment about the casualties of war, but in hindsight it stings.
I actually like that we messed up in that regard. Whether or not it was right, the thread made it's choices. At the end of the day humanity 2.0 is alive, is safe (for now), and has hope for the future with the other aliens. Whatever missteps we made can be... not erased, but definitely Mended as long as we put in the time and effort.
For all that it was painful for Jessica and the Circles, I maintain that it wasn't a mistake to more or less remain neutral to them until it became obvious that they needed an unusual level of extra support. There were already grumblings about the Circles as a political bloc being especially attached to Amanda; if she were seen as funnelling an unusual amount of resources to the Circles, and keep in mind that every one of our Action Dice during those turns represented a significant percentage of the total resources available to all of humanity so even a single project would involve a massive amount of time and resources, we could well have faced pushback from the rest of Humanity who are not in a Circle.
Turn 22 - Of Fractal Symmetry
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
August 13th, 2127
You've given other Potentials guidance before, even acting as a personal tutor on occasion within the Two Twenty Three for those within and without your own Heartcircle. But those occasions have never been as continuous, and sometimes precarious, as your work with Aya has been in the last year and a half. As her mostly unseen performance at the conference early in the year showed, she'd come a long way, but also still had a great deal to learn. Much of that was repetition of the techniques she was learning, and for the simpler things, that was all that was needed. But for things like she'd done at the conference, there was more involved.
The rooms near the top of the Mytikas Spire had been suites once, according to the designs. High enough that you could just see out over the rim of Olympus Mons' caldera to the land beyond the huge volcano. There were farms stretched out towards the horizon now, beyond the city's primary fortifications, and their existence had given the flourishing Martian population true self-sufficiency. Of course, if the Shiplords reached the planet- you pushed those thoughts away. It was becoming difficult to do that now, with the next Shiplord assault looming on the horizon, but you managed.
Aya sat beside you on a long, straight-backed sofa, a small table between you and the long window that spanned almost the entire length of the outer wall. Her eyes were closed, and she breathed in a slow, steady rhythm. Someone watching with a medical scanner would have been able to tell that the breaths, in and out, were matched to her heartbeat. Every Potential started with simple breathing exercises to access their Focus, but it was rare that they stayed with those as they grew more confident in their use of Practice. Still, Aya was within normal tolerances for that process, and the complexity of her Focus made this sort of advanced foundation work expected. Given the nature of the Web, it was little wonder that she needed these to use that aspect of her Focus properly. She'd been able to give you an answer to your question from what she'd been able to tap into, but not the reasons why it was the right one.
She was starting to bridge that gap now, but there were years of work still to do before you'd feel comfortable with her accessing the Web on her own. New as she was to her Practice, and without a means to anchor herself like you did so naturally, connecting to the Web without you could be dangerous. Which was why you'd kept a tight control on the number of these sessions, no more than two a month at most. Most of your tutoring at this point involved more regular lessons. There, your experience with teaching Vega to Speak had been surprisingly useful. Most of Aya's practical lessons took the same form, though done with conventional Practice instead of empowered Words.
Until now you'd given Aya tasks during these lessons, something to find in the Web mostly. This time, you'd given her the freedom to roam. Directed work with the Web could only take her so far. If she was to find a way to anchor herself, she needed to explore the construct on her own. You were still providing an anchor point for her, but no destination. It was odd, really. Before you'd started teaching Aya, so much of what you'd done with the Web had been little more than instinct. You'd known you could explain it, but when talking to Vega and those like her, you'd never had to.
Someone had once told you that, at some point, the only way to learn more of something was to teach. Your work with the student Potentials of the Fourth had taught you much, but you'd never needed to explain something like the Web to them. That had been for later in their lives, and most likely only for the Harmonials, who like Vega would be able to understand it on a level so fundamental that words had no meaning. Aya did share the same overarching theme as a Potential, that much was true, but she lacked the general conceptual framework that most Harmonials possessed. Just explaining what she needed to learn, how to do so notwithstanding, had been a challenge you'd not known how to approach at first.
Still, that you were here now, watching her flit through the Web in careful steps, showed that it had worked. And it hadn't just been Aya who'd learnt from that experience. Delving into the conceptual framework of your Focus to help your apprentice find hers had revealed things about you. Most notably that during the Second Battle of Sol, and to a lesser extent Second Contact, you'd done things with your Practice that you'd never thought you could. Your Focus was fundamentally a peaceful one, a reflection of your own existence a person most comfortable restoring the world around them.
You'd taken that beautiful and peaceful power and turned it into a weapon wielded against the Tribute Fleet. Dress up Purify as you liked, but you'd struck at the Medicament - the name still made you shiver - with a singular intent: to destroy. Your work with the Contact Fleet had been comparatively light, but it had still pushed up against the edges in some places. Of course, it was easy to salve your conscience in those instances for what you'd been giving back to those infested by the Shiplord nanotech. But it didn't change that some of what you'd done there had come perilously close to the edge of what the ideal you embodied in your Focus was comfortable with.
The worst part? You'd been aware of the conscious dichotomy of those actions for several years. You'd…not ignored it, but you had found other things to do with time that could have been spent investigating how you'd been able to use Mending as a tool of war. Not to heal, not to make things stronger or return them to what they'd been. But to fight.
Aya stirred, and you focused on her again for a moment fully, checking where she was. Her eyes were open, but they were unfocused, staring across the Web from the figurative viewpoint she'd found. You'd never told her about that one, but you'd hoped she would find it. The view was, well, like nothing else.
"Did you mean to make it so beautiful?" The words pull you firmly back into reality even as your thoughts try to turn. Aya's voice is a breathless whisper, but not unexpected. The content, however, is. "All the endless patterns, and so many of them link back to you. Did you mean for that to happen?"
"In a way," you answered, after a contemplative moment, turning your face to look out towards the horizon. "But I never planned it. It just," you sighed, casting your mind back, wondering where the first moment had come. "Happened. The Circles were needed, or something like them was. But my part? I was just there. I saw the need, I felt it, and I tried to…make it better."
"And you poured yourself, so much of you, into it," she takes a breath, her brown eyes still unseeing, looking out across a very different picture of humanity. Her words are strangely distant, or would be, if you hadn't seen it before. "You know one of my friends wondered, I think she still does, why you made so few Artefacts. Being able to look at this, I think I'm starting to see that you never did make so few. It's just that…" she trailed off, the moment of cognizance within the connection fading. She'd be back soon. If she'd entirely remember this, well, you'd find out then. Was she right, though?
The Circles had been your creation, that was true. But had you made them that way, it was hard to find the right word. Intent was wrong; you'd meant to make something to help the world. But had you meant to create it this way? Perhaps it would be better to ask if it mattered. Those things had started as yours, and you could tell that Aya's vision of them was correct in so many still leading back to you in some way. But they weren't yours anymore, not like that…were they?
Something more to think about, you considered ruefully. Maybe one day that would stop happening, but somehow you doubted it. And truthfully, wouldn't that just make the world so very boring?
Aya stirred again, and you felt her rushing back into the here and now, following the anchor and beacon of your making into reality. Her eyes flicked closed, and opened clear, aware. She yawned, stretching to loosen her muscles after hours spent sitting.
"I found something," she told you, and you waited patiently as she sorted through her memories to find it. It took time for the human mind to reorganise itself after something like that, and that included memories. It was why you'd wondered if she'd remember what she'd said. "I could see so much, Amanda."
"I know," you told her with an approving smile. "I was hoping you'd find that place, Aya. It's a good start for what you still need to learn."
And maybe, you thought as she started to ask questions, the moment of tiredness swiftly forgotten, it would be good for other reasons, too.
A Healers Fire: 76 + 34 = 110/???
Of Words And Melody: 100 + 35 + 34 = 169 + 183 = 352/???
New action unlocked.
You've given other Potentials guidance before, even acting as a personal tutor on occasion within the Two Twenty Three for those within and without your own Heartcircle. But those occasions have never been as continuous, and sometimes precarious, as your work with Aya has been in the last year and a half. As her mostly unseen performance at the conference early in the year showed, she'd come a long way, but also still had a great deal to learn. Much of that was repetition of the techniques she was learning, and for the simpler things, that was all that was needed. But for things like she'd done at the conference, there was more involved.
The rooms near the top of the Mytikas Spire had been suites once, according to the designs. High enough that you could just see out over the rim of Olympus Mons' caldera to the land beyond the huge volcano. There were farms stretched out towards the horizon now, beyond the city's primary fortifications, and their existence had given the flourishing Martian population true self-sufficiency. Of course, if the Shiplords reached the planet- you pushed those thoughts away. It was becoming difficult to do that now, with the next Shiplord assault looming on the horizon, but you managed.
Aya sat beside you on a long, straight-backed sofa, a small table between you and the long window that spanned almost the entire length of the outer wall. Her eyes were closed, and she breathed in a slow, steady rhythm. Someone watching with a medical scanner would have been able to tell that the breaths, in and out, were matched to her heartbeat. Every Potential started with simple breathing exercises to access their Focus, but it was rare that they stayed with those as they grew more confident in their use of Practice. Still, Aya was within normal tolerances for that process, and the complexity of her Focus made this sort of advanced foundation work expected. Given the nature of the Web, it was little wonder that she needed these to use that aspect of her Focus properly. She'd been able to give you an answer to your question from what she'd been able to tap into, but not the reasons why it was the right one.
She was starting to bridge that gap now, but there were years of work still to do before you'd feel comfortable with her accessing the Web on her own. New as she was to her Practice, and without a means to anchor herself like you did so naturally, connecting to the Web without you could be dangerous. Which was why you'd kept a tight control on the number of these sessions, no more than two a month at most. Most of your tutoring at this point involved more regular lessons. There, your experience with teaching Vega to Speak had been surprisingly useful. Most of Aya's practical lessons took the same form, though done with conventional Practice instead of empowered Words.
Until now you'd given Aya tasks during these lessons, something to find in the Web mostly. This time, you'd given her the freedom to roam. Directed work with the Web could only take her so far. If she was to find a way to anchor herself, she needed to explore the construct on her own. You were still providing an anchor point for her, but no destination. It was odd, really. Before you'd started teaching Aya, so much of what you'd done with the Web had been little more than instinct. You'd known you could explain it, but when talking to Vega and those like her, you'd never had to.
Someone had once told you that, at some point, the only way to learn more of something was to teach. Your work with the student Potentials of the Fourth had taught you much, but you'd never needed to explain something like the Web to them. That had been for later in their lives, and most likely only for the Harmonials, who like Vega would be able to understand it on a level so fundamental that words had no meaning. Aya did share the same overarching theme as a Potential, that much was true, but she lacked the general conceptual framework that most Harmonials possessed. Just explaining what she needed to learn, how to do so notwithstanding, had been a challenge you'd not known how to approach at first.
Still, that you were here now, watching her flit through the Web in careful steps, showed that it had worked. And it hadn't just been Aya who'd learnt from that experience. Delving into the conceptual framework of your Focus to help your apprentice find hers had revealed things about you. Most notably that during the Second Battle of Sol, and to a lesser extent Second Contact, you'd done things with your Practice that you'd never thought you could. Your Focus was fundamentally a peaceful one, a reflection of your own existence a person most comfortable restoring the world around them.
You'd taken that beautiful and peaceful power and turned it into a weapon wielded against the Tribute Fleet. Dress up Purify as you liked, but you'd struck at the Medicament - the name still made you shiver - with a singular intent: to destroy. Your work with the Contact Fleet had been comparatively light, but it had still pushed up against the edges in some places. Of course, it was easy to salve your conscience in those instances for what you'd been giving back to those infested by the Shiplord nanotech. But it didn't change that some of what you'd done there had come perilously close to the edge of what the ideal you embodied in your Focus was comfortable with.
The worst part? You'd been aware of the conscious dichotomy of those actions for several years. You'd…not ignored it, but you had found other things to do with time that could have been spent investigating how you'd been able to use Mending as a tool of war. Not to heal, not to make things stronger or return them to what they'd been. But to fight.
Aya stirred, and you focused on her again for a moment fully, checking where she was. Her eyes were open, but they were unfocused, staring across the Web from the figurative viewpoint she'd found. You'd never told her about that one, but you'd hoped she would find it. The view was, well, like nothing else.
"Did you mean to make it so beautiful?" The words pull you firmly back into reality even as your thoughts try to turn. Aya's voice is a breathless whisper, but not unexpected. The content, however, is. "All the endless patterns, and so many of them link back to you. Did you mean for that to happen?"
"In a way," you answered, after a contemplative moment, turning your face to look out towards the horizon. "But I never planned it. It just," you sighed, casting your mind back, wondering where the first moment had come. "Happened. The Circles were needed, or something like them was. But my part? I was just there. I saw the need, I felt it, and I tried to…make it better."
"And you poured yourself, so much of you, into it," she takes a breath, her brown eyes still unseeing, looking out across a very different picture of humanity. Her words are strangely distant, or would be, if you hadn't seen it before. "You know one of my friends wondered, I think she still does, why you made so few Artefacts. Being able to look at this, I think I'm starting to see that you never did make so few. It's just that…" she trailed off, the moment of cognizance within the connection fading. She'd be back soon. If she'd entirely remember this, well, you'd find out then. Was she right, though?
The Circles had been your creation, that was true. But had you made them that way, it was hard to find the right word. Intent was wrong; you'd meant to make something to help the world. But had you meant to create it this way? Perhaps it would be better to ask if it mattered. Those things had started as yours, and you could tell that Aya's vision of them was correct in so many still leading back to you in some way. But they weren't yours anymore, not like that…were they?
Something more to think about, you considered ruefully. Maybe one day that would stop happening, but somehow you doubted it. And truthfully, wouldn't that just make the world so very boring?
Aya stirred again, and you felt her rushing back into the here and now, following the anchor and beacon of your making into reality. Her eyes flicked closed, and opened clear, aware. She yawned, stretching to loosen her muscles after hours spent sitting.
"I found something," she told you, and you waited patiently as she sorted through her memories to find it. It took time for the human mind to reorganise itself after something like that, and that included memories. It was why you'd wondered if she'd remember what she'd said. "I could see so much, Amanda."
"I know," you told her with an approving smile. "I was hoping you'd find that place, Aya. It's a good start for what you still need to learn."
And maybe, you thought as she started to ask questions, the moment of tiredness swiftly forgotten, it would be good for other reasons, too.
A Healers Fire: 76 + 34 = 110/???
Of Words And Melody: 100 + 35 + 34 = 169 + 183 = 352/???
New action unlocked.
Last edited:
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So here we have the first example of Amanda teaching, and a pretty continuous confirmation of how, as Amanda notes herself, there comes a point at which the only way to learn is to teach. Amanda has taught before, yes, but not like this. Aya needs some very specific lessons here, and as part of those has given Amanda some ability to look into herself. She's not finished with that process, and has actually found it complicated here by something Aya's said. But that's honestly probably a good thing, in the long run. And though Aya is having to develop a lot of stuff from scratch, at least where the Web is concerned, that will be to her benefit once she's done.
Of course, once she's done is going to take time. Years, even with the rolls she's been getting. Next up, the long-awaited Arcadia Progress Report!
Of course, once she's done is going to take time. Years, even with the rolls she's been getting. Next up, the long-awaited Arcadia Progress Report!
Last edited:
Aya instead of a kid saying it, but it fits.
Also, All Hail Amanda, God-Empress of Mankind! Or is that Neo-Queen Amanda?
Healer's Fire is going to take a little while, isn't it? Just because it runs so counter to who Amanda is, on purpose granted, but still.
Also, All Hail Amanda, God-Empress of Mankind! Or is that Neo-Queen Amanda?
Healer's Fire is going to take a little while, isn't it? Just because it runs so counter to who Amanda is, on purpose granted, but still.
Last edited:
Ahahahahahaha.
Wut.
The rolls make snowfire cry over on the Discord.
*pats snowfire's head*
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I hoped you'd like it! And yeah, it's going to take a bit, but probably not as much as you might expect. She's already done this stuff before, most of this is a matter of working out how to stabilise herself when she does so. That's not easy, but it's not as hard as working out how to do it from scratch would be.
Teaching, it seems, has its benefits.
*faint sobbing sounds*
Last edited:
- Location
- Florida
Really looking forward to what that new action is.
I give it equal chances of being something spawned off the nat100 or what I suggested with investigating the Circles being Amanda's Working/Device.
Although hearing how Snowfire writes it will be interesting.
- Location
- Kansas City area
I prefer a cup of sake when I get ridiculous rolls sadly that meant I rather drunk each time after rolls.
Turn 22 - Arcadia Progress Report
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Arcadia Progress Report
You shifted the virtual pages around the space in front of you, setting them out for careful examination. The year was ending, and with it, you'd finally found the time to look at how Arcadia had managed with their projects. One new one, and two continuing, though the last had been deeply affected by the conference at the start of the year. It's hard enough to do research without not knowing where you were going. And much of your time had been spent focused on Aya over the year, as your apprentice began the slow process of growing into the power she'd Awoken to.
Still, the first report was almost refreshingly free of those things. You'd chosen to take up pursuit of the final piece needed to complete the Orrery. The advances in computing technology required were immense, and not just because of what they would do. Creating a system where every switching circuit was replaced with lagless relays was the sort of work that took time. And it wasn't really your speciality, either. Computing was something you understood, and you'd need to understand much of its infrastructure to properly rebuild the cities of the world lost to the Sorrows. But beyond that? It had never been part of your focus. Still, there's always time to learn, and you had two invested and highly skilled individuals to help you. At first, you hadn't known if lagless relays small enough had even existed.
Lightless Circuits: 84 + 26 (Learning) + 25 (Vision) + 31 (Iris) + 20 (Archive of Terra) = 186/???
Amazingly, they had. Making this sort of shift in computing technology would be a crowning work for a generation of specialists, before any new hardware developments for the task. Yet Arcadia had made similar strides in the passing of years, because it was necessary. This was no less essential, and in some ways more so than anything the Institute had ever worked on. Without this technology to give you a way to predict the War Fleets without the use of Insight, no rebellion could prevail. It would take time for the Shiplords to reduce its systems, but reduce them they would, unless you could give your allies a way to protect themselves.
Both the virtual creations of humanity came together in pursuit of this goal, but they were not wholly driven by survival. As AIs, Iris and Vision run on electronic hardware, and the possibilities offered by faster than light processing capacity were incredible. In many ways, you saw it as akin to the perceptual acceleration that Sidra granted you, and it wasn't an incorrect way of looking at things according to Iris. In that context, you could understand why the two AIs were so excited, or at least as excited as Vision ever really got. The older AI had been spending more time in the Vault recently, aiding in recovery efforts, and the painstaking process of trying to recover the circuits that had allowed her to act as the Elder First's Project Insight. The data itself was long gone, but the way in which it had been gathered might be recoverable with enough work. Yet most of her time this year was spent focused on this project. According to her it was simply more efficient, but you're not convinced. In the end, it mattered little.
War Office Development: 35 + 42 + 10 = 87 + 186 = 273/???
Whatever the mix of reasons that brought the two together, no one could deny the effectiveness of two AIs working towards a single goal, and looking at what they've achieved makes you very proud of the woman that your daughter had become. Arcadia's teams contributed as well, of course, and you did too. But to put it in context, the aid of the War Office only barely eclipses the work of the two AIs this year. All towards a greater goal, and one that's become far more than just concepts with only a year of work, but it speaks to power of humanity's children when they truly exert themselves.
The designs then were, in many ways, still quite basic. But there was a steady evolution towards more than just proof of concept circuit models already coming through. With that was a steadily growing realisation that the systems you currently possessed would require further miniaturisation to produce the mass to power ratios that were projected to be required for the Orrery system to function properly. The less said about the energy cost of those systems, though, the better. The cooling systems alone were going to require some truly creative heat management solutions.
Rollover banked (+273). Research action unsatisfied.
Or they might not, you considered, moving the next summary file onto the main reader. The sun had moved appreciable since you began, but you still had time, and this was important. FTL circuitry would revolutionise computing and so many of the fields reliant on it. But in many ways, it was still small fry compared to the other two projects that Arcadia had been focusing on. No doubt that feeling would change as the technology matured, but you already knew what the Third Secret was capable of. You're still a long way from accessing it if Mary's predictions were right, and you've learnt to trust those, but there had been progress last year. Progress that you could feel as much as Mary did, though in different ways.
Where that path was taking you? You weren't sure, but you couldn't travel without moving forward. With scrapping all their old work, Mary and the teams around her were able to find the beginning of the road. All that remained was to follow it, and overcome the challenges that awaited you. If the Third Secret was to be yours, there was no other way.
Tasting Lightning: 64 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 15 (Olympus Archives) + 20 (Momentum) + 24 (Rollover) = 199/???
Ministry of Science Research Assistance: 87 + 21 + 26 = 134 + 199 = 333/???
What you had in front of you now was progress. There wasn't much more to it than that, on one level, yet on another it was far more. The process of discovering a Secret had always been hard to track, and it was no different here. The work made sense, and each completion added to the puzzle before you, but the actual image you were building wasn't visible until the very end. And from what Mary and Ministry of Science personnel had said, that realisation was a strange thing. It came slowly, but when it happened, it simply did and with that moment, a species gained access to a Secret. Or at least, that's what those involved in previous projects thought was what happened. It's hard to tell sometimes, they'd told you, and now that you're involved in one of those processes you were starting to understand.
Finding a Secret had always been described as a melding of science and faith. Science to find the way, but faith to believe that it was there. You had to want what you'd find, in a way that seemed very precious. No one was really sure why that was, though some among the Group of Six believed that the Shiplords, some among the Uninvolved, or both, understood it. Humanity had no such knowledge, and anyone who knew anything about Project Insight knew better than to even consider asking Phoebe to try and find out. Not after what had happened to her project's predecessors. Maybe one day you'd know. For now, you simply had to trust in what's before you, like Potentials trusted their Practice. There's little point in worrying. If the Secrets were a trap, then the entire galaxy was well and truly snared.
Rollover banked (+333). Research action unsatisfied.
Putting those thoughts aside, you turned to the final report. A quick glance at the time confirmed that you'd allocated enough and probably some spare. That was good: tonight was a special night, after all. Fortunately, you already knew most of this report, on the priority within Arcadia that you'd found yourself working on the most and not just because of what you are. It's who you are, too. With the Conference breaking up in early February, the groups working on the next generation of Unison Platforms finally had what they – and you – had needed so badly: direction and a clear conscience to follow it. With that in your hands, there wasn't much you couldn't do.
And looking at the report? It wasn't all you and Arcadia, but you felt the sentiment still applied.
Circles Support:17 16 + 23 = 39 + 20 (Rollover) = 59/???
Ministry of Practice Support:11 77 + 24 + 15 = 116 + 59 = 175/???
Perhaps understandably, the Circles hadn't had a great deal of attention to spare this year. What little they'd had had fallen through a little in the autumn, even. Nothing deliberate though, and with everything they'd been dealing with you understood. This research was important, but not so much as to distract from larger concerns. What they did manage to do, though, was focus your teams. Morale in these situations mattered, especially after the morass that the year prior had been, and their aid after the conference where the Unison Intelligences made their choice known was invaluable. Jessica was proud of the staff she'd sent, and had every right to be.
From there, the Ministry teams found themselves focusing on base level work, constructing the final system images for the new Platforms. They'd also the Practice required to catalyse the synchronisation system of the handful of Platforms slated for production this year. None of them would be used until you could produce a coherent set of tweaked requirements for synchronisation, but you'd had to know if recreating that sublime Miracle had been possible.
Bound Souls:53 96 + 26 (Learning) + 21 (Vega) + 30 (Focus Synergy) + 25 (Harmonic Record) + 10 (Momentum) = 208 + 175 = 383 + 48 (Unison Intelligence Interrupt) = 431/400
You and Vega had led the way, working through theory that'd often felt half-remembered even as you'd known you'd never seen it before. Echoes of the Miracle that had forged the first Platforms, maybe, or maybe something more than that. It was hard to tell with life. Freed from its previous concerns though, Arcadia surpassed itself. It took months, but in the final quarter of the year you'd been looking at the base sets of the first new Unison Platforms in a generation. The Unison Intelligences themselves had contributed to your final success, providing the last pieces of the puzzle that had begun with their image and now would return it completely.
Of course, that still left you needing to revamp the criteria for synchronisation, with Gestalt Platforms research just waiting for the year to change. You still weren't sure if Arcadia would be part of that. Too early to tell, really, but couldn't you leave something like this to Adrianna's government if you wanted to? Maybe you could. But…maybe you couldn't, either.
Fourth stage development complete. Rollover banked (+31) for future Unison Platform based projections. Will reduce to half (+16) if not pursued next year. Research Action satisfied.
Only time would tell. Time that you'd now almost run out of this evening, and for something as special as this, you weren't going to let yourself be distracted. This was the day that your daughter had chosen to be her birthday, after all, and today she was eighteen. You'd not even tried to make it a surprise party, she'd have found out somehow. Instead, you'd simply declared the day to be that, and that you would be expecting her and her friends to indulge you in celebrating the day of her physical birth at least once more in the place she'd grown into an adult. She said she'd known better than to argue, but you'd seen the truth in her smile.
You shifted the virtual pages around the space in front of you, setting them out for careful examination. The year was ending, and with it, you'd finally found the time to look at how Arcadia had managed with their projects. One new one, and two continuing, though the last had been deeply affected by the conference at the start of the year. It's hard enough to do research without not knowing where you were going. And much of your time had been spent focused on Aya over the year, as your apprentice began the slow process of growing into the power she'd Awoken to.
Still, the first report was almost refreshingly free of those things. You'd chosen to take up pursuit of the final piece needed to complete the Orrery. The advances in computing technology required were immense, and not just because of what they would do. Creating a system where every switching circuit was replaced with lagless relays was the sort of work that took time. And it wasn't really your speciality, either. Computing was something you understood, and you'd need to understand much of its infrastructure to properly rebuild the cities of the world lost to the Sorrows. But beyond that? It had never been part of your focus. Still, there's always time to learn, and you had two invested and highly skilled individuals to help you. At first, you hadn't known if lagless relays small enough had even existed.
Lightless Circuits: 84 + 26 (Learning) + 25 (Vision) + 31 (Iris) + 20 (Archive of Terra) = 186/???
Amazingly, they had. Making this sort of shift in computing technology would be a crowning work for a generation of specialists, before any new hardware developments for the task. Yet Arcadia had made similar strides in the passing of years, because it was necessary. This was no less essential, and in some ways more so than anything the Institute had ever worked on. Without this technology to give you a way to predict the War Fleets without the use of Insight, no rebellion could prevail. It would take time for the Shiplords to reduce its systems, but reduce them they would, unless you could give your allies a way to protect themselves.
Both the virtual creations of humanity came together in pursuit of this goal, but they were not wholly driven by survival. As AIs, Iris and Vision run on electronic hardware, and the possibilities offered by faster than light processing capacity were incredible. In many ways, you saw it as akin to the perceptual acceleration that Sidra granted you, and it wasn't an incorrect way of looking at things according to Iris. In that context, you could understand why the two AIs were so excited, or at least as excited as Vision ever really got. The older AI had been spending more time in the Vault recently, aiding in recovery efforts, and the painstaking process of trying to recover the circuits that had allowed her to act as the Elder First's Project Insight. The data itself was long gone, but the way in which it had been gathered might be recoverable with enough work. Yet most of her time this year was spent focused on this project. According to her it was simply more efficient, but you're not convinced. In the end, it mattered little.
War Office Development: 35 + 42 + 10 = 87 + 186 = 273/???
Whatever the mix of reasons that brought the two together, no one could deny the effectiveness of two AIs working towards a single goal, and looking at what they've achieved makes you very proud of the woman that your daughter had become. Arcadia's teams contributed as well, of course, and you did too. But to put it in context, the aid of the War Office only barely eclipses the work of the two AIs this year. All towards a greater goal, and one that's become far more than just concepts with only a year of work, but it speaks to power of humanity's children when they truly exert themselves.
The designs then were, in many ways, still quite basic. But there was a steady evolution towards more than just proof of concept circuit models already coming through. With that was a steadily growing realisation that the systems you currently possessed would require further miniaturisation to produce the mass to power ratios that were projected to be required for the Orrery system to function properly. The less said about the energy cost of those systems, though, the better. The cooling systems alone were going to require some truly creative heat management solutions.
Rollover banked (+273). Research action unsatisfied.
Or they might not, you considered, moving the next summary file onto the main reader. The sun had moved appreciable since you began, but you still had time, and this was important. FTL circuitry would revolutionise computing and so many of the fields reliant on it. But in many ways, it was still small fry compared to the other two projects that Arcadia had been focusing on. No doubt that feeling would change as the technology matured, but you already knew what the Third Secret was capable of. You're still a long way from accessing it if Mary's predictions were right, and you've learnt to trust those, but there had been progress last year. Progress that you could feel as much as Mary did, though in different ways.
Where that path was taking you? You weren't sure, but you couldn't travel without moving forward. With scrapping all their old work, Mary and the teams around her were able to find the beginning of the road. All that remained was to follow it, and overcome the challenges that awaited you. If the Third Secret was to be yours, there was no other way.
Tasting Lightning: 64 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 15 (Olympus Archives) + 20 (Momentum) + 24 (Rollover) = 199/???
Ministry of Science Research Assistance: 87 + 21 + 26 = 134 + 199 = 333/???
What you had in front of you now was progress. There wasn't much more to it than that, on one level, yet on another it was far more. The process of discovering a Secret had always been hard to track, and it was no different here. The work made sense, and each completion added to the puzzle before you, but the actual image you were building wasn't visible until the very end. And from what Mary and Ministry of Science personnel had said, that realisation was a strange thing. It came slowly, but when it happened, it simply did and with that moment, a species gained access to a Secret. Or at least, that's what those involved in previous projects thought was what happened. It's hard to tell sometimes, they'd told you, and now that you're involved in one of those processes you were starting to understand.
Finding a Secret had always been described as a melding of science and faith. Science to find the way, but faith to believe that it was there. You had to want what you'd find, in a way that seemed very precious. No one was really sure why that was, though some among the Group of Six believed that the Shiplords, some among the Uninvolved, or both, understood it. Humanity had no such knowledge, and anyone who knew anything about Project Insight knew better than to even consider asking Phoebe to try and find out. Not after what had happened to her project's predecessors. Maybe one day you'd know. For now, you simply had to trust in what's before you, like Potentials trusted their Practice. There's little point in worrying. If the Secrets were a trap, then the entire galaxy was well and truly snared.
Rollover banked (+333). Research action unsatisfied.
Putting those thoughts aside, you turned to the final report. A quick glance at the time confirmed that you'd allocated enough and probably some spare. That was good: tonight was a special night, after all. Fortunately, you already knew most of this report, on the priority within Arcadia that you'd found yourself working on the most and not just because of what you are. It's who you are, too. With the Conference breaking up in early February, the groups working on the next generation of Unison Platforms finally had what they – and you – had needed so badly: direction and a clear conscience to follow it. With that in your hands, there wasn't much you couldn't do.
And looking at the report? It wasn't all you and Arcadia, but you felt the sentiment still applied.
Circles Support:
Ministry of Practice Support:
Perhaps understandably, the Circles hadn't had a great deal of attention to spare this year. What little they'd had had fallen through a little in the autumn, even. Nothing deliberate though, and with everything they'd been dealing with you understood. This research was important, but not so much as to distract from larger concerns. What they did manage to do, though, was focus your teams. Morale in these situations mattered, especially after the morass that the year prior had been, and their aid after the conference where the Unison Intelligences made their choice known was invaluable. Jessica was proud of the staff she'd sent, and had every right to be.
From there, the Ministry teams found themselves focusing on base level work, constructing the final system images for the new Platforms. They'd also the Practice required to catalyse the synchronisation system of the handful of Platforms slated for production this year. None of them would be used until you could produce a coherent set of tweaked requirements for synchronisation, but you'd had to know if recreating that sublime Miracle had been possible.
Bound Souls:
You and Vega had led the way, working through theory that'd often felt half-remembered even as you'd known you'd never seen it before. Echoes of the Miracle that had forged the first Platforms, maybe, or maybe something more than that. It was hard to tell with life. Freed from its previous concerns though, Arcadia surpassed itself. It took months, but in the final quarter of the year you'd been looking at the base sets of the first new Unison Platforms in a generation. The Unison Intelligences themselves had contributed to your final success, providing the last pieces of the puzzle that had begun with their image and now would return it completely.
Of course, that still left you needing to revamp the criteria for synchronisation, with Gestalt Platforms research just waiting for the year to change. You still weren't sure if Arcadia would be part of that. Too early to tell, really, but couldn't you leave something like this to Adrianna's government if you wanted to? Maybe you could. But…maybe you couldn't, either.
Fourth stage development complete. Rollover banked (+31) for future Unison Platform based projections. Will reduce to half (+16) if not pursued next year. Research Action satisfied.
Only time would tell. Time that you'd now almost run out of this evening, and for something as special as this, you weren't going to let yourself be distracted. This was the day that your daughter had chosen to be her birthday, after all, and today she was eighteen. You'd not even tried to make it a surprise party, she'd have found out somehow. Instead, you'd simply declared the day to be that, and that you would be expecting her and her friends to indulge you in celebrating the day of her physical birth at least once more in the place she'd grown into an adult. She said she'd known better than to argue, but you'd seen the truth in her smile.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
And there we go. If this is a bit intermittent, blame it on me and no one else, I was in an odd place as I wrote it and used a different style than usual. Still, I hope it gives you what you need. If nothing else, you've completed Bound Souls, so that's probably worth some celebration. Next we'll have your Answer post, and then News. Again, I'd like to have this done before May, but we'll see if that's viable.
Many thanks to @Baughn for looking this over for me. Any errors are mine.
Many thanks to @Baughn for looking this over for me. Any errors are mine.
Huh? Why is the lower roll the one that got used?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
There was a full reroll set done for Bound Souls post-conference. This wasn't a case of pick the higher. It was a case of go with the reroll. No choice involved.
Well that was a long turn.
Bound Souls is complete. Probably a Minor Action will pop up to help train newbies, but the major seems done.
So we move on.
Skins of Steel, or Practice In Unity? Or even Wings of Starlight?
I mean, I want to push Wings of Starlight(zoom zoom), but I acknowledge that Practice In Unity + Mother of Circles + Healer's Fire might be a better allocation of resources at the moment, especially since it falls into Vega's bailiwick and Mary isn't free.
Or is it more thematically appropriate to pursue a civilian-industrial option like A Clear Sky or Inheritor's Legacy?
Vega recreated a bunch of them, so her bonus should apply there too.
I'm open to opinions.
Bound Souls is complete. Probably a Minor Action will pop up to help train newbies, but the major seems done.
So we move on.
Skins of Steel, or Practice In Unity? Or even Wings of Starlight?
I mean, I want to push Wings of Starlight(zoom zoom), but I acknowledge that Practice In Unity + Mother of Circles + Healer's Fire might be a better allocation of resources at the moment, especially since it falls into Vega's bailiwick and Mary isn't free.
Or is it more thematically appropriate to pursue a civilian-industrial option like A Clear Sky or Inheritor's Legacy?
Vega recreated a bunch of them, so her bonus should apply there too.
I'm open to opinions.