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Mayu_Zane · 08-31-2019, 03:36 AM

smuchmuch Wrote:That's fair, but I'd still apreciate if we used Francoise and Feathr as filters. They can act as relays for the transmitions and We still have Vora do the speaking. That way if there's a direct mind control lin k thingy, it'll likely be broken while the negociation cna still happen

You: Feathers, can you act as a filter for me? Let the Paladin AI’s audio come in through you first, and let us know if anything’s amiss. Likewise, don’t let anyone else hear the Paladin’s words directly. You relay it to us yourself.

Feathers: Can do. You may speak now.

You: Attention, robot. This is Commander Vorador Mortanius, of the Saramis Alliance. Are you surrendering to us?

(Through Francoise) Paladin: Yes. You win.

Silence follows. Feathers speaks to you and the rest of the bridge.

Feathers: Commander. There was something off in that transmission. It’s outside of your hearing range, but I’m detecting some very low-frequency audio as well. Infrasound.

You: Anything coherent?

Feathers: No, it’s total gibberish as far as I can tell, but this is suspicious.

You: Hmm…

You speak to the mech again.

You: Robot, I say again, are you surrendering?

Paladin: What? You are unaffected?

Lagantis: Looks like our paranoia was well-warranted.

You: I don’t know what kind of trick you just tried to pull, but it didn’t work. Either you surrender or we destroy you immediately.

Paladin: The weapon has failed. I have no hope. Do what you will with me. I no longer care. I won’t even bother with poetry anymore. The light has gone from my life.

The mech’s weapons suddenly detach and fall to the ground.
After an hour, your forces retrieve the crestfallen mech. Your cyberwarfare specialists and engineers at R&D examine everything they can. Together, they compile a report.

Quote:=== PALADIN A.I. AND JET-KNIGHT MECH REPORT ===

Please Note:

To avoid confusion, the A.I. and the Mech have been given different names.

The AI is ‘Paladin’

The Mech model is ‘Jet-Knight’

The Jet-Knight mech was fitted with eight laser cannons, each one capable of penetrating shields and most armored vehicles. The armor itself is extremely tough, capable of shrugging off any conventional weaponry we have, as well as laser weapons.

The mech’s weak points are its leg joints, where the gaps between pieces armor are largest. Our pilots did not strike these points as they were focused on attacking the main chassis. The vents on its sides are also possible weak points, but they require sustained, intense heat to cause damage to its internal systems.

We have dubbed the armor fitted onto this mech as ‘Orical’, after a mythical mountain in Saramis mythology that was unaffected by earthquakes. We do not know how to obtain more Orical armor, though we suspect the enemy’s dealings with the Authors was how they were able to acquire this material.

After some testing, we have determined that Orical can be destroyed through either the use of our black hole weaponry, or by freezing the material and then striking it, as it becomes very brittle when frozen at minus 2 degrees Celsius.

The Jet-Knight has no cockpit, only an electronic brain where the Paladin is installed. The brain is attached to a wireless network relay.

As for the jetpack fitted on the rear, its power source is the same as the green orbs, the Stomachs of the Polluted. This means it would be centuries before the jetpack runs out of fuel.

The AI installed onto the mech and directing the other mechs was actually left unnamed by the enemy’s leaders. They simply called it ‘Robot’. It seems to enjoy the name ‘Paladin’, so we will continue calling it that.

The Paladin AI is an odd mish-mash of old software joined together to form something that can control a bipedal robot, fire laser weapons, fly and also maintain a cohesive wireless network. From what we’ve found, the Paladin was cobbled together from a self-driving car, an automated sentry gun, a wireless router and an autonomous flying drone. This has caused the mind to gain an identity crisis and become obsessed with finding quirks for itself.

The AI contains a program that the enemy’s developers named “Mind Reaper”. It delivers a psychic ‘virus’ that completely erases a person’s mind, and then put the host body under the control of the Paladin AI.

To deliver the virus, the AI first needs to activate the Mind Reaper program. Then, the AI must speak to an organic target. If the target hears the AI’s voice, the mental virus immediately takes effect and the target dies.

We have managed to isolate and remove Mind Reaper from Paladin, and with some tweaking we can actually weaponize it against our enemies, if you so choose. Theoretically, we can add Mind Reaper to our friendly AIs and then use it to allow them to take command of organic foes.

However, there is a hard limit:

The AI cannot command more than three bodies without causing severe data corruption. We don’t understand how, exactly, but it seems when a mind is erased, a copy of it becomes added to the AI, and if more than three minds are taken then the original AI is subsumed.

Ghulls: Wait, we’re getting a message from Carpenter, our Swiftback infiltrator in Region 1. Showing on screen:

Quote:This is Swiftback Carpenter AN-92Q, transmitting through encrypted channel.

I have eliminated and impersonated an enemy officer, Lieutenant Holden Fawkes. Found intel from enemy memos and deleted some files important to their strategic goals.

Enemy’s priority one is our Omni-Factory.

They know it is the heart of our logistics: It manufactures materiel, organizes our supplies, provides automated maintenance for vehicles, constructs buildings.

They know where it is and they will not stop attacking it. Attacks on civilians are a distraction effort. They know terrorizing populace will cause people to lose trust if you stop protecting them.

The enemy is aware of their dependency on organic units. Mechs are one part of this effort. A cyborg programmer has been hard at work building an army of human-sized combat drones, to be used in tandem with their organic forces. Today’s assault was a test.

I am still trying to find out where they got the Mech’s armor (called ‘Magog’ by the enemy, you call it ‘Orical’) from. It does not behave like any kind of armor known to the Human Federation, it does not conduct any heat at all and shockwaves are severely dampened. Bullets and explosives are useless against it.

Black hole weaponry and freezing are your best weapons against anything fitted with Magog Armor, as it stands no chance against a black hole and the armor becomes severely weakened if frozen.

I also found an image that I believe worthy of your attention. It contains information taken from this planet’s moon, but was rejected by the enemy’s leader, Robert North as he believed it did not match his assumptions about the entities known as The Audience, the ones the Authors have been searching for.

He saw the picture and deemed it ‘a mistaken assumption’. The source of the image is Dr. Yoko Redwood. She said the symbols in the image briefly appeared on the moon during your assault on Fortress Cyrano and she drew them as she saw them on telescope. She then wrote her interpretation of what she saw.

Transmitting image now. The upper part is what she saw, the lower part is her conclusion. I will contact you as soon as the enemy makes another move.

Ghulls: Picture’s coming in.

[Image: A86hfgv.jpg]

You: A giant eyeball looking at a figure being torn apart. Lagan, it’s-

Lagantis: The Audience.

You: So Nadir’s death brought the attention of the Audience?

You then feel something probing in your mind. It is an extremely unpleasant sensation, as if a giant needle has made itself home in your skull. The feeling passes, but you become convinced that the message is true.

Rainhar: The Audience… wants to see more Authors die?!

Lagantis: Well, damn, sounds good to me. Let’s go kill more of them until they stop.

You: No wonder Robert North didn’t want to believe it.

Lagantis: At least we know the Audience are ‘rooting for us’, in a way.

Ghulls: This feels so wrong. Weren’t the Authors created by the Audience? And now they want us to kill them? Just because they find dying Authors ‘intriguing’?

You: It sounds like we’re all just providing amusement for gigantic beings.

Feathers: May I share my thoughts on this?

You: Go ahead.

Feathers: Perhaps we are thinking about this the wrong way.

You: How so?

Feathers: What if this isn’t about entertaining an audience? What if we’ve been using the wrong word to describe what they are? What if what we’re dealing with aren’t an ‘Audience’, but an ‘Observer’? Consider: The universe we live in is alive, as proven by what Lagantis witnessed and what the enemy on the Saramis Homeworld attempted with the Cosmic Organ. What if the Audience are actually researchers, watching us like a scientist looking into a petri dish? Perhaps to them, the cosmos we live in is just an animal under observation they were watching what would happen if they introduced the Authors, Redactors and Auditors.

You: So you’re saying we’re living inside a sample just lying around somewhere in a colossal laboratory?

Feathers: Does it sound that implausible?

You: At this point? I’m not even sure what counts as plausible anymore… but I can’t deny it makes some sense.

Lagantis: I’m not convinced yet. We’ll have to get more information about the Audience to get a more solid conclusion. Right now, whether we’re the victim of an experiment or someone’s sick idea of entertainment, we have a war to fight.

You: You’re right. We need to focus on our survival. The Authors are locked in denial and they’d rather see countless lives get sacrificed instead of confronting the possibility that what they’re doing isn’t helping.

Lagantis: Agreed. Let’s first focus on what to do about this Paladin AI, the salvaged Jet-Knight mechs and the Mind Reaper. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. I am VERY interested in using the Mind Reaper against our enemies.

What should we do with the Paladin AI, the Mind Reaper and Jet-knight mech? We cannot build a new Jet-Knight since we don’t have Orichal, but we could put it to use.

Your options:

- Send the mech back to Region 1 and to send psychic radio signals into enemy territory.

- Erase the Paladin AI. It might be waiting for an opportunity to hijack communications. The risk is too great.

- Keep the Paladin in storage in sleep mode (unpowered).

- Reprogram the Paladin to be loyal to our cause and have it pilot the Jet-Knight.

- Remove all Orichal material from the Mech to refit onto a different vehicle.

- Add the Mind Reaper ‘mental virus’ to Feathers/Francoise then have them communicate with Region 1 personnel.

- Have Monash, the AI driving the networked Hovertanks, pilot the Jet-Knight mech.

- Add Mind Reaper to Monash’s arsenal, allowing it to take control of enemy organics during combat.

- Something else?

>_

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