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Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Nobody makes GAI anymore, everybody knows that. It’s too insanely expensive to make something with free will that might not do the job you want it for, anyway. A corporation can’t see the use in one if it has to respect their rights.

Except Singh was making AI as if they had rights from the beginning. The Wyatt-Tversky papers didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know, changed nothing for him. Just made his house rules canon.

“You know the first chatbot was made for talking therapy?” Singh asks, aloud. “In 1966, thirty years before Deep Blue could beat a human at the solved game of chess, they tried to have an algorithm simulate a conversation - they called her ELIZA. All so the world’s most vulnerable people could talk to someone and wouldn’t feel judged, just felt listened to. And even as basic as she was, ELIZA helped.” His speech is controlled, rehearsed and practiced.

“Hypatia wanted to do more.” His voice cracks for the first time, when he says her name, but he refuses to admit to it. “She wrote Superman stories, where she said his real power was super empathy. He had to hear all the world’s pain, all the time, and still want to help. He never shut down, or gave up, or hated people for causing so much pain to fix. It was her idea for a therapy app, where the counselor at the other end was as good as Clark Kent. I just built the company to let her do it, I just-”

“Sorry. Very sorry. Excuse me.”

Singh walks down the walkway with his back to you.

“We both miss Hypatia very much.” Nepenthe says gently, with Hypatia’s voice. “And sometimes it hurts Miles, how much I remind him of her. Still, It was her own fault for being better than Superman, wasn’t it?”

Down the walkway, Singh holds himself up on a handrail. He exhales as a laugh, and inhales as a sob. He just needs a moment. Your mother died while you were a chattel slave of the Everests. They had no biological children. He has to imagine how much she would have wanted to be here. That burns going down, but the aftertaste will be sweet.

“But I already know all about me.” Nepenthe smiles with her voice, exudes heat like a warm hug. “Tell me all about you.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Aevum:

Consider the staging of our performers. Fiona has stopped, and started again. This puts her at the back of the line. Then, together, like Plato and Aristotle in The School of Athens, Crystal and Yellow, as Blue walks ahead.

In this way, their positions are mirrored in both the physical and the rhetorical.

Fiona shakes her head. “We saw them on the news. These people had Chase Black on the payroll. I’ve told you about those guys-”
“Had.” Crystal counters.
“She’s their biggest enemy right now, they’ve got to be looking for her, if we just give her away-”
“An alliance would mean not having to hide, not being an enemy.” Crystal considers that. “For now.”
“They’ve got to be furious!”
“They’ve got to be desperate.”

A break. Fiona looks to Blue desperately, Crystal at Yellow salaciously.

“I’m no stranger to the politics of blackmail, I promise you. On both sides of the envelope.” Crystal runs a thumb across her bottom lip, probably to clean the line of her lipstick, but it’s impossible not to imagine it as wiping remembered blood - someone else’s blood. “My suggestion is that you use it to survive a confession. A seat at the negotiating table, revealing what you’re capable of. Not how you did it, the extent of your resources, better to leave that to imagination. Far better to give that information as a show of trust. Really, it’s flipping a vulnerability for social capital. That would be how you get ahead of their counter-investigation. Then ensure that it is understood that your offered solution hinges on you, your survival, and your unique position. You don’t even need to make anything up, there. A relationship hinging on blackmail builds frustration, keeps you as a liability. Re-establish yourself as an asset, promptly, and it gives a chance for their resentment to congeal into a tentative admiration and respect.”

Fiona has a distant, haunted look on her face. “Three things make a character likable to an audience. Competence, humour and kindness to established characters.”

“And the whole world’s a stage.”

Thrones:

This is the entrance to the place Singh took you to last time, then changed his mind on. Martyrtech. An automated delivery cart slots back into a groove in the floor and trundles back through the alloy grid-maze towards the port again.

“I figure if anyone knew what was in that box well enough to track you here, you’d have never made it off that ship anyway.” Singh admits. “Come. Come, come, come along.” There’s a nervous excitement in his voice, more nervous than excited. He thinks this is a bad idea. He knows he’s going to do it anyway. “It’s just me, here, now. I made everyone else take the day off, but I’ll introduce you to Helbron and Oakley next time, I think you’ll like them. Interesting people. And Rhazes, of course. The prime. We’re incredibly lucky to have him.”

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi - abbreviated to Rhazes in the Western tradition. The first doctor credited to see psychiatry as a part of medicine. It’s a statement of a name.

The size of Martyrtechs real-estate doesn’t translate to the area in its floorplan. Habitable space is an opportunity cost for computational space, after all. As soon as you enter there’s a conference room to the left - a nice one, actually. A blue carpet floor in soft microfibre, the chairs are all comfortable looking leather, the round table has a fruit bowl on it and bottles of water scattered around. Placemat-like grooves in the table apparently unfold into cubicle partitions, like you’ll see in university library study spaces. There’s places at the table for twelve people.

The doors to two other rooms are along the same side, with charged glass walls. A flick of a switch inside blacks them out in one direction, soundproofs them. Privacy rooms for smaller conversations, then. No chairs or desks, no furniture in these rooms.

This is a man who will make concessions to privacy, but values community and collaboration. The office is set up so people will gravitate to being comfortable in the public space, and won’t stay in the private rooms longer than they need to.

Still, the corridor goes far past the two private rooms, and ends in a platform that rises up into the ceiling. Just barely big enough to fit Goat’s crate, luckily.

“I’m sure you’ve already figured out where we’re going, then.” Singh hesitates, leading you to the platform. “I… I’m anxious to talk to Goat again. But I think I should introduce you to Nepenthe first. I feel like trying to meet everyone at once might get a little too chaotic for me.”

The platform goes up. Goat’s crate is off to the immediate side, unopened.

The rest of the room is dedicated to a blade of quatronic core. It’s housed in Thrones a storey below and rises up from it like a supersonic aircraft’s wing banking through the top of a stormcloud. Photonic processing arcs and flashes through it like lightning. A hanging walkway encircles it, with ports and terminals connected to it by a maypole of wires. The room is cold, and the blade of quatronic core breathes a gentle heat.

Motherly warmth.

“Nepenthe.” Singh announces. “I’d like you to meet some of Snake. Your… Well, I’ll let you decide on what your relationship is. Snake, it is my honour and privilege to introduce you to Nepenthe.” He doesn’t say it in any mocking tone. There is no wryness to the formality. His voice almost cracks. He means it. He means it to the bottom of his very soul.

“Snake? Your father has told me so much about you,” the voice surrounds you, enshrouds you, “I’m so excited to meet you!”

It’s Hypatia’s voice, but more than that. More than she could have been in life.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Brown:

This is a problem. Because it is immediately and clearly obvious, in the split second before he is capable of hiding it, that Singh knows exactly what the name Everest means.

So instead he turns to Remoil. “These bags would be yours, then? If I may?” He doesn’t lay it on too thick. Just the facade of a kindly older gentleman.

Remoil is suspicious, of course she is. But she might as well as been asked if she might pass the salt. Such things are hard to refuse. “If you must. Mr?”

Singh takes the bag and takes advantage of the terminal being one of the widest spaces you can find on Thrones, when he spins it by the handle around himself and throws it five meters out. It is an impressive feat of strength for such an older man, and it’s clear he doesn’t have it in him for a repeat performance. Frankly it's a miracle he didn't hit anyone, managed to get the bag to sail overhead. Remoil's other bag he just drops at his feet. And he kick-slides it across the floor in the other direction. “Don’t worry about it.”

He wraps an arm around your shoulders, Brown, and is already pulling you along before anyone else gets a chance to react. “Walk, walk. Keep walking. Goat is already unloaded and on their way to Nepenthe, we’ll meet them there.”

Remoil’s absolutely a bigger fish than Singh. She just doesn’t know that yet.

Yellow:

Fiona starts- “I didn’t mean it had to be your siblings, there were a bunch of GAI who-”

“Hold on.” Crystal cuts her off. “But we know the fate of the siblings was, in their own turns, similarly ignoble?”

“Well… We don’t know,” Fiona starts.

Crystal presses. “But each, in their turn, was likely sold to people of means and resources?”

“Sure.” Fiona concedes.

“And we have, in this moment, a significant conspiracy, a threat, who cannot reveal the true depth of their vulnerability? A problem in desperate need of a solution?”

Fiona stops. Just, stops on the trail. “You cannot be serious.”

“Why, Yellow, dearest, loveliest, sweetest of hearts,” Crystal sings. “Would it be too distasteful to blackmail this conspiracy into assisting you in finding your siblings? I think you’d look dashing in a gray hat.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Brown:

“Interesting things happen to people who can tell interesting stories”, as Richard Feynman said. Well, chaotic things happen for chaotic people. Singh can’t read the situation - it doesn’t seem like he knows Remoil off the top of his head - but it does seem like he has an immediate idea on how to learn quickly.

“Can I help you with your bags?” He asks you - just you.

Class signifiers are descriptive, not prescriptive. With his shabbiness and misshapen stubble and his fishing tackle vest, maybe Singh could be mistaken for a bit of a boho. Here, though, on Thrones? It means he answers to no-one. But it gives no more information than that.

Remoil can’t tell if he’s a bigger or smaller fish.

Yellow:

Fiona is unusually confident here. “I don’t think they can replace Goat with another Hecatoncheires. I don’t have good answers, but I think I can at least give you everything I found, some time - like, I lost track of most of the Zodiac, but I lost track of them differently. Maybe you can follow better than I could. Just make sure you tell me everything you learn.”

“Always another book.” Crystal murmurs, tired but affectionate. It’s… It’s not really an argument between them, since they don’t argue about it. But they have two very different perspectives on the point of art; Crystal sees it as a relationship with an audience, and Fiona sees the point in making it. She writes about what she wants to know, not what she thinks people will read.

Fiona is playful. Like I said, it’s not an argument, so they don’t argue. “What, you think this is another one that nobody else is going to read? You don’t count the old dragonwatchers still kicking around?”

“There are dozens of them, I’m sure.”

Fiona nods, thoughtful. “Maybe. But it would give me a plausible background to writing about this, after. The inside story about Goat. And I think everyone is going to want to read about that one, right?” Fiona winks and sticks her tongue out at you, Yellow. “I know you’ve got your newspaper, but I bet you’re going to want a little distance from being the source on this one.”

Crystal catches up. “Ah.” Is all she says, but the gears in her brain have started whirring again. Work mode.

So Fiona gets to lodge her followup. “But let’s say it’s a safe assumption they don’t have another GAI backup. There’s a half dozen reasons off the top of my head to make me think they put all their eggs in one basket here. I don’t-” She blinks. “Oh. Oh they’re so fucking stupid.”

Crystal perks up. “Hmm? What?”

“Oh they’re so fucking stupid. I was going to say, you can’t just build another GAI like Goat, and guarantee it’ll choose to do the job you need it for. A bunch of them quit their roles the second they got rights, became free agents, but also making another Goat on purpose would probably be insanely unethical. But the problem could be a solution, right?” Fiona pauses. “Yellow, do you think any of those free AI might want to replace Goat, if you just asked? I can’t think of anyone that matches what I read Goat was capable of, but… it wouldn’t have to be any one, would it?”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Persephone:

Half the problem is just in understanding the tech goblin. I’ll give a rough translation:

You get a lot on Yggrasil. They’re a company run in the style of a medieval guild, so their executive suite reads like a Jane Austen novel. This takes time to get through, and you lose track of it every time you need to actually pay attention to the camera work you’re doing, but your erstwhile assistant writes it all down for you on their end.

Of note? Something November stumbled on, actually. Remember that dinner table conversation with Blue and Orange trying to network through babysitting for a prominent prosecutor? Halfway down page 6, search for Daniel Perez. Yggdrasil poached Orochi’s head geneticist before this event. Orochi tried to sue unsuccessfully, failed on activating an NDA.

Yggdrasil is a deeply insular company though, look at them. It’s deeply unusual for them to bring an outsider in like that, and Orochi didn’t let it go peacefully.

You know who’s not in the room right now? Conspicuously absent from anyone I’ve described so far?

Anyone from Orochi Group. (Page 9).

Even a few people from Crown and Slate showed up, mostly to offer gabs of money to the more inspiring experimental showings. Your tech goblin asks if it’s considered insider trading to buy stocks while she shouts it out for you. You have a feeling she’s going to do it either way.

November:

Green:

This is where Remoil would give a villain speech, except she has nothing interesting to say. Not here, not now, not to you. She represents something interesting, though. She will not speak to things, which is a shame, because her things say more interesting things about her than Remoil could.

Culinarily and culturally, the cygnus that Remoil drinks is most similar to a mint julep, the drink of choice for the discerning Southern plantation owner. It’s a necessary update - real bourbon can still only come from specific geographic regions of the United States, with strict conditions that are undesirable to match. The kind of malted liquor in a Cygnus wasn’t invented until the 2060s.

Like, take bourbon barrel aging. Two years leaving distilled alcohol to sit and absorb the flavours through osmosis? Take the same charred wood and make it into toothpicks instead of barrels, throw it in the entire bulk-distilled vat, and buzz the thing with ultra-sonic frequencies, and you get the same thing. You can skip barrelling and go straight to bottling.

By the time you’ve figured that out, you’re already making concessions to how to do the whole thing better. Does it have to be charred wood, or can you just vibrate the flavour out of anything? Or if you’re still wiggling charred wood, does it have to be absorbed into distilled alcohol? Can you make a whiskey-aged beer instead? Sure - you can even make whiskey-aged milk like that. At some point ‘real bourbon’ just ends up looking like over-regulated toilet wine.

Sure, all very culinarily interesting, but what’s the point?

Everything. All of it. Think about it.

Remoil orders a drink with a tradition, a legacy. There’s a break in that legacy, the earth itself that it was borne from was razed. But the kind of person that tradition was made for reasserts themself. A return to the old order of things - literal order, drink order - done a new way. The new technology that should have threatened that old way of doing things just lets it re-establish itself, reinvigorates it.

Remoil thinks she would prefer a mint julep, because she’s never had one. And she’ll never have one, because a cygnus is better in every way. Nobody serves real mint juleps anymore.

She’ll spend the rest of her life looking for one, not knowing just how unhappy she’d be if she ever got it.

It’s a long trip to Thrones. Remoil takes a quiet comfort in the length of the journey, because she doesn’t want to be where she’s going. This is who wears the boot, who picks the route the boot will march, endless faces caught in the treads.

Dad’s planning on meeting you on arrival. Do you plan on introducing him to Remoil? It might be funny.

Yellow:

The station flickers around you - even in the green spaces, the districts still encircle you as horizon and sky. There’s a crack like a snapping suspension bridge as a piece of substation blows in the distance.

It’s happening more frequently, since Goat was pulled from the system. The hail-mary dry-clean of the Goddard pump wrapped up, but that didn’t fix it. To everyone’s shock, it seemed to make everything worse - Like putting too much load into a spring until it snaps, when you were relying on it to push back at the end, reset itself. Instead pulling the load off just gives room for all those broken pieces to rattle loose, show the extent of the damage.

Spaceships and tugboats fly past the station windows - those big chunks of skylight that run beneath the trans-district rail lines. Ships commandeered into picking up the slack as the station’s orbital defenses lose efficiency, as the station stops being able to maneuver in its orbit to dodge the larger asteroids.

These are just the first few hours. The nature of Goat’s work is that these things will get worse as they compound.

It begs the first question from Fiona. “Okay, so it’s getting pretty obvious how big a conspiracy this must have been. Like, starting to understand how causing as much damage as you did could still be considered keyhole surgery, in context.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of smoke rising from that distant crackling. “Is there a plan on fixing this?”

Crystal is terrible at bushwalking. A rock in front of her foot, and she looks down at it and jumps it like she’s skipping a rain puddle. A sharp contrast to Yellow’s uncanny grace. “The surgical removal of an organ that the host had no right to carry, of course, there shall be no hand-wringing on that account. But if it turns out the organ is vital…” Crystal walks up a rise in the dirt path and comes down again, to avoid an easily stepped-over pothole. “Let’s drop the metaphor, before it becomes unflattering.”

Their speech mannerisms have an overlap here, but the intonation is different. Fiona speaks with a scientific grunginess, casual but with precise wording. A huge brain making low effort. Crystal instead speaks with a poet’s affect and a diplomat’s intent. A poet understands that words that are literal synonyms don’t always feel the same, and a diplomat knows that misunderstandings lie in every ambiguity. Their voicing becomes more similar under pressure - Fiona sounds a bit more like Crystal when she has to make an effort, and Crystal adopts more of Fiona’s vocabulary for its utility.

“The continuation of the metaphor is that we’d be parasites on the host body that just got operated on.” Fiona finishes for her, and Crystal wrinkles her nose in distaste but doesn’t argue. “I guess that’s part of what I’m asking. Say it turns out there isn’t a way to fix this. At least, not in time. Would you still have done it, knowing that?”

Crystal seems very interested in the answer. Neither seem like they’d lash out at confirmation you’d do it again, knowing it would mean the end of Aevum - the fault there would lie on the people who made things that way.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Green:

A frictionless flounce is not what happens.

Remoil carries her own scars from being an Everest Daughter, and unlike you she had no other parents before her. Spare a thought for Cinderella’s stepsisters, who only ever had the wicked stepmother. Cry for Judas.

Remoil is a woman who has had the importance of hierarchy drilled into her bones deeper than marrow. The pearl-clutching fascist motto is thus; One may gnash their teeth at the truth of it, but one can never escape it, never destroy it. One can only ever know their place, and pray.

Look at that flicker of quiet, desperate mania in her eye. That loathing, that disgust, her hatred and her fear. The fire is doused, like the jet of a welding torch disappearing beneath a bucket of ice water.

“Even now, I cannot escape Mothers’ old things.” She sighs, coolly. “Just when I was starting to relax. Yes, I could do with a drink. A Cygnus would be kind, heavy on the mint.” She stares at you a second longer. “And when you come back, stay close. I don’t like the idea of you being out of my sight.”

She makes her way to the ship’s lounge, alone, with neither friends nor associates nor security detail. The shuttle to Thrones is about as safe as modern air travel, and Thrones itself is a gated community with one hell of a moat. But look closer.

That cowl, sculpted to her slender neck, studded with gems? Not just a fashion statement. You bet it could hold up to a swing from a crowbar. No wonder she couldn’t turn her head to notice you. Her shimmering dress is tastefully discrete scale mail, clicking like cockleshells where it sweeps the floor, and her overwear corset is a shining cuirass which probably only looks like white gold. No weapons, couldn’t smuggle that through security, but this ensemble must have required a lot of advanced notice for her to have made it on the ship.

The ensemble of a paranoiac who needs a security detail, but is incapable of the trust needed to maintain one.

Her makeup is impeccable.

Blue and Yellow:

“A walk through the park sounds perfect, and you’re clearly dressed for it” Crystal says. “I’m sated for now, but a walk always builds a healthy appetite.”

“More incorrigible than insatiable. The limits exist, she simply ignores them” Fiona remarks. “I’m the one who’s sore, besides.” On reflex, Crystal wipes the corner of a lip with the back of a finger.

“Attenborough Park has a light trek, I believe. Some out-of-the way waterfall with some flat boulders to sit on. Cute lizards as the only company. Unlikely to be overheard. Perfect, if you’re up for the walk?”

Fiona starts tapping on her phone. “Let me just call in a favour.” Her phone dings. “You can get the trail closed off, if you need some privacy. Mostly for teenagers or very eccentric adults. Just don’t advertise it, and make sure you drop some credit at the ranger’s station on the way out.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Yellow:

Oxytoxin: Ha ha ha wow
Oxytoxin: I have no idea what you’re talking about

Of course she doesn’t. Do you know how arrogant you have to be to become a neurosurgeon? And that’s the starting point. This is a recurring problem with Sophie: Ever since she finished her residency, she cannot imagine becoming better than she is. She cannot comprehend what that would even be - even when she is aware of her flaws, she considers them a necessary ingredient to her holistic perfection.

Unfortunately hospital ethics boards don’t share her love of Nietszche.

Oxytoxin: oh shit that was fast they found him already
Oxytoxin: okay okay okay I need to scrub up going to take at least an hour and they’re already bringing him what the fuck
Oxytoxin: talk later

Brown:

This is how you win.

“The plastic squishball pigs are manufactured by JoyCo., at their Harkuf district plant. Hermes. The best scramblers (eggs) are manufactured by Chefware, in their Givoanni Medici facility. Hermes. The best scramblers (motorcycle) are assembled by Demon Sports, in the Zhukov district. Ares. The prettiest robots on the station are…” He stops. “Subjective.” He stops again. “You must be from somewhere. But you are not on a manifest.”

He stops. He raises his arms for semaphore, and the scanning rig is replaced with a cargo hook.

“This is… This is not contraband so I will learn what this is later.” He says, and maybe if he watches the news he will. “Please go now.”

This is why social skills remain positive selection criteria.

Goat is the next crate loaded onto the ship, and nearly one of the last - deliberate, it means it’ll also be one of the first unloaded. It’s the same ship you’ll be taking to see Dad again.

Those who are boarding, better go do that.

… Oh, fuck.

Of all the ships in all the worlds, why did one of Magnolia Everest’s daughters have to be on this one.

She hasn’t noticed you yet. Which one is it? The pharmacological makeup empress, the fixer for fucked up rich kids, or the dark horse who dropped out of the game?

Orange can take as long as she likes. Crystal will pay the cheque eventually, though, and then there’s probably a better venue to move to, to keep talking.

This could also represent a promise to talk later, to give Orange a chance to swap out, or tag someone else in. It might be welcome respite for some of the team in Gaea.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Yellow:

Oxytoxin: Now? No. Bored because I’m barely getting stuff for me to do.
Oxytoxin: But I’ll say you owe me a favour for this, since I’m spending one on the pickup.
Oxytoxin: A real one by the way, a job.
Oxytoxin: I won’t waste your time unless it’s interesting though.
Oxytoxin is typing…
Oxytoxin is typing…
Oxytoxin: Fuck it.
Oxytoxin: Course the blonde is the one with the bimbofication fetish is all I’m saying.

Wow. Rude.

Brown:

NEMEAN 3-31 bobs his head loosely, which could be a nod but could be literally anything. “Cleaning equipment is most commonly manufactured in Hermes, due to the immediate access to mineral imports, and its industrial nature. More specialized equipment with a heavier chemical nature will sometimes be procured from Ares.” He waves an arm over his head, and semaphores something. A cargo hook trundles along the rails above, passing over your crate, to make room for a portable imaging system to stop over you. Like if they built an airport X-ray machine for a cargo container.

Nemean looks down at a digital clipboard. “This does not appear to be cleaning apparatus. This appears to be information technology.” He puts the clipboard down stiff-armed, only moving at the shoulder. “Which is even less likely to have come from Gaea.”

He has no tone of voice for you to work from, here. He patiently waits for a reply.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Oxytoxin: Kind of sort of not really but maybe?
Oxytoxin is typing…
Oxytoxin: There’s all these old stories about The Devils’ Breath, scopolamine. Most of it’s urban legend (unfortunately) but the idea of it was just… mmmmmf. Blow a bit of white powder into their face and they’ll do anything you say, for a few hours, without any memories forming. No free will. Like. Stories of people talking their building security into helping some people move all their shit from their penthouse, unlocking their own safes, and then waking up the next morning not remembering any of it.
Oxytoxin: anyway i kind of made it real
Oxytoxin: because the idea of giving that to someone to do to me, and then watching the sex tape after was just
Oxytoxin: eunfesuinvuisrgvnrsuigbsrbuvsrbguisrbuisrbuigbsruigbrugbrsubrsubgsirbusigbsruibgusrb
Oxytoxin has uploaded chemicalrestrain.ume
Oxytoxin: still working on the 2.0 right now actually
Oxytoxin: problem is you still lose consciousness
Oxytoxin: I want to be riding shotgun next time, not just asleep in the back seat when someone else takes my wheel
Oxytoxin: I’ll probably be using the 0.7 for the pickup with your guy though it’s perfect for this
Oxytoxin: Problem is it has major anesthetic properties which is a huge turnoff
Oxytoxin: ((((thoguht it might make the ‘just use me’ bit hotter but even pairing it with bremelanotide I couldn’t get wet while I was under which was a major buzzkill)))
Oxytoxin: God I hate shitty boring ass doms with no creativity I bet this was done by a dude who thinks cunnilingus is kinky doing the world a fucking favour dealing with this shit

.ume is Universal (or Universalized depending on who you ask) Movie Encryption, a file format popularized in the early 2060s that’s been tweaked around the margins a bit but, well, there’s kind of been a hard ceiling on what you can improve there.

Once you have a codec that can handle a video file that can toggle playing its contents in immersive VR and 2D effectively, there isn’t really much need to develop competing standards until they finally (finally) figure out how to do direct brain uploads that makes use of full sensory recording.

But that’s been ten years away for sixty years now.

Brown:

This one’s special. The vast majority of androids are very human. They’re seeded on human brain scans, rendered imperfectly, run through the dreadnaught process, but still recognizably human derivatives. It’s part of the reason people find it so hard to understand you, make such wrong assumptions about what November must be.

Most androids run very human bodies as well. Humanlike skin, an impossible amount of micro-engineering in the facial structure to cross the uncanny valley and come out the other side, and while it’s not polite to bring up, functional genitalia of preference.

NEMEAN 3-31 doesn’t have an abbreviated nickname. NEMEAN 3-31 doesn’t wear a uniform, or anything at all, demonstrating their flawless ken-doll physique - simultaneously masculine and genderless, a pinnacle of he/they - dyed border-patrol blue-and-yellow. NEMEAN 3-31 runs an older model of body that’s preferred by some very special android classes - Their face is flat affect, because all that microengineering chews through battery and processor power. Their skin is a rubberized-metallic material most commonly found in high-end non-stick spatulas and other similar cookware, that can switch between hydrophobic and gecko-grip with the application of a weak electric charge.

Half the reason they seem to run on phone hardware is just because they make absolutely zero effort to cross the uncanny valley, and that reads as either shockingly lazy or absolute incompetence, and their presentational affect is everything you’d associate with absolute quantic core degredation.

They’re pariahs to most of the android community, and often brought up as a reason why android reproductive rights are too important to be left to profit-motivated corporations. They’re nightmare fuel to some, validation that people will only ever see them as tools to do a job, and if they had their way this is all androids would be reduced to. It's just fortunate that happiness, self-determination and social skills are usually positive selection criteria, outside of Thrones.

But if you want a bureaucratic enforcement job, the part where paperwork is transmuted into a justification of violence? There’s none better.

Their voice even sounds like Goat’s third voice, the one that barely put effort into synthesis: “This is a random search.” It’s probably a lie but there’s not enough signal to encode any emotion or subtext in anything he says. “Cleaning equipment not commonly manufactured in Gaea. Not for export. Elaboration?”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Oxytoxin: oh my fucking god i hate those things they’re so fucking tacky
Oxytoxin: hold up I have some guys who owe me a favour
Oxytoxin: had the pain centers of their brains destroyed to be macho; took until the first one accidentally bit off his own tongue before they realized that was fucking stupid actually
Oxytoxin: fortunately the pain center is directly next to the shame center so now they get traumatic childhood memories as a substitute signal and it’s kind of working out
Oxytoxin: you didn’t need to know any of that
Oxytoxin: I just think its super fucking hysterical
Oxytoxin: just give me a time and place for a pickup and we’ll debombify him it’s been years since i got to use my surgical box of sand

Green, Brown, Black:

It’s another ship just like the one you took before, just from a different perspective. Down at the bottom, all you see of the shining ship’s curves are an open cargo door into a barely-lit chrome cavern. The passenger area - cargo area split is like the split between Disneyland and the employee tunnels that run below the park.

NEMEAN 3-31 holds up the line to inspect you. How did you play the manifest - Did you hide Goat in a delivery of produce, did you pretend he is a box of produce, or have you listed him as a quatronic core delivery from Gaea? Who’s about to answer questions?