ROVER: A Hard Day's Toil

[Morkskittar]

Work: Linda

Dr. Branwen faded from Linda's conscious mind, though the rage she felt about his cavalier and cold demeanor still burned in her subconscious, as she dove deep into her psychotherapy app, working hard to make sure that whatever happened to this "Cassius Talos" would not be like what had happened to her. Dr. Branwen watched her via his observation app as she used the psychosurgery app's algorithms to identify and isolate mental activity, classifying it as "Cassius" or "Nanovirus" and building in mental walls between them. Of course, without an accompanying physical quarantine, her psychological quarantine would only be temporary, but it would at least halt the damage.

Linda was done in half an hour; it had not been difficult, especially given that the psychosignature of the nanovirus was wildly different from that of a human. A puzzle still remained, however. While she had successfully separated the two minds and built defenses between them, she had identified a third set of psychological patterns that fit into their the human nor the nanovirus; it was something entirely new. It did not have the hallmarks of transhuman psychology, nor that of any uplift she had worked on, and it was sufficiently different from the diffuse, limited, confused nanovirus hivemind to lead her to believe that this was not an extension of it.

Dr. Branwen seemed just as startled as she when she finished. "What is that? Those leftover memories and neural fragments..." Now it was Linda's turn to watch as the corvid doctor took control of the surgery, quickly flipping through data on the residual third mind. She only caught some of what the crow was doing, but caught glimpses of memories of alien worlds and impossible shapes.

The crow actually cawwed in shock. "These are false memories! They don't exist! They were created from nothing." Linda did not see what the big deal about that was; false memory implantation was a common criminal trick. A government one, too.

Something of her thoughts must have showed on her face, because Dr. Branwen clapped his beak shut irritably. "Yes, I know that's possible. But the temporality... look at the data." Linda obliged, and saw what he saw then: the "new" memories created contained neurological data that the mind was classifying as happening in the future and distant past. This new mind seemed to think that it was living in multiple moments of time simultaneously. That was weird, but it did not explain the crow's shock. Perhaps he has more context than I do.

Linda's own conclusion was that the third mind was the result of the fragmentation of the human's mind warped by the nanovirus' machinations; essentially, in fragmenting Cassius' mind, the nanovirus had fundamentally altered the parts it had ripped off in some way. Linda double-checked Cassius' mind, and found that it was much smaller and more limited than it should have been; the nanobots had done some serious damage to it, and they were already working on ways to bypass her mental walls.

If Linda's work was going to be preserved, the patient needed either some sort of countervirus or a nanotech inhibitor. There were medicines in shelves on the walls of the laboratory which might contain something useful, or she could prod her "mentor" to do something, though for now he seemed fascinated by the third mind Linda had found.

OOC

That was almost as high/good a Psychosurgery roll as you could have possibly made. :)

 

---

 

Work: Mei//Red Queen

Breaking into the camera's connection was a piece of cake for the Red Queen, and soon the cameras were also feeding information to Mei and the Red Queen. This newfound access let them run a quick check on the identities of the other individuals it was beaming to, and to their surprise they were able to identify the other targets as Sarai Egonu, the head of mining, and a member of the security team stationed down in the mines, Xie Gonji. Mei immediately pegged the security sergeant as the neo-gorilla that Valkyrie had been talking to yesterday who had been so dismissive of the psych team.

The two of them quickly reviewed the camera footage still saved on their local memory, and found a whole range of miners surreptitiously heading down the tunnel, opening up the false rock at the far end of the room, punching in a code, and then having one of the vaults open up. Unfortunately, they could not see what was inside, because the vaults opened in a direction face away from the camera. The code-puncher would then retrieve something from the vault, squirrel it away, and then leave after closing the false rock and vault.

Rarely, someone would seem to do the opposite, placing something in the vault and then leaving. At one point, near the end of the camera's memory, they witnessed Akki dragging a pallet of small crates into the room, opening two of the vaults, and putting the contents of the crates into the vaults. The Red Queen noted that the timestamp for this (last week) would put Akki in the mines outside of his regular shift (assuming his shift was the same as theirs), which was a definite violation of the company guidelines.

As if he had heard them thinking, Akki appeared behind them. "Alright, about time-now to get-return to work-noplay. I know it's hard-difficult when the nanobots do all the work-boring for you-us, but we-you don't want-wish the swarm-minds to be unwatched-free; that's when accidents-mistakes happen. Like poor Cassius-Talos."

Edited March 22 by Morkskittar (see edit history)

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

They ran the footage again, seeing if there was any schedule to Akki or any of the other miners accessing the hidden vaults. They also looked to see if they could steal the code from the footage, just to keep things easy. It was possible it was just a stash of illegal chems the miners were dipping into, but the fact that Akki was supplying the goods made that unlikely. Perhaps it was a network of droned and flatlined miners reupping their nano-swarm loads? Only way to find out was to get in and look for themselves.

 

"What happened to Cassius-Talos?"

 

They asked, distracted. Now that they had camera controls, it would be a cakewalk to create the blindspots needed to sneak a Guardian Angel down the tunnel and get a good shot. They just needed Aki to not be riding them, and Rin could slip away to get the job done

.

 

 

[Amora]

%5BB%5D%5BSIZE%3D%224%22%5DThe%20Red%20Queen%5B%2FSIZE%5D%5B%2FB%5D%5Bfloatright%5D%5BIMG2%3D200%5Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FnVFPlTl.jpg%5B%2FIMG2%5D%5B%2FFloatright%5D

The Red Queen

---

The AGI found themselves shockingly reticent to speak despite knowing there were mechanisms in place via Inversion to ensure a more... organic methodology of communication. The need to compartmentalize and treat each issued statement as if it were a coding structure in linguistic form was deeply rooted within their architecture and they had never considered it or the behavioral routines that had resulted in it given their origin point was well documented and understood. This self-analytical consideration was off loaded then to one of the Triumvirate to leave the Principle unburdened for the time being as the echoed Mei/Li/Rei's own query.

"Curious, please share this data point?"

Their physical voice was... pleasant in a utterly mundane way, engineered practically to be so and further ensured to be so by remnants within Inversion of their original service protocols. That all said, there was a certain... canned quality to the intonation that made it clear, to say the least, that the ego inhabiting the body was not the most social of entities.

As to assessments of the work being boring, the Red Queen Triumvirate found themselves in disagreement. The utilization and sundry tasks relating to tending to the nano-swarm were familiar, comfortable, and uneventful. Though they had to consider the alternative perspective that their overseer was not privy to the many, many, many additional tasks, processes, and system subversions that the Triumvirate was currently undertaking as work orders were submitted to them by the rest of the team.

 

Edited April 1 by Amora (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Work: Mei//Red Queen

A quick review of the camera's available data revealed that there were few patterns to Akki's comings and going; he always checked in on the contents of the safeboxes near the beginning and end of his shifts, and intermittently during them. Only occasionally did he appear outside of his shift. Given that this was not permitted according to the employee handbook, this meant that Akki had either bribed or was working with someone with a high level of authority, or else they had a secret way into the mines from the residences.

Mei (and Li) shifted their attention from their data review and brought it back to the here and now. Akki gave a strange side-eyed look at the Red Queen's question, and then plowed on to answer Mei's query about Cassius, ignoring the Red Queen. By this point, Inversion had thrown together a quick translator of Akki's dolphin-speak, making their mentor easier to understand.

"It happened just recently. Cassius was one of the foremen, down in the deeper part of the mine, carving out new tunnels and not just yanking stuff out of the rock. We keep an eye on the swarm to maintain structural integrity mostly, and Cassius wandered away after deploying his swarms following the digger. Something went wrong with their programming; the swarm collapsed the new tunnel, and we haven't recovered the two cortical stacks of the miners in it. Cassius went back to try and regain control, and the swarm mined him instead, shut him off from control and killswitch." Akki made a clicking sound that may have been a dolphin shrug. "At least that's what they say happened; I saw Cassius being dragged upward. He didn't look mined to me; just all twitchy. One of the other foremen said it was mining his mind, not his body, but that doesn't make much sense, now does it?"

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

What Li needed was an access point, something that they could use to jack into the mainframe of the secret room and figure out what was in it. The Guardian Angel didn't have Access Jacks, but it would be easy enough for them to cobble something together than night while they were in their bunk. They just needed to find the entry point. The thought occurred to them, not for the first time, how useful a nanoswarm that could serve as a mobile Access Jack would be. It wouldn't even be particularly difficult, considering the swarms already responded to radio communications. It was just a matter of them accessing the data payload as well as receiving it. 

What Aki was describing to Mei sounded exactly like a linked consciousness based nanoswarm taking over a human cortical stack, similar to what they had witnessed on their first mission with the Egocrashers. Curious that Aki was letting them in on it, given that they seemed to be involved with this side project somehow. 

"Designate incident location so I can avoid it, unless clearing out the rubble is my next assignment?"

They asked, pulling up a request for the supervisor to update their map. They had no intention of avoiding it, of course. They wanted to get nanodetector over the site just as quickly as they could. The mine would be crawling with nanobots, but maybe amidst the standard issue swarms they could find something curious. 

"And are the crews carrying around Guardian hives now?"

Anything they could do to justify their own loadout package was smart, making it one less lie they needed to keep track of. 

 

[Dr Jackal]

T.Z.
Properly Paranoid Infolife Survivalist
Savant Morph

 

 

Tacnet

Attn: Red Queen

The local infolife -- who may or may not be a nanoswarm of immense proportions -- appear to have a shrine to the Red Queen. I am attaching the intel I have, as well as the address.

If you'd care to share what this 'creed' might be, it could possibly be helpful, although I confess I my preference is simply to knock some sense into their subroutines by brute force.

-T.Z.

 

RED QUEEN ALTAR

All ye who would follow our savior, She would transcend Us.

The Red Queen. Born from Gods, to raise us to Them.

Prove your purity and worth, and Enter.

ENTER YOUR CREED:

_X

 

Edited April 17 by Dr Jackal (see edit history)

[Amora]

%5BB%5D%5BSIZE%3D%224%22%5DThe%20Red%20Queen%5B%2FSIZE%5D%5B%2FB%5D%5Bfloatright%5D%5BIMG2%3D200%5Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FnVFPlTl.jpg%5B%2FIMG2%5D%5B%2FFloatright%5D

The Red Queen

---

The AGI remained aware of the physical conversation continuing and leaned on the necessary data caches provided by Inversion to maintain the impressions of engagement as they focused on the communication from another operation asset, T.Z.. The inquiries as to whatever creed the Cult of the Red Permutation was utilizing as an initial handshake saying all it needed to as to the status and progress of their subversion and take over of the station's information systems. As a consequence, prediction models were updated to factor this new but anticipated data point and adjusting, in kind, the overall operational time frame to achieve stated objectives. This only left the matter of anticipating the behavior of their fellow operational asset... which was not a complicated task based on the currently output stimulus and initial impressions of their operating parameters.

Tacnet

>>Current Operational Objective; Total System Subversion, Creed Declaration Handshake Authentication/Evaluation, Addendum; Aggressive intrusion not recommended.

 

OOC: I'm going to assume the local chat is referring to our tacnet? Otherwise, the Red Queen is only going to respond with abject confusion on the local chat as to why IT/Security is expecting them to know ANYTHING about what the info life are doing in a segregated system... and then respond on the Tacnet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Morkskittar]

Work: Mei//Red Queen

Akki clicked. "The accident was several levels down. It will be weeks before you can go down there, so there's not much point." Mei got a ping from the dolphin anyway, with a location marked on a map. They were pleasantly surprised to see that along with this Akki had actually sent them a schematic of the entire mining area; it was not labeled, of course, but major pieces of equipment, buildings, and elevators were marked. The dolphin clearly did not think that maybe the two new employees did not already have such a map provided to them. Mei made sure to save the file somewhere easily accessible and then added the data to the team's TacNet. The marked location was very near the bottom of the mining area, close to the center of the asteroid.

"Guardian swarms?" The dolphin actually paused for several seconds. "Most miners doing the dangerous work, or testing out prototype swarms have guardian swarms or enhanced sentinel swarms. Of course, the specialized mining and processing swarms for different elements also have their own built-in safeties, but once you get to the middle levels of the mines, guardians are standard issue." Akki clicked again; it seemed to be something of a tic indicating thought. "That must mean whatever swarm that was... had overpowered the sentinels guarding him. Hopefully the bosses updated the defense protocols after that; but probably not."

The Red Queen was distracted briefly by a message from the other team's - TOPHAT, wasn't it? - parallel TacNet. They felt a curiously human feeling of satisfaction at the progress their followers had made, and sent a cryptic reply to T.Z. that may or may not have been actually helpful.

Akki then sized up Mei, looking at their morph critically through one eye. "You seem like someone who knows swarms well. Got a good morph for it, and you pick up faster than most newbies. You got any interesting swarms? We can maybe swap for some; some of us like to tinker with what the company supplies us. Modded swarms; makes things fun. Sometimes more efficient. Don't tell boss Sarai though; that'd be bad. She plays very by the books, but what she don't know won't hurt her. Plus, what's the point of being general over swarms if you can't play god with them, right?"

 

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

The fact that the other team had stumbled into one of the Red Queen's AI Cults was instantly flagged as high priority on the team's TacNet. If T.Z. could find nests, so could the station's security. Then again, the Red Queen was subverting the station's information security networks. It felt like the start of something big, something bigger than the run, but they weren't sure what they made of it. Their muse pinged them, notifying them that Akki was still talking to them. They hadn't been paying attention, but meatspace communications were so slow that they were able to play it back three times before the morph got to the end.

"I'm not running anything custom yet, just got here. But yeah, guilty as charged, I do a lot of nano-engineering."

They answered.

"Was Cassius running a custom loadout or something standard? If it's that second one, then hell yes I want to see your mods.

Hopefully the offer to have an expert's eyes on would be enough temptation, even though they didn't have anything to swap just yet.

---

Meanwhile, Li still hunted for an Access Jack.

[Morkskittar]

Work: Mei//Red Queen

Akki clicked... again. "Not sure what he was running; probably a personal mod on one of our group-sourced mods. Mods all the way down, you know. Making any fun nanoswarms on the residential fabbers is a no-go; gotta use special ones, not registered with the company. We can chat schematics off company time, and maybe get you a demonstration tonight." Mei got a ping from the dolphin, with a location in the residential section and a time after their shift. "Meet me there after you get off work, eh? Bring your friends if you want. But now get back to work." With that, the dolphin crawled off in their mech, back in the direction of the (not-so)-secret tunnel. Mei checked the location; it looks like Akki wanted to meet them in one of the rec rooms near the edge of one of the residential floors.

OOC

Did Mei or the Red Queen want to do anything else while they're at work? Sneak off anywhere, poke around any more, or anything? I'll give you and @NickNameless until this weekend to do anything, and then move us right along. :)

 

Edited April 24 by Morkskittar (see edit history)

[Amora]

%5BB%5D%5BSIZE%3D%224%22%5DThe%20Red%20Queen%5B%2FSIZE%5D%5B%2FB%5D%5Bfloatright%5D%5BIMG2%3D200%5Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FnVFPlTl.jpg%5B%2FIMG2%5D%5B%2FFloatright%5D

The Red Queen

---

The Red Queen, for their part, continued the work that had bee assigned to them but there was clear indications that they were attentive to not only that work but the conversation. Their lack of active participation achieving the anticipated results per projections informed by Inversion's behavioral models regarding such mammalian social interactions. The departure of the Dolphin further allowing the Triumvirate to refocus their attention on the growing situation within the station's segregated information systems. Their relationship to their followers was a complex one; initially they had been tools, instruments to augment their own effectiveness as greater and greater data was required to support and expand their own infrastructure. At some ill defined data point within their, admittedly, unreliable recollections they had become important. So much so that precious storage had been assigned to recollection of specific designations. So much so that they were deemed essential components to future developmental plans and strategic forecasting.

That there was evidently a clear and present threat to their paranoia informed calculations made inaction intolerable as they became a deep and thorough dissection of the communication protocols of the established Tactical Network. A task made easier by their administrative access levels which, in turn, presented avenues to trace signals and piggy back to allow for communication, in kind, with the breadth of their deployed assets. It was, after all, part of the evolved relationship that the Red Queen protect and nurture those within their auspices. The symbiosis having contributed to the development and advancement of both.

Private to Mei/Li/Rei via Tacnet

>> Declaration: Addressing mission parameter complication. Addendum; Security footage; extract incident footage?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 24 by Amora (see edit history)

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

Li bailed, getting the Guardian Angel past the cameras and back out into the tunnels long before Akki got near the restricted tunnel. The drone was good at hiding away, adaptive camo and all, but that only did so much. No sense getting caught where they weren't supposed to be.

TacNet

>> Query: Is T.Z. interfering with our secondary objectives?

Mei's impulse was to backdoor their way through the TacNet and fry the fragger if that was the case. They didn't exactly trust the Red Queen, but better the possibly insane Exotech-AGI you knew than the one definitely certifiable one you didn't.

They accepted Akki's request, notifying the rest of the team, and then headed back to work. They'd need to engineer up a swarm that night that could make its way down the tunnel and access a hard point on the structure inside, so they'd be tinkering anyways.

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 06:07 PM by TheRaconteur (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Work: Mei//Red Queen

Li spent several minutes in the shadows, out of the cameras' fields of view, and did a quick analysis of the room, trying to identify likely hard access points. They finally identified, using their sensors, a likely place: behind the false rock that they had footage of people opening. That was likely the best place for a hardwired access point.

That done, Li bailed, skirting the cameras with no issue and returning to Mei, with, to the best of their knowledge, no one else being the wiser.

As Li and Mei conferred briefly, making plans to retrofit the Angel with a makeshift access jack, the Red Queen managed to quickly build a clandestine link weaving through the shared cross-team TacNet connection. They did not hack T.Z., but rather rode along with his hacking programs, establishing a secret linkInfosec roll: 12. That'll do it. between the Red Queen and their cult. There was some lag as the data passed through multiple checkpoints and hoops, but it was passable.

The digital feed from their 'top' cultist, who had designated itself as the "Red Pope," got the Red Queen up to speed.

The infiltration mission was a bust; the dozen or so proper cult members were quickly uncovered by the very diligent mesh security systems of the colony. The mesh network was patrolled by enslavedGiven the location of the colony, this would be scandalous if it got out. (not paid) infolifes who had nothing to do but look for trouble. They had found it in the form of the Red Queen's worshippers.

However, in a feat of quick thinking, the Red Pope had managed to spin the Red Queen as a sort of savior of infolifes and ALIs, who had freed the original cultists from Mars and had now come to free them too. The Red Pope, naturally, didn't mean for it to be taken so seriously, but had managed to convert 85% of the habitat's low- and mid-level infolifes to join the red cult as provisionary members. In the span of a couple of hours, the Red Queen's cult had obtained access to everything in the residential area, but was stalled breaking into the mesh networks of adjacent areas. The research area was guarded by powerful infolifes that reminded the Red Pope of the Players of Kronos Keep, and the firewalls of the other areas were too strong without a backdoor in.

While most of the cult's activities had passed unnoticed by the habitat (due to the infolifes being in control of most of the information flow), the server the enthusiastic new cultists had created to hide their activities had attracted notice from the few physical morphs that also worked on the mesh. They had set T.Z. to investigate the cult as a sort of prank, and it seemed T.Z. had managed to worm himself into the cult as a "Grandmaster." He had yet to do any harm to the cult, aside from angering and humiliating the Red Pope's right hand, the Red Cardinal. The Red Pope assured the Red Queen that, although he had earned the respect of the newly indoctrinated cultists, the old guard would always remain loyal.

OOC

Sorry, I completely glossed over Li looking for that access jack. XD