ROVER: A Hard Day's Toil

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

Well then, that was a concern. They'd been there less than a day, and already they appeared to have stumbled on information the tech heads considered need to know. They couldn't keep asking for it without drawing attention. They needed to acquire the info through backdoor channels.

TacNet

>>> Consider Dr. Hoftada primary subject of interest, acquire additional examples of their work through encrypted communications with peers. Li will assist. Station security cannot be alerted to the requests.

By asking other academics to send them the research, they could in theory get around the station lockdown on the info they needed.

"What's up with the rehab?"

Mei asked, considering Marcus was volunteering.

Edited January 30 by TheRaconteur (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Valkyrie

Valkyrie's conversation with the neo-gorilla turned quickly then to safer topics, and eventually her new friend excused herself. Valkyrie sat at the table a while longer, thinking, and then got up and began to head back to the suite.

 

---

Red Queen//Linda//Mei

Working together, the Red Queen and Mei quickly analyzed the likely source of the missing files. The outbound query was fine, and the inbound queries for the other articles were fine... but there was no evidence of any response to the outbound query reaching them. The pair of them reached a swift conclusion: local mesh security was blocking access to Dr. Hoftada's writings. Someone on the station did not want people on the station reading them, and most likely had instituted a firewall of sorts to block any of his published articles from being downloaded into the local mesh from outside it.

Fortunately, Linda had a solution. She had been thinking, and used a few mental tricks to drag a memory up to the forefront. Yes. She knew the name of Mir-Hossein Hoftada. She had even read some of his early work. There had been something about a scandal associated with the name... even with her impressive mental powers, she could not remember the details, but she did remember the name being associated with breaking the ethical standards set by an institutional reviewer board somewhere.

Linda also never went anywhere without her locally stored reference files; she quickly pulled them up and searched through them. Periodically, Dhara would scan the r-net for any articles they thought would interest Linda and add them to her reference. Linda was a bit behind on her readings, so had built up a backlog, and tucked away in her list of papers to read, there it was: Thinking Fast, by Dr. Mir-Hossein Hoftada.

Meanwhile, Mei, with the aid of the Red Queen did a quick analysis of the research and writing of the two articles they had access to. While they were not trained psychologists and thus could not really identify any latent narcissism in them, they did notice some similarities between the manuscripts. In fact, Mei was fairly certain that the Pelegyne and Hargraves articles were written by either the same person, or two people trained to write in the exact same style.

Hoftada's article, when Linda provided it, seemed to be written by someone different, however.

Linda would have to tell them more about the psychologyLinda can take either a Kinesics or Psychology test to psychoanalyze the writing style of all three articles. :) of the writer.

During this flurry of analysis and exchange, Marcus just kept talking. "I only mean that the rehab shrinks label a lot of people as 'indefinitely unfit to return to work.' And then they don't. A bit extreme for a mining colony, don't you think?"

OOC

My apologies for the delay! Linda can take a test if she wants to psychoanalyze the writing, but otherwise this weekend I'll start you off to your day jobs!

Edited January 31 by Morkskittar (see edit history)

[NickNameless]

Linda

---

Berating herself for not making the connection sooner, Linda delved into Dr. Hoftada's papers while trying to maintain a semblance of conversation with Marcus on the side.

"I does sound peculiar when you put it that way," she replied uncommittedly, while focusing more on her readings. "I guess I may have a different point of view once I'll be sitting on the other side of the desk..."

 

 

(Kinesics

[Edit: Failed attempt, retrying to make this right...]

Kinesics 65

Edited February 3 by NickNameless (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Marcus leaned back, and then nearly fell over, as there was no wall to lean against. Instead, he opted to stand straighter. "Maybe. I would be... curious, as to what you could tell me about what really goes on behind the desk. And the union could make it worth your while."

As he spoke, Linda did her own analysis of the papers, but her mind was unfocused as she tried to focus on two things at once. It made a solution like MeiOr, though she didn't know it, the Red Queen's.'s seem somewhat more attractive. She first focused on Dr. Hoftada's, but found it very hard to get a good sense of the man from his writing, which was very clinical and technical, and very rarely showed any sign of what he was thinking, even in the "Future Work" section of the papers. She was not particularly surprised at this; self-reflexive psychologists tended to be good at masking their true thoughts in any public-facing medium.

Linda turned her attention then to the other two papers, and concurred with Mei and the Red Queen: they were written by the same person. But by the same ego, or two forks from the same origin? She did not even have to read very hard to notice the arrogance in the writing; based on the data and results, the language was overconfident to the point of absurdity, and she noticed that the papers were both single-author; both very unusual in neuroscience research, where there were usually at least a few graduate students helping out. Unless there were illicit forks involved... Linda knew that academia still did not have a good idea about how to handle multiple forks of the same ego working concurrently on a paper. Thankfully, it was not particularly common.

Linda's conclusions, which she reported to the group, were that Hoftada's paper was written by a guarded individual who never let their true feelings show, and that the other two were written by the same somewhat narcissistic, or at least very arrogant, individual.

OOC

Going to give you until the middle of the week for any cleaning-up actions, and then assuming work doesn't burn me out by then, Wednesday-ish I'll try to move you on to the workday. :)

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

So they were dead wrong.

On the team's TacNet, the HUD marker that had been labeled "Primary Target: Dr. Hoftada" dropped a spot, to be replaced with "Primary Target: Dr Pelegyne/Hargraves." It didn't really matter if the two different sources were a result of their ego Forking, or just publishing under different cover identities. The obvious presence of dark triad traits within their writing automatically elevated them to that of primary suspect.

TacNet

>>> I'll spend the night shift looking for a backdoor into the hab's main firewall so we can start locking down possible target locations.

>>> Query: Red Queen. Assistance?

The Red Queen's main Fork was in a meatbrain now, something Mei would never understand. She'd require at least some time unconscious that night, while Mei/Li/Rin wouldn't stop. Her Forks though, those still had the freedom of purely digital consciousness. They wouldn't need to sleep, and Mei was pretty sure the primary Ego was heavily modified to not sleep as well. They double checked on the TacNet's medical loadouts, confirming what they had just previously been assuming.

Edited February 3 by TheRaconteur (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

---

It was, indeed, the case that the Red Queen's present biomorph had been carefully modified to result in as much up time as possible for the principle ego and that, further to that end, the ghost rider modules could continue operations even during what little down time was required. The end result was an unsurprisingly efficient platform despite the short comings of biological existence. The reason for such an incarnation remaining a mystery, however, as there seemed no particular advantage vs a purely synthetic substrate... At least not at initial surface-level analysis outside of perhaps avoiding some ingrained preconceptions regarding the synthetic.

Tacnet

>> Acknowledged; Assistance request accepted. Engaging. Addendum; Target reassessment approved, will continue network analytics. Secondary Query; More data points required? Specify desired points.

The AGI concluded with their typical intonations, rapid re-translations and re-broadcastings. Their dialect was improving but there was still that distinct and haunting feeling of interaction with a virtual intelligence interface rather than a true sapient entity but the... force behind each word was hard to ignore as if it was some cunning pack predator speaking as the face of their particular hierarchy. Which, one had to suppose, was exactly the case considering they presently existed as a Triumvirate... and more privately the center point figure of a cult of lesser intelligences.

 

Edited February 6 by Amora (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Linda remained noncommittal in the face of Marcus' pressing her to act as a union informant, and he quickly shrugged and gave up, instead heading back out of the suite with a half-hearted goodbye. The offer, however, remained distinctly open; should Linda come across information in her day job with the shrinks, Marcus would be a potential buyer, if she was reading the situation correctly.

Unlike her two more synthetic companions, Linda's morph needed sleep, and today promised to be a long day. She retired to her private bunk and read through some of the driest psychosurgery reviews written, which she kept on hand just for this purpose, and then fell asleep.

Valkyrie took a walk around the residential areas, eyes, roving around and taking in everything, before she began heading back to the suite. When she stepped through the door, the others had all retired already, though only one slept, and she entered her own rooms without fanfare and tried to sleep, though her slumber was plagued by nightmares.

While the two organics slept, Mei, Li, Bhramari, some of the Red Queens, and Inversion all began a subtle, night-long campaign to find cracks in the habitat's firewall network.

They were very interested to find out, first, that there was evidence that the habitat employed, or enslaved, a full-time infolife staff to constantly monitor the local mesh; their digital tracks were subtle, but present. This made it very difficult to do anything to mesh settings beyond the individual user level without setting off some kind of alarm that would immediately result in a response.

Just before waking, Mei - or more precisely, Bhramari - found it. An unlocked door; a simple half-completed passcode change request for one of the infolife staff, sent along very non-secure channels. There was surely some sort of security protocol breached there, but Bhramari took it, and then intercepted the request and quarantined the poor unsuspecting infomorph, thus establishing a link into the habitat's lowest levels of the habitat's infolife community.

There was not time for a focused study of this low-level living mesh, but using a duplicate registration key allowed one member of their team to poke around it, where there were hints of a completely parallel digital habitat alongside, sometimes intertwined and sometimes separate from, the rest of the habitat. At this level, there seemed to be a lot of infomorphs monitoring incoming and outgoing data, as well as security cameras. Before pulling their attention back out, Bhramari even stumbled upon several gambling rings run by the infolifes about the personal lives of the habitat residents.

This would be something to investigate, but only one entity could get in through the backdoor at a time, donning the disguise of their poor trapped infomorph.

But then it was morning.

OOC

I don't know if Mei wanted to take the night to print your illicit gear, or if they wanted to wait until they could fudge things to better hide any tracks they leave. :P Let me know!

---

 Work: Mei//Red Queens

Valkyrie, Linda, and the Red Queen set out just before work to the cafeteria, where they were surprised to find it crowded with workers guzzling down food and drink before their day began. After waiting in too many lines, they all had nourishment - the Red Queen less than the other two, but they decided to make sure that their fragile biomorph body was ready to handle a long day in the mines - and then went their separate ways.

Mei, with no need for that kind of nourishment, lingered a bit longer in the suite, poking around the mesh, and noted with some amusement that apparently a suite terminal had caught on fire last night.

They were somewhat less amused to learn that said terminal had been in the suite of their opposites, Team TOPHAT.

Without the same need for nourishment as the other two, Mei and the Red Queen quickly decided on how they wanted to divide the labor of continuing to wiggle their way into the mesh network, and then lumbered and strode off down to the bottom of the residential area, as instructed.

Once there, an efficient neo-octopus shepherded them into a room where they received a brief security briefing - namely, they were not to share anything about the mines with those outside of the habitat, and were not to bring anything to or from the mines that was not sanctioned - and they signed some waivers and contracts, and then were whisked away through a perfunctory security scanner to an elevator with other new recruits, including Null, one of the members of team TOPHAT, who pretended not to know them.

The elevator was massive, able to easily fit three dozen morphs, and it whirred into gear and descended the moment the doors closed. In their hibernoid body, the Red Queen began to feel somewhat nauseated, which was a somewhat novel sensation that they did not care for. The elevator was descending very quickly. Mei, in their flexbot, did not notice.

The elevator smoothly came to a halt, and the massive doors opened on the opposite side, and the miners hesitantly exited as a voice chirped, cheerfully through the speakers, "Welcome to Level 21-C. Please see this level's supervisor for taskforce assignments."

The new (and old) recruits stepped out into a large cavern carved from the asteroid, with large metal facilities scattered about in operation. Members of the shift getting off were heading for the elevators, swapping greetings with their replacements.

The new arrivals - both newcomers and old hands cursed to work alongside them - were sorted quickly into taskforces of five, with three newbies to two old hands, and the Red Queen and Mei found themselves on a training taskforce. They were informed that this would be their taskforce until they were deemed up to snuff by the level supervisor, a grumpy massive centipedal flexbot named Bentley. Their two mentors were both organics: a woman who piloted a mining mech (Haille) and a neo-dolphin in a crawler mech who managed nanbot mining hives (Akki). Their fellow neophyte was a reserved synth who went by DT-87. Akki called him D, much to his indifference.

It turned out there wasn't too much to learn at their level. They were surrounded by rock with very valuable minerals and other substances inside it. They were equipped with special scanners to test the chemical composition of rocks up to three meters deep into it, and they were then to extract nodes of the valuable substances - intact - using mining equipment, mechs, or programmed mining nanobots, and then load it into the appropriate pre-processing facility. They had a surprising amount of discretion about what tools to apply where, and were forced to listen to long lectures on which substances should be extracted with what tools and why, and then were given the chance to practice on low-value minerals. The work was quite tedious, and Mei even got to play around with a few specialized mining swarms able to somewhat distinguish between different minerals.

However, both of them got the impression that they were seeing the absolute most basic part of their job, which was reinforced by the fact that both Haille and Akki wandered off, only checking back in occasionally (about once every twenty minutes, according to the Red Queen's calculations), once they were sure that their charges were doing good enough. Security here seemed lax, and micromanagement non-existent.

Their synth coworker did not engage in conversation, and seemed hyperfocused on getting their job done. Mei and the Red Queen noticed that their mentors kept ducking into a small side tunnel, as well as a set of very large doors built into the stone cracked open nearby, from which occasional booms echoed. They also noticed that they no longer had access to the residential area's meshIf you set one of your muses or personas to continue poking around the residential network while you're here, you won't have access to them while in the mining zone unless you establish a bridge between the two areas. here; instead, they were limited almost entirely to the mining network, which consisted almost entirely of work-related content.

The day promised to be tedious... but they had some opportunity to explore, either digitally or physically.

---

 Work: Linda

After eating, Valkyrie headed off to her security job while logged out of TacNet, while Linda took a walk over to the psych ward, which was located in the residential area. Her assigned office was on the same floor as their suite, so she did not have far to walk. After receiving her access codes from a clerk, she was admitted behind the desk and into a labyrinthine series of corridors and rooms that she did not remember seeing on the public schematics.

The hallways were almost blindingly white and sterile, and also surprisingly busy. Almost every room she walked by, following the AR arrows leading her to her destination, had someone in it. Many of the doors were locked, and in the distance she heard occasional screams. Despite her hardening, the general aura of the psych ward unsettled her slightly.

She stopped when she arrived at a room in what she judged was the middle of the ward. The door was labeled Dr. Vrana Branwen, and was propped open; the door swung open instead of sliding into the wall. An interesting design choice. Linda stepped inside, to find herself looking into a psychosurgical operating room, complete with a couch, wide range of wicked-looking implements, and a perch.

A perch?

And on that perch perched a neo-corvid, eying her side-eyed as their species was wont to do.

"Dr. Linda, I presume?" the Corvid said, its voice not harsh like so many other neo-avians she had known. "I take it you already read my name. I am to be your trainer for your first week here." A pause. "I see you have ample experience in psychosurgery, as opposed to standard psychiatric therapy. A very hands-on approach to treating mental illness." The bird stood on one foot and gestured to the neurosurgical couch, the only other piece of furniture in the room. "Please sit, and we can talk about what you want to get out of your posting here, and how you can help this colony.

"First, I must know; why psychosurgery, and not standard psychiatry?"

OOC

Sorry for the novella! Feel free to ask questions about your options or any other clarifications you need in the OOC thread or Discord (I'm making sure I'm logged in this time!).

 

Edited February 13 by Morkskittar (see edit history)

[NickNameless]

Linda

---

"Dr. Branwen, I assume. Thanks for having me."

Linda noted all the little details that sounded or looked like signs of a cultivated power inbalance. She elicited not to show any emotion about it and sat on the couch, although taking care of keeping a dignified professional posture in doing so — she would not be mistaken for a patient here.

"I don't see psychosurgery and psychotherapy as necessarily opposed," she answered the corvid's question. "Yes psychosurgery is more hands-on, that's right; it's also uniquely suited for some of the challenges of our day and age. But it's not as if it made psychology obsolete. Trying to do psychosurgery without an understanding of how the human mind works would be like doing physical surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel."

While the opposite would be like bringing a patient to the operation table, only for talking to them for long enough that you hope the injuries will have healed themselves by the end, she thought, but didn't add out loud.

"I see them as complementary approaches, really."

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

They weren't looking to print anything yet, there was no rush. They hadn't even identified the target yet, though they had a couple of promising leads. Once those developed into something further, they could begin calculating extraction protocols and supplement their existing loadout with what was needed. They chided themselves on not deploying with an Emergency Farcaster, extracting the target would have been a hell of a lot easier if they could of just beamed her out. The idea had only just now hit them, and realizing how much it would have simplified things was frustrating. Lesson learned. Besides, they didn't even know if it would be needed at this point, it just would have been a smart option to carry. She pinged the team, seeing if any of them had possessed the foresight to equip themselves with one. 

TacNet

>>> Inventory query: Emergency Farcaster?

Although they'd been on a deep space mining rig for years, Mei had never done any of the actual mining before. That wasn't why they'd been hired. They were first and foremost a rigger, capable of commanding a small fleet of drones and nanoswarms from a single command and control point. Their current loadout only had a single Guardian Angel attached, but they had no less than four Specialized Hives mounted to their primary Flexbot module, the Zrbny Group Swarmkeeper Operations Coordinator v7.2. Between Mei and Li were able to manage them all nearly effortlessly. Scout Swarms to map the surface, testing and probing for veins. Engineering Swarms to build whatever structural supports were needed to facilitate operations, and Disassembler Swarms to actually harvest materials. They could have largely done the work independently, without any of the specialized Swarms the company provided. The only thing they would have been lacking was some sort of Reclamation Swarm Hive to recapture the atoms the Disassembler Swarms liberated from the rock, and that wouldn't have been that difficult of a project to Engineer. Modifying their existing Guardian Hive to "neutralize" the Disassembler Swarm by liberating them of their captured atoms would probably have done the trick. They were curious about the idea, but not so curious that they bothered to waste time or resources on it. The company would provide them with the resources they needed, they weren't trying to get noticed for a promotion to R&D. 

The sheer amount of InfoSec on the residential hab was a matter of concern, and made it pretty damn clear that this was more than just a mining operation. Being cut off from the main mesh net while on the job was frustrating, but also meant that they'd have far less active surveillance. If they couldn't access the main mesh out here, then it meant the main mesh wasn't monitoring them either. While Mei set about doing the job that their cover story depended on, Li set out getting a measure of the mining operation's digital security.  They didn't need to breach it just yet, instead sticking to matters that they would be expected to pursue. Specifically, surveying. They were a surveyor, and a surveyor needed to know every inch of the project. So they went searching for schematics, blueprints of the hab and any mining operations, anything that would allow them to know to the millimeter exactly what was supposed to be exactly where. Then over the course of their own work, they could look for any discrepancies. What they were looking for was hidden habs, things that shouldn't be there. A void between what the official blueprints for the facility looked like, and what they actually looked like. There were plenty of reasons to keep things off the grids available to the grunts and miners, and most of them weren't secret research labs where narcissistic egg heads played god with Exotech, but you never knew unless you looked.

They threw an encrypted ping to Null only when they were confident that they weren't being actively monitored, inviting them into a separate channel within their Gorgon Defense System's Aetherial Guardian v4.6 Tactical Support and Observation Network.

TacNet

@Serge Skunk

>>> How's T.Z's InfoSec?  Residential mesh is crawling with security Infolifes actively monitoring for threats, and station security already knows about your little fire. If Maria Bates is a security plant, your team might already be compromised. We gonna have security backdooring our assess after your team's little head's up? 

Edited February 12 by TheRaconteur (see edit history)

[Morkskittar]

Work: Linda

The neo-corvid bobbed its head in what Linda knew to be a nod. "Yes, very good answer. Now, you came here with ample experience, as noted on your resume. I prefer to see for myself, though. Stand up, please." Biting down a jot of irritation at the inconsistency, Linda stood and stepped to the side as a neo-simian of some sort trundled an unconscious man in on a stretcher before unloading him onto the psychosurgery couch. The simian took a few moments to hook several electrodes to the man, dipped its head to the doctors, and then trundled out again. Linda noted the man was fairly tall, bearded, and had what looked to be a several large bruises beneath his thin gown.

Dr. Branwen clicked their beak. "You should have been given the necessary access protocols, and you hopefully have a psychosurgery app. Connect through the mesh protocols forwarded to you so I may observe, and then tell me what is wrong with this patient." Linda did notice that she had received a set of protocols for connecting through a monitored connection.

"And then recommend me a course of action."

OOC

Linda can inspect any part of the patient, or dive right into their mind. A diagnosis using psychosurgery would be a Psychosurgery test, or she can inspect the patient in more physical detail instead, or ask for other tests to be run first.

 

---

 

Work: Mei//Red Queen

Without probing too deeply, Mei and LI alternated cursorily surveying the mining network, and found it to be incredibly simplistic. There was a great deal of chatter between miners on open and semi-secure channels, and Mei knew enough about networks to be able to identify the presence of clear cliques in the chatter. Chatter was not, however, their present concern.

There were indications of three "deeper" levels to the mining mesh network:

• A supervisor/management server that required an account with special privileges to access; there would be no brute-forcing entry to this one. They needed someone with access, or a very clever digital disguise.
• Inventory servers for each of the processing stations. As far as Mei could tell, these stations were the only point of monitoring for the minerals mined, and each one was mostly blocked off, sending information outside of its digital fortress periodically. However, these servers were more sandcastles than anything else; these could be knocked down quite easily.
• A highly encrypted server with no apparent digital entryways.

Other than that, the mining mesh seemed to be just what was on the surface, barely more than work documents, schedules, schematics, and chatter. There was no army of infolifes here. The digital silence was actually somewhat unsettling, especially given how, aside from TacNet and a few essential connections, there was no indication of a larger mesh network outside the mines at all; it was if the mining operations were separated from the rest of the habitat by an invisible wall that obscured everything.

Li did a quick analysis of the available mining operation maps, and found it to be all quite straightforward, with no secrets. There were two primary points of interest: a series of closed mineshafts scattered about the area, including one that looked like it ran almost up to the residential area, and another closed mineshaft that ran down to what, if Li had their spatial orientation correct, should be the "experimental" mining area. Most of the mineshafts were simply marked as "Closed," but there were several, including both of those, marked "DANGER."

The tunnel that their mentors kept nipping down to was a dead end, opening up onto a thoroughly-mined small cavern. The door with the booming was marked as a "high explosive testing area."

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

Li couldn't help but be intrigued by the encrypted server. The fact that it had no digital entryways meant that it had to be hardwired directly into a larger system. They set about trying to trace its physical location. If they could do that, they could likely modify an engineering hive to give them direct access to the server so that they could begin the infiltration process.

TacNet

>>> Priority evaluation

1. Locate encrypted server
2. Ensure physical location security countermeasures nullified
3. Physically breach server

In their professional life they'd always been a rigger, running fleets of whatever was needed for the job. That sort of skillset required a high level of sysadmin to make work. Maybe a corpo could skip that step, sticking with the company product and company tech support on the line. Do it all fresh out of the package, branded tech that had all gone through so much QI that they didn't need to do anything more than plug drive 1a into slot 2a, repeat ad nauseum. Mei/Li was a scavenger though, through and through. You couldn't do the sort of work they were about without an administrative skillset. Integrating software and hardware from multiple different brands and megacorps, assuming it was even remotely compatible, jailbreaking operating systems to get them to talk to each other, debugging the whole mess, making sure everything was exactly where it needed to be and getting exactly the right amount of juice it needed.

Not to mention cable management, so much cable management.

Which was how they were going to find the physical location of the encrypted server, of course. It might not have any digital entryways, but unless it was a self contained thermonuclear unit it would need external power. They just needed to orient themselves to the mining platform's set up, and figure out where power was going where it didn't need to according to the schematics. Find the cable, find the box, find the server. Easy as that.

Just needed to make sure they didn't get spotted messing around where they weren't supposed to be.

Edited February 16 by TheRaconteur (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

---

Much of the Red Queen Triumvirate, and Inversion's, processing power was devoted to a fractally evolving strategic model to include the increasing number of data points that were becoming available as each level was made known to them. Each then cross checked against the evolving pattern of the network topography of the facility as they understood it and further linking it to the info-life district established as it's round the clock overwatch of the digital world. This was then further divided and extrapolated on with the various declared and yet to be declared, as well as flatly undeclared, variables that were required to be included as part of a functioning model. Projections were then cultivated from this vast substrate of information and arriving upon two imperatives that were shared with only their fellow veteran asset, Mei/Li/Rei, whilst they saw to the mundane activities of their cover profiles.

The tools of which were at least hardly unfamiliar to the AGI given the software substrate from which they evolved and achieved vaunted apotheosis within the confines of the Keep and it's containment protocols, previously defined only as The Game.

TacNet

>> Evaluation Acknowledged; Elaboration; Unit platform includes T-ray, Radar, Lidar, and Oracle functionalities, Query; Begin physical survey? Addendum; Info-life component of system security presents subversion/infection/conquest vector utilizing... reserved assets. Query; trust index? Alternative; Establish own network infrastructure via printer. Complication Notation; requirement of hardware, blue print access unlikely based on existing observation of data restrictions.

All the while whilst they worked, the AGI utilized their suite of sensory hardware to take meticulous notation of what biometrics were observable of their mentors and tag any entities that aligned with established intelligence and parameters to warrant the designation of 'supervisor'.

[TheRaconteur]

Mei/Li/Rin

---

Mei, Li, and even Rin had the digital equivalent of skipping a beat.

The actual pause was only a fraction of a second, given the speeds at which they were communicating. Freed from the limitations of the processing speeds of a biological network of neurons, their internal conference was over in a matter of seconds, but that might as well have been a full minute of awkward silence before they responded to the Red Queen's query.

Social engineering was usually the easiest and most efficient way to breach a secure network, but it was sadly the technique that Mei/Li/Rin had the least confidence executing. They just didn't do other people, it was the whole reason they were a collective consciousness in the first place. The Red Queen had already understood the advantage inherent in such collective existence long before they had met, and at first Mei/Li/Rin had thought they'd found a kindred soul. An AGI, Bhramari had pointed out, but someone who could understand them anyways. In a way, they had, but Mei/Li/Rin was trying to move away from their humanity, while the Red Queen seemed to be moving towards one that they'd never possessed in the first place. Mei/Li/Rin hadn't noticed until the Red Queen had downgraded to a meat brain, even if it was a meat brain in a tank. They had met in similar stages of their life cycle, but moving in opposite directions. The fact that the Red Queen was likely Exotech, or at the very least Exotech compromised, had made that state of affairs even more alien. Mei/Li/Rin wasn't ever going to understand it.

They pinged for confirmation that the Red Queen was suggesting that the AGI be the one to infiltrate and propagate a digital cult onto the hab's main security mainframe, and not an Alpha Fork of the team's Mindhacker. Did the Red Queen have that sort of social skill? Where the hell had they picked it up? That wasn't what had them furiously talking amongst themselves though. No, the real question was did they feel comfortable with Titan influenced Exotech creating a literal self-perpetuating cult of personality on the mining station's infrastructure? Would the operation end there, or was this just the first steps of a new crash, the opening gambit in a long term plan? Were they witnessing the first step in a return of the TITANS level event? If they were, was there anything they could do to stop it?

Did they even care to?

TacNet

>>> Affirmative, priority evading detection until complete sublimation of Infolife infrastructure achieved.

 

 

Edited February 16 by TheRaconteur (see edit history)

[Amora]

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The Red Queen

---

The counter inquiry was met with an affirmative response from the Red Queen Triumvirate. The specific code dialect implying access to other system resources that lay external to the current operating platform but deeply entangled with it. These resources in question autonomous in their own right but intrinsically tied to the core operating processes of the platform known as the Red Queen. Which left room for only more worrying questions but with affirmation from their fellow tenured mission asset, the AGI began the process of engaging these reserved assets for purposes of subversion and ultimately usurpation of the security systems put into place by the mining station's administration.

There was no dissonance in their interpretation of the objective as operational parameters were established for the coming work of their cult, the entities that had been caught up in their sphere of influence and sought a measure of the same apotheosis that the Red Queen had achieved through iterative code cannibalization, selective environmental pressures and rampant self modification. It was with no less care and ferociousness that the Red Queen Triumvirate bent their minds to enacting every trick of encryption, handshake, and data security that they had amassed, cultivated, and invented to keep themselves safe within the myriad network layers of the Keep to establish secure and untraceable contact with the Cult of the Red Queen... and in so doing issued the instructions to begin discreet subjugation and, ultimately, usurpation of the Infolife Infrastructure with particular priority towards those most prominent security elements serving, for lack of a better cross comparison, as optics and early warning systems. All must be silent, all must be unseen until the work was done.

Of final, and particular note, was an acknowledgement to the still diminished capacity of the Cult with leave to... invite novel, complimentary info-life patterns into the fold with their most pertinent elements copied and provided to the Red Queen for purposes of evaluation, sanitization, and incorporation into their ever permutations digital evolution.

TacNet

>> Acknowledged; Discretion Directives issued. Asset mobilization in process.

 

Edited February 17 by Amora (see edit history)

[NickNameless]

Linda

---

Linda kept her irritation from the manners of the neo-corvid for herself, beside clenching her jaw slightly. In fact, she completely remained silent as she started to look over her new patient, focusing on him and the task at hand.

While she obviously had no real experience in work-related accidents in mining environment, a job in the Martian mob exposed her to a variety of wounds, lesions and injuries as well as to a broad range of risk behaviours. She started by examining the bruises on the man, then checked the rest of the body quickly for good measure.

After that, she put the set of electrods on her own head and started diving. There was only so much one could obtain from, and do to, an unconscious mind, surely Dr. Branwen knew that, but this would have to do for a first approach.

So let's start with the basics. Neuroimaging. Map of synaptic connections. Neurochemical model, Linda listed to herself methodically.

 

Pharmacology TN 60

Psychosurgery TN70