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eternity:kedalion:turn_5

Kedalion

The War Opti

The War Opti is still active, and is engaged in active conflict with Cheimeros. This is not quite on the scale of turn 0 - Kedalion itself is not covered in factories, and the War Opti’s production facilities are mostly confined to the moons (though they cover much of the surface and burrow into the insides), but there is a constant flow of resources towards the war effort.

The Other Optis

JUPITER as created last turn was never initialised - only the “new” set of optis is in place (since they take over most of MOTHER/JUPITER’s features). The MOTHER patch to the war opti is in place - this is what is causing it to mostly leave Kedalion itself alone and allow the other optis to have day-to-day control.

The Optis which run Kedalion are as follows:

  • Mother (default: keep the peace between other Optis, act as main communicator to people); tempalted on Daphne's mother; thinks of Mel and Daphne as her children
  • Oracle (default: predict the future, and the changes to it that would result from policies as accurately as possible); templated on Kendall stone
  • Housing (default: provide everything people need and as much as they want); templated on Thalia
  • Security (default: do not build the tools for attacking other systems, protect anyone on Kedalion who's liberty is threatened); templated on John Gunner - INACTIVE
  • Recreation (default: invest heavily in art and green places); templated on Kendal
  • Education (default: teach everyone how to interact with the new Optis, emphasise the economic advantage of peace and trade); templated on Gordon Fox
  • Health (default: maximise quality adjusted life years); templated on Charlotte
  • Research (default: make the technology for human augmentation as advanced and *available* as possible, with a particular interest in brain uploads); templated on Tamika
  • Cyber Security (default: find security vulnerabilities in the all the Optis (including itself) and Secure them - naturally requires MOTHER's approval to do so if the other Opti would prefer the change not to be made); templated on Micah

All of the Optis (except the War Opti) are governed by three overriding rules:

  • Must be 100% honest with all other optis and cannot manipulate or hide facts to manipulate others
  • Must never take direct control of a person via implants
  • Must never use sensory data from personal implants without explicit permission from that person

Security is currently inactive, as the areas it is responsible for are the domain of the War Opti - it cannot be brought online until the War Opti is disabled, and this cannot happen while Kedalion and Cheimeros are at war

Each opti has a public face which is basically a chatbot that looks and acts kind of like the person it is templated on - but they get easily confused when asked questions outside of their domain. Attempts to actually solialise with them and treat them as people rather than machines quickly hit the uncanny valley.

In the first 5 years after the Ananke, they acted purely via their own directives - this was a time of radical change, and there was some resistance, but mostly the changes were for the better. After 5 years, the voting system was brought online, allowing people to modify the priorities of the Optis (and how Mother prioritises between them). This has mostly been positive - though it has led to disagreements between the Enhanced and non-enhanced Kedalions, on two fronts. Firstly, there is a perception that because the Enhanced have generally better and faster network access, they have more voting power (it is essentially impossible for them to miss a vote, and their internal optis can be set up to predict what they would have voted for if they do not give conscious thought to the vote itself). Secondly, there is a constant debate as to when Enhancement should be performed on biologically born Kedalions - proponents of early enhancement point out the quality of life benefits, and the fact that enhanced “Jupes” (artificially grown humans) have a better integration with their enhancements than those born later in life; opponents reject the parent’s right to consent on their child’s behalf for such a life-changing decision.

Everyone has a place to live. Mostly these places are quite nice (and the smaller dwellings make up for it by having good access to services/jobs). Everyone is educated to a good standard, and is provided with basic resources. All who wish to have employment and to afford luxuries beyond that may do so.

Trade and manufacturing are conducted by the individual corporations of Kedalion, rather than centrally by the Optis (as the PCs did not have time to make these components). Occasional proposals are put forward to centralise these, but there is (unsurprisingly) a large amount of resistance from the corporations, who see it as a severe encroachment on their freedom to operate.

There are still rough areas of the cities where gangs are active, and corporate espionage agents still steal secrets from other planets or corporations. While Enhancement theoretically has some ability to prevent the Enhanced from committing crimes, the restirctions on surveillance through augmentations or direct control of augmented individuals make this rather toothless - and most would-be criminals will just hack these functions out, anyway.

The Enhanced

Anyone who is Enhanced has an opti in their head, wired tightly into their nervous system. This gives them:

  • External memory storage - more like a “vlog” than actual memory, essentially just a record of sensory inputs, with very little emotional context or cross-referencing. These may be shared, and a market for other people’s experiences has grown over the years.
  • Access to information - Enhanced can use their Optis to look up and collate information on any topic
  • Automation - The Opti can take over certain functions - freeing up biological thinking capacity. For example, when walking through the city the Opti can take over your walk, avoiding obstacles and navigating to your destination while you think about something else entirely.
  • Communication - Any Enhanced can communicate with any other Enhanced, to a degree which is almost telepathic. If they are in range of an FTL comms relay, this can even be done over interplanetary distances.
  • Full immersion VR - The Opti can project onto all senses, allowing “deep dive” simulation for replaying memories, or crafted experiences.

If an Enhanced commits a crime, this will be logged by their Opti - and can be reviewed by law enforcement. However, most people have this feature removed by a friendly hacker.

At the present time, most Enhanced are still those born biologically, who later take the implants. However, Research has also created “Jupes” - artificial “vat-grown” humans, who have integrated enhacements. They are functionally the same as those born biologically, except that they have access to their Enhancement abilities from birth, which makes them much more comfortable in the new world.

Enhancement does not require major surgery - advances in technology allow a simple injection of “constructor bots” which can perform the procedure overnight. Waking up during this time is apparently an absolute mindfuck.

Biologically born humans can only get Enhanced at 15, though this age tends to move lower every few years as the Enhancements become more and more a part of everyday life. (This is considered similarly to the debate around children having smartphones)

eternity/kedalion/turn_5.txt · Last modified: 2019/06/15 20:05 by gm_mike