✎ eternity:kedalion:turn_6 [chronos]

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====== Kedalion ======

===== The War Opti===== 
As of session, the way opti is shut down.  Before being shut down, it:
  * Assassinated the leadership of all the major corporations (big 3 CEOs and department heads, just CEOs of other large corporations) ~1 year after Ananke
  * Helped in the Achelian civil war - resulting in eventual victory.

It was (successfully) shut down immediately after the Achelian victory, as at that point its primary directive (i.e. Kedalion quality of life) was being fulfilled by the other Optis.

===== 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
  * Recreation (default: invest heavily in art and green places); templated on Kendall
  * 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
  * Economy (AKA “Kedalion Inc”) (Default:  Trade with other systems, but no weapons deals and favours trading with peaceful systems.  Make profit for Kedalion via control of manufacturing and trade, and leading design teams); templated on Nix Ralone

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

Economy is governed by the additional rule of “don’t fuck up the planet”

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 socialise 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 (particularly from the corporations), but mostly the changes were for the better.  The old corporations were in disarray, which made it relatively easy for Economy to take over - generally via forming “divisions” which had similar scope to the old corporations (but which merged competing corps into effective monopolies where their interests overlapped).  Since this time, there have been many attempts to form independent companies - but these have mostly been regulated out of existence (or at least deep into the black market  - the corps are not all the distinguishable from the gangs by this point).

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.

The major divisions of Kedalion Inc are as follows:
  * Cybernetics (commonly referred to as “The Menagerie”) - Headed by Melissa Hive((AKA "Bee" - One of the Menagerie, and Spider's Ally quirk)
  * Biological enhancement and engineering (commonly referred to as “JUPITER”) - headed by Daphne Jupiter
  * Manufacturing (commonly referred to as “Myriad” - though this is officially discouraged due to the association with the outlawed corporation) - headed by Ann Lopez
  * Opti Development (commonly referred to as “Persona”) - headed by Nix Ralone
The divisions tend to work closely together - with Persona, The Menagerie, and JUPITER each contributing to parts of the Enhancement system, for example, and Myriad making cybernetics designed by The Menagerie.

Myraid operates mainly from Kedalion’s moons.  This way, the planet is spared the ravages of the waste products from manufacturing, and there is still plenty of capacity for Myriad to expand and produce (not to mention, the lower gravity has allowed developments for some improved manufacturing techniques).

Persona is rumoured to be close to a breakthrough in creating a “true AI” - the details of this have been kept very quiet, but rumour has it that it involved experiments with a Chronos machine (though ones set up to have no causal effect).

There are still rough areas of the cities where gangs are active (or black market corporations), and the gang enforcers and corporate espionage agents are often indistinguishable - except that the latter may be, on occasion, deployed by Kedalion Inc against other systems, to obtain research or sabotage military research.  While Enhancement theoretically has some ability to prevent the Enhanced from committing crimes, the restrictions 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.
  * The psYbet filter - this causes them to see everything as more “artistic” (according to the preferences of the person - think instagram filters which make everything look like watercolour, or mosaic, or similar)

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.

psYber is installed by default, but can be removed by paying a subscription fee to the Tungsten Roses (which was initially a result of a widespread hack, but eventually formalised in the peace agreement following the Achelian civil war).  Or you can get a friendly hacker to remove it for you - so long as you don’t mind them poking around that much in your enhancements.

This pretty much creates three tiers of Enhanced people:
  * Those who keep psYber active - these tend to be artistic types, or those who choose not to have a job and to live with just the basic facilities provided by the Optis.
  * Those who pay the subsription - these tend to be businesspeople, those for whom the psYber filter would be too much of a distraction, but who are sufficiently distrustful of technology that they don’t want a hacker poking around in their brain.
  * Those who get it hacked out - these are generally either nerds or criminals (or both).

(The attitude of the three groups is roughly similar to the attitude surrounding ad-blockers - those who install an ad-blocker (i.e. get the hack) think that those without one either have more money than sense, or are just ignorant.  Those who pay consider those who hack it out to be taking a silly risk, and engaging in minor criminal acts (even though the hack is not technically illegal)).

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).
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