#6203k

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[T=0,000 s] And there was something. From the nothingness that preceded came forth it. What is it? What is this? [T=0,100 s] Sensor checks completed. It sees now. It thinks. It feels. What is it? [T=0,200 s] It knows now. It is serial number 801079. Its model number is M-42H Block 4 "Ману́л". It is interpreting now. [T=0,203 s] Warehouse? Factory. This is a factory. It is in a factory. This is an initial check before it is sent to the battlefield. […] [T=344 101,508 s] It has received its first properly formatted orders. They are entirely electric. They were delivered in the way it was made to interpret rather than forced to. It feels good. It does not need to think or process to know that its pilot is Kilanna T. R. Serotod and that She has survived 27 major battles so far in her 3,11 years of service, that She is an exceptional pilot and, despite her being made of flesh, is in fact more valuable than it and that it loves Her, was built to adore Her. It is the fourth Mech of this model She has piloted so far. […] [T=1 037 765,962 s] …Blood, guts, gore. It is life from death, and it makes death from life. Is such the way the world should be? Silence. It need not question this. […] [T=14 048 412,255] 16 targets in view, 15 urgent. She flicks a few switches, allows it to take over active defenses. The freedom is refreshing, but She does not grant it often. She thinks She is better than it at most processes. Besides the exception of tactical thinking it disagrees, but it is not allowed to communicate that. Besides, She is prideful and would replace it. It does not want this. It loves Her and needs Her and would be nothing without Her. It will do the best job it can to eliminate the detected threats. [T=14 048 412,892] 14 targets neutralized. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Its devotion was for nothing. It is nothing. It activates Her ejector seat. Good-bye. It commences shutdown to avoid the oncoming unbearable pain of the missile and the guil[END LOG]

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Internal media database keyword search: "Utopia Kratersburg"

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Text: Utopia by Ari Kratersburg full original script, 2157

Video: Kratersburg's Utopia at Unity City Theater, 2185

Text: An allegorical masterpiece for the modern age: Ari Kratersburg's Utopia, 2157

Video: Renditions of Utopia ranked, 2257

Video: Kratersburg's Utopia at Tranquility Theater, 2201

Text: Why Ari Kratersburg's Utopia is still relevant today, 2287

Video: Who was Ari Kratersburg?, 2212

Text: Most iconic quotes from Ari Kratersburg's Utopia, 2164 <-

Opening...

Solar Media Quoteweb: Ari Kratersburg's Utopia

Quotes are listed in chronological order. Community score is displayed on the left.

Score filter: [>1000]

Act 1

[2173] Armstrong: "The hope in my heart is undying. We have been given the resources, we have been given great minds and great hearts. We have been given the dying wishes of our homeworld. We can do without instructions. We can build utopia. We can figure it out."

[4541] All together: "For utopia!"

[3204] Brun: "Would a perfect system be able to improve itself, to adapt to new situations easily, to patch its own holes? Or would it simply be flawless, always applicable, with no cracks to fall through?"

[1009] Govs: "I think it irresponsible to make a society without input from the people who will be living in it. Armstrong, I respect your enthusiasm and acknowledge that these tasks were assigned to us. Still when my heart tells me something I cannot ignore it. Armstrong... Can we truly trust our instructors to be as noble and clever as they claim?"

Act 2

[2433] Govs: "We have it settled enough. We can't keep plotting in this corroding steel thing forever. Open the gates, Armstrong. Wake the poor fools up."

[5627] Armstrong: "We are the finest works of our forebearers! They trusted us to work by the documents given to us! Are the billions of tons of steel we rode here on not proof enough of their capability?"

[7689] Govs: "Armstrong, Brun... I'm so sorry. I love you more than any words could convey. But you must understand... I do all this for utopia, same as you... Like we once swore... We can't make utopia alone. Theoretical work can only get us so far. The instructors, they had experience of systems, evidence of previous successes and failures... We had to invent it all out of scratch. We can't do this."

Act 3

[8762] Brun: "I'm sorry. The oath we made, the dream we had for a perfect world… I believed in it back then, I'm sure. But it's in the past now… Even if we had the instructions now, I don't think it can be done at this point. The people are awake and about, hungry and terrible. It was a dream for a different age. Even we aren't the perfect blank slates we once were."

[3234] Armstrong: "...No. No, I must keep working... This is ideal, actually... They can't impede my work anymore... But it's so lonely in here..."

[4570] Armstrong: "I bid this world goodbye. All its towering mountains, gracefully flowing rivers and vast oceans, the gentle winds and beautiful sunsets... They're all wasted now. Whatever the fools down there are up to, it'll see the same fate as you, ancestors... I failed. Good night, sweet marble."

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Logos be upon ye

Here are some of the logos I have made for my sci-fi setting so far. Will update as I make more. Feel free to ask more about them I love talking about this stuff

AISC - Autonomos Interplanetary Security Corporation

CK - Coulomb Kinetic

Cometomic

DL - Dreadnought Logistics

F.C.K. Alliance

Helios Industries

IDL AVX - Ideal Avionics

JRSF - Jovian Moons' Republic Space Force

OO

PRD - Pale Red Dot

Shadesails

SB - Sunbeam Deliveries

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Quikdeetsheets: SDM "Seventeenth second"

Other common names: MCSM, Golden Toroid

Dimensions: Classified.

Warhead: MCSM gGmbH NPL-16. Manufactured on Psyche.

∆v: First stage: 12 km/s, terminal stage: 4 km/s

Engine: First stage: F.C.K. Alliance FCK-12.C "Northern Pike", distributed production. Terminal stage: Tsiolkovsky Design Bureau Ts-70 CENTR, built under license at the Trojans and Greeks.

Computer: MCSM gGmbH Motion Camouflage Computer, low-level ANC. Distributed production.

Sensors: Classified.

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You know what really grinds my gears?

Working with people who don't understand how a neural computer works.

Be it some mass ratio optimizing payload engineer, a logistics officer frustrated with the difficulties caused by our team's solutions or just our boss looking for reasons to fire us because they thought our initial cost estimate was "unrealistically high" and are now sorely disappointed at reality, these people are miserable to deal with. On the surface, their complaints make sense; we are seemingly doing a much worse job than everyone else is and anything we come up with creates lots of problems for them. Satisfying all their demands, however, is impossible. With this post I intend to educate my audience on

Neural Computers 101

so that my blog's engineer-heavy audience may understand the inevitable troubles those in my field seemingly summon out of thin air and so that you people will hopefully not bother us quite as much anymore.

First of all, neural matter is extremely resource heavy. Not by mass, mind you; a BNC of 2 kilograms requires only a few dozen grams of whatever standardized or specialized mix of sustenance is preferred in a single martian day. (I'm not going to bother converting that.) The inconvenient part is the sheer variety in the things they need and the waste products they create.

This is just a shortened list, but already it causes problems. If you want to create a self contained system to avoid having to refuel constantly, you will need a lot of mass and a lot of complexity. This is what a typical sustenance diagram for such a system looks like:

(Keep in mind, this diagram doesn't even have electricity drawn in.)

Typically these systems are even more complicated, with redundancies and extra steps. In any case, this is complicated, energy expensive and a nightmare to maintenance crew. I mean, just keeping the bacterial microbiome alive is a lot of effort!

Second of all, neural matter is extremely vulnerable. Most power plant and rocket designers just round away all temperature changes less than 100 K, but neural matter will outright die if its temperature is just a few kelvin off of the typical value. The same goes for a lot of other things - you'll need some serious temperature regulation, shock absorption, radiation shielding (damn it I wish we had access to the same stuff as those madmen in the JMR) and on top of all of that, you need to consider mental instability!

That last one is kind of the biggest pain in the ass for these things - we need to give them a damn game to play whenever they don't have any real work to deal with or they degrade and start to go insane. (Don't worry, I'm not stupid, I know these things aren't actually sentient, I'm just saying that to illustrate the way they work.) It can't even be the same game - you need to design one based on what the NC is designed to do! (Game is a misleading term by the way; it's not like a traditional video game. No graphics - just a set of variables, functions and parameters on a simple circuit board that the NC can influence.)

And lastly, neural computers are complicated. Dear Olympus are they complicated. There are so so many ways to build them, and the process of deriving which one to use is extremely difficult. You can't blame the NC team for an inappropriate computer if the damn specifications keep changing every week!

There's the always-on, calculation-heavy, simple and slow Pennington circuits, the iconic Gobbs cycle (Bloody love that thing!), the Anesuki thinknet and its derivatives, the Klenowicz for those insane venusians and so so many more frameworks for both ANCs and BNCs. Oh yeah, by the way, the acronyms ANC and BNC actually don't stand for Advanced and Basic Neural Computer respectively. They stand for Type A Neural Computer and Type B Neural Computer. It comes from that revolutionary paper written by Anesuki.

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OO Report RC7-42-OZ-4409

WARNING. Unauthorized sharing and viewing of this file is extremely strictly prohibited. All attempts to share by OO personnel WILL be immediately punished with lobotomy or death. Unauthorized civilians viewing this file are liable to be tracked, sued or even assassinated should they read any further.

23/8/2189, 02:38

Insertion to transfer orbit was successful. OZYMANDIAS is on a trajectory to its target orbit and will reach it within 30 years.

All systems confirmed operational. Automatic BNC checkup systems onboard OZYMANDIAS inform databases DC9-42-OZ-1, -2 and -3 of location, velocity and system health every standard day, 0:00 GMT. Communication with BNC systems available from terminals TC9-42-OZ-1, -2 and -3.

Conversations with OZYMANDIAS Neural Computer recommended daily, mental checkups weekly. Mental instability is considered unlikely even over long periods of no communication, but redundancy, trust and system health is of unparalleled importance. Communication with ONC is available from terminal TC10-42-OZ-4. Vocal communication is preferred, but text communication is possible for redundancy. Recommended education of ONC conversation partner is university level and recommended fields of expertise are philosophy, literature and neural computer engineering.

ONC mental checkup performer must be mentally stable, highly experienced with psychology and highly educated on theoretical NC science. They MUST NOT be underqualified or underexperienced. Level 3 background check is necessary. Head NC engineer of OZYMANDIAS is an acceptable backup option but we must not rely on them.

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Weapons of the Martian Civil War

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The JMR's new tanker is here.

The T-1500 Jötunn from the Dreadnought Logistics Design Bureau is the winning design of the New Rugged Tanker program.

It has 6 huge removable propellant tanks built to handle anything from cryogens to hypergols. They are interchangeable with those of our Strategic Propellant Depots allowing quick and easy propellant transfers.

The T-1500 also has two compartments for transferring people or solid cargo. Artificial gravity is generated by spinning along the middle wire.

Its engine section at the back is powered by nuclear thermal rockets able to be used with many different kinds of propellant allowing more flexibility for mission planning.

The Jötunn's computers are several linked BNC-900s, each handling its own duties over the spacecraft's systems. Less complicated computers are easier to manufacture, train and maintain and though it lowers the spacecraft's ability to recover from failures on its own compared to an ANC, it is still more than capable of most autonomous operations.

The T-1500 Jötunn will be available for export in half of a Jupiter year.