⚠️ FORLORN AU ARTICLE ⚠️
[While I was writing this, I felt like a «JcJenson in spaaaaace» scientist, lmao.]
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I. The emergence of the Solver Virus and how it works.
When drones break down, they undergo a repair process. However, when their condition becomes critical, recovery becomes impossible, and they die. But if their core remains undamaged, there is a very small chance that a critical system error occurs, and the Solver Virus may appear. It “solves the problem” in a rather radical way.
I-1. Internal organs.
Drones have peculiar internals that only imitate real organs (for example, the CPU acts as a brain, wires as nerve endings, the core instead of a heart, oil tubes and storage tanks throughout the body serve as radiators and veins). In Solver carriers, these organs begin to overgrow with real flesh, making them partly organic while remaining just as mechanical (BIOMECHANICS RULZ). The infected drone’s body becomes covered from the inside with flesh, blood, bones around the core, and other grotesque organic matter. Externally, however, the patient shows no visible changes. Because of this invisibility, at first the drone may not even suspect the presence of the Virus while it slowly devours the host from within, digesting and transforming the body into something completely different.
As a result, they develop not only typical organs but also a full digestive system: they feel hunger, saliva begins to be produced in the mouth, and eaten material is processed to sustain the internals and activate regeneration. The hunger is intense and almost impossible to fully satisfy; accompanied by severe intoxication that literally turns the infected inside out. The Solver forces damaged drones to eat anything they can find as both food and repair material: organic flesh, metal from other drones, wires, microchips, batteries, etc. Human food or random metals are unsuitable; it’s much easier to process materials already present in their own body, so cannibalism becomes the only viable solution. Whatever is eaten is digested, and the body repairs itself: wounds heal, overheating is delayed, and so on.
I-2. Overheating.
Due to constant hunger, the system becomes heavily overloaded trying to keep the organism alive and functional, eventually failing and leading to overheating. During overheating, the system’s primary goal is to conserve energy and search for “food,” so the drone’s consciousness and personality is turned off to save power. The drone then begins indiscriminately killing and devouring other drones, at minimum to obtain oil for cooling so the system can return to normal. Machine oil is literally the equivalent of blood for drones. Oil not only prevents overheating in Solver carriers, but also temporarily calms hunger and has a warm, sweet taste.
Uninfected drones do not need food or oil. But to all drones need to recharge via a charging station during sleep mode to keep functioning. However, because of the Virus, infected drones often have problems with “sleep” and may randomly wake up from sleep mode.
Additional note: drones can enter sleep mode without a charger, but in that case only energy is conserved, not replenished.
I-3. Regeneration.
The Solver Virus also grants its carriers regeneration. Regeneration works on the same principle: consumed materials are converted into “patches” for wounds. In humans this process is more visible and usually leaves white scars, but in infected drones it leaves no trace and the surface remains perfectly smooth. Even this regeneration is not perfect and can fail, usually due to individual problems in the host’s system.
Only solid materials are useful for regeneration; machine oil is practically useless in this regard.
I-4. Fear of sunlight.
Many people compare infected drones to vampires or zombies. Although the term “zombie drones” is more popular and was even the official term in «JcJenson» employee training tapes, “vampire robots” is actually more accurate. We have already examined how cannibalism works in Solver carriers, but we have not yet touched on another crucial difference from uninfected drones.
The bodies of patients are constantly running hot due to the complex work of biomechanical organs and the fact that their original systems were not designed for such operation. Because of this, direct sunlight can be fatal. Death from overheating is not instantaneous, of course, but it is strongly recommended not to risk prolonged exposure to sunlight. It is best to stay completely in shade or wait out the day in a cold room.
The high thermal conductivity of metal guarantees rapid heating even if sunlight hits only small areas of the surface. The strength of the Sun’s electromagnetic radiation on Copper-9 is unknown, so that may also be a contributing factor to severe overheating in sunlight.
II. Daily life of worker drones.
[This section is supplementary and contains less critical information.]
II-1. Imitating humans.
As everyone knows, after humanity disappeared from Copper-9, worker drones began living their own lives — or rather, they began imitating humans: putting on wigs, taking clothes from frozen human corpses, and copying human lifestyles. Most drones simply replicated human behavior they had observed during their service or seen in surviving video cassettes, forgetting about individual personality and appearing rather flat and stereotypical from the outside, like mannequins.
Worker drones began copying stereotypical behavior from media. As a result, typical high-school archetypes appeared even in drone schools: popular girls, nerds, jocks, outcasts, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone copied only harmless traits; many also adopted negative human habits - from gossip and bullying to violence and indulging in sins (as far as that is possible for robots). No society is perfect, and there is always a dark side.
II-2. Offspring.
In a short time, drones began forming their own families. On average, each drone couple had one child. A newborn worker drone initially looks like a metallic egg-shaped sphere. From the very beginning it already has its own operating system, name, etc. The parent chooses the color of the child’s system and eyes, but according to statistics the color usually matches the mother’s. The most important fact, however, is that every newly created drone is an Untrained Artificial Intelligence.
Every juvenile drone has a sticker on its body warning that it is an Untrained AI (UAI). In essence, newborn drones are like human infants: at the beginning of life they capable only of basic actions and have only basic needs. As they grow, children explore the world, attend school, and after completing full education become adult AIs. The amount and quality of knowledge may differ between generations due to the evolution of more modern AI models.
[Yeah, I've been dragging my feet on this article... But here it is! I hope you're interested in seeing what the world of Forlorn looks like from a more scientific perspective, hehe.] :3