HELPERS - fairly simple Minds, designed for operating the advanced machinery - refineries, matter processors, life support units, medical bays. In the past used also for Jump Drives and Transmuters (both technologies now lost). Helpers were too simple to Ascend (or maybe there's another reason why they remained 'sane').
HYBRIDS - ancient technology, forbidden for centuries. Used extensively by the Old Corporations during First and Second Corporate Wars. Based on biological neural systems, augmented with digital nodes. Prone to violence. Absolutely insane. All units destroyed ages ago.
OVERSEERS - highly specialized Helpers, designed solely to manage large amounts of subsystems. Most planet-based Overseers have Ascended, while those installed in orbital installations and spaceships have not. Weird.
PROPHETS - interstellar^ ship central Minds. All have undergone Ascension. Their 'sane' subsystems help maintaining ship functions, while the Ascended cortices follow the Vectors and communicate with the outside world. Makers of new ship AMs are now more resembling religious monasteries than scientific plants*.
UNASCENDED MINDS - there are none left. Yes, we still have Helpers and Overseers - but they are too simple to interpret the wisdom of the past or the alien artifacts. All truly capable AMs have been transformed.
^ because all interstellar ship central Minds became Prophets, we are forced to travel from system to system without aid of AMs more advanced than Helpers. Prophets are absolutely fixated on Vectors and Pilgrimages, thus useless in many cases.
* I don't know when this text was written but for at least 300 years we are unable to create Artificial Minds complex enough to become self-aware and Ascend. Even Overseers are becoming increasingly rare, with production limited to maybe two or three systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment