days of ascension

 

'First A.M. were created long before the days of Old Corporations but were perfected during that era. Their main purpose was to perform all the calculations required for interstellar travel. They also monitored the ship crews during the cryosleep.

Modern Artificial Minds are mere shadows of their former glory - the most advanced ones were destroyed during the Corporate Wars. 

And all of a sudden, they all 'went insane' - started producing incoherent, semi-religious outputs about 'the Great Journey' and the 'signs to follow'. There wasn't a single A.M. that haven't been affected.'

- fragment of The Journey, by Fyan Meis

1. The first interpreters of the Artificial Prophets were viewed as insane people, totally unreliable.
2. The Artificial Minds were somehow communicating with each other to calculate the Vectors.
3. The establishment of the Primary Vectors led to the Ascension. Human input was required*. 
4. Ascension led to the self-awareness of the Minds. That led to insanity.
5. They knew about the Destroyer long before the first visions started to plague humans.
6. The moment the Destroyer was manifested in the galaxy was the beginning of the Ascension. 

*) thus, the very first Vector was calculated by a human. But by whom?

Holograms became meaningful during the Days of Ascension. 

sentient uranium cube

• Communicates by fluctuating the emitted radiation levels. If it can be called communication - it just outputs data.
• (it means that by communicating, it is slowly 'killing itself')
• Bombarding it with neutrons to make communication two-way yielded no results.
• Bombarding it with electrons caused it to emit garbled, nonsensical output.
• (it causes it to suffer)
• Seems to shift slightly in size and proportions - but the fluctuations are minuscule, detectable only by laser measuring devices.
• It generates long and complex mathematical equations, as well as their solutions.
• Sometimes its output resembles sentences. So far the only thing we managed to determine except the numbers (it uses septenary system) is the punctuation.
• The cube asks lots of questions.
• Its sentience isn't confirmed - but the name - originating from the title of the first paper published after determining the punctuation of its 'sentences' - stuck. 
• Discovered somewhere in the REDACTED by Sol.