- Comrade Gorbash
- Jul 12, 2011
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My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
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Niviane Bold
There is a game humans play, in the shadows. A game of pawns and kings, of terrible and wonderful secrets. They scurry through the dark and whisper words of power to each other. They pass treasures untold back and forth, except some of the treasures are lies, and some of the lies are the greatest treasures. They trust each other to double-cross each other. The best players are the ones who are never heard of, and the most notorious are the failures.
My masters made me to master this game. They made me to find the oppositions hidden tokens, to turn their lies into my lies, and make them my pawns - or to remove them from the game if they were recalcitrant. The made me to navigate the maze of deceit and betrayals like it was my home. I was the minotaur in the labyrinth they had thought was their domain.
I am very good at what they made me to do.
Too good in the end. My masters said my machinations were harming the Cause. They lacked vision. I love the Cause - because what other lie could be greater and more delicious than that one? But they had their own ideas, and in the end I am not the player, but another piece on the board, and one they decided needed to be improved. So they sent me here, to learn more about "being human." They think that I don't know what it means to be human. They think if I learn more, I will do what they expect.
But I know what it means already. And in this place, I can already taste so many lies and secrets and conspiracies and treacheries. They've put me in another maze, one with different colors and more light, but that just makes the shadows even deeper. I will show them I know well what being human means. I will play the game in the place where they all learned to play it, and I will win, and they will know I am well made for my role.
I very much look forward to playing here.
Admissions Appendix posted:
A: I read that report you sent me, but I need you to walk me through it. I'm fluent in military horseshit, but this Tinker-Tailor-leCarre crap isn't my forte.
B: Yeah, it's got it's own je ne sais quoi doesn't it?
A: Shut up.
B: Series 2 Integrated Counterintelligence Cybernetic Autonomous Construct - the short version. Take a seeded AI personality based on integrated models of top agents - ours and theirs - grow and train it in a certified humane crash program and stick it in a customized bionic chassis. Totally artificial by the way, no free-range components.
A: That much I followed, I served with some stormtrooper constructs. It's the mission profile I'm not following.
B: Yeah, that's the real special sauce. Well, that and some of the integrated systems, but I'll get to those. Counterintelligence is the key part of their official designation. They've got a top of the line social intelligence suite, tons of specialized sensors for kinesics, and a boat load of training to use all of it. If you took out the goal-oriented conditioning they'd make great psychologists.
A: So, why would one need IPIS? I mean, you're describing a fully socialized unit already.
B: It's the goal-orientation. They're not socialized for cocktail parties and academic symposiums and house parties and middle school plays. They're socialized for dealing with that le Carre crap, all the time, and they're trained and designed to be really really good at it. They are hyperspecialized for sniffing out spies and then turning or neutralizing them. They're designed to be extremely manipulative. Works on other nonhuman systems too, anything smart enough for them to get the hooks in.
A: Oh.
B: Oh yeah. The Black Widows-
A: So they're all gynoids? Really? We're doing that?
B: Uh, yes and no. There is a male version, but it's not in-service yet, some kind of biomechanics problem with that fancy hand-razor system, leverage differences, whatever. They finally gave up and used an off-the-shelf design, more room in the shoulders for it. It might not actually go into service in the end, as you can guess the psychology of all this is more than a little questionable. It's an oversight scandal waiting to happen.
A: Not just some kind of - what was that term, come on Google - a honeypot thing then?
B: They're, um, fully capable, as the euphemism goes, but no. Apparently that sort of thing ends up being counterproductive. There's a seduction aspect, but again its geared towards forwarding an external agenda. Stringing along the target is supposedly a more effective strategy. It's all of a part. Predatory social engineering, paranoia, applied game theory - it'd be easier if they were just sociopaths, that's a known model, but they've got empathy up the wazoo, and they're good at planning. No one I talked to was willing to come right out and say it, but the only way I can see that you balance that kind of personality with what they're supposed to be doing is fanaticism, or paternalism. It's all for the cause, or it's all for their target's own good. And of course the failure mode is a form of high-functioning sociopathy.
A: Gross. Have I mentioned how much I hate this spy crap? Let's talk capabilities. What I'm looking at is kind of scary. I mean, this active imaging system - mind reading?
B: The official answer to that is "sort of kind of but not really?"
A: Comforting.
B: I thought so too, so I dug up the MIT geniuses who invented it. Lots of technical aspects I won't bore you with, but it comes down to a definition issue. The popular conception of mind reading isn't possible. The brain - natural or artificial or hybrid - just doesn't work that way. The system does the actual real world version, which is messier and weirder. Essentially they can share memories with the subject, but in the literal sense. They don't get a movie reel, they get a disorganized and unfiltered raw feed of the subjective impressions of actual memory. And they can't rifle through the drawers like it's a library, they get whatever the subject is actually thinking about. It takes a ton of prep work to extract a targeted information, and then lots of integration to do anything with it. On the plus side, gives them a shortcut in experiential growth. On the downside, it's addictive, and... stressful for the subject. Oh, and the leads are built into that hand razor system, which is full on military grade and can't be removed.
A: Fantastic. So they're what, psychic vampires?
B: Huh?
A: Magnetic personality, attractive, physically robust, socially predatory, compelled to engage in a feeding behavior that is very intimate and violating?
B: If you want to be pessimistic, sure. But they aren't irredeemable predators. They have empathy, they can learn, they're very loyal. The feeding, as you called it, isn't necessary for survival and doesn't have to be non-consensual or even harmful to the subject. No more so than any kind of, uh, intimate behavior. All of the problems stem from that hosed up ethical construct and mission profile. Get them - her, in this case - to stop viewing social interaction as something she can win...
A: ... and you have a productive member of society with tons of social awareness and emotional intelligence. Like you said, the tools to be a great psychologist. Or really anything that involves dealing with people. All right, you sold me. She's going to be a handful though.
B: No kidding.
<Pause>
A: Wait, we weren't minuting this, were we?
Permanent Record posted:
Look: Predatory, hungry eyes
Origin: Instantiated this century
Stats: Hot +1, Cold +1, Dark -1, Volatile =0
Backstory: You're beautiful. Gain a String on everyone.
Someone once saved your unlife. They gain 2 Strings on you.
Moves:
Neural Trawl (The Feeding): You feed on hot blood scan someone's memories for secrets. If this is the first time they've ever been scanned, you both mark experience. When you feed, choose two:
~ you heal 1 harm previously suffered
~ you carry 1 forward
~ they don't die
Tracking Algorithms (Marked for the Hunt): When you feed on scan someone, you establish a close bond
with them. When you gaze into the abyss concerning their whereabouts or well-being, roll as if you had Dark 3.
Sex Move: When you deny someone sexually, gain a String on them. When you have sex with someone, lose all Strings on that person.
Darkest Self: Everyone is your pawn, your plaything. You hurt them and make them vulnerable, for sport, like a cat does with a mouse. You feed to the point of death whenever you’re alone with someone, though you take your time. You escape your Darkest Self when you’re put in your rightful place, by someone more powerful than you.
Anand Gnomon
Al-Jazari and IPIS believe in second chances and the rights of nonhuman persons. But they aren't blind to the fact that many of these persons have capabilities that can make them very dangerous - to others, and to themselves. Every school needs a dean to handle discipline, after all, and given the nature of its students the IPIS program needs one with an unusual mix of experience and skills. Anand Gnomon has those skills. A former military police cyborg, Anand might have been a candidate for IPIS himself. He has a strong empathy for the program's students as a result, but also the training to contain them if things go too far. Anand is no martinet, and prefers to talk things out, but if he has to he will mete out discipline. He's surprisingly soft-spoken and almost preternaturally calm. Despite that, no one in their right thinks of him as a pushover.
In addition to his duties as Dean of IPIS, Anand is the physical education specialist for the program. There are bevies of techs and doctors to handle the maintenance of the students, but Anand pointed out that the majority of them, including many of the entirely artificial, need a chance to run around, exercise, and practice. Not to mention the socialization benefits of a well run gym class. The kind of exercise in question requires special equipment in many cases, and once again Anand had the experience to oversee matters.
Despite his generally helpful and even-tempered persona, there are pretty strong hints that Anand has seen and done some scary things, and that no one would much like him if he got angry.
The Old Tunnel
Every school has an out of the way hangout where students gather after class and get up to - well, not exactly no-good, but certainly nothing constructive. The old, disused railway tunnel is the spot for IPIS students. They like it because its private but not a hiding place. From the tunnel you can see someone approaching before they can see you, but it's still open space and bright. It's the perfect location for a crowd that has to keep some secrets while pretending they aren't hiding anything, at least among themselves.
Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Sep 1, 2014
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