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Hold on, why are solar implants even a thing? Do we expect to spend most of our time naked? Just get a solar T shirt or something! Rescinding my vote for solar.
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Aug 25, 2016 04:37
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For the brain augment, will it give us perfect memory/recall/attention to detail? And or, will it make it instantaneous, so we have lots of time to make a decision in bullet time?
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Aug 25, 2016 05:00
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Loel posted:For the brain augment, will it give us perfect memory/recall/attention to detail? After a fashion, for the first one. And it's very fast. Not instantaneous, but it works at least as quickly as you can think for most of the more mundane functions. It probably can't do detailed modelling regarding a complicated system super fast, but you could expect to have an answer in a few minutes if you pose the question properly. Also, voting is closed.
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Aug 25, 2016 05:34
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You are Tabitha Genovese, a military strategist turned starship captain. Before the war you were a genetic engineer, a healthy and well respected field. You are familiar with a number of technologies that relate to bionics as well as some of the more advanced medical technology that helps humans live for hundreds of years. You also have a strong background in math, biology, and chemistry. Your physics is a bit rusty, undergrad was a long time ago, but you can probably spend a bit of time to get back up to par if you want. If not you can simply ask one of your crew members, or just look the information up. You have a solid understanding of computer simulations for things like protein folding and understand the basics for things like deterministic and non-deterministic modeling. The war was hard on everyone, no doubt, but it was not quite so hard on you as it was on others. At least this is the opinion you suspect the majority of the soldiers have. You didn’t see a lot of combat, but you can use a gun if you need to. You are relatively good with a rifle, less so with a pistol, and you have no training with anything heavier than that. What you did see a lot of was just how badly humanity was doing in the war. You had a front row seat to many a discussion about how many people would have to die in order to secure a single victory, and how many others you would have to let die because you simply did not have the resources to save them. It was not easy, even as detached as the command system was from the war. Cognitive enhancement bionics were commonplace among strategists and leaders, and were not uncommon amongst regular soldiers either. Many people have communications bionics installed, it was necessary to be able to coordinate extremely well if we were to defeat the robots, who acted in virtually perfect unison. Cognitive enhancement/Transmitter combo bonus! Late in the war effort you volunteered for an upgrade to your bionics, developed by a friend of yours. You acted as one of the test beds for his newly developed model, which tied the communications module into the cognitive computer directly as a single module instead of two independent ones. The throughput on data transmission was increased, and you can now access most any computer on which you have a login remotely. Want to start that expensive simulation, but aren’t at your desk? No problem. He even managed to get the transmitter receiver to broadcast on specific parts of the EM spectrum and tuned your computer to interpret the results, giving you a personal radar system! What a guy. You also have a solar charging system that will allow you to charge your battery or power your bionics (the difference is murky, you aren’t an electrical engineer) while on the go. “Captain.” Behind you is your chief of security. You are always amazed that he manages to be as quiet as he does. It makes no sense. “My team and I have secured the cryo decks for the colonists. Nothing is amiss.” “Thank you, Vladimir.” ”Of course. My team and I will prepare for cryo, yes?” “Yes, that’s fine.” He turns and leaves without another word.  Vladimir Barkov is your chief of security on the ship. He was a decorated soldier during the war, rising to a command position but remaining on the front lines. He was well known for making some particularly daring attacks on robot holdings. Something less well known to the public, but very well known to command, his tactics were extremely unconventional. Vladimir wants to get results and he’s willing to come from some odd angles to do it. Some have gone so far as to even call him sneaky, an interesting adjective for a man who is nearly seven feet of heavily augmented human. Apparently during one fight he pulled a rotary cannon off of a downed VTOL and used that to great effect. He enjoys order, and is happy with his position in the ship.  You check in briefly with your naviga... astrodynamicist, Asta Lundgren. She hates being called a navigator, for reasons that are beyond you. For her part she is the most knowledgeable “All set to go, Asta?” “Yes ma’am, Vlad says everyone and everything is locked up down there so we can begin our acceleration as soon as you’d like. I’ve plotted a course that will swing us outside of Tyson-664d’s orbit by about a weeks travel. From there we’ll have to go more carefully, I don’t have the necessary data to put us any closer safely. The wardens will wake us up if anything goes wrong.” “Thank you.” Ah yes, the wardens. Strange group of people they are. The wardens are four (un)lucky people chosen for their particular traits who will remain awake through the entire journey to monitor vital ship functions and handle any minor emergencies. As the captain you’ll wake up once every four years to take a status update and to handle any issues that have cropped up in the previous four years, but the majority of it should be taken care of by the wardens. “Ok, Asta, take us out. Let’s go ‘home.’” The word feels odd in your mouth. Home. The place you’re leaving behind you right now. The ship doesn’t seem to move at all at first. Asta is clearly doing something and you can see that the ship is moving, but if you closed your eyes you wouldn’t know anything was happening at all. “Captain, we should get into cryo.”  Your first officer, Thomas Moulton. He was some sort of weapons researcher during the war but is tight lipped about it. He seems very eager to get away from all the mess now that the war is over. “Of course. Cryo. I just want to watch for a few minutes.” Thomas doesn’t say anything else, but he stands and watches with you as the Earth slowly shrinks away. You can feel the acceleration beginning to pick up, it’s time to go to sleep. You walk towards your cabins in silence, Thomas’ cabin is right next to yours. You nod at one another as you step through the door. You could almost swear you heard him say something, but it was probably your imagination. The cryo pod is upright, attached to the bulkhead of the ship. You step inside and slide the lid closed. It has a weighty feel to it and makes a satisfying click when the latch engages. Someone did a good job on designing these. Year 4 AD (after departure), colony ship Absolution Oh my god, this headache. They had said something about cryo sleep being hard on you, and that waking up would be rough. Ugh. You are pretty sure that the entire robot army was just marching around inside your forehead. Standing isn’t as easy as you recall. The ship seems like it’s facing the wrong direction, why did they put the floors down there? You reach for a container of water and some of the antioxidant pills they told you would help with the headaches and with the radiation issues. You fumble with them in a haze and manage to stagger to the bed and lay down for a few minutes. Surprisingly you aren’t cold. It does seem really hard to think right now, this headache is awful. After about 15 minutes of laying on the bed your head has returned to a relatively normal state. The headache isn’t gone but it’s no longer going to keep you from standing. You walk out of your cabin and find the hallway dark. The lights trip on as you move into the hall proper, the ship is nearly silent. You can hear a subtle thrumming noise, like someone firing an automatic weapon or operating a chipping hammer. As you move to the bridge the thrumming noise seems to get further away. The door to the bridge slides open with little fanfare. The bridge is largely dark, but there are four glowing consoles displaying tremendous amounts of data. In front of three of the consoles are people interfaced into the ship through their NVI systems. They seem completely oblivious to your presence on the bridge. You walk to one of them, you think his name is Cedric? You’re pretty sure that his name is Cedric. You met all of the wardens, but your headache is making it hard to remember the name of someone you met once... four years ago? It seems like both forever ago and yesterday. You can only imagine how everyone else is going to feel when they come out of cryo, when 22 years is gone overnight. You briefly wonder if the algorithms that chose the people going on the trip took into account how well someone would cope with a multi-decade gap in their life. Probably. Can’t have someone going nuts as soon as they step on to a new planet. The bridge door slides open behind you, the fourth warden walks onto the bridge directly towards her console. Bedia, you remember her name. It was the first time you’d heard that name. You asked her about it. It comes from the Arabic word for new, or novel. Well it was certainly a novel name. “Bedia.” She startles, dropping a datapad on the floor. “Captain! Oh my, we, uh. Wow.” She fumbles to get the datapad with one hand. Her other hand is a spiderweb of tiny manipulators and sensors, it looks like she can probably interface directly with a number of the various ship systems through it. “We, I mean, uh I, I didn’t expect you. Has it really been four years already? Wow.” “Tell me about it. It feels like a night.” “Yeah, I’ve been told that cryo is pretty rough. Headache?” “The worst.” “Well, you don’t seem to have thrown up, that’s good. Would you like to take a walk? I can give you your briefing while we walk, there are a few things you should probably see.” You nod and the two of you exit the bridge. The other wardens, if they noticed you or heard your short discussion with Bedia, have not reacted to it in any way. As you move through the ship the thrumming noise gets louder and then softer with no apparent pattern. “Bedia, what is that thrumming noise?” “What noise? I don’t hear anything.” She has a puzzled look on her face, “Oh! You mean the reactor. That’s probably the ship’s reactor that you’re picking up on your comlink. It can be a bit distracting at first.” “Why is the reactor showing up on my comlink?” “Well, the reactor emits some pretty strong magnetic fields that oscillate with a given frequency. Your comlink is probably just picking up some of those fields as they propogate through the ship. They supposedly insulated that stuff so the fields wouldn’t interfere with the ship. It’s not perfect, that’s actually one of the things we’re going to see. I’m surprised you can pick it up this far away, though.” Bedia leads you down to the reactor area. As you get closer the thrumming becomes a bit more intense but doesn’t seem to be too bad. You experiment with shutting your comlink off and the thrumming does indeed go away. The reactor is a monster. Conceived by a madman, it is thousands of cubic meters of molten metal swirling in a sphere. The metal is forced around the sphere by a series of magnetic pumps to open a central vortex. As if that wasn’t enough, an incredibly strong magnetic field compresses it at regular intervals, maybe five times a second, collapsing the vortex and crushing the fuel that was just injected into the vortex and initiating fusion. It is the literal beating heart of the ship. You are standing on the other side of several walls from the reactor. A readout is displayed on the door with the reactor status, everything is green, as well as several signs cautioning against entering the reactor room. Especially if you have bionics, apparently, as several signs indicate very clearly in both text and graphic that you will probably lose your bionics (and your life) to the magnetic fields within the room. Even here you can feel a subtle tug on your form, and you have only minor bionics as far as metal content is concerned. ”Feel that pull? That isn’t supposed to happen,” Bedia is clearly experiencing it as well, she has a number of bionics with more metal than yours, “We think there’s an issue with one of the magnetic seals in there. But we can’t go in to check, all of us are augged up and it would probably tear us apart.” “Is it dangerous?” “We don’t know. We want to send someone in to take a look, maybe one of the engineers. But it doesn't seem to be an emergency so we need your permission to wake one of them up.” “How long has it been like this?” “About two months,” she says. She starts again “Wait. More like a year, I guess. Time is hard sometimes. I don’t think it’s been getting any worse, though.” 1. Do you wake an engineer to look at the reactor? A – Yes, are you insane? You just said this is the beating heart of the ship, get an engineer now! B – No, it’s been this way for nearly a year, it’s nothing to worry about. It's not even the reactor, just one of the seals that insulates it from the ship. After letting Bedia know what you’d like to do about the magnetics issue at the reactor room, you move on to the next issue she has for you. As you exit the reactor area you turn your comlink back on and the thrumming resumes, steady as can be. This might actually be a way for you to check the frequency of the reactor from afar. You have your computer take some of the data, the pulses are of uniform intensity and come with a frequency of 5.2 hertz. That seems about in line with what you’ve been told the reactor should be doing. You make several turns and climb a few ladders before you arrive at your next destination. “This is one of the cryo controllers,” Bedia is pointing to a computer bank in what looks like a closet, “it’s been giving us some anomalous data. When I ask the computer here, everything reports ok. But when I’m on the bridge it tells me that some of the pods have been opened. I’ve come down to look, but I can’t see what’s wrong. I think the connection to the bridge might be faulty.” “Is it an issue?” “Well, no. I mean, I do have to come down here to make sure everything is ok instead of being able to do it from the bridge. It’s not so bad, I guess. The trip is good exercise.” 2. Would you like an engineer to look at the connection between the cryo controller and the bridge? If there is a fault it could be anywhere in what is probably miles of cabling. Bedia doesn’t seem to mind the walk. C – Yes, I voted to wake up the engineer for question 1, so have him look into this as well. D – Yes, but I voted no on question one, so I want to wake an engineer up for just this. E – No, this isn’t worth making someone dig through miles of conduit, Bedia can just keep making the trip. With that resolved the two of you return to the bridge. She shows you the display for the cryo controller. Everything looks fine. You talk to Bedia for a few more minutes about various issues with the ship that they have handled, fuel supply data, and other boring stuff. Behind her you watch the cryo controller register one of the pods open. Then closed. Just a flicker. 3. Do you want to stay awake while the engineer fixes the issues? F – Yes. G – No. Olothreutes fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 12:54
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ACF We are Captain Paranoia!
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Aug 25, 2016 13:06
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1) A, with more tact. Also give the engineer time to acclimate. 2) C, but wake up a different engineer to look into it. 3) F 4) "Behind her you watch the cryo controller register one of the pods open. Then closed. Just a flicker." I don't think that should have happened... Better wake up a third engineer to look just into that. Edit: "You, look at the thing that keeps us alive. You, look at the wires that talk between the thing that keeps us alive and the other thing that keeps us alive. You, that light did a weird thing. Figure out if its important or not." RandomPauI fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 13:08
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So I think we have a saboteur on board. He rigged the cryo pods to make him appear asleep (hence the glitch) and then weakened the magnetic fields surrounding the fusion reactor to fail over time, ultimately posing a major threat to anyone on board with bionic implants. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a purist on board who would rather not start a colony of "half-robots". Is there anyone on board who lacks bionics that would be affected by the field?
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Aug 25, 2016 13:15
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There Bias Two posted:So I think we have a saboteur on board. He rigged the cryo pods to make him appear asleep (hence the glitch) and then weakened the magnetic fields surrounding the fusion reactor to fail over time, ultimately posing a major threat to anyone on board with bionic implants. That would be a very odd way to start a colony without "half-robots" considering it would kill everyone, probably. The reactor is pretty important to staying alive. The magnetic O-rings around it, maybe not so much? Several of them still work. Without them the reactor is dangerous to everyone, augmentations or not. And yes, two of the engineers have no bionics explicitly so they can work on the reactor without having to worry about having part of their head ripped out. They are quite talented and very smart. Olothreutes fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 13:18
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A C F
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Aug 25, 2016 13:28
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ACF, and this is a really good start OP 
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Aug 25, 2016 14:42
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ACF and yep, this is good so far!
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Aug 25, 2016 14:58
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ACF
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Aug 25, 2016 15:05
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Eh, things break down sometimes. It happens. This seems like A Biggie, though. ACF but instead with a gentle reminder that a mechanical fault that threatens the ship is totally valid reason to wake us up outside the inspection cycle, and that we'll need to wake up enough people to handle the ship's disparate issues promptly. And yes, someone needs to look at cryo while Bedia is at her station. And if whatever is at the site of the cryo anomaly is, uh,
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Aug 25, 2016 15:12
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ACF+ Wake Vladmir If someone is loving around with the pods etc I want our security chief there when we figure it out. There's really no reason not to wake people I can see, anyway, other than avoiding putting them through a lovely headache. FoxTerrier fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 16:10
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During the war, were there any robots that closely approximated a human physically? Or are synthetics beyond current tech?
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Aug 25, 2016 16:14
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Also Check the ID of the pod we saw open slightly, and ask Bedia for the names associated with the pods she's seen opened
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Aug 25, 2016 16:16
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ACF Maybe wake up a second engineer with bionics suited to searching out electrical problems, though I'm sure we've got multimeters and HUD visors around too. Unaugmented engineers are a precious resource while we're on the ship, and while I'd like to keep people awake long enough to keep the Wardens company I think it's best to minimize the stress we put on our engine engineer. Maybe let them finish the inspection of the engine, then decide for themself if they want to work on the cable problem.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:29
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Abyssal Squid posted:ACF
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Aug 25, 2016 16:30
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Yea, we definitely smell a rat. ACF Have the engineer checkout the "properly functioning" cyro terminal for tampering. It's possible someone got tripped up by hardwired bridge security or something. Do the cryopods have view ports? Can we spend a couple days doing an in-person head check? See if there are empty pods? Does the ship computer register which of the motion sensitive lights are on and when? Do the pods that are "flickering" exclusively contain people with cognitive implants or is there some other linking factor? The prior one would be very bad. On that note can we set up a log of the errors? Could the mag seal anomaly on the reactor be a result of power being rerouted elsewhere on the ship? Arrange for additional security for our cryochamber before we go back under. Underline that last task several times on our to-do list.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:08
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ACF Get that poo poo fixed immediately. Regular pulsing of EM waves are going to be a loud screaming beacon to anyone who can listen. Also if the reactor is losing emag containment and its literally a magnetic fusion reactor then we are in deep poo poo. The faulty cryo-pods need to be addressed, but what we really need to figure out is if there are saboteurs on board. No pods should be open and with the minor faults in the reactor I am immediately putting on my tinfoil hat. Additionally wake up a contingent of the security officers. Perform a full sweep of the ship with the engineers. Two officers per engineer. No one goes off alone, no one takes any action without clearing it with us first. I bet the robots never lost, they just went full digital and could have snuck into the ship aboard a sleeper agent. Better to apologize for some headaches than get caught with our pants down.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:14
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Upvoting Team Paranoia: ACF If we have 22 more years of this, we need to be on top of it.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:17
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ACF. It's not that any of this is especially serious now, but it's better to check it before it turns into a big problem. At the very least we can check and be sure it's not something that could affect the mission.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:53
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ACF Better safe than sorry, best to fix it now before it becomes a Thing.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:16
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ACF why would we not play it safe? Gently advise Bedia that next time you awake you expect to have a detailed written report waiting for you. Our wake-up times are known in advance, there's no excuse for not being expected, or for not having information like "exactly how long has the reactor been malfunctioning" readily available Wake up our security guy too. Almost certainly unnecessary, but why not? He's a soldier, he can deal with a few headaches.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:28
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What do we know about the wardens? The "We, I mean uh, I!" thing and the fact 3 of them didn't notice us is slightly worrying.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:39
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Nettle Soup posted:What do we know about the wardens? The "We, I mean uh, I!" thing and the fact 3 of them didn't notice us is slightly worrying. Four years deeply interfaced with a computer and no one but three other people socially profiled to not mind 22 years of extreme isolation. Frankly I would just stay calm, speak quietly and not make any sudden movements around them. They're not gonna be people persons. We basically have to trust them because they may as well be aliens in terms of how easy it would be to replace them. They are uber goons. What we've seen of Bedia so far is actually quite encouraging. She remains empathetic, enjoys exercise, and can carry on reasoned conversation outside of the machine interface.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:57
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ACF
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Aug 25, 2016 21:43
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Nettle Soup posted:What do we know about the wardens? The "We, I mean uh, I!" thing and the fact 3 of them didn't notice us is slightly worrying. Not Alex posted:Four years deeply interfaced with a computer and no one but three other people socially profiled to not mind 22 years of extreme isolation. Basically this. You expect that the other three, assuming there are no other shorts in miles of cable, probably don't move unless it is 100% necessary for their job. Even Bedia would probably not do any walking if it weren't for the cryo-mystery. You did look at each of their screens in passing, Cedric's more closely, and it was clear that they were all awake and doing a bunch of things simultaneously. There Bias Two posted:During the war, were there any robots that closely approximated a human physically? Or are synthetics beyond current tech? No, the robots never bothered with any attempts at subterfuge, they were far more on the doctrine of overwhelming firepower. The early models were vaguely human shaped, though nearly 10 feet tall, and as the war progressed they became less and less human looking. Apparently the robots found the human form inefficient for combat. Not Alex posted:Do the cryopods have view ports? Can we spend a couple days doing an in-person head check? See if there are empty pods? They do. You can go check now if you'd like, or when you wake up someone who is handier with a weapon. You will probably just see a very still human. quote:Does the ship computer register which of the motion sensitive lights are on and when? Yes. Bedia pulls up the logs and there aren't any instances of the lights coming on other than when she goes down to check on the local status panel. quote:Do the pods that are "flickering" exclusively contain people with cognitive implants or is there some other linking factor? The prior one would be very bad. You'll have to check which ones are flickering. You've only seen it happen once, Bedia says it's pretty intermittent and she doesn't think that it's always the same pod. You get the impression that she looks at this as a minor annoyance in the sea of data that she usually manages. quote:On that note can we set up a log of the errors? You set up a quick monitoring program to look at the status lights and check to see what sort of signals are being sent from the local computer to the bridge. It will take some time to gather enough data to be super useful. You don't know the frequency of the error so it's hard to know how long it will take before you can be statistically confident in your analysis. quote:Could the mag seal anomaly on the reactor be a result of power being rerouted elsewhere on the ship? Maybe? You aren't an electrical engineer and the workings of the reactor isolation systems are not something you studied in great detail. You pull up the schematics but they are incredibly complicated and not something you are very familiar with. It is not much like the bionics schematics that you are used to reading, this is orders of magnitude more intricate. Olothreutes fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 22:14
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1CF
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Aug 25, 2016 22:29
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ACF I'm voting with team paranoia as well. Not good, and it is our job to check things out.
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Aug 25, 2016 22:40
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How many pods are there? Is it plausible to stretch our legs and do a walk-by of every pod? See if any are empty, dead, broken, things like that. Just a visual inspection.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:41
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Loel posted:How many pods are there? Is it plausible to stretch our legs and do a walk-by of every pod? See if any are empty, dead, broken, things like that. Just a visual inspection. In total? Almost 8,000 of them. Just under the glitchy controller? 200.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:45
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Olothreutes posted:In total? Almost 8,000 of them. Just under the glitchy controller? 200. Assume a meter for each pod, thats ~5 miles. Easy walk to stretch our legs, and we can make a habit of it each time we come out of cryo.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:51
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ACF We're spending 22 years on this ship, we should make sure it's in optimal condition. Also:Security sweep if ANY signs of tampering are found I don't think we should do a sweep otherwise, might increase paranoia among the awake crew or make them believe that we're losing it.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:01
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Its not paranoia, its exercise! We're just stretching our legs 
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Aug 26, 2016 00:03
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Loel posted:Its not paranoia, its exercise! We're just stretching our legs A few people want to wake some of the security team and/or Vlad.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:06
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Olothreutes posted:A few people want to wake some of the security team and/or Vlad. Ive seen this movie Im not walking 5 miles by myself on an empty ship
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Aug 26, 2016 00:07
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I'm sure that we've also all seen Pandorum. Yeah, we may only be scheduled for 22 years, but still, let's fix things early.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:08
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the_steve posted:I'm sure that we've also all seen Pandorum. Yeah, we may only be scheduled for 22 years, but still, let's fix things early. Oh, gooooood shoutout.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:09
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I BEG you all to consider that these are extremely minor problems. The only reason they were noticed at all is because there was nothing else happening, anywhere. Its a quirk of the ship. If things get worse then Bedia et al will wake us up so we can fix whatever is happening.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:10
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