Post by snowyaegis on Jan 9, 2022 23:31:45 GMT
Julna looked over the reports with a tired gaze, letting the coat hang over her like a cloak as she rubbed her eyes.
By all intents and purposes, the process to engineer a new hardlight form was nailed down, with the help of the humans. Metastability, full seal integrity, stable internal energy mass, it was all there.
The only part they didn't know was how to tie a mind to it and keep it stable. Granted, forming a new mind ready for a hardlight form wasn't lost on them either--with only some tweaking, it had enabled the creation of their androids, and although that project was technically a failure, Sameh had ordered production of androids maintained, if not performed at top pace--it would be unfair to subject them to the same fear of extinction that the Artificia themselves faced.
If only she didn't have to face this difficulty without the accented Unioner, Valen, making uncomfortable advances every other day. Noyre arriving periodically to bully everyone didn't help.
Julna groaned again.
The door clicked and opened with a wheeze, Julna looking up and over, leaning back as her head turned, to see the turquoise form of Ktehlan, a relatively recent addition. A little quiet, he was nonetheless a helpful presence.
"Dr Julna."
"Mmm?"
"A missing Artificia was returned to us...about three days ago. ICO Ohuhri, AUN. Apparently the Jade Empire managed to secure her safety."
"...Okay? What's that got to do with us?"
"They wanted her for research regarding hardlight forms. They decided to send us a copy along with her. As you'd expect, Sameh had it sent to us. I...have it here, if you wanna take a look." he explained. An eyebrow raised, the pink Artificia holding out a hand and nodding softly. He strode over, handing her the tablet. Julna swung back around, tapping some buttons to patch it to her larger-screened computer.
"...Anything else?" she breathed after a second.
"No, ma'am."
"Alright. Thank you, Ktehlan." she nodded, the man straightening up and leaving.
This creation process was...vastly more efficient than their one Valen and Elansworth had been trying to rig together for literal years of their life now, though they could be merged. Overall, this could greatly expedite the process. Other than that, though, it didn't seem of massive gravity to the project, though it gave her a few thoughts on how they might improve their own work.
The theory and results of synapse links made her think, though. She wondered if that was how the Artificia were made. The Federation had made sure all those decades ago that the Artificia never caught on to how the devices that spawned them worked, destroying plans and once even utilising a nuclear warhead to incapacitate all of the machines in a city. The determination of the effort was one of the things that had damned the both of them; the Artificia in its success, and the Federation in the material cost's impact on their war effort.
So a machine that made a sort of 'neural cloud' and tied its digital synapses to a hardlight frame didn't seem too out of the question.
The door opened again, two of the humans and Zulya entering.
"We have a test cycle planned for today, right?" the Union scientist, Elansworth, asked.
"That we do." Julna sighed, sitting up straight to bring her hands to the keyboard.
"That we do."
SIX HOURS LATER
The door to the personal quarters opened with a hiss, Julna all but stumbling into the room, hitting the light switch.
The machine had worked, but once again the heat buildup was more than the coolant systems could handle. Valen and the engineering teams had worked for ages devising a coolant method more sophisticated than she imagined the Nexus could handle, and yet surprisingly it was well within the abilities of the installation's power grid and radiator vanes.
And it still wasn't enough. No effort the Artificia had ever undertaken to fix their most dire of problems had gone to nearly the same cost, scale or length as this one, and yet for all of their achievements they were no closer to success than they were when her mentor, Irhota, had helped lay out the plans for this same installation.
Tossing off the lab coat and flopping uselessly onto the bed like a sack of jelly, Julna groaning as her arms fell outwards, the pink Artificia staring at the ceiling.
On the one hand, she felt that even so they inched closer to a solution by the day. All of this couldn't have been for nothing, right?
On the other, there was nothing to actually indicate they could do it, or if they could that it would at all be practical. Even if the huge machinery they had assembled here worked, it would only produce one Artificia at a time, and they'd need to see if they were mentally stable. The cost to restore the Artifician population would cripple the Unanimity.
She felt a pang of guilt at the idea of sending the humans home in failure. Unlike the Artificia, humans aged, and it would be a more impactful waste of their life. Not to mention going home feeling like they'd failed.
At least it'd get Valen out of her hair.
Groaning, she grabbed the tablet off the bedside table, holding it high over her head. Reports, news articles, past logs. The tab containing the intel from Ingen caught the corner of her eye, the Artificia clicking to it.
She narrowed her eyes a little as she thought, taking a closer look at their use of synaptic links.
All of them tied to something or other. Muscle groups, sensory reception, verbalisation.
It was when she saw the ones tied to internal function that she paused.
...Were the Artificia missing some?
Were they missing ones allowing them to reproduce?
If the Ingenious could engineer these, could they alter them?
Could...
Could the Artificia alter their own? Could they add what the Federation had deprived them of?
Instantly, she switched to the comms, tapping on the icon with a small image of Zulya sticking out her tongue and bringing the device to her ear.
"...Yo, Julna. Yeah, before you ask, I already did clean out the--"
"That's not what this is about."
"...Wh...what is it, then? That was...more energetic than you usually are. You alright?"
"Yeah, fine. I have a theory and I want your opinion on it."
THREE MONTHS LATER
For a long time, the Artifician science nexus had been rather quiet, the two teams pursuing different approaches to solving the question of their reproduction. They had funding and resources, of course, but very gradual progress hindered how much crowding the halls would help.
Then Team A had posited the idea that the Artificia simply lacked the underlying subconscious connections to start the process themselves, and that theoretically this could be fixed.
Two weeks had passed.
Both teams had reported the same thing: The theory had solid ground, and there was grounds to attempt a fix.
Installation personnel had tripled overnight, Captain Noyre given a stern talking-to about making the lives of the crew hard, and the scant few humans aboard suddenly found themselves comparatively buried in the multicoloured light of the artificial species.
Still, work had again slowed. Figuring out how to literally add an analogy to programming to a species lacking any distinct hardware was easier said than done. Still, both teams, including the now much larger and more animate Team A, worked on approaches, solutions, ideas and theories sprung from their steadily growing base of data, any potential solution tested and sent off to Team B.
And Julna again found herself slumped in a seat, staring at a computer screen, return reports of tested hypotheses.
No change.
No change.
No change.
Brief instability.
No change.
Negative reaction.
No change.
Light output increase slightly.
No change.
Granted, these reports were a day or so old, Team B taking their time putting reports together.
Still, Team B chugged away. Sameh wanted the theory tested until it was absolutely certain if it did or didnt work.
"Anything interesting?" Elansworth asked as he passed through, the human carrying something under his arm.
"Not really." she grumbled. "Minor shifts at most. Nothing implying anything and nothing really worth writing down except that it didnt do anything."
"Damn." he muttered. "I overheard some commotion from Team B, but I was in the access shafts. Couldn't make out what was being said."
"Weird. Maybe they got some news we didn't."
"We'll probably hear from them later." he shrugged, moving for the far door.
Then, the thundering of boots came tearing down the hallway, the door sliding open to reveal a dishevelled blue Artificia.
"Here! Trial 442!" she all but shouted, virtually shoving a data store into Julna's hand.
Julna didn't know how to respond. Years of trial and error, and when it finally clicked green, after all those years of waiting for a theory to work, she didn't know how to react.
Trial 442, that was almost a month ago. At the time, nothing had happened and it had been written off probably as a fail.
But now, the examination before trying something else.
'New hardlight form detected inside subject, larger over the previous two weeks'.
That was it.
A new Artificia.
They had finally found their solution. The room went silent as Julna, muttering, read it aloud.
Dim light, that of Zulya leaned into Julna's vision as she leant to take a look.
Unlike the dumbfounded Julna, Zulya's reaction was much more obvious.
She screamed.
THREE HOURS LATER
Sameh sat in her office, grumbling as she read over the many myriad things supposedly important enough to be worth her attention. Most of it was really for lower echelons, and some others weren't even her business. How they wound up on a screen in front of her was anyone's guess.
She sighed.
"Something got you down, lemonade?" Valka asked, a smirk on his face as he glanced over.
"...Nothing, but also everything. Galaxy's going to shit, some pricks continue spilling their anti-colonial drivel on the net like we're out there burning random native worlds, just about everyone ready to sally off to another cataclysmic war we're all going to be pointing fingers over for decades." she grumbled.
"Bit of a shitshow out there, eh?"
"Yeah, just about. I don't know if I should tell Kulne to raise the Navy's readiness level or not just yet."
"If you think it's for the best."
"Yeah but you can only do drills and extra precautionary exercises so much before they become more of a cost than they're worth if you kick em off too early. I just want good news for once."
As if on cue, the door to her office hissed open, Valka snapping to his feet with a hand on his pistol, as a maroon Artificia burst into the room, the armoured hand of a Marine clamping down around her arm and almost sending the datapad she had in the other hand sailing across the room, the woman having evidently been in a hurry.
"What's the meaning of this?" Sameh demanded. The other marine stepped into the room, grabbing the datapad.
"It's important! She needs to see it immediately!" the woman pleaded, the Marine glancing at it, his reaction invisible beneath the mass of his visorless helmet until he spoke.
"...Oh, fuck." he muttered. Sure enough, the armoured hulk crossed the room in two steps, holding out the device to Sameh, the woman seemingly calming down at this development. Sameh took it, bringing it about and scanning over it, brow furrowed.
The next thing she did, Valka neither expected nor had ever seen before. Sameh sank back into her seat, and the yellow Artificia begun to cry, letting the tablet fall to her desk with a clack as her eyes sunk into her other hand.
"W-Woah, hey, what's wrong?" Valka stumbled, circling to the woman's side and placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Sam, you alright?" he asked again, Sameh replying by leaning over into him, the crying beginning to break into laughter through closed teeth, her face still in her hand. Still, her body language had shifted. In all the years he had known her, he had come to see her dreary, dour demeanour as her normal. Rarely did she smile, and even less often did it look genuine to the man. Yet in spite of the sounds and shudders, she seemed...relaxed. Like a weight had been lifted.
"Wh-What the hell is it?" his brow furrowed, turning to the maroon woman. She, in turn, simply pointed at the tablet. With his free hand, the other curled around Sameh, he scooped it up.
Valka didn't need to read the entire report to know what it was. The first two lines conveyed everything he needed to know.
UNANIMITY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEXUS, YUNHEH
MISSION SUCCESS
By all intents and purposes, the process to engineer a new hardlight form was nailed down, with the help of the humans. Metastability, full seal integrity, stable internal energy mass, it was all there.
The only part they didn't know was how to tie a mind to it and keep it stable. Granted, forming a new mind ready for a hardlight form wasn't lost on them either--with only some tweaking, it had enabled the creation of their androids, and although that project was technically a failure, Sameh had ordered production of androids maintained, if not performed at top pace--it would be unfair to subject them to the same fear of extinction that the Artificia themselves faced.
If only she didn't have to face this difficulty without the accented Unioner, Valen, making uncomfortable advances every other day. Noyre arriving periodically to bully everyone didn't help.
Julna groaned again.
The door clicked and opened with a wheeze, Julna looking up and over, leaning back as her head turned, to see the turquoise form of Ktehlan, a relatively recent addition. A little quiet, he was nonetheless a helpful presence.
"Dr Julna."
"Mmm?"
"A missing Artificia was returned to us...about three days ago. ICO Ohuhri, AUN. Apparently the Jade Empire managed to secure her safety."
"...Okay? What's that got to do with us?"
"They wanted her for research regarding hardlight forms. They decided to send us a copy along with her. As you'd expect, Sameh had it sent to us. I...have it here, if you wanna take a look." he explained. An eyebrow raised, the pink Artificia holding out a hand and nodding softly. He strode over, handing her the tablet. Julna swung back around, tapping some buttons to patch it to her larger-screened computer.
"...Anything else?" she breathed after a second.
"No, ma'am."
"Alright. Thank you, Ktehlan." she nodded, the man straightening up and leaving.
This creation process was...vastly more efficient than their one Valen and Elansworth had been trying to rig together for literal years of their life now, though they could be merged. Overall, this could greatly expedite the process. Other than that, though, it didn't seem of massive gravity to the project, though it gave her a few thoughts on how they might improve their own work.
The theory and results of synapse links made her think, though. She wondered if that was how the Artificia were made. The Federation had made sure all those decades ago that the Artificia never caught on to how the devices that spawned them worked, destroying plans and once even utilising a nuclear warhead to incapacitate all of the machines in a city. The determination of the effort was one of the things that had damned the both of them; the Artificia in its success, and the Federation in the material cost's impact on their war effort.
So a machine that made a sort of 'neural cloud' and tied its digital synapses to a hardlight frame didn't seem too out of the question.
The door opened again, two of the humans and Zulya entering.
"We have a test cycle planned for today, right?" the Union scientist, Elansworth, asked.
"That we do." Julna sighed, sitting up straight to bring her hands to the keyboard.
"That we do."
SIX HOURS LATER
The door to the personal quarters opened with a hiss, Julna all but stumbling into the room, hitting the light switch.
The machine had worked, but once again the heat buildup was more than the coolant systems could handle. Valen and the engineering teams had worked for ages devising a coolant method more sophisticated than she imagined the Nexus could handle, and yet surprisingly it was well within the abilities of the installation's power grid and radiator vanes.
And it still wasn't enough. No effort the Artificia had ever undertaken to fix their most dire of problems had gone to nearly the same cost, scale or length as this one, and yet for all of their achievements they were no closer to success than they were when her mentor, Irhota, had helped lay out the plans for this same installation.
Tossing off the lab coat and flopping uselessly onto the bed like a sack of jelly, Julna groaning as her arms fell outwards, the pink Artificia staring at the ceiling.
On the one hand, she felt that even so they inched closer to a solution by the day. All of this couldn't have been for nothing, right?
On the other, there was nothing to actually indicate they could do it, or if they could that it would at all be practical. Even if the huge machinery they had assembled here worked, it would only produce one Artificia at a time, and they'd need to see if they were mentally stable. The cost to restore the Artifician population would cripple the Unanimity.
She felt a pang of guilt at the idea of sending the humans home in failure. Unlike the Artificia, humans aged, and it would be a more impactful waste of their life. Not to mention going home feeling like they'd failed.
At least it'd get Valen out of her hair.
Groaning, she grabbed the tablet off the bedside table, holding it high over her head. Reports, news articles, past logs. The tab containing the intel from Ingen caught the corner of her eye, the Artificia clicking to it.
She narrowed her eyes a little as she thought, taking a closer look at their use of synaptic links.
All of them tied to something or other. Muscle groups, sensory reception, verbalisation.
It was when she saw the ones tied to internal function that she paused.
...Were the Artificia missing some?
Were they missing ones allowing them to reproduce?
If the Ingenious could engineer these, could they alter them?
Could...
Could the Artificia alter their own? Could they add what the Federation had deprived them of?
Instantly, she switched to the comms, tapping on the icon with a small image of Zulya sticking out her tongue and bringing the device to her ear.
"...Yo, Julna. Yeah, before you ask, I already did clean out the--"
"That's not what this is about."
"...Wh...what is it, then? That was...more energetic than you usually are. You alright?"
"Yeah, fine. I have a theory and I want your opinion on it."
THREE MONTHS LATER
For a long time, the Artifician science nexus had been rather quiet, the two teams pursuing different approaches to solving the question of their reproduction. They had funding and resources, of course, but very gradual progress hindered how much crowding the halls would help.
Then Team A had posited the idea that the Artificia simply lacked the underlying subconscious connections to start the process themselves, and that theoretically this could be fixed.
Two weeks had passed.
Both teams had reported the same thing: The theory had solid ground, and there was grounds to attempt a fix.
Installation personnel had tripled overnight, Captain Noyre given a stern talking-to about making the lives of the crew hard, and the scant few humans aboard suddenly found themselves comparatively buried in the multicoloured light of the artificial species.
Still, work had again slowed. Figuring out how to literally add an analogy to programming to a species lacking any distinct hardware was easier said than done. Still, both teams, including the now much larger and more animate Team A, worked on approaches, solutions, ideas and theories sprung from their steadily growing base of data, any potential solution tested and sent off to Team B.
And Julna again found herself slumped in a seat, staring at a computer screen, return reports of tested hypotheses.
No change.
No change.
No change.
Brief instability.
No change.
Negative reaction.
No change.
Light output increase slightly.
No change.
Granted, these reports were a day or so old, Team B taking their time putting reports together.
Still, Team B chugged away. Sameh wanted the theory tested until it was absolutely certain if it did or didnt work.
"Anything interesting?" Elansworth asked as he passed through, the human carrying something under his arm.
"Not really." she grumbled. "Minor shifts at most. Nothing implying anything and nothing really worth writing down except that it didnt do anything."
"Damn." he muttered. "I overheard some commotion from Team B, but I was in the access shafts. Couldn't make out what was being said."
"Weird. Maybe they got some news we didn't."
"We'll probably hear from them later." he shrugged, moving for the far door.
Then, the thundering of boots came tearing down the hallway, the door sliding open to reveal a dishevelled blue Artificia.
"Here! Trial 442!" she all but shouted, virtually shoving a data store into Julna's hand.
Julna didn't know how to respond. Years of trial and error, and when it finally clicked green, after all those years of waiting for a theory to work, she didn't know how to react.
Trial 442, that was almost a month ago. At the time, nothing had happened and it had been written off probably as a fail.
But now, the examination before trying something else.
'New hardlight form detected inside subject, larger over the previous two weeks'.
That was it.
A new Artificia.
They had finally found their solution. The room went silent as Julna, muttering, read it aloud.
Dim light, that of Zulya leaned into Julna's vision as she leant to take a look.
Unlike the dumbfounded Julna, Zulya's reaction was much more obvious.
She screamed.
THREE HOURS LATER
Sameh sat in her office, grumbling as she read over the many myriad things supposedly important enough to be worth her attention. Most of it was really for lower echelons, and some others weren't even her business. How they wound up on a screen in front of her was anyone's guess.
She sighed.
"Something got you down, lemonade?" Valka asked, a smirk on his face as he glanced over.
"...Nothing, but also everything. Galaxy's going to shit, some pricks continue spilling their anti-colonial drivel on the net like we're out there burning random native worlds, just about everyone ready to sally off to another cataclysmic war we're all going to be pointing fingers over for decades." she grumbled.
"Bit of a shitshow out there, eh?"
"Yeah, just about. I don't know if I should tell Kulne to raise the Navy's readiness level or not just yet."
"If you think it's for the best."
"Yeah but you can only do drills and extra precautionary exercises so much before they become more of a cost than they're worth if you kick em off too early. I just want good news for once."
As if on cue, the door to her office hissed open, Valka snapping to his feet with a hand on his pistol, as a maroon Artificia burst into the room, the armoured hand of a Marine clamping down around her arm and almost sending the datapad she had in the other hand sailing across the room, the woman having evidently been in a hurry.
"What's the meaning of this?" Sameh demanded. The other marine stepped into the room, grabbing the datapad.
"It's important! She needs to see it immediately!" the woman pleaded, the Marine glancing at it, his reaction invisible beneath the mass of his visorless helmet until he spoke.
"...Oh, fuck." he muttered. Sure enough, the armoured hulk crossed the room in two steps, holding out the device to Sameh, the woman seemingly calming down at this development. Sameh took it, bringing it about and scanning over it, brow furrowed.
The next thing she did, Valka neither expected nor had ever seen before. Sameh sank back into her seat, and the yellow Artificia begun to cry, letting the tablet fall to her desk with a clack as her eyes sunk into her other hand.
"W-Woah, hey, what's wrong?" Valka stumbled, circling to the woman's side and placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Sam, you alright?" he asked again, Sameh replying by leaning over into him, the crying beginning to break into laughter through closed teeth, her face still in her hand. Still, her body language had shifted. In all the years he had known her, he had come to see her dreary, dour demeanour as her normal. Rarely did she smile, and even less often did it look genuine to the man. Yet in spite of the sounds and shudders, she seemed...relaxed. Like a weight had been lifted.
"Wh-What the hell is it?" his brow furrowed, turning to the maroon woman. She, in turn, simply pointed at the tablet. With his free hand, the other curled around Sameh, he scooped it up.
Valka didn't need to read the entire report to know what it was. The first two lines conveyed everything he needed to know.
UNANIMITY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEXUS, YUNHEH
MISSION SUCCESS