Little things can be important
“No, you must not look, its a surprise...”
Cathy was vaguely aware how she was blindly lead through some of the
experimentation modules of the Catgirl Industries homebase Jenga. Some
month ago she would just have raised an eyebrow about an explanation
like this, but that had changed four weeks ago.
A small team of Catgirls had been away in the belt to supervise the
installation of a set of defense drones in a Belters base and had
decided to visit the Wizards on their way back.
The had come right in time for some funny contest between a pair of red
haired boys and a group of serious looking adults. Being caught in the
middle of a ‘prank war’ had delayed their journey by a full day,
especially after one of the catgirls had her fur coloured neon green and
the group decided to join the prank war and have some fun too.
According to the email from Hogsmeade nobody had been hurt, biomodded or
otherwise permanently changed, and everyone one had enjoyed the
experience a lot.
The group had told anyone else in the company what fun they had there.
It could have been just another funny anecdote that could be told to
visitors... but it managed to influence Catgirl Industries a little bit
more than this.
Within two weeks a mayor prank war within the company broke out.
Most prank wars in the Wizarding World are fun for an afternoon for a
few people, but a prank war fought by groups of engineers, equipped with
a lot of tools and Handwavium was something completely different.
It had taken five days for everyone to calm down again... and another
two days to find and disarm all kind of traps the various factions had
built during this time.
In the end everyone agreed that it had been a lot of fun and had got
back to work, but since then Cathy was a little bit more careful when
someone promised a ‘surprise’ for her... even when the group had
promised it was not prank related.
“It is really a surprise for you and Cortana... we asked her not to look
into our lab module in the last months... and not to tell you about it”
Sammi assured her, “no need to worry about anything.”
Cathy was getting more excited slowly, a surprise for Cortana inside
this base was something really special, the AI was involved in nearly
all projects the cats were doing.
Finally she was stopped.
“You can take of the blindfold... Cortana? You can activate the cameras here” the Sammi said and grinned.
In front of Cathy was a large experimentation desk with a could of
small... drones on top. Cathy looked at the six similar drones, each of
them maybe 20 cm high.
“Hmm, I think I have seen this design... but I am not sure where it was” she murmured, but Cortana was faster.
“Ohh! They are really cute...” she announced from a speaker while her
holographic avatar appeared near the table. “I think I know them from a
Star Trek episode... they were these nice little repair robots...
Exocomps... right ?”
Sammi and the other catgirls around the table beamed proudly and nodded.
“Yes, they are,” one of them started, “we had always wanted to built a drone to help inside the base...”
“And then we had the Star Trek TNG weeks some time ago, that’s where we
got the idea about the design.” Sammi continued the explanation.
Jana, the third catgirl of the group grinned. “So we took the plans of
the Element Zero drive and pushed down to the smallest drive we could
get... and then built this hull around it.”
“Wait a moment” Cathy interrupted the waterfall of information, “this
small thing has a Mass Effect drive? That’s no repair bot, that’s a
small kinetic kill vehicle... isn’t it?”
Sammi chuckled and shook her head. “Keep calm, it is not... there is not
enough energy in the internal cell. It can fly a little bit faster than
50 kilometers per hour... but unless it gets external energy there will
be neither more speed nor a shield. Maybe with an improved engine
system, but not with this one.”
“Aehm... can we maybe skip the rest of the tech explanation?” Cortana
asked impatiently, “I would really like to test them... they are ready
for testing, are they?”
“The Trekkies? How do they know...” Cortana wondered. “But anyways, I
told you earlier that I had asked some friends of mine about the strange
data we got from the Exocomps behavior... on of them is working with
the Vesta Institute of Robotics. He says that he ran the collected data
through some pre-turing tests... he guess that the Exocomps would get a
Gamma level rating!”
“Cortana, you know that the common Fen consensus says that a waved
smartphone is not enough to trigger the development of a Gamma Level AI.
That’s why we are using waved phones... are you saying we have a large
number of evolving AIs in our company?”
Cortanas avatar shook her head. “No... its not each of the Exocomps, its
a larger group of them together. According to my numbers there is a
slowly growing group of them, maybe 20 at the moment, who are more
networked together than the rest. The program that is running on all of
them together is creating some kind of emergent swarm AI!”
----
‘It has finally happened’ Cathy thought, ‘despite all countermeasures we
did we created a new AI... we created a new life, and we are not sure
how its behavior and personality will become.
Except that it most likely would enjoy funny races and doing crazy construction work.’
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
“No, you must not look, its a surprise...”
Cathy was vaguely aware how she was blindly lead through some of the
experimentation modules of the Catgirl Industries homebase Jenga. Some
month ago she would just have raised an eyebrow about an explanation
like this, but that had changed four weeks ago.
A small team of Catgirls had been away in the belt to supervise the
installation of a set of defense drones in a Belters base and had
decided to visit the Wizards on their way back.
The had come right in time for some funny contest between a pair of red
haired boys and a group of serious looking adults. Being caught in the
middle of a ‘prank war’ had delayed their journey by a full day,
especially after one of the catgirls had her fur coloured neon green and
the group decided to join the prank war and have some fun too.
According to the email from Hogsmeade nobody had been hurt, biomodded or
otherwise permanently changed, and everyone one had enjoyed the
experience a lot.
The group had told anyone else in the company what fun they had there.
It could have been just another funny anecdote that could be told to
visitors... but it managed to influence Catgirl Industries a little bit
more than this.
Within two weeks a mayor prank war within the company broke out.
Most prank wars in the Wizarding World are fun for an afternoon for a
few people, but a prank war fought by groups of engineers, equipped with
a lot of tools and Handwavium was something completely different.
It had taken five days for everyone to calm down again... and another
two days to find and disarm all kind of traps the various factions had
built during this time.
In the end everyone agreed that it had been a lot of fun and had got
back to work, but since then Cathy was a little bit more careful when
someone promised a ‘surprise’ for her... even when the group had
promised it was not prank related.
“It is really a surprise for you and Cortana... we asked her not to look
into our lab module in the last months... and not to tell you about it”
Sammi assured her, “no need to worry about anything.”
Cathy was getting more excited slowly, a surprise for Cortana inside
this base was something really special, the AI was involved in nearly
all projects the cats were doing.
Finally she was stopped.
“You can take of the blindfold... Cortana? You can activate the cameras here” the Sammi said and grinned.
In front of Cathy was a large experimentation desk with a could of
small... drones on top. Cathy looked at the six similar drones, each of
them maybe 20 cm high.
“Hmm, I think I have seen this design... but I am not sure where it was” she murmured, but Cortana was faster.
“Ohh! They are really cute...” she announced from a speaker while her
holographic avatar appeared near the table. “I think I know them from a
Star Trek episode... they were these nice little repair robots...
Exocomps... right ?”
Sammi and the other catgirls around the table beamed proudly and nodded.
“Yes, they are,” one of them started, “we had always wanted to built a drone to help inside the base...”
“And then we had the Star Trek TNG weeks some time ago, that’s where we
got the idea about the design.” Sammi continued the explanation.
Jana, the third catgirl of the group grinned. “So we took the plans of
the Element Zero drive and pushed down to the smallest drive we could
get... and then built this hull around it.”
“Wait a moment” Cathy interrupted the waterfall of information, “this
small thing has a Mass Effect drive? That’s no repair bot, that’s a
small kinetic kill vehicle... isn’t it?”
Sammi chuckled and shook her head. “Keep calm, it is not... there is not
enough energy in the internal cell. It can fly a little bit faster than
50 kilometers per hour... but unless it gets external energy there will
be neither more speed nor a shield. Maybe with an improved engine
system, but not with this one.”
“Aehm... can we maybe skip the rest of the tech explanation?” Cortana
asked impatiently, “I would really like to test them... they are ready
for testing, are they?”
“The Trekkies? How do they know...” Cortana wondered. “But anyways, I
told you earlier that I had asked some friends of mine about the strange
data we got from the Exocomps behavior... on of them is working with
the Vesta Institute of Robotics. He says that he ran the collected data
through some pre-turing tests... he guess that the Exocomps would get a
Gamma level rating!”
“Cortana, you know that the common Fen consensus says that a waved
smartphone is not enough to trigger the development of a Gamma Level AI.
That’s why we are using waved phones... are you saying we have a large
number of evolving AIs in our company?”
Cortanas avatar shook her head. “No... its not each of the Exocomps, its
a larger group of them together. According to my numbers there is a
slowly growing group of them, maybe 20 at the moment, who are more
networked together than the rest. The program that is running on all of
them together is creating some kind of emergent swarm AI!”
----
‘It has finally happened’ Cathy thought, ‘despite all countermeasures we
did we created a new AI... we created a new life, and we are not sure
how its behavior and personality will become.
Except that it most likely would enjoy funny races and doing crazy construction work.’
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children