The Grid, Catgirl Industries Cyberspace
»Its the mirror image of our home, just on the other side of the screen.«
- Cathy about the Catgirl Industries cyberspace in 2016
The cyberspace of the Catgirl industries home base is made up by a large number of virtual rooms corresponding to the building blocks of the base, each of them connected by portals. The complex is floating above a huge glowing Grid, which can be used to create additional virtual working places if necessary. The Grid is the place where the catgirls and Cortana meet to plan new projects, dream about unmade constructs and sometimes celebrate parties together.
The look and feel of the Grid consists partly to the Tron movies, with lots of Neon or even semi-transparent glowing constructs. Many visitors have been a little bit disappointed when seeing it the first time, the level of graphical realism is lower than the one you see in many places at the Genaros Metaverse.
Visitors have been on the Grid on multiple occasions, both Fen surfing with some VR style equipment and AIs, constructs of pure intelligence and information. The Grid has its own security patterns which roam the starry skies of the Grid, keeping an eye on its inhabitants and securing the catgirls computers from virtual attacks.
In the few occasions the base have been attacked by spaceships, the Grid became the war room of Catgirl Industries, stretching for multiple lightminutes and showing everything the sensors of the base managed to detect. It is said that this war room can connect to other computer systems, should the base ever participate in a larger military operation.
The Grid as a Metaverse node
»I just took the original code and started modding it, cheer for the team at Genaros for releasing the original code.«
- Cortana, after being congratulated about her Metaverse Distribution.
Cortanas work on the Grid started as a small private node of the Metaverse project from Genaros, patched for a higher level of central control and security. The protocols are compatible with the original Metaverse protocols, but the internal processing core has been replaced with something Cortana considered more secure than the original fully distributed system. The modified source code was released shortly after the Metaverse Incident on Genaros.
While most people don’t think much about the level of realism of the Grid, its a mistake that the deceiving look of the cyberspace easily provokes.
During the creation of the Grid the primary focus of Cortana was on writing a research and development tool for construction, not a recreational game. While the graphics level of the Grid is quite low compared to some places in Genaros Metaverse, most of the computer power is channeled into a series of plug&play physics simulations. Different sections of the Grid can run different physics modules to help in design and virtual testing of the projects the Catgirls are working on.
If stressed to maximum workload, the Grid can draw on the resources of two waved computers inside each Module of Jenga, which means that there were more waved computers than Catgirls in the base in 2017. But the Catgirls are still not completely happy with their tool and discussing adding more computers to Cortanas and Serinas hardware.
Grid security
» Its said that most important places in Fenspace exist in two realities, the physical world and cyberspace. If this is true, the home base of Catgirl Industries exist in three realities. «
- unknown member of the Hacker Underspace, December 2018
What only a few members of the Hacker Underspace know is, that there is a third layer called Subspace, even below the Grid. This layer is not meant for visitors or creative exchanges of ideas, the only intelligence that inhabits this place is Cortana and Serina. Build directly ‘below’ the Grid, the Subspace is filled with tightly controlled flows of information, using a noticeable fraction of its computer capacity to make sure no external program code will ever enter this layer. The Subspace has command authority over everything that happens in the Grid, its the hidden immune system against intruders in the datasphere of the company.
Cortana designed the first parts of Subspace after her experience during an undercover mission of Ford and Cathy. During this mission Cortana had to defend herself against a cyber-attack by Quattro Kuattoro, an expert hacker that chased Cortana out of the infiltrated systems and nearly managed to hack the AI in her own computers on the Stargazer. Cortana vowed that she would never be without a second line of defense against attacks like this again. She knew that there were more powerful AIs in Fenspace, and not all of them were friendly. So in addition to slowly growing her abilities inside the Catgirl Industries base, she also decided to cheat by building a hardware architecture that makes an attackers position much more difficult. Should the Grid ever experience a mayor cyber attack, Subspace could take over, hitting the first attackers from behind and segmenting the free and open datasphere of Catgirl Industries into tightly locked segments, one for each module of the base.
All kinds of security and hacking programs sneak through this layer, waiting for the day they will be released onto the Grid. Some parts of the Subspace are used for corewar style tournaments between attack and defense drone utilities, to test their abilities against each other. Cortana often has meetings with other AIs to exchange know-how and do fun battles against with the new tools on public servers, but she would never consider to reveal the existence of the Subspace for meetings and battles like this.
When the Exocomps spawned a new artificial intelligence at Catgirl Industries in 2016, Cortana and Serina started with a number of upgrades of the Subspace hard- and software. Their new knowledge about swarm behaviour and distributed computing allowed to improve the defensive capabilities of Subspace against stealth infiltration. A short time later new generations of guard programs and scanner software was integrated both into the Grid and into the hidden world below.
Up to the end of 2018 Subspace has only been active once for the defense of the Grid. In autumn 2017 an advanced data worm infiltrate the Catgirl Industries computer system. The program began to multiply in an unused section of the Grid, managed to subvert several Grid security subroutines and attacked parts of the digital infrastructure of one modules when it triggered defensive code running in Subspace. A small section of the Grid suddenly became darker and a wave of black water washed over the Grid structures, taking the foreign code with it while the rest of the Grid guardians took down their subverted companions under control of subspace. Cortana dissected the code, that had been drawn below the Grid into a secure storage afterwards and classified it as a semi-intelligent cyber weapon, with a decision capability comparable to a class D artificial intelligence. She released the code together with a preliminary analysis to the Hacker Underspace two hours later. The appearance of a sophisticated but non-aware cyber weapon like this was considered a mayor step up in the dangers of Fen cyberspace.
A fresh series of security updates appeared on the Metaverse development list soon after this incident, many of them written by members of the Hacker Underspace and based on the analysis of the cyberweapon.
»Its the mirror image of our home, just on the other side of the screen.«
- Cathy about the Catgirl Industries cyberspace in 2016
The cyberspace of the Catgirl industries home base is made up by a large number of virtual rooms corresponding to the building blocks of the base, each of them connected by portals. The complex is floating above a huge glowing Grid, which can be used to create additional virtual working places if necessary. The Grid is the place where the catgirls and Cortana meet to plan new projects, dream about unmade constructs and sometimes celebrate parties together.
The look and feel of the Grid consists partly to the Tron movies, with lots of Neon or even semi-transparent glowing constructs. Many visitors have been a little bit disappointed when seeing it the first time, the level of graphical realism is lower than the one you see in many places at the Genaros Metaverse.
Visitors have been on the Grid on multiple occasions, both Fen surfing with some VR style equipment and AIs, constructs of pure intelligence and information. The Grid has its own security patterns which roam the starry skies of the Grid, keeping an eye on its inhabitants and securing the catgirls computers from virtual attacks.
In the few occasions the base have been attacked by spaceships, the Grid became the war room of Catgirl Industries, stretching for multiple lightminutes and showing everything the sensors of the base managed to detect. It is said that this war room can connect to other computer systems, should the base ever participate in a larger military operation.
The Grid as a Metaverse node
»I just took the original code and started modding it, cheer for the team at Genaros for releasing the original code.«
- Cortana, after being congratulated about her Metaverse Distribution.
Cortanas work on the Grid started as a small private node of the Metaverse project from Genaros, patched for a higher level of central control and security. The protocols are compatible with the original Metaverse protocols, but the internal processing core has been replaced with something Cortana considered more secure than the original fully distributed system. The modified source code was released shortly after the Metaverse Incident on Genaros.
While most people don’t think much about the level of realism of the Grid, its a mistake that the deceiving look of the cyberspace easily provokes.
During the creation of the Grid the primary focus of Cortana was on writing a research and development tool for construction, not a recreational game. While the graphics level of the Grid is quite low compared to some places in Genaros Metaverse, most of the computer power is channeled into a series of plug&play physics simulations. Different sections of the Grid can run different physics modules to help in design and virtual testing of the projects the Catgirls are working on.
If stressed to maximum workload, the Grid can draw on the resources of two waved computers inside each Module of Jenga, which means that there were more waved computers than Catgirls in the base in 2017. But the Catgirls are still not completely happy with their tool and discussing adding more computers to Cortanas and Serinas hardware.
Grid security
» Its said that most important places in Fenspace exist in two realities, the physical world and cyberspace. If this is true, the home base of Catgirl Industries exist in three realities. «
- unknown member of the Hacker Underspace, December 2018
What only a few members of the Hacker Underspace know is, that there is a third layer called Subspace, even below the Grid. This layer is not meant for visitors or creative exchanges of ideas, the only intelligence that inhabits this place is Cortana and Serina. Build directly ‘below’ the Grid, the Subspace is filled with tightly controlled flows of information, using a noticeable fraction of its computer capacity to make sure no external program code will ever enter this layer. The Subspace has command authority over everything that happens in the Grid, its the hidden immune system against intruders in the datasphere of the company.
Cortana designed the first parts of Subspace after her experience during an undercover mission of Ford and Cathy. During this mission Cortana had to defend herself against a cyber-attack by Quattro Kuattoro, an expert hacker that chased Cortana out of the infiltrated systems and nearly managed to hack the AI in her own computers on the Stargazer. Cortana vowed that she would never be without a second line of defense against attacks like this again. She knew that there were more powerful AIs in Fenspace, and not all of them were friendly. So in addition to slowly growing her abilities inside the Catgirl Industries base, she also decided to cheat by building a hardware architecture that makes an attackers position much more difficult. Should the Grid ever experience a mayor cyber attack, Subspace could take over, hitting the first attackers from behind and segmenting the free and open datasphere of Catgirl Industries into tightly locked segments, one for each module of the base.
All kinds of security and hacking programs sneak through this layer, waiting for the day they will be released onto the Grid. Some parts of the Subspace are used for corewar style tournaments between attack and defense drone utilities, to test their abilities against each other. Cortana often has meetings with other AIs to exchange know-how and do fun battles against with the new tools on public servers, but she would never consider to reveal the existence of the Subspace for meetings and battles like this.
When the Exocomps spawned a new artificial intelligence at Catgirl Industries in 2016, Cortana and Serina started with a number of upgrades of the Subspace hard- and software. Their new knowledge about swarm behaviour and distributed computing allowed to improve the defensive capabilities of Subspace against stealth infiltration. A short time later new generations of guard programs and scanner software was integrated both into the Grid and into the hidden world below.
Up to the end of 2018 Subspace has only been active once for the defense of the Grid. In autumn 2017 an advanced data worm infiltrate the Catgirl Industries computer system. The program began to multiply in an unused section of the Grid, managed to subvert several Grid security subroutines and attacked parts of the digital infrastructure of one modules when it triggered defensive code running in Subspace. A small section of the Grid suddenly became darker and a wave of black water washed over the Grid structures, taking the foreign code with it while the rest of the Grid guardians took down their subverted companions under control of subspace. Cortana dissected the code, that had been drawn below the Grid into a secure storage afterwards and classified it as a semi-intelligent cyber weapon, with a decision capability comparable to a class D artificial intelligence. She released the code together with a preliminary analysis to the Hacker Underspace two hours later. The appearance of a sophisticated but non-aware cyber weapon like this was considered a mayor step up in the dangers of Fen cyberspace.
A fresh series of security updates appeared on the Metaverse development list soon after this incident, many of them written by members of the Hacker Underspace and based on the analysis of the cyberweapon.