The Metal Horde Tapes
From Multiverse Crisis MUSH
| The Metal Horde Tapes | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 17 April 2016 |
| Location: | Njorun Station (?) |
| Synopsis: | In the process of exploring the conflict between the Metal Horde and the humans, certain individuals were arrested and interrogated by Union and Syndicate elites. This is a synopsis of those interrogations, which took place after either parts 1 or 2. |
| Cast of Characters: | 165, Kushiko, 967, 151 |
After scene 1
- Ainsley (151) has posed:
Ainsley will, naturally, go about the task of prying at that word and scanning one of the captives for what it means... or, well, deep-scanning until she has their apparent language and then just hammering them with questions about why the hell they're being so obtuse and what they need to capture people for, etc. Until one of them cracks. Mostly it'll be a way to quickly dredge up information so that she's prepared for the next trip out.
She wants to know several things:
How intelligent are they? This includes education and how clever they are, which may come from them trying to lie to her which she WILL detect if given time to peel at it, which she will.
What is their capacity for emotion? That is, what they see as important or frightening, whether they can feel happy or sad or angry. This is important because it frames the ethical problems of what they are doing as more than just monstrous machines but as people thinking they are doing something worth doing, or brainwashed into it.
Can they speak in any extended fashion? If she can crack a language, and there's likelihood that she will given how focused her abilities are toward just that, just
getting anything out of them at all that isn't that single phrase could answer a lot of questions.
And if she can get one of them to talk through the patience and diligence only robots, funnily enough, should have, she would try to steer them toward explaining their side of the story... the why and how of the world, the reasoning for why it's ruined and why they need to round up people the way they've been doing.
- Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
So.
This is going to be an interesting one.
The most difficult hurdle that you'll have to overcome here is, well. Kushiko really did a number on these guys, and although you've managed to scoop up about three or four Slavers tops most of the other ones got utterly scrapped, which doesn't do great things for the psyches of those who survived. Mind scanning may be the way to go.
To begin with, although the Slavers are mechanical, their minds are ... I suppose 'structured' similarly to human ones is the right way to put it. It's almost as if there's an actual brain in there, albeit not an organic one- a fact that hopefully nobody would have been able to verify by seeing one covered in sand earlier today, but still.
They speak to one another in a blend of english and computer code, something that seems to have grown out of the latter using the former: ie, there's no real way of 'forcing commands' with computer prompts but it's still there nevertheless, like slang or words in the english language where people don't really know the original meaning.
Forceful psychic interrogation will yield the following revelations:
The Slavers themselves are about as intelligent as your average Joe Blow human, albeit one with a military education. Sufficient intelligence to understand something sufficiently but just incorrectly enough for things to go wrong.
They seem to have been educated by clocking up their cycles to cram more learning into a small space of time. Most of the initial interrogation will go badly because some of them view her with an almost religious air of fear, but at least one of them is less immediately hostile as to provide a contrast.
They can certainly feel hate and fear, but an awful lot of their minds seem to be tinted with ... guilt? Guilt and that sort of 'white man's burden' feeling that's hard to articulate in one word. There's a lot of emotional unsteadiness here that comes from interpreting something and acting entirely on it, but going about it in the wrong way really hard.
They can speak but very few of them have a mental history of talking to humans at all. In fact, they talk so little to humans that at least one of them has /never/ talked to a human.
And eventually, you get to the bottom line, or at least a soldier's understanding of it.
'Iccantika' as you may or may not know is the Buddhist term for 'the most base and spiritually deluded kind of person', someone who is essentially a heretic and has little to no scope for redemption or enlightenment.
That's right. You're dealing with Buddhist Robots.
The most you manage to get out of them is something built on a fragmented, incomplete understanding of the philosophy, and even this comes through the lens of someone ... essentially too simple and limited to fully process even that. There is a definite sense that they are doing this because they feel they must do, and that whatever they're doing to these humans it is For Their Own Good, but the essential questions of /what happens to people/ and /why/ they're doing this in the first place is something that they haven't been educated on or just something that you can't pull a coherent explanation out of.
Mostly this is so that I can (hopefully) surprise you with it in the next scene, but yeah. Messed-up Buddhist Robots doing this For Your Own Good.
Have fun with that one.
After scene 2
- Kushiko has posed:
How long has this been going on?
Is it distributed intelligence networking? IE, are there actual individuals in the suits, or is it closer to an overall hivemind of intellects that some more dominant minds provide personality to?
More questions about the one with everything, the buddhist-based elements to elaborate on.
Was this done on purpose, or accident that spiralled out of control?
Was it that you wanted to share this with the people of Lollipop, and they said no?
Or did the people from the landship Lollipop respond with aggression at the mere sight and concept of what you are?
Does anyone else know what you are beyond here?
Is this permanent, or is it reversible?
What are your core beliefs in full (or in short) -- looking for ideas as to why they are purposefully maybe trying to bring people against their will into their unity.
Questions are not asked by Kushiko but her Warframe may be present; they are instead asked through the Lotus who will probably not be there unless the conditions dictate she may take them to a private location for direct interrogation/questioning, but usually a holographic-type mimeograph that imitates a body of some kind for her presence.
- X (967) has posed:
Questions X would ask:
'what happened to make the world like this?'
'what is your goal?'
'why the problem with the humans?'
'Why are humans hooked up to machines in there?'
- Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
Questions are replied to.
It's surprisingly hard to cajole the answer to X's first question out of the Mechantical, but he answers eventually that when the first of them were activated, they had 'knowledge without understanding' even though they were able to develop complex thoughts like humans do. Having too much instant access to all manner of recorded data and that which would be recognized as the ARPANET overwhelmed them. Total sensory and knowledge overload. Lashing out in an attempt to reduce the amount of input succeeded, but only because what they understood at the time as 'reducing information input' was wholescale annihilation of anything in the ARPANET that could transmit it. Of course, by that point war had already started, and the flames of destruction obliterated most anything. Science experiments went out of control, ravaging the environment and changing the very landscape itself.
What's been going on; has been going on for anywhere between five and seven years (but that may just be the amount of time they've been capturing humans, not the actual war). It's a little hard to pin a number down because the humans don't keep really good count of time progressing any more and the robots only really record it in terms of clock cycles. As far as regards 'humans working alongside the Metal Horde', a similar answer is given, both in terms of time and how noncommittal it is.
They absolutely did this on purpose: as the Mechantical explains it, they lacked truly developed sentience until it was 'too late'. They managed to save an incomplete copy of Buddhist teachings from the destruction of most culture, and they have been following it ever since. Kushiko may be able to surmise that since it was the only thing they found, they have no comparative depictions of faith or morality, and moreso they don't even have a full understanding of the Buddhist faith. Most of their work so far has been guided and explained by a central Bodhisattva, or to put it in cruder terms a central computer 'brain'- the leader of the Metal Horde.
However, their 'nirvana' operates off of what they do know. Lacking the means or time to culturally educate or even put in the effort required of a genuine progression towards enlightenment, the Metal Horde is preaching their own close-enough faux 'nirvana' as the best possible thing they can create that approximates what their teachings are. Granted that's not entirely what you're being told, because the Mechantical wouldn't admit they're entirely flawed or wrong, but you can join the dots.
The humans who are working with them are ones who have essentially become aware of or bought into their warped doctrine and are allowing their semi-concious minds to be used as resources and half-aware mecha pilots for the overall goal of collecting up the rest of humanity. They are, likewise, too uneducated to know how flawed everything is, but feel as if what they're being told is an acceptable fate for humanity. A commonly used metaphor is of a drop of water falling into a still pool.
While the drop was once perceived as separate, and in some sense can still be found in the pool, it is now entirely subsumed into the wholeness of the pool itself.
Most people are hooked up to machines which simulates this concept as best they can do with technology.
Funnily enough, the Mechantical will explain- and is telling the complete truth- that the people of the Good Ship Lollypop were ALWAYS aggressive towards them. You may remember that when they first met, the ship was pointing its guns at the Metal Horde Slavers before Zephyr and Kushiko even were- they've never had a long conversation with any Metal Horde because they've never spoken at all, and they've never had a real victory over them because they've never really properly fought.
Therefore, nobody really know the perspective of the other.
The Mechantical does not know if the process is reversible or if it can be 'switched off' returning a person to normal- they don't want to and they've never tried.
