Consistent Technology - 16/Sep/2012
She'd left the pub. It'd served it's purpose. And, quite a nice lunch too. Mako preferred a beer with a bit more bite, but it wasn't bad.
A little trip via the kitchen waste bins proved useful. She'd another 50kg of high quality organics. But, she hadn't bothered to taste those, just do a quick analysis. A quick check for observers in the car park, and a burst from an inhibitor into the surveillance system, which should give her 15secs to leave.
Her motorbike shape seemed best. She had enough of a database of local models to make it seem credible. For extra fun, she ran-up a humanoid remote, nearly 100% organic, to sit on the bike, in helmet and leathers. It'd be fun to experience the ride through that.
Something was... wrong. She seemed to be functioning OK, but... Turning the problem over to her strategic analysis and prediction subsystems she rode on, carefully following the local traffic rules. To her horror, it seemed like most of the vehicles around her were driven manually. By organics. How could that be safe?
The lack of safety was proved. Just around a corner two vehicles had collided. A car was in a ditch, a motor bike was smashed-up, and there was its rider. And there. And there. Messy. Triage. Deploy medical sensors on two dragonfly remotes. Check. She had the full field medical kit.
The car driver was unconscious, and had elevated alcohol levels. Not in any immediate danger. The motor cyclist was technically dead, by local standards, and had lost an arm, which had further lost the hand.
Easily stabilised, the med kit would quickly clone-up some blood, and her organic reserves were quite sufficient to feed it. The arm would go back on pretty easily, a quick glue and weld, the hand was more messed-up, but looked repairable. Mostly. There'd be some nasty scars.
After a little thought she did an analysis of the accident pattern. Some quick repairs to the bike, a little work on the car, a dose of memory fuzzing drug for the biker, it all looked like it'd fit together. Neither vehicle had a black box recorder, so she didn't need to mess with those. Time to call the emergency services.
It was police and ambulance time. She explained how she'd come on the accident, and how initially it looked a lot worse than it was. The biker's head injury matched the amount of blood to be found, and she'd salvaged the excess. Looked like the car driver would be prosecuted. The biker kept saying, "I thought I was dead", over and over, as they put him in the ambulance.
Mako waited. No one turned-up to tell her off for interfering with 'destiny' - preventing a death was usually pretty good for raising red flags. So, not that kind of world. Maybe it was as Main Line as it looked. She was slowly figuring out what was wrong - she'd been hacked.
All the check-sums were OK, so they'd done a pretty thorough job. But, she had a partial record of the check-sums from her last update - thanks to her rider's paranoia. Too much was different, and there were changes in unexpected areas. Rather than relying on her inorganic data banks, she ran some associative tests on her purely organic memory. She'd been massively altered.
The Forge was only supposed to work on ceramet systems, it was a limited portable one, after all. Most of the work took hours. She'd been building drones, in at most minutes, and with lots of organics in them. She'd repaired the bike, the car; both do-able, but it should have taken her a lot longer.
Mako recalled a briefing on the limits of technology - the only way to produce living brains was to grow them, which took months. She'd been doing it without thinking, in minutes for a human-grade mammalian brain. Impossible.
The weapons were wrong, too. She didn't used to have a beamed inhibitor, just the grenades. All the lethal options were locked-out. The Forge also reported the inability to restore their lethality. Was someone trying to tell her something?
At least she still had her swords, and knives. The cross-bow and its bolts seemed OK, too. So, powered deadly weapons were "against the rules". She could work with that.
Her jump jets had been messed with, too. She seemed to be another system wired-in. She didn't recognise the technology, though all the interfaces seemed standard, and, the Forge said it was maintainable. Some sort of flight system? That'd make getting around a lot easier.
More careful inspection of the Krem cell also proved interesting. It wasn't. A Krem cell, that is. Something else, impersonating its characteristics. Weird.
So, here she was. Without consistent technology. On a world she didn't recognise. And no idea how she got here. Great.
Cue puppet master and dancing mimes? Or, was she going to be really lucky, and it'd be even weirder than that?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
She'd left the pub. It'd served it's purpose. And, quite a nice lunch too. Mako preferred a beer with a bit more bite, but it wasn't bad.
A little trip via the kitchen waste bins proved useful. She'd another 50kg of high quality organics. But, she hadn't bothered to taste those, just do a quick analysis. A quick check for observers in the car park, and a burst from an inhibitor into the surveillance system, which should give her 15secs to leave.
Her motorbike shape seemed best. She had enough of a database of local models to make it seem credible. For extra fun, she ran-up a humanoid remote, nearly 100% organic, to sit on the bike, in helmet and leathers. It'd be fun to experience the ride through that.
Something was... wrong. She seemed to be functioning OK, but... Turning the problem over to her strategic analysis and prediction subsystems she rode on, carefully following the local traffic rules. To her horror, it seemed like most of the vehicles around her were driven manually. By organics. How could that be safe?
The lack of safety was proved. Just around a corner two vehicles had collided. A car was in a ditch, a motor bike was smashed-up, and there was its rider. And there. And there. Messy. Triage. Deploy medical sensors on two dragonfly remotes. Check. She had the full field medical kit.
The car driver was unconscious, and had elevated alcohol levels. Not in any immediate danger. The motor cyclist was technically dead, by local standards, and had lost an arm, which had further lost the hand.
Easily stabilised, the med kit would quickly clone-up some blood, and her organic reserves were quite sufficient to feed it. The arm would go back on pretty easily, a quick glue and weld, the hand was more messed-up, but looked repairable. Mostly. There'd be some nasty scars.
After a little thought she did an analysis of the accident pattern. Some quick repairs to the bike, a little work on the car, a dose of memory fuzzing drug for the biker, it all looked like it'd fit together. Neither vehicle had a black box recorder, so she didn't need to mess with those. Time to call the emergency services.
It was police and ambulance time. She explained how she'd come on the accident, and how initially it looked a lot worse than it was. The biker's head injury matched the amount of blood to be found, and she'd salvaged the excess. Looked like the car driver would be prosecuted. The biker kept saying, "I thought I was dead", over and over, as they put him in the ambulance.
Mako waited. No one turned-up to tell her off for interfering with 'destiny' - preventing a death was usually pretty good for raising red flags. So, not that kind of world. Maybe it was as Main Line as it looked. She was slowly figuring out what was wrong - she'd been hacked.
All the check-sums were OK, so they'd done a pretty thorough job. But, she had a partial record of the check-sums from her last update - thanks to her rider's paranoia. Too much was different, and there were changes in unexpected areas. Rather than relying on her inorganic data banks, she ran some associative tests on her purely organic memory. She'd been massively altered.
The Forge was only supposed to work on ceramet systems, it was a limited portable one, after all. Most of the work took hours. She'd been building drones, in at most minutes, and with lots of organics in them. She'd repaired the bike, the car; both do-able, but it should have taken her a lot longer.
Mako recalled a briefing on the limits of technology - the only way to produce living brains was to grow them, which took months. She'd been doing it without thinking, in minutes for a human-grade mammalian brain. Impossible.
The weapons were wrong, too. She didn't used to have a beamed inhibitor, just the grenades. All the lethal options were locked-out. The Forge also reported the inability to restore their lethality. Was someone trying to tell her something?
At least she still had her swords, and knives. The cross-bow and its bolts seemed OK, too. So, powered deadly weapons were "against the rules". She could work with that.
Her jump jets had been messed with, too. She seemed to be another system wired-in. She didn't recognise the technology, though all the interfaces seemed standard, and, the Forge said it was maintainable. Some sort of flight system? That'd make getting around a lot easier.
More careful inspection of the Krem cell also proved interesting. It wasn't. A Krem cell, that is. Something else, impersonating its characteristics. Weird.
So, here she was. Without consistent technology. On a world she didn't recognise. And no idea how she got here. Great.
Cue puppet master and dancing mimes? Or, was she going to be really lucky, and it'd be even weirder than that?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind