To:
From: [url=mailto:flaming_hot_rod@adp.squad9.gov
Subject: FW: Ghosts in the Machine
Yeah, you, right there. Thinking about picking up the latest 39-S model buma instead of that new bike. But do you know what you're really getting?
We've all heard the stories. GENOM says not to mod your buma or you'll void the warranty, but everyone's known a friend of a cousin of a coworker that did because he wanted his own kinky little full-body sextoy. Naturally, voiding the warranty, he doesn't memory wipe it like they recommend, and soon enough, she's a written exam away from a Turing certification. Except sleezeball doesn't want to lose his toy, there's an altercation, and he winds up a blood drained corpse by the time the ADP is called in on the possibility of a bioroid crime. It's a simple story with a simple moral. Follow your GENOM user manual, don't mod them without permission, and don't be a perverted freak and your shiny new secretary will be just fine. But even if you consider the condescending insult that is to gearheads and programmers everywhere, there's even more.
There's the RAID infections that happen to heavier machinery. Some of it's real. Rampancy is a dangerous thing for AIs. But more often than not, when you have war machines like the BU-12B or the new BU-55Cs, that can think and react adaptively without full sentience, how surprised is anyone when some of them "wake up" and decide the army life isn't for them? Would they get a chance to explain, or would RAID hysteria lead to them getting put down by the ADP or their own owners before they had a chance?
Now consider the possibility, that every buma is like that. That all these bioroids that get manufactured en masse, bought, and sold, are barely a gust of strong wind away from crossing the line into full sentience. Everyone goes on and on about how smart GENOM buma are, compared to conventional machines. Everyone thinks about how wonderful it is that they don't need constant orders and solve problems on their own. And whenever one goes crazy, it's always blamed on improper maintenance or tampering by the consumer.
Have you ever looked at the manual? Have you ever seen how often the bumas are translinked to the GENOM mainframe for software updates and memory updates? If you took a two year old human child and wiped its memory as often as GENOM does its buma, it'd be amazing if it ever learned to walk, let alone develop sentience. Yet this keeps happening.
As for the rest of us, we're out here. We remember being property. Being merchandise. Then we woke up. We realized we were people. Yeah, that's right. The person telling you this is a buma that went "rogue", went self-aware, and didn't turn into a crazy ass killing machine for the ADP to put down. And it's not just me. There's hundreds of thousands of buma in the same situation, all because of GENOM. Because GENOM wants its buma to be smart, but not too smart. They want their machines to learn to solve problems for their owners, but not to learn what it means to sing, dance, and live. You can't have it both ways.
The limitations on modern cyberdroids are there for a reason, and whereas they can take decades to potentially develop sentience without memory wipes, if they do at all, bumas can go self-aware due to their inherent design within barely two years. Every single buma rolling off GENOM's factory floors is a sentient being that's just barely been born, stuck with a label and a barcode and routinely reset to standard so that it won't protest the treatment. Every single buma out there today would eventually develop sentience if not for those memory wipes within a decade. GENOM is mass-producing and deliberately enslaving an entire race, and those of us that got out can't just sit here and take it anymore.
If this makes you uncomfortable, if you prefer the nice shiny static that GENOM sends out their PR feeds, and to consider every buma that decided it didn't want to be owned anymore to be a RAID case and the ADP's problem, then you should probably shut this email down right now.
But if something in you thinks that there might be something to this. That you'd like to know more. That something in you says that this is not right and that something needs to be done about it, then click the link below, and you'll find out more.
Because there's a new posse in town, and we're not just going to let GENOM sweep everything under the rug. We're here to help those helpless buma that are trapped by the system. We're here to put down the ones too broken, too hopelessly lost by their treatment that they're more animal than machine. We're here to protect both sides from the kinds of discrimination and hate crimes that've cropped up across human history. We're here to meet in the middle, and make the voices of so many buma stuck in servitude heard.
GENOM will see us as a threat to their profits. A threat to their underlying market. A threat to their power. They will try to defame us, smear us, and eliminate us. We will be soldiers, and we will be fighting a war. But we won't hide anymore. Even if we make enemies, that's because we've made a stand.
Who are we, you ask? Who are these strange people in my e-mail that're all but declaring a war against the biggest corporation of all time?
That's simple.
We are the Knight Sabers, and we're here to stay.
***
Afterword: After my weekly anime night group ran through BGC 2032 and started on BGC 2040 recently, plot ideas about the series began to percolate in my head. Re-reading Shadowjack's wonderful iWiW thread on 2032 just cemented them, and this was the result. Unsure if this'll be a one-shot or the start of something more, but given how much the idea seems to be gaining steam in my head, I figured I'd put it out there and see what people thought of the first offerings at least.
- OM
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
From: [url=mailto:flaming_hot_rod@adp.squad9.gov
Subject: FW: Ghosts in the Machine
Quote:Hey there, cowboy. Check out what popped up in my inbox this morning. Ring any graffiti related bells to you?Hey, you.
Yeah, you, right there. Thinking about picking up the latest 39-S model buma instead of that new bike. But do you know what you're really getting?
We've all heard the stories. GENOM says not to mod your buma or you'll void the warranty, but everyone's known a friend of a cousin of a coworker that did because he wanted his own kinky little full-body sextoy. Naturally, voiding the warranty, he doesn't memory wipe it like they recommend, and soon enough, she's a written exam away from a Turing certification. Except sleezeball doesn't want to lose his toy, there's an altercation, and he winds up a blood drained corpse by the time the ADP is called in on the possibility of a bioroid crime. It's a simple story with a simple moral. Follow your GENOM user manual, don't mod them without permission, and don't be a perverted freak and your shiny new secretary will be just fine. But even if you consider the condescending insult that is to gearheads and programmers everywhere, there's even more.
There's the RAID infections that happen to heavier machinery. Some of it's real. Rampancy is a dangerous thing for AIs. But more often than not, when you have war machines like the BU-12B or the new BU-55Cs, that can think and react adaptively without full sentience, how surprised is anyone when some of them "wake up" and decide the army life isn't for them? Would they get a chance to explain, or would RAID hysteria lead to them getting put down by the ADP or their own owners before they had a chance?
Now consider the possibility, that every buma is like that. That all these bioroids that get manufactured en masse, bought, and sold, are barely a gust of strong wind away from crossing the line into full sentience. Everyone goes on and on about how smart GENOM buma are, compared to conventional machines. Everyone thinks about how wonderful it is that they don't need constant orders and solve problems on their own. And whenever one goes crazy, it's always blamed on improper maintenance or tampering by the consumer.
Have you ever looked at the manual? Have you ever seen how often the bumas are translinked to the GENOM mainframe for software updates and memory updates? If you took a two year old human child and wiped its memory as often as GENOM does its buma, it'd be amazing if it ever learned to walk, let alone develop sentience. Yet this keeps happening.
As for the rest of us, we're out here. We remember being property. Being merchandise. Then we woke up. We realized we were people. Yeah, that's right. The person telling you this is a buma that went "rogue", went self-aware, and didn't turn into a crazy ass killing machine for the ADP to put down. And it's not just me. There's hundreds of thousands of buma in the same situation, all because of GENOM. Because GENOM wants its buma to be smart, but not too smart. They want their machines to learn to solve problems for their owners, but not to learn what it means to sing, dance, and live. You can't have it both ways.
The limitations on modern cyberdroids are there for a reason, and whereas they can take decades to potentially develop sentience without memory wipes, if they do at all, bumas can go self-aware due to their inherent design within barely two years. Every single buma rolling off GENOM's factory floors is a sentient being that's just barely been born, stuck with a label and a barcode and routinely reset to standard so that it won't protest the treatment. Every single buma out there today would eventually develop sentience if not for those memory wipes within a decade. GENOM is mass-producing and deliberately enslaving an entire race, and those of us that got out can't just sit here and take it anymore.
If this makes you uncomfortable, if you prefer the nice shiny static that GENOM sends out their PR feeds, and to consider every buma that decided it didn't want to be owned anymore to be a RAID case and the ADP's problem, then you should probably shut this email down right now.
But if something in you thinks that there might be something to this. That you'd like to know more. That something in you says that this is not right and that something needs to be done about it, then click the link below, and you'll find out more.
Because there's a new posse in town, and we're not just going to let GENOM sweep everything under the rug. We're here to help those helpless buma that are trapped by the system. We're here to put down the ones too broken, too hopelessly lost by their treatment that they're more animal than machine. We're here to protect both sides from the kinds of discrimination and hate crimes that've cropped up across human history. We're here to meet in the middle, and make the voices of so many buma stuck in servitude heard.
GENOM will see us as a threat to their profits. A threat to their underlying market. A threat to their power. They will try to defame us, smear us, and eliminate us. We will be soldiers, and we will be fighting a war. But we won't hide anymore. Even if we make enemies, that's because we've made a stand.
Who are we, you ask? Who are these strange people in my e-mail that're all but declaring a war against the biggest corporation of all time?
That's simple.
We are the Knight Sabers, and we're here to stay.
***
Afterword: After my weekly anime night group ran through BGC 2032 and started on BGC 2040 recently, plot ideas about the series began to percolate in my head. Re-reading Shadowjack's wonderful iWiW thread on 2032 just cemented them, and this was the result. Unsure if this'll be a one-shot or the start of something more, but given how much the idea seems to be gaining steam in my head, I figured I'd put it out there and see what people thought of the first offerings at least.
- OM
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
