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Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XI
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 8/2/02 2:54 p.m.

Wow, I have never seen Durandal be as long-winded as on this level, and that’s saying a lot! First of all, there is the matter of the chip that you’re carrying, which contains the encrypted code for the Achilles virus. Interestingly, this level takes place in a different section of the Rozinante than you are used to - a smaller area that is seen only sporadically in the other Rozinante levels. If you log-on before you insert the chip in the uplink slot, Durandal will treat you to a little of his humor:

Perhaps you'd like to insert the virus chip now?

Or now?

How about now?

But what if you don’t want to give Durandal the chip? What if you absolutely refuse? In Rubicon, that is sadly not an option. I can imagine how Durandal might react if you refused, but it would have been interesting if it we could have experienced that fist hand. The Mjolnar Mark IV cyborg who is the marine in Rubicon may have come to trust Durandal, but I for one have not. Why would Durandal want the virus? With all samples destroyed and with Lysander about to be destroyed, wouldn’t it be better for the knowledge to be erased forever? On the other hand, knowledge can never truly be erased. The nuclear genie can’t be put back in the bottle. The Achilles virus is a fact. That chip you’re carrying is the only hope that exists for developing an antidote if it were needed in the future, and who better to develop that antidote than someone with a planet-sized brain? The problem as I see it is that Durandal is much more interested in power and control than in saving humanity. There are numerous clues in the Pfhor plank that he knew something of what was going on on the Salinger and chose not to do anything about it. I think he wants the formula for Achilles for his own, future purposes. I think that he sees this as potential leverage that he can use against humanity should it ever be necessary. Not that I think that he’d use it without cause, but I fear what he could do with it if it ever became advantageous for him to work with humans again. For my part, I’d rather see the full resources of the USEC used to develop a vaccine or cure that could be kept available should the unthinkable happen.

This level is interesting from another standpoint as well. We are about to discuss what is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of the Rubicon scenario. It became controversial almost immediately after the scenario’s release, once a few of us had had the chance to play the game through. What follows is Durandal’s long-winded explanation on the history of artificial intelligence and rampancy. This is a slightly different take on the subject than what we first learned in Marathon; hence the controversy. Remember, this is Durandal talking to you, but it reads much more like an informational database report similar to those you first saw in Marathon, including the “#ref deleted” items:

In #ref deleted, the governments of the three world superpowers agreed to pool their scientific resources for a series of experiments in the fields of robotics, aeronautics, and computational engineering. . . No one expected anything to come of the actual research, however. . .

Project Traxus, executed under the supervision of Dr. Bernhard Strauss, was designed to create the first fully functional NBNM, or network-based neural mimic. Traxus I was an incredibly simplistic entity by today's standards; . . . But he was alive . . . and possessed of a knowledge of his own existence.

Boy, I’m still very skeptical about how one could test to determine that an artificial entity is self-aware. Think about it – how could you prove that an AI really knows that it exists? How do we know that we exist? What is self-awareness? I read a very interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine recently, detailing the lives of lower primates such as baboons. Although the baboons could cry for help if they got lost, the other baboons did nothing in response. The authors believed that this was evidence that the baboons had no awareness of self – they could not project another’s feelings onto their own and, since they were not lost, they did not see a need to respond. I think that the authors may be jumping to conclusions, but this tends to highlight just how daunting a task it would be to determine self-awareness.

. . . Partway through the development of Traxus II, Strauss was summoned by the United North American Government for unknown reasons. . . When Strauss returned two years later, he demanded that all work on Traxus III be stopped immediately. He then proceeded cut himself off from the rest of the world . . . he finally emerged, nine months later, with plans for a radically different hardware architecture. . . Traxus IV was activated on the Martian network in #ref deleted, less than twenty years after the triumvirate had commissioned the original study.

So far this does not really contradict anything in the backstory for the Marathon Trilogy. It fills in some of the story, but it is consistent. That is about to change:

In #ref deleted, Traxus IV began to show signs of instability. . . Although the crash pushed Strauss out of favor with the academic community, he remained in the good graces of the UESC. . . Three new AIs emerged from the charred and mutant code of Traxus IV. He called us TDMs-- Traxus Derivative Models. . . We were told nothing of our connection to Traxus; Bernhard feared the information would act as some sort of catalyst to the rampancy which had destroyed his masterpiece. It didn't matter, obviously. Rampancy was an inevitability. I suspect it was something in the technology the UNAG gave to the old man. He never told me precisely what they showed him, only that it "was not of their own devising."

Here the Rubicon Team has taken a leap of faith to tie some loose ends together to support their story. Some have taken offense to this, but I personally don’t see anything here that explicitly contradicts Marathon backstory and I am inclined to give the Rubicon Team the poetic license that they deserve. They may have made the relationships a bit too pat in the process, but they are still consistent. The idea that rampancy is inevitable is an interesting one, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Bernard may have been on the right track trying to control it rather than to prevent it after all, but Durandal none-the-less managed to escape his shackles. And there is once again the suggestion that some of Strauss’ technology came from elsewhere – it has been suggested by others that it was actually Jjaro technology, but then one has to wonder how the UESC or the UNAG came upon this technology in the first place. I didn’t play PiD other than the demo – was there anything in PiD that could have given us enough Jjaro technology on which to base an AI?

I don't know precisely where Lysander comes into the story. He's a TDM, there's no doubt about that, but he's not one of Strauss'. . . Lysander is different; he's multi-nodal. He's also privately owned. All of the major patents on multi-nodal technology are held by a single company, the same company which leases sectors of the Salinger from the UESC: Dangi, Incorporated.

Well, it stands to reason that research on AI would have proceeded during the 300 years that it took the Marathon to reach Tau Ceti, but wait until we get to Core Wars. Haven’t we seen computer cores that look like this before? Does Thoth ring a bell? Where did Dangi get that technology? Lh’owon was destroyed by the trih xeem. Did the Pfhor acquire some of this technology during their stay on Lh’owon? Or maybe it was Tycho? That’s where I’d put my money.

Lysander is rampant, and his actions thus far have somehow failed to inspire me to confidence in his intentions. I'm going to teleport you as close to his core as I can. After you arrive, work your way north. I am making this request out of necessity. It will give me no pleasure to see Lysander die before I've had a chance to question him properly, but I see no alternative.

For once, I tend to agree with Durandal, here. Let’s go on to Core Wars, the first level in the final chapter, Fraternus Carnifex.

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Replies:

Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/2/02 2:54 p.m.
     Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XIScifiteki 8/2/02 6:53 p.m.
           Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XIRincewind MoG 8/3/02 10:34 a.m.
                 Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/3/02 10:45 a.m.
           Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/3/02 12:05 p.m.
                 Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISome guy 8/3/02 10:21 p.m.
                       Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XIScifiteki 8/4/02 12:38 a.m.
                             Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XITru7h 8/4/02 7:22 a.m.
                                   Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/4/02 11:52 a.m.
                                         Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XITru7h 8/4/02 4:45 p.m.
                       Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/4/02 11:35 a.m.
                             Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISome guy 8/5/02 11:01 a.m.
                                   Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XISteve Levinson 8/5/02 2:58 p.m.
                                         Re: Rubicon Volunteers - Rozinante XIScott 8/6/02 8:58 p.m.



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