Intergalactic Summit

My guess would be that the genome editing got out of control, mistakes were made, too many concurrent branches of the 'working' genome copy were taken and then worked upon.

Even just coding for wetware MF's takes a huge amount of code control. I'd hate to try to manage that on genome editing.

If I am a part of someone's 'Last Known Good' construct I can assure you it is not we who are boned...

No, not us.

Imagine a population element the Jove had no societal need for at that point, but couldn't rule out needing in the future. like, say, an entire warrior-caste similar to the way the Empires use us.

Genetically, we're perfectly viable human stock. You keep that on record. When you get to a point where your society doesn't need immortal weapons, where we're more of a danger than an asset, you decommission us. You don't know what's going to happen in the future, so why destroy infomorphs with hundreds of years of combat experience dealing with all manner of emergent, chaotic, unpredictable crises. You might need that sort of thing in the future. So you archive that, too. You build a virtual environment, upload the infomorphs.

Then you store it someplace. Consider the discussions about kidnapping Napkins and 'storing' him in cryo. You don't want to have to worry about your violent superweapons getting loose and being pissed off, so the storage facilities need to be someplace remote. someplace isolated. And you need to make sure that a)they'll still be there when they're needed, but b)they won't get out before that. AND you need to ensure that if these things are needed, they'll be able to be useful, because you do not know what conditions will be, maybe your enlightened society's under attack and you need these things because you don't even remember HOW to make weapons.

So these storage systems are surrounded with massive constructs that keep anyone from getting a clue as to what's inside. And systems that can begin producing war materiel. AND systems that protect all those vital systems from all manner of exposure to the elements, and as you lump failsafe upon failsafe onto the design, it's so big that it's too big to be subtle or hidden on any dirtside construction.

So, stick 'em out in space it is. Well, then you need to worry about spacefarers you don't anticipate or have contact with. And you don't want to post big signs that say 'HEY! LIVING SUPERWEAPON CONTAINMENT FACILITY, BACK THE HEL OFF', right? So you put in place automated defenses to shoo people away. You also, because again: this may have to start up from scratch and now you're out in space include automatons that can go out and collect the one thing you can't store in serious bulk without getting to the point of building artificial ecosystems: biological matter to be reprocessed into amino acids and used to build the DNA sequences you need, and then flash-grown via cloning technology itno viable bodies for your warrior-infomorphs.

That explains the why that we haven't had in this puzzle. Why now? Why turn up after the collapse of Jove civilization and the exposure of the Observatories? Why get the data from the Observatories, then start attacking us? What are they doing that we're not seeing?

They're not making any distinction between us—between the capsuleer-saturated empires—and the Sansha Nation. They're a hedge on the bet of cooperating with 'normal' humans, and an emergency failsafe in the event of complete societal collapse. Which means they're likely rebuilding on a massive scale... we just can't find them.



No, those were just the automated 'BEWARE OF SUPERWEAPON' signs.

Hard to say there, Miz. How rusty would you be after a few centuries in a computer being subjected to the 5,000,000,000 part lecture series 'Naupliusism and You: The Red God Doesn't Like You Very Much'?

Whatever turns your crank sister. But I have news you are the most praise needy person I have met so far.

And here we'd moved on to something else..

Yes princess I forgot you get to set the rules. Ok I am done. Seriously.

It was a fascinating article and a matter I once gave considerable thought.

I am often concerned that I stopped being me, the me I used to be, a long while back. But I do my best still. My body is the same, I keep it age appropriate out of consideration for others. But still, it isn’t the same is it, I can feel it.

My wife once told me she appreciated it but, "when you have been lovers for as long as we have, you know your partner’s body like a familiar landscape. A scar from a mishap climbing for Uellaron blossoms, a burn from a campfire ember, a mark of passion… gone.”

What good can one suppose when you turn your own death into nothing more than a learning experience.

I haven't been reading the IGS much this week.

Who's currently winning in this thread ?

Okay, I feel like someone needs to give you the talk that we used to give Marines coming onto shore leave. If you tell me where you are, I'll contact station security and get you a list of all the reputable houses of negotiable affection. You obviously need some relief.