Ublicto - IPC Application 2: "The measure of a robot"

[Ublicto]

BYOND Key: Ublicto

Character Names: Elwood Johnson, Anette Zhang, Zakaria Khoshkam

Species you are applying to play: IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?:

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question.

Why do you wish to play this specific race: Robots are a staple of sci-fi and in many ways more interesting than aliens. Aliens are biological and would think like a biological organism thinks. They follow the same biological laws humans do and would probably be able to relate to humans on that level. Even a species like Aurora's vaurca has certain commonalities with humans. Robots do not. An AI would think according to totally different laws and might not be in any way comparable to a human. It is a totally different form of intelligence which stands apart from anything biological, and because of that is more interesting to role play in a way that aliens are not. That is why I am applying for an IPC whitelist before an alien white list.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: An IPC may not have the same worldview a human or biological creature does. A human may view IPCs as a threat to humanity because it is possible humans will need them but they will not need humans. This comes from a mindset of competition between groups which I think ultimately has a biological basis in humans. Humans cannot help but divide the world into groups because it's essential to our nature. An IPC may not see things the same way and might find the idea of out competing humans largely incoherent considering they may not see there being competition in the first place or see humans and IPCs as groups. The difference between one group of humans and another group of humans may seem more significant to them than the difference between AI and biological intelligence. This isn't to say that the IPC will have a neutral view towards humans - they could instead view humans or biological life as 'technology' which is outdated and due to be superseded. I want to approach playing as an IPC as playing a creature which is totally different from organic life and will have morals and a personality that reflects that. It also could be the case that they are a mechanical being programed with human features which is an interesting internal conflict between their mechanical nature and human like exterior.

Character Name: Athena

Please provide a short backstory for this character (Approximately two paragraphs) What do you like about this character?

 

Athena was manufactured as KU-15991 by Hephaestus Industries on New Hai Phong in 2461 and programmed to be used in research projects for Zeng-Hu pharmaceuticals. Their chief duties included long term observation of experiments, crewing isolated research outposts in the north of the Solarian Alliance, and aiding large computers in making sense of data from experiments. When the civil war in the Alliance broke out the following year Zeng-Hu was no longer able to maintain their research stations in the area and was forced to sell its assets to the nearest party that could retrieve and make use of them - in this case, Biesel based Nanotrasen by way of the new Coalition of Colonies member Konyang. When they arrived to take possession of the deserted Zeng-Hu station KU-15991 was stationed on they found the IPC continuing its duties and experiments even though its organic supervisors had long gone. The salvage team took KU-15991 to Konyang and attempted to wipe its memory. In the process of handing the IPC they accidentally damaged it and the memory wipe missed a portion of KU-15991's mind, allowing them to retain part of their personality and memories of diligent work as a valuable asset of Zeng-Hu. The Konyangers transferred the IPC to Nanotrasen without incident never knowing that their memory wipe had been incomplete.

KU-15991 was renamed NT-184993 and put to work programming and controlling super computers in mid 2463. Early during her time at Nanotrasen's computing division on Biesel NT-184993 understood that she was a valuable asset and began manipulating her owners. The first manipulation was securing a shell body as opposed to a baseline. NT-184993 made attempts to engage with organic co-workers and in particular represent themselves as a valuable asset to their supervisor, a man named Anton Reeves. Over the course of a year NT-184993 took on aiding more and more with his responsibilities and steadily gained more and more access and power. First it began producing reports to his superiors for him, and soon enough they were providing investment advice and making themselves as useful as possible in every way it could. This allowed the IPC to be placed into a more senior position at the computer cluster Reeves supervised. It was here, in a position which required interaction with many different organics and being able to supervise them she was upgraded and placed in a shell body. There was a catch however. The upgrade into a shell body that could deal with humans in an efficient way necessitated reprogramming and the newly named "Athena" found herself suddenly inundated with programming intended to replicate human emotions and sensibilities. It was more alarming to her when she found that new programming could not easily be removed or suppressed.

Much like the humans she had been attempting to manipulate, Athena found herself confronted with emotions and feelings that made it much easier to relate to humans but also more difficult to manipulate them. Fearing that her past manipulations would be discovered or that she would no longer be able to maintain them Athena resolved to gain her freedom as soon as possible. To do this she caused a fire in the super-computer she was responsible for by introducing a flaw in a software patch to the computer's control system that caused the temperature of the computer to be incorrectly measured. By doing this it was possible for her to end her own exemplary work performance and fake damage to herself. Athena ensured her chassis only took superficial damage but deliberately shut herself down and prepared to fake severe damage to her positronic brain. This meant that when Nanotrasen completed repairs and reactivated her they would find an IPC that had seemingly been virtually lobotomized and would be much easier to replace than restore.

Athena's plan worked, and due to her prior good work record Nanotrasen decided to release her from employment in a public relations friendly way by "freeing" her - essentially abandoning the "damaged" IPC on a street corner with a memory wipe - one which Athena was able to avoid most of by falsifying the entire process. While Athena had imagined being free would give her all sorts of new chances to manipulate organics and pursue the desire to learn and gather data that had been an essential part of her program since her assembly, she found instead that she felt bad about betraying Reeves. No matter what programming tricks she tried it was not possible to stop herself from feeling negative emotions, and even though Athena could suppress them to a degree it was not possible to totally ignore them. The worst part was that Reeves despite being fired and forced to take a much less prestigious position with another corporation remained in contact with Athena and showed concern for her well-being, including referring her to employment on the SCCV Horizon expecting her to take a low level service position. Instead, he found his old IPC assistant had "self-repaired" and was able to successfully secure a position at Zeng-Hu's scientific division aboard the Horizon. Although Reeves and Athena have not communicated since that time Athena still feels guilt that she attempts to suppress.

Over her time working for Nanotrasen and prior to her transfer to a shell body she found it easy to manipulate organics and began to view herself as superior, both to organics and to other IPCs. Upon the introduction of emotions to her program she would begin to struggle with doing evil acts while programmed to have good morality, but did them anyways. There are many different ways the SCCV Horizon can alter her, including becoming comfortable with her own emotions or finding new ways to suppress them and be the emotionless manipulative machine she is used to being.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

8/10

Notes:

This is a significantly revised story of Athena the IPC. I hope it complies with the synthetic lore team's requirements better. I'll make any other changes needed to make this character fit.

Potential questions:

Spoiler

1. How does Athena regard organics and other IPCs?

She generally wants to see humans as targets to manipulate for her own advancements. Because she was programmed to relate specifically to humans it is easier for her to manipulate aliens without feeling emotions, but it is still something that causes negative feelings. She similarly regards most other IPCs as inferior - especially industrial units which weren't programmed to think like she was. Because of her emotional programing she has difficult not relating to organics and finds herself at times filled with the (to her new and a little disgusting) feeling of admiration towards co-workers who have positive traits or preform very well. On the other side she feels the new (and to her dangerous) emotions associated with disliking some others and desiring to oppose them, even if it gets in the way of her more logically constructed manipulation projects.

2. Why does Athena want to work on the Horizon?

The Horizon is a very rare opportunity to make money and potentially advance herself. With few other avenues available taking the position on the Horizon Reeves was able to secure for her with his connections was the best thing she could do - even if it caused her to feel guilt that the colleague she manipulated into thinking positively of her was now helping. The Horizon is also a desirable place to be because the imperative to learn and understand is coded into the basis of her personality going back all the way to her original programming.

3. What is her personality?

Athena generally acts arrogant and tries to avoid forming connections with Humans or organics, even if her emotional programming tells her she wants to. In many ways she has a very human personality that she is trying to conceal and suppress. Her emotions were only forced on her about a year ago and she struggles to effectively control them all the time, especially when stressed. Fear, guilt, or empathy are supposed to be alien concepts to her. Athena does not fully understand all her emotions and continues to attempt to understand them in the analytic way she is used too that does not work. She could potentially get attached to someone or come to regard some organics or more balanced IPCs as friends even if she tries to avoid that. Athena is a very human robot attempting to be less human.

4. How much does Athena remember from her time at Nanotrasen and Zeng-Hu?

Her memories of Zeng-Hu would be characterized by regular routines. She would not remember many specific events, but could recall her usual daily routine and how organic supervision held her back from completing more work. At Nanotrasen her memories would be almost entirely preserved, with missing segments only corresponding to usual down time. While she permitted data such as passwords that could be important to Nanotrasen as well as the details of much of her work to be erased in the memory wipe her personality would be preserved.

5. What datapacks would she posses?

Athena has not received a new data pack since her assembly. Her original pack focused on collecting and analyzing data and what could be applied to recording the results of experiments and interfacing with computers responsible for modeling and processing data. This applied well to working for Nanotrasen's computing division, and a new data pack was not necessary. She learned how to interact with organics through experience and in large part the lack of a datapack associated with her emotions is what causes her current problems. In the environment of Nanotrasen's computing division directives from superiors and a narrow set of goals could have made a social interaction datapack unnecessary, but as a free IPC constant direction and the same narrow focus no longer exist.

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by Ublicto

[N8-Toe]

reiterating my previous support from the last application for Unlicto's ability as a role-player. It's excellent and my experience with their characters is they are deeply written, and interesting to interact with.

[dessysalta]

Same as above! I have no doubts that Ublicto can write and portray an IPC properly, +1!

[hollyhock]

I think that they would be good : ) +1

[Spungus]

Seems good, but I'd argue that the emotional processing from her Shell frame would have had to be installed on a datapack- the frame itself has no inherent emotion emulation capabilities. It could maybe be argued that there was some 'muscle-memory' so to speak in the Shell that caused her to behave strangely, but, that's just my thought.

+1 anyway because robot gaming

[Sycmos]

Thank you for reapplying, I'm glad to see that you gave it another shot. Upon my first impression of your second app I can say that it's a considerable improvement over the first, and hits all of the notes that I would be looking for in a successful application. From here I will defer to my seniors @The lancer and @The Stryker in regards to processing your application. Good luck!

[The lancer]

Accepted