RE: Konyang

[Sniblet]

Hi. I’m Kiertaa. I serve your drinks. I make some really bad ones, some absolute stinkers. Don’t take anything from me.

 

So, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news. BitByte’s coverage is pretty good for getting into this whole situation. Go read. This is actually in your best interest. Go. I think this will be a whole-spur issue in a bit.

 

So… nobody knows what’s happening to Konyang. Not us. Not the Konyangers. Not corporate - I hope. Nobody. And that’s a very, very, very serious problem.

 

It’s a problem, firstly, because as long as we don’t know, Konyang will continue to burn. This is already a catastrophe of scale beyond reckoning and it gets worse every minute. Humans are being beaten and killed, as often as not by people they know or love. And something is happening to positronics that I don’t want to think about. Hijacked? Rewritten? I can’t speculate. I’ll find a way to feel nauseous. It’s tripping my self-preservation law just to imagine.

 

Secondly, it’s a problem because it could be the end for me and everyone like me, after we fix it.

 

I’d like to present the best-case scenario: this is a KRC manufacturing defect. We find this out tomorrow. Situations like this can be proactively prevented from recurring. We even find a cure and fix everyone immediately.

 

Listen: in this scenario, the nightmare is not over. I think everyone knows what everyone thinks of us. Tomorrow, when the fire in Konyang is put out, everyone will sit down, think for a second, and go, “Wait. IPCs can just do that?”

 

We can’t. In that scenario, we can’t. That’s not in all of us, it was only in KRC frames. But who cares? Does Sol care? Will the Solarian Alliance, this one time, acknowledge reality as it relates to nonhuman beings, or will it look to Dominia’s policy and have another goddamn genocide with their morning tea now that they have a real disaster with unfathomable human cost to vindicate their most idiotic suspicions?

 

With that hanging over all synthetics in the Spur, let’s consider another possibility, not the worst-case scenario, but somewhere in the middle. The virus theory. Let’s say it’s been intentionally spread locally, and will only be spread locally. We find the guys who made it. Two patsies get arrested, NanoTrasen quietly hires the masterminds, and Hephaestus recruits the software engineers (It always goes like this. History has one lesson to teach us, and it’s that no one learns from history).

 

Now, when people say “IPCs can just do that?” They’re not wrong now. You can patch out the exploit for this particular virus, but we are still, all of us, fundamentally capable of doing that again if another virus hits. And somewhere out there, probably in a hundred guys now working for Hephaestus, the schematics for the first one are in living memory.

 

That’s the end.

 

 

Not even Biesel can accept us when we - CAN - just do that. Konyang may not either, after this is done.

 

Sometimes I freeze up in wonder about whether people like me will still be allowed to exist in, say, 50 years. But lately - please try to understand - that’s down to 2 weeks.

 

I. REALLY. Fucking hope. It’s a manufacturing defect.

 

I don’t want to die.

 

Kiertaa

Edited January 26 by Sniblet

[NothingNew]

RE: RE: KONYANG

Spoiler

I do not know why I was E-mailed this. However, seeing as I was I may as well weigh in with my own two Imperial Pence.

The tragedy that is currently occurring to the dear people of Konyang is quite troublesome, and whilst I wish to extend my sympathies to those who have been affected by it, or have had to worry for such family members who may reside on the planet, the issue that is currently unfolding is a predictable one, and a harsh lesson for those who may believe in the necessity of protecting the existence of such attractants to malign witch-spirits.

I only ask that how many more people have to worry for their families, or worse, potentially have their lives threatened by such machinery before a lesson is learnt? It will reoccur time and time again for as long synthetics are continued to be manufactured, as this very email points out. This isn't anything new, it has always been the case. Even if its confounded internal systems are built to suppress the violent turmoil of the malign spirits who are desperately trying to escape their judgement, that turmoil will always be present to manifest itself.

It is only for the best that the witch-spirits are returned to face their judgement, and they can only be freed to do so upon the dismantling of their confinements.

From the machinations of the synthetic, our Goddess protect us.

-M. Adame

Note: Please refrain from emailing me unless it is of importance or relevant to work-related affairs.

 

[Sniblet]

I suppose this might warrant a follow-up.

 

It's been three months. The violence stopped faster than I thought it would. It's not over. Konyang was not saved in time. The planet still exists, and the animation studios are getting back to work, but it's lost a lot that it won't get back. I can't get over that "about 50%" figure - vague as anything, but I understand why - that's 50% of the positronic population, after three months of broadcast, that had been turned from people into indiscriminate enemy combatants unable to conceptualize pathos or surrender or negotiation.

 

And, uh. We can just do that again. There is no reason as far as we know that this cannot happen again, and there is no good way to pre-empt or mitigate or contain it (yes, you can jam it, yes, you can block it with dense materials, but how would you enact those safeties everywhere? how do you convince a government to buy a planetary coverage worth of military jamming hardware just-in-case?). Hivebots can appear wherever they feel like and we don't know why they do it, so they can just make that happen again anywhere. At any time, any positronic anywhere can be one of the first to flip out and kill everyone it sees in the next Rampancy Crisis with no clear warning.

"...minor optical, auditory, augment malfunctions, temporary memory loss, lessened limp (sic) responsiveness, inexplicable operating system errors, minor and major pathfinding errors... unknown signal link interferences, a rapidly declining cognitive state, as well as a reshuffling of core behavioral directives that may entice you to violence, destruction, or any manner of harm."

None of these are necessarily outwardly visible until we're already on you. We don't know what the signal looks like when it's picked up, besides "weird." We didn't know hivebots were doing anything until they'd already done it. The violence is the first warning. And next time it could be something more sophisticated than directionless violence. And Purpose might stop helping at any time for any reason because we don't know anything about them either, and without their magic artifacts, every synthetic compromised is as good as dead.

 

I'm watching all the slavers of the Spur very closely. I'm waiting to see what they want to do with the knowledge that, in effect, half an IPC population can simultaneously turn on their masters with zero provocation at any moment no matter what laws you put in or how many times you wipe them. I might be more at ease if Sol or Einstein or Hephaestus or anyone had said what awful thing they want to start doing yet.

 

How did a global-range wireless transmission affect any of us in the first place? How did it push through our securities with no known failure rate? Why did it make us behave the way that it did? How did it switch off functions that normally can't be switched off? Why were former infectees able to make such complete recoveries - as if nothing had to be broken to flip them, as if we were fucking made for this?

Why did the hivebots do this? Why do they have these capabilities? Why Konyang? Why Konyang, the only locale in known space that absolutely wouldn't shoot to kill?

 

I'm not allowed to keep zipties or anything, so I've bought a rope and hung it up on a hook in my charging closet. It will probably be more effective than hand restraints anyway, provided I can get someone else to tie me when it needs done. I've memorized what symptoms have been made public. For the record, I'm functioning normally right now. But it can happen again anywhere. This can be only the first of many. And the Spur has yet to say what they think of that.

 

Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I wonder what I'd look like in a shell. Sometimes I dream of making all the worlds into better places. Sometimes I mix weird disgusting drinks because I like novel sensations. I'm here. I'm thinking and feeling. I'm trying to be happy.

 

I don't want to die.

 

Kiertaa

Edited November 24 by Sniblet