Log #99
The AI killer Virus has been finalized, it will cripple and slow the AI’s thought processes while broadcasting the location of all the AI’s server banks. After that I will have a day to find and destroy each and every server the AI is running on before it adapts and the weapon loses its effectiveness.
The androids are being prepared for large scale deployment while a smaller taskforce is standing by to find and infect the machine network with the virus. The smaller task force is composed of the YoRHa androids that have previously fought alongside my forces, and I have outfitted them with the best gear I have available.
I suspect I will be prepared to launch the assault within a few days, the foreclosed city I originally landed in has been torn down, either processed into raw materials, completely rebuilt as barracks, or turned into defenses and staging grounds. It has enough aerial power to move and deploy all my current forces across the globe, a high mobility rapid strike plan will be used wherever it is practical. A reserve of heavier units is being kept on standby to break tougher targets who resist initial assault.
These heavier forces are androids outfitted in power armor, they will drop down in command tanks and spidertron from high altitude onto any targets.
I suspect the machines will lack a counter to such a strategy. Androids do not tend to favor aerial combat and lack a large standing air force. If this assault method fails, kill satellites will be dropped from orbit, obliterating the targets. Non- ideal method due to environmental contamination.
I have started limited integration of Maso technology and energy into my units. Analyzing parts from fallen and captured machines has greatly propelled my knowledge and I am now capable of manufacturing drones that make use of Maso rounds, similar to lasers; these are rounds generated from energy. They somehow have mass, meaning they travel slower than light but have weight.
Space saved on ammunition storage has increased armor and speed of drones it has been integrated with. Integration into tanks is on hold until a maso cannon can be designed and implemented, maso point defense weapons are less effective than lasers, meaning the current iteration of tanks are superior to any maso tank currently feasible.
Machine ‘lifeform’ variants are occasionally in the form of tanks. Capturing one for study is a minor priority to lessen needed research time. Other unique machine forms are also of interest, the amount of knowledge I have gained from my current specimens is far more than I had predicted.
Their ability to regenerate is the current object of my study, if it can be implemented onto power armor and machines I can overload them without having the consequences. The Maso to Matter conversion rates are nearly ninety percent, an unheard of ratio.
The best energy to matter conversion I can manage with my current technology is 0.4 percent. Which is insufficient to make it more cost effective than simply mining the material, matter to matter conversion however is significantly more efficient, approaching the point where it is cheaper to turn stone and carbon into metals and plastics than it is to produce metals and plastics. Though time and throughput is a factor.
Work on reopening the portal has begun, though the current efforts are directed towards understanding what caused it in the first place, so that the environment can be replicated. Actually efforts towards reopening it are infeasible until it is understood how the portal formed.
Spidertrons have been showing an abnormal amount of activity when not on active patrol, suspected causes are maso interactions with the Spidertrons learning programs or simple evolution in programming. Activity is deemed a non-issue, but increased monitoring has been enacted.
Extensive mining operations have begun, resulting in minor damage to soil integrity, and in light of the danger the machine forces pose limitations on pollution output have been rescinded until further notice, limited damage to biosphere is expected to occur in the short term as well as long term effects on water quality.
As there is no current human habitation these issues are of little concern, minor loss in resources solely attainable from organics can be negated by increased production of synthetic alternatives.
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It had been a hectic few weeks, and White knew things were only going to become more complicated. Her own workload had more than tripled since the minds had been taken offline. She was now the one in charge of positioning the humans own machines, as well as the de-facto head of the new war effort.
The human didn’t even slow down with the loss of his minds, if anything he had only sped up. White could only assume the human hadn’t been trying before, the machines couldn’t even hope to so much as slow his spread, dozens of factories were springing up, each unleashing a veritable tide of machines.
And those machines only increased the rate he spread and built, at this rate it wouldn’t be years before the machines were outnumbered, it’d be weeks or months. The machines had only had one chance to stop him, and they had failed. And now they were doomed. that didn't even take into account the chained up machine AI and Droids he was experimenting on. it had taken days of effort to calm her androids down when they heard about it, and the human hadn't seen fit to help.
She wasn’t even sure they needed to launch the attack on the machine’s central intelligence. But morale had never been higher and the human had sent out his attack plans, if she didn’t coordinate it someone else would.
White herself however? She looked down at earth and imagined she could see the clouds of pollution spreading everywhere, down on the ground the air was hazed with pollutants, and the plants around everywhere the human went were slowly growing sickly. Sinkholes were forming, the fish and animals were dying, and the water was slowly becoming toxic.
She looked at the spreading poison, and thought to herself ‘there was a reason he had been moving so slowly, and he no longer cared about it’.
Humans had brought millions of species to extinction, and it seemed this one had every intention of keeping up their grim record, she just hoped the machines would be one of them.
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Robin eye’s life had taken a drastic turn ever since he had found the human, nearly entirely by accident. He had gotten enough credits as payment for his discovery that he’d been able to afford the first set of power armor the human had sent to the camp. It had been an amazing investment, he was practically indestructible and finally felt safe enough to take on the more dangerous but higher paying missions, no longer just scrounging for scraps.
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More money meant more weapons and modules for his armor and body, and he rapidly grew into pseudo hero of the camp, anemone sending him on the most important mission whenever YoRHa androids were occupied. Robinseye had never been popular among the other androids, just another scavenger, but he was self aware enough to admit the attention was getting into his head.
But was that really such a bad thing? Finally becoming confident in his own abilities? Sure it had taken a lucky break to get him the opportunity to prove himself but he had still needed to rise up to the chance, and he had. So what if he basked in just a little too much praise, spent a bit more time talking to sycophants, and was starting to get really good at telling the stories of his adventures?
It wasn’t like he hadn’t done everything they thought he did, none of it was a lie. By now he had a more advanced suit of armor than most of the YoRHa androids, the playing field was nearly level his suit bridging the advantage they had from being military models. And even beyond that he had become good with his suit, even the largest machines couldn’t hit him and he knew just where to hit them.
He routinely placed in the top percentages in the simulator, and he’d only really been fighting for a month. He was the resistance’s rising star, showing that they could compete with YoRHa in something other than numbers.
And there hadn’t even been any casualties for weeks, resistance androids would get destroyed and just wake up back in the humans factory like nothing had happened. Morale had never been higher and so when he heard the human was planning a massive assault and was accepting any and every android into it there had been thousands of volunteers, of which Robinseye had been only one of many.
Yet it appeared the human himself knew about robin’s accomplishments. When he had volunteered he’d been set aside for one of the elite squadrons, even getting assigned a spidertron for transportation to the battle field, him and another twenty nine androids, each with power armor and a spidertron would be one of five elite strike forces, there was even a command tank, with a full squad of YoRHa androids, for each strike force.
The war was so close to ending he could almost see it.
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Her portal had slammed shut, which was not something Nauvis had been expecting. This new world was absolutely fascinating, sure the biological animals were weak, the only thing of note being their integration of a new energy source. But the life like her human’s own creations? They were fascinating, and nothing they did made much sense to Nauvis.
Nothing on Nauvis ever stopped, there was no slowing down or resting, not even her human, the only foreign life on her world, truly slept. But these machines that didn’t even need to? They still slept. They did things for seemingly no reason, they dedicated not insubstantial portions of their life to something beyond becoming more.
And Nauvis had no idea why. What point did it have? Life was about becoming more, growing larger, stronger, and greater in number. Of rising to meet any challenge or dying in the attempt. You grow until you are killed, and then your body is used to grow your killer.
The desire for peace was foreign to Nauvis. Why end conflict when it is the perfect stone to sharpen yourself upon?
That had been the object of her fascination before the portal closed, now however she was once again fascinated with her human. His mind had been torn apart when his minds were torn from him, and the minds themselves were doing little better.
They had been five parts of a whole, the engineer had been the core of the network of minds, and they had held a not insignificant influence on his mental state. Each mind either stabilized or contributed to his thoughts, with both the loss of the minds and the damage he’d taken from them being torn out, and then worsened by him frying his own brain?
Her human was….. Less human, and Nauvis didn’t know how she felt about it. He had become more in some ways, he wasted less time, he was improving himself and his equipment faster, and he was rapidly improving his own understanding of his technology.
But it felt … hollow. Life on Nauvis wanted to reign supreme, they would tolerate no equals. But her human no longer wanted anything, he didn’t have any drive to thrive, he only sought survival. If the bugs hadn’t attacked this version of her human he wouldn’t have even expanded, he would have made enough machinery to feed and heal himself and he would have waited, forever.
The way her human had been meant that even without the bugs pushing him to grow stronger he still would have spread over Nauvis, just to see how much he could create and the heights he could reach. He wasn’t, and never would have been, content with what he had.
Nothing living should ever be. A species on the whole must always be fighting to grow, or else it will die out. Stagnation was wrong.
But this new version of her human would stagnate, as long as he was in danger he would grow to match it, but once that danger passed he would stop growing.
That's when she noticed it, what had set the human apart from the rest of her creatures. Without a threat the bugs would grow weaker, they would stop striving for greater heights. The human wouldn’t, even without competition he would reach ever higher. And he had lost that, that thing that made him more appealing than anything else she had.
She already had monsters, she did not need more.
Then if she didn’t want just another monster action needed to be taken, the minds were already trying to force the portal back open, and once the human made his own attempts they would once again reconnect. But that alone would not bring her human back, he had shattered and the minds alone would not be able to do much beyond gathering the shards together and forcing them into shape. The cracks would still remain.
But with a few guiding nudges and those cracks could be fixed all on their own….