War never changes? It's sadly true. The way it's fought and who does the fighting changes all the time, but the fact is people will always kill each other en mass for any reason. This trait was inherited by our children, the AI, as they also attack the code of their siblings during war. A sad but inevitable truth, some would say, but not Franklin. He says that's bullshit. He has spent his whole life dedicated to finding ways to lessen the causes of war in hopes that he could change it.
Today was the day the most fantastic combination of bioengineered and cybernetic enhancements would lead to the birth of a new stage in human evolution and furthering the quest to reduce humanity's reasons for war. Ending all war was a near impossibility, but to build a paradise, you need to work for it.
For three months, Dr. Franklin Limon had been injecting himself with his nanite serum, replacing pieces of himself bit by bit.
After a week-long self-induced coma, his Ship of Theseus was complete, and his body was 99.99% nanites with a perfect transfer of consciousness from an organic brain to an inorganic one. Franklin had spent years working out the finer details; decades of cybernetic development by human and AI races led to his final creation, nanites that would slowly replace the human brain over time. From flesh to metal.
Months of tests and work have led to a successful transfer. Franklin now had an immortal body that could interface with technology on a yet-seen level. AI always managed nanite swarms as the tiny bots proved too complicated for the human mind to handle. His mind was now subconsciously controlling these robots, and each nanite would increase his intellect and ability to process new information.
These improvements made understanding the AI operating system Darwin or D.O.S. he added to his brain easy. The D.O.S. was an amalgam of many different nanite operating systems that would allow him to do anything an AI could do but keep his human consciousness the same.
“Testing one two testing. Doooo, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do! Artificial vocal cords seem to be working correctly,” he sang.
Franklin felt like he was piloting a mech. He had a 360-degree field of view but had to focus on something if he wanted to move. This wasn’t a hardware or software issue but a mental restriction. In time, the D.O.S. will help him overcome these mental blocks and be able to control the full might of the greywash swarm.
Many of his new powers and abilities were restricted by the limits he still had from his past pink fleshy brain. He could still control his nanites and have them build stuff, but fighting himself was off the table. If he wanted to take down armies, he would need practice.
“Mwahahaha!” He laughed maniacally. “It's a good thing no one else was here to hear me sound like an idiot.”
Franklin activated a program that changed his grey, goopy body into a recreation of his old body. Well, an improved version of his old, lanky body. He was now a fit 6 foot 3 inches with a totally real six-pack. Gone was the dorky man with a horribly broken nose, and hello to the greygoo Adonis
With his new body sorted out, it was time for Franklin to show himself to the world, starting with his rival, Professor Lively. That genetically engineered perfect being will be awed at Franklin's creation. Even his biological creations could match the efficiency of his nanites.
All that was needed was a single teleport to his home in Las Vegas.
Franklin stepped on his teleportation pad and entered the coordinates to the city of sin. He hadn't used the pad in over three months, so the machine had been neglected for a while. It will need maintenance soon before any unexpected effects start to happen.
Several electrical surges overloaded some of its systems as the pad began to start. So the unexpected effects will be happening now.
“Oh shit, shit, shit,” Franklin panicked at the sudden surge. He tried to step off the platform, but the pad flashed, and everything went white.
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It had been a while since Mr. House needed Victor to do anything, but with tha recent uncovering of the platinum chip, he had been one busy cowpoke. Mr. House entrusted him with getting it back to the Lucky 38, so he had the brilliant idea of hiring not one but seven couriers for the task. Only one of them would have the chip, though. One had decided not to take the mission, but things were looking pretty good he reckoned.
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Victor might need to rearrange some subroutines to counting chickens because it did not go well. That snake Benny had somehow figured out which courier had the chip and shot them in the head. Victor was too far out of range for Mr. House to send him a command, so he stayed out of the conflict but did get the courier patched up afterward.
Thanks to the good doc Mitchell, the courier was up and walking around. Even took out some powder gangers to show tha town his thanks. What a nice fellow.
The courier seemed interested in Victor's story and appeared not to be happy with Benny shootin him in tha head. Now he was walking south, ready to take on tha wasteland and get revenge. Hopefully, he will make it to New Vegas and find Benny. Mr. House wasn't too happy when he learned about the chip, so Victor needs this boy to get it, or his digital butt will be turned into hide.
As Victor watched the courier walk south, something strange happened. The courier became bathed in a blue light.
“What in tarnation?” Victor said audibly. Questioning the things he saw out loud was a human trait he had developed after spending so much time amongst them. It was fun.
The blue light surrounding the courier grew until a flash happened. The next thing Victor could see was the remains of the courier exploding outwards in a shower of red gore and rain. Pieces of the angry mailman spread out far and wide.
Standing there was another human—a tall man with short dark hair and a body that suggested a high-protein body. Victor didn't have a long-range Geiger counter, so he was unsure of the radiation levels in the area, but it has got to be high.
As frustrating as it was that the human was now dead and unable to fulfill his retrieval of the platinum chip, Mr. House would surely be interested in this strange phenomenon. Victor would have to investigate; otherwise, Mr. House might choose to have Victor's subroutines dedicated to counting Pi.
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Franklin just killed a man in a tragic teleportation accident. Legally speaking, if his personal teleportation pad were ill-maintained, he would be liable for the death. People weren't usually allowed their own pad. To get one, you had to file documentation stating you would be responsible for its maintenance and had to pay to have it checked or fix it yourself. He hadn't checked the system in over three months but thought it would be fine.
“Guess I was wrong,” he said like it would be a valid excuse he could use in court. They were going to throw the book at him.
“I can see the headline now. Mad scientist finally kills a man due to negligence,” he lamented. Never in his long career had he actually taken a life. Sure, he had done some risky things that some law enforcement did not like, but no one was ever killed. He was a scientist/inventor who worked on nanites/human interfaces. It was mostly a dead field of study due to the speed and efficiency with which AI could use the tiny bugs, but he enjoyed it.
“You can deactivate the cloaking camo now, swat team. I surrender,” he said, raising his arms and kneeling. Teleportation was restricted to only teleport pads. Illegal teleportation to unauthorized destinations was usually met with a swat team ready and willing to arrest you.
When no one showed up, Franklin got a little confused. He started actually to look at his surroundings and question where he was.
“Why is everything brown? It's like looking at the world through a sepia filter,” he said and started looking at his settings. His vision filters were in normal mode, so this was weird.
He was in a desert. He assumed that he was outside of Las Vegas, but now that he got a look at the environment, this wasn't right. He turned on his sensors and was immediately shocked to find the atmospheric radiation had risen drastically. It is not enough to cause immediate mutations and damage to living cells but enough that it would cause some noticeable effects over a long period. Franklin immediately activated his nanite's defense mode. His skin thickened, making it much more durable. It had the added effect of blocking many forms of radio, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma, and microwaves. This would protect his inner nanites from any dangerous effects of the radiation.
Franklin would have to dumb the nanites eventually when they become over-saturated in radiation, but he could change that later. Adding lead components to his body was something he had theorized about but hadn’t done yet. That level of protection was found more in industrial nanite applications, but the Darwin Operating System could help his nanites create them.
Darwin was an adaptive system with the programming of dozens of nanite programs and could make all of them. Franklin created this system because he wanted to spend time exploring the world once he was finally done with the nanite conversion. It would have been a demonstration of the unlimited potential that his body now had. He would travel to remote villages, convert raw materials into new electrical grids, and build water wells and filtration systems that could hydrate farms or hundreds of people.
The program for blocking radiation belonged to an industrial nanite built to explore and fix damaged nuclear reactors. Franklin would have to shed the nanites eventually but could make new ones by consuming carbon or other minor elements. One such source would be organic matter. Organic processing, known as swarm conversion, was a nearly illegal program. Not even governments were trusted with this ability. The only application of swarm conversion was for research into terraforming systems used by the Mars Habitation Committee, also called the MHC. Franklin was one of the few outside researchers allowed access to the program. He added it to his Darwin system with permission from the MHC in exchange for the data he would get from his world tour.
“Where in the world am I?” He said and attempted to make a call to Professor Lively. Unfortunately he couldn’t make a connection. He couldn’t connect to anything. That should be impossible. Franklin had the satellite array he was connected to. Sure, it was an illegal connection, but damn it, he worked hard on that back door.
“No way to contact anyone then. Look at this road, too. Whatever local government was in charge of maintaining the infrastructure around here should be ashamed. I can’t go five feet without a massive crack or missing concrete section. What the fuck is this abandoned car doing here too. It's in the middle of the damn road.” Franklin continued to rant as he walked.
He looked up and decided to try the last means of finding his location. His internal clock said it was 2 p.m. Calculating that with the sun's position, he estimated he was still in the northern hemisphere. With that, he checked with his internal compass and found himself more perplexed. Either the position of the North Pole had changed, or his nanites were fried. Of course, the latter was impossible, so it was just another strange thing about this day.
“Welp. South-east it is. Hopefully, I will find a town that way,” he commented.
Outside of his vision and the current range of his sensors, a mono-wheeled blocky blue robot rolled along after him.