Big Brother Loves You - Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, Good Guy Yang Edition

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Big Brother Loves You - Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, Good Guy Yang Edition

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Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Hmmm, this thread seems to be eating posts. Usually kicks in after a few more.

# ? Mar 17, 2018 23:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 8, 2024 21:01

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

It always seems to have on unread post in my bookmarks, anyone else see that?

# ? Mar 17, 2018 23:45

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

GunnerJ posted:

It always seems to have on unread post in my bookmarks, anyone else see that?

# ? Mar 17, 2018 23:46

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

It's the new iteration of forums cancer, this one can not be cured, you have to make a new thread and abandon the old. (The actual cause is a database desync from an administrative incident a while ago.)

# ? Mar 17, 2018 23:53

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Too much effort went into re-opening it to be honest. Just live with the tumor I say.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 02:09

Neophyte: Apr 23, 2006; perennially; Taco Defender

For the base, what better to counter "the invisible hand" of Morgan's marketplaces than The Visible Finger?

Okay, it's too silly to use for the LP but when I thought of it I laughed.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 02:54

wedgekree: Feb 20, 2013

Yay! Tis thread is again. Also I totally imagine Yang's theme as the Nod theme from Command and Conquer.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 04:22

T-man: Aug 22, 2010; Talk shit, get bzzzt.

Just found this thread and binged it over a few hours. Good stuff! I might drop in with a more queer-focused character, since we've had some neat discussions on homosexuality and the way the Good Hive works with gender/sexuality difference is really interesting to me. Anyone else feel the same way?

# ? Mar 18, 2018 07:16

Caustic Soda: Nov 1, 2010

I'm for it. Seeing how Good Hive handles people who are different is always interesting. Especially when, as in this case, the difference isn't antisocial.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 07:39

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

T-man posted:

Just found this thread and binged it over a few hours. Good stuff! I might drop in with a more queer-focused character, since we've had some neat discussions on homosexuality and the way the Good Hive works with gender/sexuality difference is really interesting to me. Anyone else feel the same way?

Criona's touched on queer issues - I was the one who started that discussion since I was writing Criona as a lesbian - so by all means, take that ball and run with it.

One thing Addamere and I agreed on the Good Hive would never touch would be turning women into baby factories. Very easy to see the Hive doing, completely inappropriate for the Hive as good guys.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 13:57

RA Rx: Mar 24, 2016

Cythereal posted:

If you're okay with it, then I'll see if I can come up with something. I stopped following Nweis' thread when he asked me to.

I think Yang gets a bad rap because his values are at odds with Western culture in a lot of respects, but I have no problem with the idea of him as a good guy. He does provide a place for every thing, and no one goes wanting in the Hive. He always read to me as being even a little subversive about it, that his Talents are those who embrace and rise above the Human Hive to excel, however that excellence may appear.

Mmmm, I was discouraged too, so I decided to get out of the way of the Conservatives (sorry about splitting that first vote). I was proposing more efficient forms of almost centrist militarism, and being charismatic about it, so NWeis assumed that I must be going for some sort of charismatic supervillain, and he wasn't happy about that. Anyway, he ran a thread that was fun for many, even if it was suffocatingly tight for some of us, so I just quit so the highly planned out story could be told.

I was never going to propose full conquest/annihilation or anything, just trying to make it more efficient - I guess at some point when affordable I might have suggested some fun, but mostly harmless dickery against those of our neighbors we didn't like (and there might have been some coddling of favored allies

). But the party platform wasn't about that, it was entirely to just be more efficient about military expansion if we were going to do it - and that was too much.

Hopefully this thread will be more open to player input.

RA Rx fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Mar 18, 2018

# ? Mar 18, 2018 14:45

Mooseontheloose: May 13, 2003

AJ_Impy posted:

All these good guy playthroughs have made me consider doing a bad guy runthrough with a usually 'good' character. Which of the SMAC or SMACX factions is the least canonically horrible?

Deidre hasn't done anything bad in the flavor but you can read her motives as willing to sacrifice humanity to planet as a means to atone for the sins of the past. Technically, Morgan hasn't done anything TOO horrible, outside of the one nerve stapling when the civilians saw an experiment they weren't suppose to see and being a monopolistic d-bag.

Lal is the most interesting because he a fairly nuanced good guy who has made some tough choices.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 15:49

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

GunnerJ posted:

We have had nothing but good relations with the Gaians and as the settlement closest to theirs, Unity's Lantern has had many visiting Stepdaughters. In my view, their environmentalist orientation is both prudent and... sympathetic. Most Hivers have a concern for their relationship to this world's environment, although I am not sure where this comes from since it is not a part of official Hive policy. (Criona has some theories... I should ask her what she thinks of the Gaians.) This is something that visitors from Skye's faction have noted with approval.

quote:

Adj-Gov Peters,

I think the widespread though highly unofficial sympathy of the Hivers for the native environment, and to the Stepdaughters, comes from a philosophical underpinning to both our factions that was observable at Planetfall. At the heart of both Hive and Gaian philosophy lies the abrogation of the self and redefining man's place in the world. The Morgans, the Peacekeepers, the Spartans, and the Believers all believe it was either some specific error that lead to Earth's destruction, or don't care much at all. They continue much as they had on Earth, and would have been easily identifiable forces there - indeed, all of them but the Spartans were. We and the Gaians are different. We have both decided that it was something much deeper and more profound to the human condition than politics or religion or economics that destroyed Earth, and on Planet have sought to redefine humanity's relationship with the world and our role in the cosmos.

The Gaians focus this attention outward, and emphasize humanity as one small part of a greater whole. At the most basic level the Gaians preach about humanity's relationship with nature, but it's a more subtle and pervasive philosophy than that. There is undeniably a pacifist streak among the Gaians, they see warfare and violence as innately destructive and harmful. Hardly the model of simply trying to be one with nature, which was on Earth red in tooth and claw and is little different here. Instead, the Gaians seek harmony in all things, building consensus through democratic means. Their facilities minimize waste, and even architecturally are built to blend in smoothly with the terrain around them. To the Gaians, humanity is only one part of a much greater whole, and shouldn't overstate its importance to the universe. The official Gaian religion, as far as I understand it, isn't simply neo-paganism from Earth but also invokes elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and even Islam and Christianity.

The Hive, by contrast, is a much more inward-looking society. Where the Gaians seek to change the relationship between man and the world around them, we in the Hive seek to change the relationship between man and humanity. Much of the imagery the Gaians evoke has also been used in the Hive, particularly in the early years: symbolism of one being merely part of a greater organism, of seeking harmony among the multitudes, and so on and so forth. I don't think it's so terribly different from how the Gaians see the world, the telling difference lies in precisely which greater whole we are most concerned with - the Gaians with the very cosmos, the Hive with the greater self of humanity. We reject the consensus-building and democratic notions of the Gaians, and I suspect they will be deeply perturbed by our recent centralization of all aspects of production and trade, but I think there's a similar idea at heart.

As for the Hive and the environment specifically, I think we do share that peculiar abrogation of the self with the Gaians. No Hiver visits the surface and thinks herself master of all she surveys. She knows she is only one small part of a much greater whole. We're a deeply humanistic society to be sure, but of all the faults and flaws I've heard leveled at us one I've never encountered is the accusation that we do not appreciate the good things we find. Yes, Hive society can be brutal at times, but is quelling dissent truly any worse when done openly than when hidden and veiled?

Just as important, though probably less intrinsic to the Hive, is the presence of the Manifold Nexus. That this alien facility has been having an effect on us is well documented, even if its precise effects and how it works remain frustratingly elusive. The Social Uplift Service has a long catalogue of Hivers experiencing unusual and vivid dreams and hallucinations about Chiron, this data eventually lead to the recognition of genuine telepathy in the Hive and the advent of the worm drivers who abrogate themselves into becoming a new self of a mind worm boil. It's hard to say, but I don't think this development would have been terribly likely without the Nexus, at least not any time soon. I'm confident that in time we would have learned to control the worms regardless. All the same, our science simply isn't capable of understanding all the effects the Nexus is having on the Hive. Not back when we were first discovering the complex, and not now.

Is it any wonder, then, between our philosophical experiments and the presence of an alien power beyond our comprehension that the Hive would have a very different relationship with Chiron than any nation of old did with Earth? On Earth, we were the world's masters. On Chiron, we most definitely are not. Here there is evidence of powers far beyond our ken. Perhaps not beyond our ability to comprehend in due time, we're nothing if not an adaptable and driven species, but the psychological shock of encountering something like the Nexus can't help but have profound and far-reaching effects on us as a species.

Perhaps it's only natural that we walk a little more softly, play a little more carefully in the shadows of giants.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 19:20

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Glazius posted:

"improving the morale of probe teams" means improving their success rate, right?

Hey, this post finally showed up!

Yes it does. Click here if you're interested in the math. Also, a unit's Psi combat rating is based entirely on their Morale level (or life cycle stage for native fauna).

e: Part Two is coming tonight/tomorrow.

Addamere fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Mar 19, 2018

# ? Mar 19, 2018 04:34

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

�� Begin Part Two. Click Here for Part One. ��

The State of The Human Hive, M.Y. 2160

(Click to expand.)

Over the course of the past decade, road networks have expanded to connect every human settlement on the southeastern landmass of Chiron, from Morgan Industries in the west and People's Eyrie in the south to The Hive in the north. On the Morganite front, Morgan Antimatter has been completely encircled by Hive territory, and Hive laser cavalry and scout infantry led by Hildebrand have encircled Morgan Industries itself.

The mogul has been fully contained. A colony pod from Unity�s Lantern is bound for the isthmus that connects the western continent of Chrion to the southeastern landmass. All is quiet along the Gaian border.

Hive military strength remains unrivaled on Planet, with a strong core of infantry supplemented by light cavalry, mind worms, and sea foils. Over the course of the past decade, base garrisons have transitioned from the traditional Scout Patrol design to the new Tranceguard design, and to date the only purely offensive units produced were the initial prototypes for the Laser Foil and Recon Rover designs. Acquisition of additional mind worms and sea foils has allowed for more rapid mapping of the areas surrounding Hive territory, which should allow for more accurate cartographic data in the coming years.

Hive energy production has risen by nearly fifty percent over the last decade, while energy consumption has more than tripled in the same time. Population growth and new facilities account for both effects. Net energy income has remained a constant, small surplus as a result of careful planning.

Hive base operations have achieved efficiency goals at most bases, and now efforts have been directed towards increased research production.

The Hive remains the economic and industrial center of the entire colony cluster, and has again grown in the past decade. Recreation Common, widely available in other bases, have recently been installed, and other common facilities are slated for the next decade. Quality of life for workers in The Hive is expected to improve in the near future, and the presence of a double-strength garrison will safeguard against future insurrections. Another secret project is already being planned, code-named The Virtual World, though it is presently in the abstract design stage.

Fecundity Tower boasts a happy, productive citizenry and is slated to produce the first seafaring terraforming unit midway through the next decade. In keeping with earlier mandates, construction of a Network Node is expected to follow.

Great Collective will complete its Network Node within the next decade, and is expected to experience significant population growth. Future production orders have not yet been received.

Owing to advantageous nearby resources, Labour Network has become a thriving settlement that rivals The Hive itself in economic output. Proximity to the Morganite border does nothing to diminish local quality of life, as the base offers the most pleasing accommodations for its citizen workers available to Hive settlements. Additional terraformers and a Network Node are slated for production.

People�s Eyrie has focused on base defense, boasting a double-strength garrison. Settlement expansion and construction of a Network Node are expected in the next decade.

Seed of Aspiration gives more than it takes from the Hive cluster, exporting resources and finished goods to be used elsewhere. Its population is small but productive, and other than its strategic location the settlement is unremarkable. Formers, a second garrison unit, and then a Network Node are slated for production.

This newly-founded base is the single most vulnerable in all of Hive territory, for its position is surrounded by the Morganites. Only the best and brightest were selected for its colonists, and they have set to their labours with admirable results. Recycling tanks are expected within the next decade. Unique among Hive bases, the local garrison is not an infantry unit but a Laser Foil, equally adept at base defense and artillery strikes. From an entrenched position at port, the Laser Foil may bombard any advancing hostile force without reprisal.

Unity�s Lantern is due for expansion in the coming decade, and construction of a Network Node is underway. Its industrial output is presently taxed by the supply trains supporting a colony pod deployed to the west, which should be resolved within two years.

Socialism Tunnels is due for expansion in the next decade, and its citizens are making great strides towards efficiency with the construction of Recycling Tanks.

Cadre Meeting
The decennial meeting of the full Hive Advisory Cadre is an open forum for discussing all manner of concerns that have arisen over the course of the past decade. As in the previous decade, a live telecast is made available in the common areas of most bases. Topics discussed among the cadre include the lasting impact of the drone riots of 2157, the practical application of data from The Human Genome Project, the widespread emergence of talents in the latter half of the decade, living and working conditions throughout the Hive, and an increasingly evident schism between the Charonborn and Planetborn citizens. Highlighted in this discussion are the effects of growing population and the ultimate goals of society. With the recent encirclement of the Morgan territories by Hive forces, all focus has been turned inward save for a brief status report on Hive military readiness that coincided with the broadcast. Hardly any mention is given to the other known factions, but for the Believers whose territory a single mind worm unit from the Hive has recently violated by accident.

Contact Zakharov: Do we want to contact Prokhor Zakharov and form the Council of Planet? A follows B; we cannot do one without necessarily causing the other to occur. Yea or Nay, simple majority wins.

Impact Prototype: During this update we gained the ability to make units with Particle Impactors, the 4-strength weapon. We could make such a unit on an infantry, rover, or sea foil chassis; or, we could abstain from making one. Such a unit would clearly represent an offensive design, if for no other reason then we simply do not have the technology to make armour nearly as strong as our weapons. Impact-equipped infantry would be able to easily overwhelm any known base garrisons, and would thus be most useful in a war of conquest. Impact rovers would be able to easily overwhelm any known human units in open terrain, and would thus be most useful in a defensive war. An impact foil could assault coastal garrisons directly or bombard any unit within two squares of the sea, which makes it useful for both defensive and offensive campaigns. All are specialized units that would be most effective against human combatants. And there is always the choice of not bothering as we are already a military superpower. Options for this ballot are: Infantry, Rover, Foil, None; pick up to three on your ballot, winner after single transferable votes are counted via Droop Quota will win. A later vote, before the next update, will further design and name the new unit type if one is selected.

Rename Base: �Come At Me Dude�: Right now it looks like "Morgan Social Collective" is in the lead, but the voting will be open for a few days still.

Research Priority: As before, options are Build, Conquer, Discover, Explore; pick up to three on your ballot, top two after single transferable votes are counted via Droop Quota will win.

Housekeeping
AJ_Impy and GunnerJ: Let me know if you two are still available to run your bases, and give me some feedback on what you�d like done with them.

Yarville: Your unit is the Scout Patrol north east of Morgan Industries, and as you can see you are at 100% strength.

Closing Remarks
I forgot to include The Human Genome Project being completed in 2158, but I�ve gone back and edited it into the proper place in Part One. After a two-year hiatus, I�m sure some other things have fallen through the cracks as well, so if you have any questions or feedback please post and ask! New and old readers, feel free to jump right into the narrative. Consider this a general call for feedback: I'd like to know what everyone reading would like to see going forward.

Addamere fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Mar 21, 2018

# ? Mar 20, 2018 21:13

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

quote:

A Survey of Factional Education Methods: Peacekeeping Forces
Prepared by Criona O'Connell for the Hive Advisory Cadre

I don't think it would be a stretch to ascribe a strong dose of ancient Confucian thought to the Hive. We are a family-oriented people, if increasingly in a sense well beyond the traditional nuclear family. Loyalty to family and state, deference to authority, and the emphasis of personal responsibility in one's own authority loom large in Hive society. It is ironic, then, that what many call our philosophical opposite on Chiron also consciously evokes some important elements of medieval China. One of the most important organizations in the Peacekeeping Forces is the UN Civil Authority, a strong and pervasive bureaucracy that maintains continuity amidst the chaos of bureaucracy, and is responsible for executing much of the day to day life for Peacekeeper citizens. While not particularly efficient, being heavily based on the internal structure of the United Nations on Earth, the Peacekeepers' bureaucracy has become an inescapable part of their society. The Peacekeeper's education system is therefore heavily oriented towards supporting the Civil Authority, and one of the primary ways to secure a career in the Civil Authority is to pass an extensive and rigorous set of exams at the end of one's formal schooling.

Like in most factions on Chiron, basic education within the Peacekeeping Forces is provided free for all citizens by the state. Enrollment is mandatory, and much of the content is familiar enough to Hivers. The differences lie primarily in how progress is measured by the UN Education and Development Agency. We in the Hive have long since discarded the Terran concept of standardized testing as inefficient and poorly suited to the needs of many children. The Morgans, Gaians, and Spartans have come to similar conclusions and developed their own forms of education (the Spartans do maintain a form of standardized testing, but it has nothing to do with academics!). Not so the Peacekeepers. The UN-EDA administers a variety of standardized exams at all levels of education, such as the FCAT (Formal Comprehensive Achievement Test), PFVAB (Peacekeeper Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery), and the like. The most significant of these exams, however, is simply known as Final. Peacekeepers sit the Final on their eighteenth birthday, and it is one's results on the Final that do much to determine their future educational and professional prospects. Re-sitting the Final is unusual but not particularly rare, usually due to extenuating circumstances.

The importance of the Final to Peacekeepers cannot be overstated. The best-performing students have their pick of virtually any career - an officer's commission in the armed forces, a guaranteed slot in a doctoral program, even a coveted opening in the UN Civil Authority itself. The Final is perhaps the single most rigorous academic examination known to us on Chiron (though I suspect Zakharov will have something to say about that if he and his followers are still alive), thoroughly testing a student on language, mathematics, history, political theory (as the Peacekeepers define it - to say they don't understand us would be a gross understatement), reading and writing ability, problem solving via logic, and so on and so forth. The Education and Development Agency does its best to prepare students for the Final, with a bewildering range of learning aids, study programs, practice tests, and other paraphenalia, but finding and making use of these tools, and figuring out what best serves the needs of the student, is largely left up to the individual and their family.

There is, I suppose, something to be admired about the Final. Contrary to my initial fears, the Peacekeepers do go to great lengths to ensure a consistent quality of education for their children. Archaic though their model might be, the Peacekeepers aren't blind to the problems that plagued public education on Earth and have gone to great lengths to refine the system. Every Peacekeeper school enjoys the same level of funding, and the same equipment. I think the British schoolteacher I once was would have admired the Peacekeepers' work on public education, but one thing has become quite clear to me on Chiron: merely refining and improving upon the old doesn't cut it.

As for the current priorities of the Hive, I recommend Build, Explore, then Discover. I've heard tell of an intriguing notion among my former students in the Social Uplift Service - if we could automate a base's resource production infrastructure via industrial automation, the new Librarian training could conceivably be issued to a base's entire productive population, allowing for significant research advantages when combined with the Hive's advantages in population growth and industrial production...

# ? Mar 20, 2018 21:44

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Addamere posted:

Housekeeping
AJ_Impy and GunnerJ: Let me know if you two are still available to run your bases, and give me some feedback on what you�d like done with them.

Very much doubt I'm going to be able to contribute at my previous level and I have lost track of what the situation was there, but I can make basic decisions. What, uh, are the options for UL, I guess?

# ? Mar 20, 2018 22:14

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

GunnerJ posted:

Very much doubt I'm going to be able to contribute at my previous level and I have lost track of what the situation was there, but I can make basic decisions. What, uh, are the options for UL, I guess?

Unity's Lantern can build any of these things, but note it's already slightly over supply cap with the current colony pod and will be at supply cap once that pod becomes a base. Each unit over the supply cap requires one unit of minerals per year for maintenance. Right now a Network Node is the only thing planned. Both supported terraformers are working on a road toward where that colony pod will be making a base near the Manifold Nexus. The garrison is at home, and the supported mind worm unit is the one that got teleported to Believer's territory.

You can also have control of the population! If you scroll up to the base image, you can see there's a talent and two workers whom are gathering from two forest tiles and the condenser tile. If you'd like, we could focus on making more food by moving workers over to the farm tiles west of town. Or one of them could become a doctor, gathering no resources but producing +2 psych. This would allow the base to enter a Golden Age once it gains another population, I think.

Addamere fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 20, 2018

# ? Mar 20, 2018 23:02

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Cool, lemme mull this over. Also, what do we know about the Believers and University? Have an itch to do more diplomatic profiles.

# ? Mar 20, 2018 23:09

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

GunnerJ posted:

Cool, lemme mull this over. Also, what do we know about the Believers and University? Have an itch to do more diplomatic profiles.

Zakharov has only been mentioned by Deirdre, but we have seen no evidence of him ourselves. We could trade with the Gaians for his commlink to initiate contact, but until then we know nothing more than that he exists.

Faction profile has not changed much since the previous update. We can deduce from the number of council votes she would theoretically have that she has a second base with 2 population. The image showing your mind worm unit chilling beside Sanctity Base is all we know about Believer's territory. That base is northeast of Gaian territory. We could probably trade with someone for a map of her territory.

edited for accuracy

Addamere fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Mar 21, 2018

# ? Mar 20, 2018 23:19

Kacie: Nov 11, 2010; Imagining a Brave New World; Ramrod XTreme

Addamere posted:

Zakharov has not been mentioned by any of the other leaders, and we have seen no evidence that he even exists. We know nothing.

Actually, Lady Deirdre offered to sell you his comm link along with Sister Miriam's.

Addamere posted:

Later in the year, Chairman Yang initiates diplomatic dialogue with the Gaians to acquire access to Miriam�s commlink frequency. In the course of the conversation, Deirdre lets slip that she also has the commlink frequency for Prokhor Zakharov, the Unity�s science officer who now styles himself Provost of the University of Planet. Setting aside that tidbit for the time, the Chairman trades away the Energy Credits acquired from Lal to gain access to Miriam, and then politely ends the conversation.

# ? Mar 21, 2018 01:39

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Kacie posted:

Actually, Lady Deirdre offered to sell you his comm link along with Sister Miriam's.

Woops! Forgive me, it's been 2 years since I typed most of that and it slipped my mind. I'll edit the response. Thanks!

e: On that note, I'm adding an additional voting measure to the current update.

Contact Zakharov: Do we want to contact Prokhor Zakharov and form the Council of Planet? A follows B; we cannot do one without necessarily causing the other to occur. Yea or Nay, simple majority wins.

Addamere fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 21, 2018

# ? Mar 21, 2018 01:53

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Still, we've virtually guaranteed a war with Morgan. A Green economy annoys him, but Planned really makes him lose his poo poo. Though we're so overwhelming in military might I wonder if he won't just declare fealty.

Peacekeepers, likewise war is very probable. Lal doesn't like Funy, but he hates Police State.

Deirdre's a bit of a wild card. She doesn't like Planned, but she doesn't blow up at it the way she does at Free Market.

Miriam is also likely to be a problem. Being batshit aggressive is what she does, and we can expect "Your so-called Police State is godless and wretched" any time she rings us up. She'll really lose her poo poo if we go Knowledge.

Santiago's going to be more or less okay until values come online.

Zakharov is at least not going to mind us since we're not Fundy and Fundy seems at odds with the Hive society we've constructed in this thread.

But for what values to choose when the techs unlock, that's a tough call. Wealth I think is a hard fit for us from a story perspective, though no denying it would work well with Planned. Power would be a much more natural fit, though not the best choice unless we're actively at war. I think Knowledge might be the best choice, I think our take on the Hive would probably be very resistant to anyone actually infiltrating Hive society but not hard to imagine it being vulnerable to computer hacking given the panopticon gone amok nature of Hive society. Power would have the added benefit of sealing our alliance with Santiago and cost of pissing off Zakharov. Knowledge would do the opposite.

Ironically, if they were present the alien factions would probably be our most natural allies right now in terms of SE.

# ? Mar 21, 2018 02:08

T-man: Aug 22, 2010; Talk shit, get bzzzt.

Addamere posted:

Woops! Forgive me, it's been 2 years since I typed most of that and it slipped my mind. I'll edit the response. Thanks!

e: On that note, I'm adding an additional voting measure to the current update.

Contact Zakharov: Do we want to contact Prokhor Zakharov and form the Council of Planet? A follows B; we cannot do one without necessarily causing the other to occur. Yea or Nay, simple majority wins.

Yeah! See if he'll trade us any good research, having a nerd around can really help.

# ? Mar 21, 2018 02:57

Gatac: Apr 22, 2008; Fifty Cent's next biopic.

Chinwe Faith: "In Praise of Pain" posted:

We are, of course, familiar with the phrase "death by a thousand cuts". I do not wish to suggest that this is what is happening to us. I only bring it up to dismiss it. This is not my worry. By every conventional measure of strength and prosperity, the Chairman's actions have bettered our situation.

Instead, let us speak of congenital analgesia - a disease we are about to eliminate from our genes at the same time as it seems to have afflicted our philosophy.

Evolution has equipped us with the animal instinct to recognize and seek to minimize sensations that warn us of danger to ourselves. We are thirsty so that we do not dehydrate, we are hungry so that we do not starve, we feel pain so that we recognize injury and retreat from whatever is causing it. These mechanisms are fundamentally flawed, but they work well enough that they have survived with us to this point. With all our recent technological advancement in understanding the human genome, we may quite easily find a method to eliminate these negative sensations should we put our minds to it, but I know of no serious proposal to do so, even as we flail towards a new definition of "healthy". We recognize that these unpleasant sensations are important even if we acknowledge that on the whole, we do not like thirst, hunger or pain.

But imagine this choice made for you. To be born into this world without pain. This is not a mere curiosity or even a blessing that lazy thought might paint it as; you would be missing an essential sense you need to navigate the world. Your survival is predicated on the functioning of several feedback loops. Take one away and you are suddenly in much danger. People with congenital analgesia burn themselves badly because they do not instinctively recoil from touching hot metal, they twist their ankles in a run and happily put yet more strain on the foot, they even get infections in wounds they never noticed on themselves. Living with such a condition - surviving it - requires trained mindfulness to imperfectly replace that which a healthy body does by reflex.

My great fear in these times is that we are becoming insensate to pain. Perhaps the philosophy we chose for ourselves, with its worship of privation and surrender of self to the whole, was not unlike a genetic risk factor predisposing us to this outcome. But we have pushed forward through so much unpleasantness - have steeled our minds and hearts to such a degree - that I now honestly wonder what could still discomfort us. What of our entry into the world of espionage? I have argued at length that some form of military power - such that it protects our cities and improves social cohesion - is a pragmatic necessity, yet how far can such pragmatism carry us? Do we need these oh-so-slyly-named "probe teams", equipped with the shiniest computers, the deadliest algorithms and the toughest training, merely to defend ourselves against whatever others might send our way? Is this not the easy logic that tore apart Old Earth? And if I admit that I find this justification doubtful, how much more queasy should I feel at the idea that we are training our children to be sent into other colonies to subvert them and do them harm such that it might render us an advantage?

What is it that upsets me so much about information warfare that does not make me recoil from taking up physical arms? I should hope that the former kills rather fewer people than the latter, so must my feelings not be reversed? Am I so steeped in archaic notions of "honorable combat" that I prefer the bright horror of spilled blood to the unseen manipulation of systems that have already become too complex for many of us to truly understand? Perhaps it is because I can imagine the pain of fighting; unseen subversion, however, strikes at us all where we cannot feel, where there is no natural signal to force our attention.

I plead with you all: let us not permit these seemingly small steps to pass without pain! Let us feel this, let us cry out, let us do everything but grit our teeth and carry on! Let us be pained by every logical step, every necessary compromise, every pragmatic decision we frame as Us vs Them. And above all, let our children feel this pain, too. However clever our training and education methods become, we must raise humans, not insensates. Pain is not the enemy of contentment; it is, in fact, needed to give it context. Mark my words: if we teach ourselves to ignore this pain now, we will not become happier, and we shall certainly not become better people.

The end of pain is the end of morality.

# ? Mar 22, 2018 20:41

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

quote:

While I have nothing but respect for my colleague Chinwe Faith, I'm afraid I feel compelled to offer a counterpoint to his publication about the dangers of information warfare. There is a saying among the Federation Diplomatic Corps that I rather like: First and foremost in our arsenal is the spoken word. Spartan culture revolves around conflict, they revel in it. Not all Spartans are warriors, of course (well, not every Spartan is on active duty at any rate), but they do not merely accept that life is a struggle, they positively relish it. In this saying of their diplomats, though, I think there is some genuine wisdom to be found.

I've pondered and pontificated at great length in the past about how different the Hive is from any society on Earth. The Spartans, the Peacekeepers, the Morgans, the Believers from what little we know of them - they're all firmly based on examples of society and government that existed on Earth. The Gaians are different, but not radically so. We in the Hive... the Chairman likes to refer to the Hive as a social experiment, and while sociology and psychology are among the fuzzier sciences, this particular experiment has been producing objective results as we enter the third and even fourth generations of colonists. The Hive's is already markedly divergent from Earth societal standards (outside perhaps edge cases like North Korea), and its unique attributes and behaviors as a society are likely to become only more pronounced as time goes on. The new Network Node infrastructure will allow everyone to contribute ideas to ongoing research and production discussion forums, newsfeeds, and the like in addition to the benefits of hard-linking the Hive's various research programs. Something on the order of a more productive version of the Internet that existed on Earth, in other words, besides its more mundane infrastructural aspects. Further technological advances are likely to only accelerate the Hive's evolution.

I don't think it's unfair to say we're an inward looking people, as a rule. Most Hivers spare little thought for affairs outside their settlement cluster, the occasional directives from on high are largely accepted without complaint and many Hivers of the third and fourth generations have never been to the surface. They have no need to. We've built a strange and beautiful world in our endless labyrinths of tunnels beneath the surface, arcologies in all but name. Accordingly, most Hivers don't think about how we must come across to other factions in my experience. State-run media programs like Viking and the Hedgehods present the view of the outside world that the Chairman and his advisors think best serves the needs of the Hive, and that's about it. Only a select few branches of the Hive, like the military and the diplomatic corps, regularly interact with other factions.

I bring all of this up, because I think accusations that information warfare is something new or terrible or not like the Hive overlook one important fact: I think our very existence is seen as a dangerous weapon to other societies.

Gaian children's programs liken us to badgers, industrious and fiercely loyal to each other as we dig dens into the soil. We're not the friendliest sorts, but neither are we dangerous unless gravely provoked. Adult oriented programming rationalizes us as redefining our relationship with ourselves in the perspective of the greater cosmos around us, not unlike how the Gaians have redefined humanity's role in the universe in the perspective of the natural world. Flattering, perhaps. Morgan media villifies us, calling us hive-minded (oh how they misuse that term) insects bent on conquering and consuming the planet, ants in human suits. Peacekeeper videos and television features about us seem to think we're a brutal dystopia of abused, servile masters kept in line through terror and military force and all our talk of equality and a greater being of humanity is so much flimsy justification for the elite's greed and lust for power. Just this past Mission Year the top movie in UN Headquarters was a young adult movie about a group of disaffected Hiver youth escaping the Hive to freedom with the Peacekeeping Forces. The Spartans have a particularly pragmatic and white-knuckle sort of social philosophy, and they if nothing else respect our military capability and the dangers of rousing the anger of a people who think and act as one.

Some of these views are accurate in many respects. Others are laughably wrong. But you'll notice, if you care to, that none of them have tried to emulate us. Even the Spartans cling to a democratic government. They all very carefully insulate their people from the real meaning of being a Hiver. This is only to be expected, truth be told, it's taken generations for the Hive to truly produce people at home with the world we've built. Radically changing the human condition isn't an easy thing that can be accomplished overnight. But the other factions are careful to prevent their own from even trying to find out what's really going on in the Hive. There's a reason for that.

They know we exist. They know we're different. And they fear us.

Fear is one of the great motivators of mankind. Fear of pain, fear of change, fear of losing power. These are all reasons why the other factions fear the Hive. We would not permit the naked greed of the Morgans, who so often prey on their own. They're afraid that maybe the world isn't one of worm eat worm, gently caress or be hosed. We would not permit the relegation of mankind to a secondary aspect of the universe as the Gaians do. They're afraid that in ending the primacy of man they might have made a mistake by exchanging that for the primacy of nature instead of the primacy of Man. We would not perpetuate a broken societal system that so comprehensively failed on Earth as the Peacekeepers do. They're afraid that maybe their way of life is intrinsically broken and can't be fixed and perfected, only discarded and replaced. We would not abandon human concerns in favor of religion, a vital part of humanity that is so easily abused as the Believers do. They're afraid that maybe the divine, however you view it if you believe in a divine at all, created Man with some growing up left to do and isn't perfect as is. We would not permit a world where the sword is forever mightier than the pen, as the Spartans do. They're afraid that maybe conflict isn't an inevitable consequence of existence, that the future might not belong to the strong. All of this without us ever firing a shot.

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can wound the soul.

-Criona O'Connell, The Great Experiment

# ? Mar 23, 2018 01:28

AJ_Impy: Jun 17, 2007; SWORD OF SMATTAS. CAN YOU NOT HEAR A WORLD CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE? WHEN WILL YOU DELIVER IT?; Yam Slacker

Governor-Adjunct Thirteen of People's Eyrie

If it pleases the Chairman, this one will continue to govern. We are approaching the point at which a Recreation Commons will be needed, so let that be scheduled.

Contact Zakharov and see if we can assert our authority as is appropriate, both on an individual level and with the splinter colonies as a collective.

Work on an Impact Rover because it is quite clear that some individuals will not listen to reason.

Build, Discover and Explore I advise as our priorities.

# ? Mar 23, 2018 10:47

sniper4625: Sep 26, 2009; Loyal to the hEnd

I did a double take when I realized the post dates on the earliest updates, if this isn't a record for "returned from hiatus" for any thread I've found yet, it's gotta be up there.

Blitzed through it, and looking forward to contributing at some point. Love this game, love these LPs.

# ? Mar 26, 2018 06:15

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

sniper4625 posted:

I did a double take when I realized the post dates on the earliest updates, if this isn't a record for "returned from hiatus" for any thread I've found yet, it's gotta be up there.

Blitzed through it, and looking forward to contributing at some point. Love this game, love these LPs.

Well there was Spirit Armor's legendary Sakura Wars LP, started in 2007 and had the last update in 2014, before it finally fell into archives.

# ? Mar 26, 2018 10:43

sniper4625: Sep 26, 2009; Loyal to the hEnd

nielsm posted:

Well there was Spirit Armor's legendary Sakura Wars LP, started in 2007 and had the last update in 2014, before it finally fell into archives.

Has it really been four years? How time flies.

# ? Mar 26, 2018 13:43

Addamere: Jan 3, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Looks like anyone interested has voted, so I'll look at starting the next update soon

# ? Mar 26, 2018 13:46

RabidWeasel: Aug 4, 2007; Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!

The Planescape: Torment LP was pretty rediculous as well though I don't remember the specifics.

# ? Mar 26, 2018 19:08

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Since Addamere asked about this in the update and no one bit, here's getting the thread back to the front page.

quote:

Impact of the Human Genome Project on Hive Society: A Brief Survey
Prepared for the Hive Advisory Cadre by Criona O'Connell, Social Integrity Service

During the last mission update by the Chairman, he invited the Advisory Cadre to speak as to the impact of the Human Genome Project on Hive society and precisely what this entails. In the absence of anyone else stepping up to the plate, I have elected to take it upon myself.

I think we're all familiar with both the idea of the HGP - fully mapping the human genetic code - and the effect - an increase in the number of Talents in all settlement clusters - but the actual mechanism for this change effect is somewhat more subtle.

The primary effect of the HGP is that, having mapped the human genome, we now have a much better understanding of genetic-related disorders and what causes them. Prenatal medical services have significantly improved in their ability to detect hereditary disorders during every pregnant woman's mandatory and free care, allowing the woman to terminate the pregnancy if she so desires or if she intends to carry the fetus to term, better prepare herself and the community for the expected needs of the child. Our understanding of many types of cancer has also been greatly improved, again allowing us to better detect and treat the malady at many stages of development. More subtly, pharmaceutical research enjoys many benefits regarding designing their treatments and drugs, and are better able to predict its effects. The Process, that expensive and difficult longevity procedure, also reaps benefits. Besides moral and ethical quandaries, the Process was violently controversial on Earth because of how expensive the procedure was, and that the Process's effects were not entirely reliable. With a better understanding of the human genome, the Process is evolving to be more accessible and robust - though still out of reach for most Hivers.

Any one of these benefits is small in and of itself and would not produce a change on the scope we've seen throughout the Hive. However, taken together, completing the Human Genome Project has been a terrific boon to Hive medical services and has produced a substantial and measurable improvement on the overall health and well-being of the Hive population. A healthy population is a productive population, and the improvements to the longevity Process keeps citizens cleared for it around that much longer.

Long term, the HGP will likely remain a priceless asset as a foundation for genomics research and genetic engineering experiments. Other factions will probably experience no particular disadvantage researching these fields for the lack of the HGP, but the Hive's ability to rapidly apply these benefits across our entire society means that the effects of the HGP now will probably never become obsolete. Sequencing the human genome at this particular moment in time and in Hive society also means that the benefits of the project will likely remain unique to the Hive. Other factions undoubtedly will sequence the human genome as part of their own biological research, it's too useful a thing to do, but I will be very much surprised if they see the same sort of benefits we have.

# ? Apr 2, 2018 22:53

FredMSloniker: Jan 2, 2008; Why, yes, I do like Kirby games.

(Inspired by this webpage and by Gatac's post:)

re: The Praise of Pain posted:

I thought it was interesting that you used the phrase 'fundamentally flawed' to describe the body's natural mechanisms for protecting us from harm even as you praised the necessity of those mechanisms for moral thought. I'm not sure I agree with you on either point. People are not rational. In theory, we should act to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain, but in practice we constantly struggle both to identify the optimal course of action and to follow it. (I'm looking at you, extra donut at lunch.) Attaching our ability to act morally - or should I say 'ethically', to avoid religious connotations - to our desire to avoid pain seems doomed to fail before it starts.

As for your first point, again I disagree. I admit I'm no doctor, but isn't there a condition similar to congenital analgesia where someone can, in fact, experience pain but lacks the accompanying reflex? Yes, you can tell that the surface you put your hand on is dangerously hot, but you have to consciously decide to pull away, and the damage is done. Our pain reflex does its job admirably - but its job is not to enforce ethical decision but to, by preventing physical damage, increase our chances of reproducing.

What I really find interesting, though, is what your two points suggest in unison. If there's any 'fundamental flaw' in our ability to sense pain, it's that we don't always react to it the way we should. We flinch from the pain of the needle, even when it gives us life-saving medicine. We eat that extra donut, knowing we'll regret it later. Our instinct is to optimize the now, to increase our chances of living through the next five seconds at the expense of living through the next five years.

Perhaps, instead of assuming that we need pain to force us to act morally, you should consider how morally we could act if pain wasn't forcing us to do anything. If pain was just an experience, not a punishment. Keep the reflex that jerks your hand away from the stove, but discard the aversion to touching a stove long cold.

# ? May 3, 2018 21:09

Gatac: Apr 22, 2008; Fifty Cent's next biopic.

Chinwe Faith: "A Response to Pain" posted:

It seems my recent missive on the topic of discomfort has spawned some interesting discourse. It is a particularly pernicious fallacy to believe that disagreement with one's position is driven chiefly by misunderstanding of the same; I shall permit my interlocutors the same benefit that my own frequent rambling has been met with and grant that their understanding of the matter is robust and in no need of factual correction. Still, if you will indulge me by reading this, I should like to expand on some issues.

Miss O'Connell very cogently argues that, quite aside from our intentional ventures into information warfare, our philosophy in itself already represents a memetic danger or is at least perceived as such by other factions. Of this I have no doubt. You know me as an enthusiastic advocate of the notion that we are dealing chiefly with people - other humans - out there, and that for whatever flavor of ideology their flags may espouse, we are not so dissimilar from one another.

And yet.

Perhaps it is merely my own conception, being that I am exposed to such a degree to Hive philosophy in my daily life, but it appears to me that we are the faction whose reason for existence is most clearly driven by a coherent experiment in reforming the human condition. The other factions, as far as we receive them, have chosen to focus themselves on known quantities of human life as it existed on Old Earth: environmental harmony, military supremacy, economic dominance, democracy, the pursuit of scientific achievement or religious...revisionism, I should suspect, for there are few "fundamentalist" movements in history who were quite as interested in a return to older times as they publicly proclaimed, though it served their goals to clothe themselves in the appearance of the same. But I am certainly in no position to judge Sister Miriam's efforts, so this digression shall end here. The point is that of these six approaches, perhaps some are pursued more zealously than others, but they remain recognizable from the vantage point which launched Unity.

And then, there is the Hive. Those who have chosen to enact an applied science rebellion of sorts against the human condition. I posit that this represents a fundamental threat to the paradigm the other factions are operating from. Their fortune or misfortune can always be blamed on luck, individual leadership or enemy action, but their philosophies cannot themselves fail. Their ideas include no mechanism for falsification, for being rendered obsolete or surpassed. Sure, the claim may occasionally be made - has frequently been made, in the past - that an idea has been consigned to the recycling vats of history, but when has this last been true? Recall how easy it was to find people who believed any silly old thing and could not, would not be swayed from it. Recall how much strife was caused on Old Earth when memes proved more resilient than any other disease. At the very latest with the turn of modernity, it became all but impossible to kill an idea. This was, of course, to the benefit of people who gained power from these ideas. Fiefdoms were carved out, people were misled en masse - whether deliberately or through a tragic lack of self-awareness - and as such the churn of human lives continued with none the wiser and none the victor, either. However, contrast this with the Hive's approach, which is deliberately designed to question and improve itself, and you find within it the seeds of great discontent among the other ideas that have so gripped the human mind over the last centuries. The other factions may speak of the imagined horrors and human costs of our way of life, but what they fear - what they must fear, whether they know it or not - is that we may be right. Because if we are, it not only disproves their specific ideas, but the very ways by which they came to believe them.

Whether this idea is more dangerous to their societies than sophisticated cyber weapons, I cannot possibly judge. Perhaps, if history grants us the benefit of first place in the race for survival, our children's children may be able to speak about it with some degree of authority.

On to pain and the reaction to it. Mr. Sloniker says, among other things, that "pain", as it exists, is maladaptive, an evolutionary kludge. This is a statement I could not agree with more! Who can tally the human cost of misplaced, misfired pain? I dare not even attempt it. Yet I seem to draw from his words the impression that I have advocated for an ethical system that seeks to link moral action to pain avoidance. This is not the case and I shall try to bring more clarity to the issue of pain as I see it now. May he forgive me if I have misread his interpretation; in that event, it shall still make for a fine windmill to tilt at.

When I spoke of the necessity of pain, it was not suggest that the crude alarm siren of our biology serve as the bedrock to making good decisions. As Mr. Sloniker so correctly observes, pain has several severe shortcomings in this manner, not the least of which is its inability to weigh long-term consequences. Pain is a signal that is inherently reactive to damage that has already occurred, even when it is working correctly. If it is useful to us as a way to prevent harm, it is only because evolution has managed to equip us with a threshold for the sensation of pain that is met already with damage our bodies may recover from and has not reserved it for lethal injuries. Nor am I saying that an individual lacking the facility to experience pain cannot be moral. I should quite believe the opposite. So we may now say, what to make of this crude sensation, this errant signal, that brings us such displeasure and cannot lead us down the path that avoids injury in the first place? Is pain not as obsolete as the chauvinistic notion that there exist human phenotypes or gender expressions that are inherently less worthy than one's own?

And yet.

What I take from the lab reports and papers written on the matter is that many admittedly very intelligent people believe that there exists, in lieu of pain, a better way to gain whatever benefits it grants us without the attendant suffering. Yet while the talk is long on optimism, I find it drastically short on details. It can be done, they say, but they do not venture to say how. I am not one to stifle science, let alone basic research, but I believe that a certain responsibility for outcomes cannot be abdicated. Yet this is precisely what seems to be happening. Is this not the same paradigm of "disrupt first, think later" that Morgan's followers have embraced in their thirst for making numbers on computer screens bigger at the expense of everything else? Is this not an echo of the Academy's drive to dig into the What and How with reckless abandon, never stopping to ask Why? So what if pain is flawed? This is, I dare say, not news to anyone who has ever stubbed their toe. What are the alternatives? Where are the experiments - where are the proposals, even? We shall have quite the illuminating discussion when the numbers are in, I predict, but until then, it is not enough to declare pain obsolete or speculate about what we could achieve without it. I shall close this line of thought with a rule we keep to at my creche: if you break it, you have to help fix it. If we are approaching the point where it seems that we have "broken" pain, then I submit to you that it is our ethical responsibility to fix it - in more than a pedestrian, freedom-from-unpleasantness sense.

Disagree with me if you think it necessary. Disagree with me on principle. I should even quite like it if you disagree with me for disagreement's sake. I believe still that we need pain - not physical pain, maybe, but disagreement, discomfort, a degree of disharmony. Our smooth ride into a better society requires friction. A feedback loop requires feedback. When the Chairman speaks of pain as merely another type of signal, I take it not as an endorsement of getting rid of it, but instead an exhortation to more carefully consider its nature and approach tuning the signal as we would approach debugging any sufficiently complex system - with care and patience and an admittedly conservative basic approach, precisely to avoid setting up a runaway positive loop that permanently destabilizes the whole. Can we, one day, be rid of pain? I venture to say we can, though I know not the day - I only know it should not be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. We have quite a bit of work to do yet to reveal the masterpiece within the slab of stone we call our society; it is this type of pain that serves as the chisel by which the work is done.

# ? May 4, 2018 16:39

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Criona O'Connell posted:

There is a word that describes what humans feel in response to expected pain, and drives us to avoid it: fear. Most human beings do not like experiencing pain, and do as they can to avoid it. Fear has been the instrument of governments for ages, and the future is no different. As a wise man on Earth said, it's not the severity of the punishment that deters crime, it's the certainty. Very few people will willingly do what causes them pain, unless they believe that they stand to gain from that action enough to justify the pain. Fear is a tool used to maintain order, and shouldn't be dismissed for that. Unpalatable to a certain taste, perhaps, but it's a useful tool. In a way, the Talents of the Hive are those who have conquered their fear, and risen to excel - taking risks others would not, willingly embracing pain and hardship because the ends were worth it.

There is very little that I fear, now. drat near nothing, in fact. I'm an old woman again, funny how that works. I hear that among the Peacekeepers and Morgans, the most common response of people in my situation is manic dread. People rejuvenated, again hearing the ticking of mortality's clock. They feel the return of biological old age, and quail in terror. Youth is only ever a temporary gift, and as the Aesir of Norse myth ate of Idunn's golden apples, so must we partake of the Process. Immortality has long been the fever dream of humanity, and we never seem satisfied with the steps we take towards that end. Well, some of us. Of all the factions we've been in contact with, the Hive has the fewest Enochs and Methuselahs left. One less, before long.

Negative. Subject non-viable.

Amazing what four little words mean.

At the Chairman's quiet encouragement, I checked if I would be viable for a repeat of the Process. I am not. Too much neural degradation from old age, coupled with genetic damage to the bone marrow from the rigors of space travel. I am going to die.

Not right away, but I will die here on Chiron. To be honest, I'm surprised that this doesn't much bother me.

I have outlived Earth, humanity's cradle in the cosmos. I have lived and I have loved. I have journeyed across the void between stars and walked on two worlds. I have been a teacher, a scientist, a social worker, a soldier, a sister, a daughter, a lover, a spy, a witness, an empath, a historian, and an explorer. Quite a respectable list, that. Never a wife or a mother, a funny thing to regret now and wonder what might have been. Ah, wonders. I have seen wonders I'd have never imagined on Earth under Sol's light.

Wonders. I consider my regrets and my triumphs from the depths of the Hive. A place, a people, an ideal, a civilization, the lines between them all blur. I know a young Irishwoman on Earth would have called this place a dystopian nightmare, unwilling to look past surface impressions to see the worth of what we are building here. Of all the sights that I have seen on Planet, the Hive may be the greatest of them. The Manifold Nexus is at least alien, the work of minds not like ours and science so far beyond ours.

When I consider the Hive, I see the realization of a dream often contemplated on Earth: one society, one being with many bodies and many minds that work in unison. We are not a hive mind. But we have created a supra-organism, something difficult to describe in the words of Earth. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself with such grandiose talk, the Hive remains something of a work in progress. We've set in motion something unprecedented in human history, and time will tell what comes of our work.

To forge something like the Manifold Nexus is one thing, a product of materials sciences and who knows what else that is ultimately concrete and comprehensible even if that else is currently beyond our understanding. To effect a real change in the quality of mankind, now that is a wonder I don't think would have ever been possible on Earth. I wonder if perhaps our spiritual power is finally catching up with our technological power, producing guided men to match our guided missiles.

They're a curious people, the Hivers. I am of them, I am with them, I am not one of them. Not really. Oh I was at first, but a deeper strain of Hiver has emerged in recent generations. I always knew they would come, and what a humbling experience it is to see them look to me with confusion, respect, and reverence. They do not understand me, or the world I came from. They know I helped build their world, yet that world is one I do not belong to.

They do not like the surface. We burrowed underground from the moment we made Planetfall, a decision made for a variety of sound reasons. We dug and tunneled and adapted our whole existence to a life beneath Chiron's surface. Oh we had our surface access, and farmers still tend to vast fields of crops on the surface, but these days when formers build farms they bury their fields in the earth. Hive roads run partially or completely underground. Still visible from the surface, of course, any initial impulse to secrecy has never been an obstacle to modern sensors.

I've often wondered why that impulse to live underground has become so endemic in Hive society. There are still good security reasons, of course, but I have the distinct impression the true Hivers would not live on the surface even if given the option. They are a people most comfortable in small, enclosed spaces. Agoraphobia of the first order has become a characteristic strand of the Hivers. They do not like to be alone. Every religion and spiritual movement thriving among the Hivers has come to emphasize the transcendent nature of the group and indeed the whole mass of mankind. Just look at what I've had to deal with introducing the concepts of solitude and individuality in the Empty School.

Would I have been happy in another cryo-pod? Probably, though I doubt Morgan's brand of salvation would have been balm to my fears and doubts. For good or ill, I am an elder of the Hive, a part of the Chairman's grand experiment. I like to think this experiment will succeed, humanity is desperately in need of a true change in nature. Deirdre shares that vision if not the Chairman's precise dreams. The Morgans, the Spartans, the Peacekeepers, I fear they would all drag us backwards into the quality of humanity that we have a chance to escape.

Earthuman. That whisper I have heard so softly now and then in the twilight. Perhaps a rare glimpse of my quiet telepathic potential, or perhaps an imprint of the Manifold Nexus. In my most fevered moments of madness, I think that whisper the voice of the intelligence I have so long suspected resides on Planet.

I do not think this intelligence is a god, as the Gaians do. I do not think this intelligence is sentient, or perhaps even intelligent in any truly thinking sense. I still consider it a likely hypothesis that we've encountered some sort of alien AI program. Having determined what we call ourselves, this intelligence has determined where we come from.

What have we found on Planet? What has found us?

These are questions I must leave for the Planetborn to answer. They're heady ones, and perhaps terrifying to contemplate. Certainly they have given me many sleepless nights. Yet, I am confident the Hive will answer them. If not any Hivers alive today, then their descendants. I cannot shake the feeling, deep in my fevered dreams, that these two questions are entwined with an even more important question for the Hive I must leave behind: what does it mean to be human? When we know the answer to that, I suspect, we will know the answer to Planet.

Or perhaps I'm simply an old woman.

I look forward to exploring another new world.

# ? May 4, 2018 17:41

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

this thread has inspired me to reinstall smac so thank you for that

# ? May 4, 2018 19:22

FredMSloniker: Jan 2, 2008; Why, yes, I do like Kirby games.

Don't mind me, just poking the thread to see if I can dislodge an eaten post or two.

# ? May 8, 2018 17:47

ThatBasqueGuy: Feb 14, 2013; someone introduce jojo to lazyb

Huh, I thought that hiatus was for a month when reading back, not two years. Whelp, on the train now.

# ? May 9, 2018 15:12

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 21:01

Almanac: Mar 16, 2008; OLD SCHOOL

HOPE Archive 313-1 posted:

//NOTE//: The following is a recreation of a human mind, made by the HOPE (Hive Operational Personality Emulator) software, under authorization of the directorate of the Human Genome Project. The child was chosen via random number generator, #313 of 754 to be watched, interviewed, and emulated.

My name is 0MA1. I am five years old.

My favorite show is Vikings. I like the way that the animals learn to get along with each other, and how to support each other even when the bad animals try to make them different. I like to play with the other children, and they like to play with me. We usually play football. I'm good at football. I can kick the ball harder than most of the others, but I don't always kick it hard. Sometimes I just pass it to another child. The other child needs to be happy like all of us, even if he or she can't kick hard. Sometimes I come up with a new play, and the other children do it. When that happens, we usually win the match. Sometimes I pretend like I can't come up with a new play, and we usually lose that match. I don't tell the other children that I planned it that way. I think that would be mean. I don't like being mean. I like being nice. Being nice is more important than winning.

But I can't always be nice. Sometimes someone else is mean, and you have to be strong with them. I only ever got into a fight once. {//NOTE//: CONJECTURE, 73.4% probability} The other boy was being mean to a boy who was different. I didn't like the different boy either, but I didn't think being mean was right. When the different boy got hit, I hit the first boy. I got in trouble. They made me go to a person who smiled a lot and wanted me to talk a lot. I told the person why I hit the first boy. She asked me why I stuck up for the different boy. I told her that I thought there was a better way to make the different boy more same. I told her that being mean would just make the boy more different, that other children wouldn't play with him and he wouldn't be able to be a part of us. She asked me why I wanted to help the different boy. I told her that it was the right thing to do. Like on the Vikings episode where they taught the squirrel to share instead of keeping nuts for himself. I felt unsure. I asked her if I had done something wrong. Her smile was weird.

They put me in a different class in school, and put the different boy next to me. The class was normal, and so was the teacher. We studied together and played together. The different boy's name was Mark. Some parents name children in the new way, and some in the old way. The old way names feel different, so maybe that is why Mark was having trouble being same. I helped him be more same, in the right way. He plays with the other children now. Nobody in the new class is different now, we are same. The teacher told me that he had worried about Mark, and told me that I did something good. He told me I should be proud. He smiled at me.

I didn't really understand. I don't need to be proud. I did what was right. I helped a different person become same. If I am prouder than the others, that would make me different. That would be bad. I told the teacher that. He was quiet for a little while, and then told me that I was right. But he didn't smile any more. I wonder why.

# ? May 12, 2018 13:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Big Brother Loves You - Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, Good Guy Yang Edition

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