[Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror (Completed)

A spot for collections of Outsider-related original fan fiction and related works.

Moderator: Outsider Moderators

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

raistlin34 wrote:
“Of course we have many more kinds of fools, there were some that believed that between the Loroi and the Umiak we should choose the Loroi just on the grounds of how the Umiak treat their allies.
Ouch! that burn must hurt, Ensign Alexander :lol:
In any case, seems that Asteios has decided to honor Loroi´s appreciation for sincerity as much as he can. Wise choice, indeed.

So, for what Shadowcloud has insinuated, would the religious leaders in the Loroi Union consider humanity as Loroi´s little helpless brothers?
Judging by how Mozin and the Historian reacted when they saw Alex, they would certainly be valuable friendly voices when negotiating with the Union even if their reasons are a bit iffy.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

Chapter 18, part 1

“Just look at this thing; it went through everything like cancer!” Lieutenant Vinica said out loud.

“And remember that it isn’t an A.I.” Lieutenant Grant replied.

“It could fool me.”

“It did fool me for a full hour, maybe two; I think I lost the track of time…”

“Will you two just focus!” Commander Summers barked at the two lieutenants who were just chatting while being fully glued in front of their screens.

“Sorry sir.” Both of them replied at the same time without even looking up.

“Now can either of you tell me if the virus or whatever you call this thing is off our systems for good?” The three of them were alone on the bridge, the rest of the crew was busy either repairing the damage or taken a much needed short rest after everything that happened.

“I don’t think that we can say that sir, not yet anyway.” Lieutenant Grant replied while looking at Lieutenant Vinica as if he was calling for backup.

“And when will that happen?”

“Whenever we have this beauty figured out.” Lieutenant Vinica said with giggle.

“That wasn’t helpful…” The commander replied and looked at Grant who just stared at his comrade as if he was ready to strangle her. “Grant, can you explain to me how this whole mess happened?”

“I don’t know how to start sir… it’s…”

“And do that in English, I don’t want a repeat of what happened when you two tried to explain how we got our systems upgraded with the Orgus software.”

“Ah…well...you see…” Lieutenant Grant begun as Vinica started giggling. “I am going to get you for this.”

“Am I dealing with 12 year olds or Scout Corp’s officers?” The commander yelled at both of them.

“Sorry sir.”

“Go on Grant and please, keep it simple this time.”

“Sir, the Umiak malware just used exploits in the Orgus communications and navigations software to latch itself onto them and from there to infect the rest of the systems through the emulation we
run the Orgus programs on.” Grant explained.

“So this whole mess happened due to the Orgus programs?”

“You could say that sir, but to be honest that’s just how the… malware got a foot through the front door. After that…well…”

“After that it’s magic.” Vinica cut in.

“Wasn’t the emulation supposed to act as a safeguard from such attacks?” The commander asked.

“It should stop ordinary attacks that specifically target the emulated software sir, our systems that have completely different programming and parameters should never be vulnerable to any malware designed for Orgus software. However no one would have ever believed that one could attack the main system in such a roundabout way through an emulation; this malware has unbelievable pattern recognition logic algorithms hammered into it. The moment it breached the Orgus software it repurposed some functions and begun analyzing the emulation and how it interacted with the main systems.” Grant explained.

“So the malware was initially confined in the emulation but it analyzed a way out?”

“Yes sir, it took it some time but that’s how it did it. It acted like we believe an A.I. would, by analyzing the patterns of the running programs in order to try and figure their purpose. Once it had some basic patterns figured out it started applying them in order to establish itself in the main systems. It took it some time and plenty of trials but in the end it figured out a way to apply certain administrative privileges on the highjacked emulation before managing to write an adapted copy of itself directly on our hard drives.” Grant replied.

“Shouldn’t our anti malware suite pick that up?” The commander pointed out.

“Not in the way it did that sir. Remember that if fully managed to highjack the emulated programs by using their known exploits and unfortunately our anti malware suite is set to tolerate some erratic behavior from the emulation because of our belief that nothing infecting the emulation could infect us.” Grant explained.

“Erratic behavior?”

“No emulation is perfect and no program can run perfectly on even its own native operating systems. Minor stuff like memory leaks, momentary program freezes and other minor issues are tolerated and the in emulation fixes strapped on everything demand some latitude in order to keep everything running. The malware had masked itself as such an issue while it did all that.”

“And how long did it take to do all that?”

“It was slow in computer terms but it only took it a few minutes from the moment it infected the Orgus programs to the moment it managed to force itself into the main operating systems.” Lieutenant Grant replied.

“You know that my computer knowledge is limited so let’s keep it brief, in the end the malware got into the emulated Orgus programs, hid itself there while observing our systems and then acted from what it observed; am I correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“And this malware is not an A.I.?” The commander asked.

“To tell you the truth sir, that’s how we theorize that an A.I. would do it but this is not an A.I. ; it does have awesome pattern recognition abilities but its actions are based on a weirdly detailed and expanded plan. Vinica has been looking at how it infected our systems while following its orders for the past hour or so.”

“All I can say that the one who programmed this is a maniac.” Lieutenant Vinica replied while keeping her eyes glued on the console. “They put down everything!”

“The Loroi repeatedly described the bugs as monomaniacal.” The commander commented.

“It fits with what I am seeing.”

“Ok then, it got in, it managed to partially take over some systems but you stopped it and are trying to get it out; what’s the problem with taking it out?”

“That’s the real tricky part sir.” Lieutenant Grant begun. “The malware is inherently very inefficient in its processing demands and the storage that it is hogging. This is due to the fact that it didn’t rewrite our systems, although it looked like it at first. The way it went about everything was to just copy the programming patterns it recognized and then pasting them whenever it wanted to alter something for its own use since the whole system is literally alien to it… Imagine someone who wants to eat a steak but doesn’t even know what a kitchen knife looks like; however they do know what a wood saw looks like and they are able to use it.”

“Messy…” The commander commented.

“It is but the saw would still cut the steak. The leftovers then become the problem as well as the various bits and pieces of the saw itself when it inevitably breaks down because of misuse; there are many programs with seemingly random bits of code injected into them throughout our systems and then there are several parts of our hard drives that are filled with seemingly random garbage code. We can’t figure the purpose of the garbage or the random bits scattered throughout, they could be failed attempts of it to adapt patterns for its own use, they could be a sleeper version of itself or it could be something that we haven’t figured out yet.”

“Wouldn’t a purge fix all that?” Commander Summers asked.

“There are three kinds of such a purge sir, the first is what we are doing now; everything on safe mode with minimal functionality. I was forced to do this as it was the only way to get some basic comms back online after the Umiak ship got taken out; right now we are running cleaning routines on every independent system and subsystem, deleting and reinstalling everything that was altered while erasing any recent changes on our systems. This is what the colonial fleet does whenever someone gets the bright idea to cheat in one of their simulated battles. The whole process takes a day maybe two but the ship’s systems will be fully functional by then; this takes care of most malware but people who know what they are doing will have taken measures about such a purge. The second kind is when we just erase everything and reinstall as if it was on a blank slate; it takes a week to do all that and re-calibrate the systems from scratch. The problem is that the stored data isn’t really deleted when we do that, the space it occupies is just marked as write-able and since we can’t be 100% sure that nothing from the malware isn’t running right now we can’t be certain that something won’t remain when we do such a purge; some of our more persistent malware can survive such a purge as well. The only way to be completely sure that nothing remains on our systems is to erase our hard drives, then flood them with garbage data and then erase them again before reinstalling everything; this will take more than ten days.” Lieutenant Grant explained.

“We can barely afford a couple days, we can’t stay idle for a week and certainly not for ten days…” The commander commented as he massaged his forehead. “What can we do to make sure that this malware doesn’t resurface until we get back to Earth?”

“The only thing we can do is to finish the normal purge and constantly monitor our systems all the way back. Not foolproof but it’s the only thing we can do with what we have.” Lieutenant Grant replied.

“Damn… Just tell me that we can at least stop it from spreading to other ships.”

“That’s fairly easy and we already have communications protocols in place in case our systems are compromised, back from the time that corp spied on the entire Corps.” Grant replied.

“Glad to hear that something good came up from that mess.” The commander commented. “Which reminds me, Grant how the hell did you trick the malware to send the wrong coordinates to the bugs for so long?”

“That’s an idea I got when I was wondering if it was an A.I. or not and if we should physically cut off the connection to our antenna in order to stop it from reporting our position. I figured that if it was an A.I. it would detect me as I put in some false data into the systems it had compromised by that point. I tried to change the coordinates that the systems showed since it hadn’t fully penetrated the navigations systems yet; the malware immediately picked up the change and transmitted it as if it were true. That’s when the captain got the idea with the torpedoes while I tried to somehow slow the damn thing down while everyone else set up the trap.”

“Good call lieutenant.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Just try to make sure that the ship will run as it should on the way home.”

Chapter 18, part 2: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 692#p22692
Last edited by Guest on Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

I am proud that this didn't devolve into technobabble; that is all I am going to say about the vocabulary used.

As I said before, the initial plan was that Humans fully adapted the Orgus navigation and communication programs for their own use and the Umiak would exploit holes that would be still be left there. The two problems I faced when I started writing the first stages of the Umiak cyber attack were the possibilities of such security holes existing after the full rewrite and if such a full rewrite was possible at the first place.

That's where my emulation idea came from (and from playing my PSX games on the PC), the idea that such highly complicated and important software is trade able in the space age is something that I haven't seen explored yet but it does make sense when even today's navigation and communications programs used by both civilians and governments are on the market. In the grand scheme of things even today such software is highly complex and demands years of development, then eternal patching and updating until a newer version is on the market.

The idea that some enterprising star faring species are selling their advanced navigation and communication programs at a premium to less advanced species isn't really far fetched; the economic benefits for both the seller and the buyer would be enormous while also guaranteeing some form of long term peace since such a trade would need some form of trust put in place before hand. Although alien such software should be easy to run through an emulation at such tech levels without any problems, nor should it be a conceivable avenue of cyber attack unless the one attacking has an A.I. or something that works like an A.I. up to a point.

In the Outsider setting Human are literally the back end barbarians who don't know anything about the greater world at large so it makes sense that they would get everything they could from the Orgus refugees, especially the navigation software and the jump algorithms that have been slowly and meticulously built by centuries of interstellar travel experience. Petty that some big nasty aliens conquered the Orgus already and know everything that there is to know about their military and civilian computer systems.

Other than that, has anyone ever wondered how an A.I. would attack completely foreign computer systems?

Krulle
Posts: 1413
Joined: Wed May 20, 2015 9:14 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Krulle »

SpoilerShow
dragoongfa wrote:Chapter 18, part 1

[...]

“Yes sir, it took it some time but that’s how it did it. It acted like we believe an A.I. would, by analyzing the patterns of the running programs in order to try and figure their purpose. Once it had some basic patterns figured out it started applying them in order to establish itself in the main systems. It took it some time and plenty of trials but in the end it figured out a way to apply certain administrative privileges on the high jacked emulation before managing to write an adapted copy of itself directly on our hard drives.” Grant replied.
[size=to hijack; or to hi-jack; or to highjack; or to high-jack. So, you need a hyphen, at least. Or write it in one word.
New for me, never read high-jack before, which is why I stumbled over it. Until now I only saw the hijack version.


[...]

“Not in the way it did that sir. Remember that if fully managed to high jack the emulated programs by using their known exploits and unfortunately our anti malware suite is set to tolerate some erratic behavior from the emulation because of our belief that nothing infecting the emulation could infect us.” Grant explained.
same issue here.

[...]

“That’s the real tricky part sir.” Lieutenant Grant begun. “The malware is inherently very inefficient in its processing demands and the storage that it is hogging. This is due to the fact that it didn’t rewrite our systems, although it looked like it at first. The way it went about everything was to just copy the programming patterns it recognized and then pasting them whenever it wanted to alter something for its own use since the whole system is literally alien to it… Imagine someone who wants to eat a steake but doesn’t even know what a kitchen knife looks like; however they do know what a wood saw looks like and they are able to use it.”

[...]

“It is but the saw would still cut the steake. The leftovers then become the problem as well as the various bits and pieces of the saw itself when it inevitably breaks down because of misuse; there are many programs with seemingly random bits of code injected into them throughout our systems and then there are several parts of our hard drives that are filled with seemingly random garbage code. We can’t figure the purpose of the garbage or the random bits scattered throughout, they could be failed attempts of it to adapt patterns for its own use, they could be sleeper version of itself or it could be something that we haven’t figured out yet.”

[...]
Personally, I still find the idea of software being able to attack computer systems, especially unknown computer systems, unlikely.
And a program which has hard-coded "what to do when the analysis shows pattern X" for all possible variants must be tremendously huge and come with a database of known patterns from known systems several 100 MB large.
I doubt that such a program can be easily and fastly transferred in such a circumstance, and that no malware scanner would not recognise such an intrusion.
But now you know what that "garbage" could be: the encoded database of known patterns to the Umiak, and how the program should reply to the recognised pattern of the host system(s).

A tremendously well done AI-simulator then.

Possibly it received help from the "infecting "mother" system" by transferring data back and forth in hidden manners once the comm system has been brought under control.

With all that's at stake, a sloppy programmers job back on earth. Have they not eaten enough steaks?

(BTW: I would expect to see several glitches in the systems during the attack, more specifically even forced reboots in cases of failed attempts of the program to write itself into the host system. - Yes, you do not want a military system to reboot in combat situations, but a failed insertion try will in most cases leave the system not working anyway, and at the latest here any malware program should intervene and quarantine the Orgus emulation systems until a user expressly allows the system to continue.)


I've read several Sci-Fi books with AIs attacking other unknown computer systems.
Peter Hamilton: Fallen Dragon
is the one which comes first to mind for me. The story uses a "sophisticated AI" which can run on any hardware.
Which I find extremely unlikely.
To be able to achieve AI-status, the program will have to be written specifically for the processors, memory,... hardware used, and should not be able to run on different hardware.
In "Fallen Dragon", the AI can even run on electronic locks to open them.
Which is what I find ridiculous to believe. Even if it runs with "restricted abilities".
Otherwise I can only recommend this story. Space exploration age has begun, but failed due to the prohibitively expensive space travel, and the impossibility of return-of-investment for the financing consortia back on Earth (no space trade, as producing in your own system is simply cheaper than any transport necessary for trade). Which is why they fall back on piracy, by plundering the colonies they paid to found, to achieve a marginal ROI).
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

Glitches did happen within the emulated programs but the emulator compensated accordingly and yes the 'garbage' that were received were pieces of the malware, the first transmission held a blanket intrusion package to all known systems and the second and third held the advanced order package in order to guide the malware accordingly. It was after the third transmission when the system begun the obvious glitches both from the attempts of the malware and by having triggered some 'tripwires' put in place by the lone code monkey left on the ship.

The Umiak did receive several reports from the infecting malware as well which I heavily implied at the second part of chapter 11, the Umiak programmers stating that they were very eager to study the humaniti systems which was very unusual for the humble Umiak to request:

http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 069#p20069

Now if the Umiak code monkeys sent their own revised orders back in burst transmissions in order to help the intrusion along, that's something I want to leave to the imagination of the reader; suffice to say that Matveyev got a handful of hours to prepare its trap out of the cat and mouse game Lieutenant Grant played with the intrusion.

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Absalom »

Krulle wrote:Personally, I still find the idea of software being able to attack computer systems, especially unknown computer systems, unlikely.
And a program which has hard-coded "what to do when the analysis shows pattern X" for all possible variants must be tremendously huge and come with a database of known patterns from known systems several 100 MB large.
Certainly the logic is a bit dubious, but what dragoongfa implied of the Orgus software (normally run in an emulator, yet controlling external systems) makes it vaguely plausible. For example, a "port authority traffic control" section is probably included, requiring both radio & thruster control, as well as some ship status info (e.g., is the reactor about to blow), so the system probably has a very high amount of control by default, making a permissions escalation all the more likely.

Also, the pattern-matching probably runs on a VM of it's own. It's likely more compact than would initially seem likely (though I wouldn't be surprised at GB+ for a sufficiently complete set of patterns, so, maybe not that big a difference after all).

Basically, this does require a leap of faith, but it's much more sensible than the movie Hackers.
Krulle wrote:With all that's at stake, a sloppy programmers job back on earth. Have they not eaten enough steaks?
This sort of thing really calls for several years, and possibly a few decades, to properly verify. The programmers involved almost guaranteed didn't get the time to properly verify the code, so if the sub-system it was running on is used for mostly close-to-metal applications...
Krulle wrote:I've read several Sci-Fi books with AIs attacking other unknown computer systems.
Peter Hamilton: Fallen Dragon
is the one which comes first to mind for me. The story uses a "sophisticated AI" which can run on any hardware.
Which I find extremely unlikely.
With VMs, speed and data capacity are the primary concerns, so maybe.
Krulle wrote:To be able to achieve AI-status, the program will have to be written specifically for the processors, memory,... hardware used, and should not be able to run on different hardware.
That is not actually true. If you build a non-invasive AI, you'll probably build it on top of a VM just so that it'll be easier to upgrade the hardware in the future.
Krulle wrote:In "Fallen Dragon", the AI can even run on electronic locks to open them.
Which is what I find ridiculous to believe. Even if it runs with "restricted abilities".
Yeah, that is making a lot of assumptions about the memory capacity of the lock. If it just involves connecting a host system to a target system then you could claim that only a "finger node" was loaded on the lock, but otherwise...

Krulle
Posts: 1413
Joined: Wed May 20, 2015 9:14 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Krulle »

Even if an alien program enters a VM, this still means it does not know what kind of instructions my processor needs to calculate correctly. Sending random signals to the CPU is the surest way to freeze it and all other progs/OS that are running.

And you also need to know which instructions the VM will accept and translate into the machine language.
Again, random instructions due to not knowing the correct peeks and pokes will lead to fast and early crashes.

Neither the processor, nor the OS, nor any VM is able to guess what the new program wants the machine to do when the new program does not use programming instructions which are known to the VM/OS, and therefore translateable into machinelanguage. And the specific machinelanguage is very much processor dependent.
Different processors need different instructions, or need to be standardised (and I doubt any alien will know about "our" standards).
(Ever tried to make a Turbo-Pascal program run in Pascal? Or even in Delphi?
Now imagine using the same program in a C++ compiler. After adaptation make it run in a BASIC compiler.
Or any of the different versions in an ASM interpreter.)

Sure, the Orgus codes are known to the Umiak, and they might guess those, but the VM running the Orgus program emulation will not be able to translate unknown commands into a useable machine language, as those are not foreseen, and thus not programmed. Thus, no program not knowing the OS and/or hardware below the VM can escape the VM. Outside the VM a different set of codes is needed, and you don't know those. And if you try to find out (random or systematic testing), modern anti-virus and anti-malware will shriek; and/or you crashed the VM/the system.

AMD and Intel spent a lot of money and learning experiences for a processor-implemented converting of AMD or Intel spcific instructions into their own instructions. Without those processor-internal translators, we would need two different windows versions to optimally use the modern processors. By now, Intel is de-facto standard again, and AMD has adapted to that.

I accept it "as is" in stories, as some techo-babble is necessary to explain things away and advance the story.
And this is a lot less bad than most I've stumbled over.

Who knows, with extremely good analysing sensors, the Umiak may know s.th. about our processor architecture and may have adapted the intrusion program before sending, but with sensors that good, they will have known that Humaniti is not Loroi, and how similar we are otherwise.

But then, telepathy and high-tech and still not knowing basic elements of its nature-law working is even harder to explain.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

As long as I am not in the '90% is crud' category I am happy :mrgreen:

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Absalom »

Krulle wrote:Even if an alien program enters a VM, this still means it does not know what kind of instructions my processor needs to calculate correctly. Sending random signals to the CPU is the surest way to freeze it and all other progs/OS that are running.

And you also need to know which instructions the VM will accept and translate into the machine language.
Again, random instructions due to not knowing the correct peeks and pokes will lead to fast and early crashes.

Neither the processor, nor the OS, nor any VM is able to guess what the new program wants the machine to do when the new program does not use programming instructions which are known to the VM/OS, and therefore translateable into machinelanguage. And the specific machinelanguage is very much processor dependent.
Different processors need different instructions, or need to be standardised (and I doubt any alien will know about "our" standards).
(Ever tried to make a Turbo-Pascal program run in Pascal? Or even in Delphi?
Now imagine using the same program in a C++ compiler. After adaptation make it run in a BASIC compiler.
Or any of the different versions in an ASM interpreter.)

Sure, the Orgus codes are known to the Umiak, and they might guess those, but the VM running the Orgus program emulation will not be able to translate unknown commands into a useable machine language, as those are not foreseen, and thus not programmed. Thus, no program not knowing the OS and/or hardware below the VM can escape the VM. Outside the VM a different set of codes is needed, and you don't know those. And if you try to find out (random or systematic testing), modern anti-virus and anti-malware will shriek; and/or you crashed the VM/the system.

AMD and Intel spent a lot of money and learning experiences for a processor-implemented converting of AMD or Intel spcific instructions into their own instructions. Without those processor-internal translators, we would need two different windows versions to optimally use the modern processors. By now, Intel is de-facto standard again, and AMD has adapted to that.

I accept it "as is" in stories, as some techo-babble is necessary to explain things away and advance the story.
And this is a lot less bad than most I've stumbled over.

Who knows, with extremely good analysing sensors, the Umiak may know s.th. about our processor architecture and may have adapted the intrusion program before sending, but with sensors that good, they will have known that Humaniti is not Loroi, and how similar we are otherwise.
Here's the point I was trying to make: the "analysis sensors" are a set of the algorithms. The VM has a JIT sub-system, controlled through a program running on the VM, because that way you can automatically customize nav programs to arbitrary systems by giving the well-integrated JIT code a new set of mappings. In some cases this gets you the entire set of opcodes, in others it doesn't, but in most cases any remaining opcodes can be extrapolated from the known ones. You'll occasionally have a crash, but that will be confined to it's own process, keeping the rest of the system mostly or entirely stable. The anti-virals want to set of an alarm, but this is mostly normal behavior for the Orgus nav programs, so they're conditionally disabled.

And yes, this is a horrible security hole, but someone apparently thought it was justified.
Krulle wrote:But then, telepathy and high-tech and still not knowing basic elements of its nature-law working is even harder to explain.
We're in the same position with respect to space time, except that we can't even manipulate it yet, just measure.

User avatar
Mr Bojangles
Posts: 283
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2012 1:12 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Mr Bojangles »

Absalom wrote:Basically, this does require a leap of faith, but it's much more sensible than the movie Hackers.
Man, what isn't more sensible than Hackers? :P
dragoongfa wrote:As long as I am not in the '90% is crud' category I am happy :mrgreen:
Definitely no crud, dragoon. Your emulation idea, though I don't think it exactly plausible in this situation, is well thought out, self-consistent and naturally follows from current computing trends. Minimal technobabble and a damn sight better than Hackers! :lol:

The only issue I saw with your emulation idea is that emulation is no easier than converting a piece of software to run directly in your own compute environment. It's generally more difficult, as you have to at least emulate the logic that a foreign piece of software expects, if not the full physical behavior of the system. This is hard enough when you know what you're emulating and how it works, e.g., human computers. Trying to do so for what could be a completely different model of computation... well, you implied the TCA was pressed for time, so emulation would not be the route the planners/developers would go.

What would be doable would be for the TCA to do something akin to Amazon's current-day Mechanical Turk. The Orgus would have to have some way of outputting navigational data into a readable format. So, rather than being clever and trying to convert/emulate Orgus navigation software, the TCA would brute force the data conversion to human standards via crowdsourcing. The TCA would handle the translation of Trade, and perhaps some of the mathematical conversions, and then pass out the rest to actual people. I mean, Earth has an absolutely massive population; there has to be an ungodly number of astronomy, math and CS grad students that the work can be foisted on to. :D

However, if the TCA were able to successfully build a VM to run the Orgus nav-suite, then the Umiak finding a way in is a logical outcome. The Umiak would be quite familiar with Orgus software, so their malware package would likely be able to find a foothold in the VM. As for getting out, well, that's where things aren't clear. The VM would have to handle conversions to the physical compute environment, so the malware package could pick up on those (VMs generally maintain internal code mappings.) Actually being able to do something when it got out - you gave a good, only mildly hand-wavey, answer in "crazy, obsessive, monomaniacal Umiak software devs typing out an absurd number of computational patterns."

All in all, I am definitely looking forward to more!

Krulle
Posts: 1413
Joined: Wed May 20, 2015 9:14 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Krulle »

Mr Bojangles wrote:All in all, I am definitely looking forward to more!
I do fully stand behind this statement.

And I can fully stand behind the rest of the post.
dragoongfa wrote:As long as I am not in the '90% is crud' category I am happy :mrgreen:
You are in the ">99% is great or outstanding" category. And that does include the "Hackers" category already, which I find you handled a lot better than the other writers I've seen daring to touch this subject handle it.
Absalom wrote:
Krulle wrote:But then, telepathy and high-tech and still not knowing basic elements of its nature-law working is even harder to explain.
We're in the same position with respect to space time, except that we can't even manipulate it yet, just measure.
But the Loroi only know that it exists, can observe telepathy, but not measure it besides through observance (and thus personal interpretation).
They know through found technology that it can be manipulated (specifically: strengthened), and they can copy this technology and its effects without understanding why and how it works.
We are further in space-time comprehension than the Loroi are understanding telepathy.

But the Loroi seem to treat technology as something beneficial for war, and not for easier life, or just "because we can", which are also two strong drivers in Human technology advancements. The Loroi do not seem to see much need in understanding how the world works, as long as they have the tools available which they need to live their military-oriented lifestyle. The tools seem to be good enough, and better tools will only be searched for once they find out that their opponent has much sharper tools than they do.
Which seems to be indicative of a lifestyle of copying and mimicking the technology of others (Soian artifacts, Historian technology,...), and less interest in original technology.
Interstellar travels have been developed to fly to the already contacted sister colonies, because the available tools were not good enough.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Absalom »

Mr Bojangles wrote:
Absalom wrote:Basically, this does require a leap of faith, but it's much more sensible than the movie Hackers.
Man, what isn't more sensible than Hackers? :P
I think I actually saw one or two, though I seem to have wiped all other trace from my memory...
Mr Bojangles wrote:
dragoongfa wrote:As long as I am not in the '90% is crud' category I am happy :mrgreen:
Definitely no crud, dragoon. Your emulation idea, though I don't think it exactly plausible in this situation, is well thought out, self-consistent and naturally follows from current computing trends. Minimal technobabble and a damn sight better than Hackers! :lol:

The only issue I saw with your emulation idea is that emulation is no easier than converting a piece of software to run directly in your own compute environment. It's generally more difficult, as you have to at least emulate the logic that a foreign piece of software expects, if not the full physical behavior of the system. This is hard enough when you know what you're emulating and how it works, e.g., human computers. Trying to do so for what could be a completely different model of computation... well, you implied the TCA was pressed for time, so emulation would not be the route the planners/developers would go.

What would be doable would be for the TCA to do something akin to Amazon's current-day Mechanical Turk. The Orgus would have to have some way of outputting navigational data into a readable format. So, rather than being clever and trying to convert/emulate Orgus navigation software, the TCA would brute force the data conversion to human standards via crowdsourcing. The TCA would handle the translation of Trade, and perhaps some of the mathematical conversions, and then pass out the rest to actual people. I mean, Earth has an absolutely massive population; there has to be an ungodly number of astronomy, math and CS grad students that the work can be foisted on to. :D
I don't know. If you have documentation then the VM can be massively simpler (I recently wrote a little utility function to identify data to be used for RPC, based only on knowledge of the encoding of the machine, the concept of the 0 address, a base pointer, and a format string; on further reflection, I realized that the array support had probably made it Turing-complete), especially if the software is itself a product expected to be used in such situations: the primary source of complexity in computers arises from a mixture of legacy support (the ISA bus is imaginary present in ALL modern IBM-compatibles, normally restrained entirely to the contents of a single support chip), hardware necessities (that get hidden via memory-mapping), and actual code. The memory models & instruction sets can be quite simple.

In fact, come to think of it, the simplest method would probably be to load custom microcode onto a Terran processor, and just have it swap to a Terran ISA for OS calls. You'd need to adapt a kernel, but if you have one that can allow arbitrary interface sets (which isn't that difficult, it just doesn't get done because most OSes are more focused on providing their interface than they are on emulating someone else's interface; for Linux, you'd just need a kernel hacker to stick some hooks in for a root-user API program to use; WinNT systems actually do something like this all the time, though I think it requires a single dll to be loaded (the WinNT Native API is not the same as the Win32 API, which always requires the relevant kernel dll, while NTAPI calls simply need ntdll.dll: this has been used to implement Unix layers by Microsoft itself), then you'd probably be looking at only a handful of non-Orgus programs.

User avatar
Mr Bojangles
Posts: 283
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2012 1:12 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Mr Bojangles »

Absalom wrote:
Mr Bojangles wrote:
Absalom wrote:Basically, this does require a leap of faith, but it's much more sensible than the movie Hackers.
Man, what isn't more sensible than Hackers? :P
I think I actually saw one or two, though I seem to have wiped all other trace from my memory...
That's kind of a depressing thought. And probably true, but, not a path I'm going to actively walk. That way lies madness.
Absalom wrote:
Mr Bojangles wrote:
dragoongfa wrote:As long as I am not in the '90% is crud' category I am happy :mrgreen:
Definitely no crud, dragoon. Your emulation idea, though I don't think it exactly plausible in this situation, is well thought out, self-consistent and naturally follows from current computing trends. Minimal technobabble and a damn sight better than Hackers! :lol:

The only issue I saw with your emulation idea is that emulation is no easier than converting a piece of software to run directly in your own compute environment. It's generally more difficult, as you have to at least emulate the logic that a foreign piece of software expects, if not the full physical behavior of the system. This is hard enough when you know what you're emulating and how it works, e.g., human computers. Trying to do so for what could be a completely different model of computation... well, you implied the TCA was pressed for time, so emulation would not be the route the planners/developers would go.

What would be doable would be for the TCA to do something akin to Amazon's current-day Mechanical Turk. The Orgus would have to have some way of outputting navigational data into a readable format. So, rather than being clever and trying to convert/emulate Orgus navigation software, the TCA would brute force the data conversion to human standards via crowdsourcing. The TCA would handle the translation of Trade, and perhaps some of the mathematical conversions, and then pass out the rest to actual people. I mean, Earth has an absolutely massive population; there has to be an ungodly number of astronomy, math and CS grad students that the work can be foisted on to. :D
I don't know. If you have documentation then the VM can be massively simpler (I recently wrote a little utility function to identify data to be used for RPC, based only on knowledge of the encoding of the machine, the concept of the 0 address, a base pointer, and a format string; on further reflection, I realized that the array support had probably made it Turing-complete), especially if the software is itself a product expected to be used in such situations: the primary source of complexity in computers arises from a mixture of legacy support (the ISA bus is imaginary present in ALL modern IBM-compatibles, normally restrained entirely to the contents of a single support chip), hardware necessities (that get hidden via memory-mapping), and actual code. The memory models & instruction sets can be quite simple.
Well, if you have actual documentation, then that changes things, I think. Especially if it's meant for aliens. It would describe the model of computation and its physical realization. A developer could go very far with that. If it included design documentation for the software and APIs, said ailens would be golden. Building a VM, or even straight-up converting stuff to run natively, would be relatively straightforward.
Absalom wrote: In fact, come to think of it, the simplest method would probably be to load custom microcode onto a Terran processor, and just have it swap to a Terran ISA for OS calls. You'd need to adapt a kernel, but if you have one that can allow arbitrary interface sets (which isn't that difficult, it just doesn't get done because most OSes are more focused on providing their interface than they are on emulating someone else's interface; for Linux, you'd just need a kernel hacker to stick some hooks in for a root-user API program to use; WinNT systems actually do something like this all the time, though I think it requires a single dll to be loaded (the WinNT Native API is not the same as the Win32 API, which always requires the relevant kernel dll, while NTAPI calls simply need ntdll.dll: this has been used to implement Unix layers by Microsoft itself), then you'd probably be looking at only a handful of non-Orgus programs.
Hmm, it could be that simple. I suppose we'd need to know a bit more about how Orgus computers work. Oh, and I think your utility is Turing-complete; an array makes for a nice piece of tape.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

Chapter 18, part 2

Listel Sininran Sulfur found it odd that she and Farseer Calmwater were called by Shadowcloud for a personal briefing. She was a Listel, it was part of the course for her to be called to hold, archive and analyze sensitive information but the Farseer was a civilian; a civilian whose caste directly aided in the war effort and as such got enhanced privileges but a civilian nonetheless. She wasn’t qualified to be included in sensitive briefings and by sensing Shadowcloud’s troubled mind they both easily understood that what they were about to be told had dire implications for the war effort.
The Mizol was waiting for the two of them inside the hastily prepared and isolated room in which the Shell Farseer was being kept while fully sedated. She was sitting on a chair right next to the butchered Loroi, staring directly towards the Farseer’s swollen belly.

“It has been statistically proven that the odds of a child inheriting its parents telepathic and telekinetic talents are improved if both parents share the same traits and the mother frequently uses her abilities during the pregnancy; the difference is seemingly small but it is noticeable and every warrior with highly sought out skills does whatever is necessary to better the odds for her offspring.” Shadowcloud sent to the both of them as the door behind them slid to a close. “All of the males I mated with shared similar traits with me and I had to do some unconventional things in order to get the attention of the one who’s telepathic, telekinetic and eidetic skills matched my own. I also carried all of my children to their full term while making sure to frequently use all of my powers in order to pass on my talents; most of my daughters went to the Mizol and the Teidar as a result with only a few going to the Listel. Regardless of their caste I am proud of all them and I mourn deeply the five which have been lost in this war; hoping and praying that all of them died in battle before the Shells could butcher them like this.” The Mizol paused in thought at that. “The Shells want as many Farseers as they can get so it stands to reason that they would impregnate all of theirs at will; perhaps we will end up doing the same when the Farseers will inevitably ascend to a full-fledged warrior caste.”

Both the Listel and the Farseer were shocked at that but with a single gesture Shadowcloud cut off any question before continuing.

“The reasons why Farseers are forbidden from having their own warrior caste are simple and well known; it’s just that they are too strong, their telepathic powers easily equaling weapons of mass destruction even when not amplified. Everyone knows that there were plenty of attempts to use Farseers in war on all three sister worlds but their use during Perrein’s World War proved the danger they posed. That war was bloodier and far more devastating than the Deinari one and knocked the world back two full tech levels by the time it was over. This didn’t happen because of the use of nuclear weapons; those were used mostly against industrial centers and transportation infrastructure. The Perrein Loroi would be able to build them up again especially since most of the population at the time had been dispersed throughout the jungles as the tensions that led to the war rose. The Farseers were the unstoppable weapon which devastated armies and civilians alike; a weapon that just tears minds asunder. By the time the Farseers were stopped by Mizol kill teams from both sides the population had dwindled to a fraction of what was before and valuable knowledge was lost as those who held it just had their minds erased.” Shadowcloud sighed at that. “After that war the Mizol took extreme measures to ensure that such a thing wouldn’t happen again but the unification with Deinar and Taben led to some concessions from my caste’s side as the Farseers proved themselves useful in other ways both in peace and war. Along with their many other duties the Mizol would ensure that Farseers would never be weaponized by any Loroi faction ever again; this was one of the few things that all castes unanimously agree on.” Shadowcloud laughed at that, the sense of irony in her mind easily felt by the two Loroi. “What more fitting irony than having the caste which swore to safeguard our whole species from the Farseers be the one which will once again use them as weapons of war.”

“What do you mean Mizol?” Calmwater asked, obviously uncomfortable at the Mizol’s irrational line of thought.

“How to explain this… It’s a simple concept really and it's one that has bound both Loroi and the Humans with the fate of having to fight off the entirety of the universe.”

“You are not making any sense!” Calmwater replied.

“I know how the Shell jamming field works and how to detect it even on interstellar distances; it’s this knowledge that lead me to this conclusion.” Shadowcloud laughed at that. “And to think that we Loroi should give thanks to the Shells for providing us the knowledge necessary to prepare for the inevitable.”

“You are unwell; you need to rest after everything that happened.” Calmwater replied and Sulfur reluctantly agreed.

“The is no amount of rest that will be able to calm me down after…”

“I will call the Doranzer for a…”

“No!” Shadowcloud shouted, making both of them flinch. “No one but us three is to even suspect about this.”

“Then what is it that you learned Mizol?” Calmwater asked once she composed herself.

“Before you can even begin to understand I have to inform you that the Humans are our template species and that their Lotai is a Soian measure to permanently block their telepathy. Listel Sininran Sulfur and I agree on this and I am sure that everyone knowledgeable who will look through the data will do so as well.” Shadowcloud replied.

“You mean we are derived from them and not the Soians?” Calmwater asked in disbelief.

“Yes, don’t let the differences misguide you, I am certain that these differences will make perfect sense once we learn more about the humans.”

“I don’t know what to think about this but I will accept what you say for now.”

“Good…” Shadowcloud composed herself by drawing a deep breath before continuing. “The first thing I realized when I started questioning the modified Shell is that it is indeed able to gain partial control of the Farseer’s telepathic abilities when it is connected to her. It then uses that limited control to stimulate the biological implant in her brain in order to mesmerize her in the same way we unwillingly mesmerize the Golim when we get near them. She thus becomes a willing and obedient slave to it who will do anything to please it. The Shell is able to vary the stimulation to a large degree in order to allow a varying degree of free thought. Furthermore whenever the Farseer would misbehave it would stop the stimulation and would induce pain through the implants in order to discipline her. The Shells believe that this is necessary to keep up the charade that the Farseer is just a sentient machine and not a Loroi.”

“This is disconcerting to know.” Calmwater commented.

“The Shell captain doesn’t know how this connection works but it does know what the ‘device’ is capable of and was curious enough to learn who was responsible for the implant breakthrough. It could be intentional misinformation but it truly believes that a faction of the Historians gave the Hierarchy everything that was needed to make the ‘devices’ compliant.”

“You seem convinced.” Sulfur commented.

“It fits with some observances that have been made in the past but there are many possible explanations for everything.” Shadowcloud replied.

“I don’t believe that this implant is what got you so terrified Mizol.” Calmwater added.

“It’s just a part of it…” Shadowcloud replied and paused to gather her thoughts again. “It confused me at first because I didn’t make the connection but both the Farseer and the Shell didn’t do anything in order to create the jamming field which hid the Shells, the Shells knew of its existence of course but they didn’t do anything to create it.”

“Then how does the jamming field gets created?” Sulfur asked.

“Their… minds conflicted!” Calmwater thought out loud after a moment. “But that requires touching!”

“Yes, their connection is indeed a crude mimicry of us touching each other; when we do that bystanders have difficulty sensing us as two different individuals since our minds meld but its the subconscious conflicts that allow us to keep a semblance of ourselves. This is why the various techniques that require touching require mental preparation.” Shadowcloud explained.

“But this doesn’t create a jamming field!” Sulfur pointed out causing the other two Loroi to stare at her dumbfounded before bursting up in laughter.

“Haven’t you mothered a child yet Listel?” Calmwater asked. “Access to males is far less strict now after all.”

“I have a daughter!” Sulfur protested.

“The male must have been in a hurry then.” Shadowcloud teased her.

“What does… I…” Sulfur futilely tried to form a reply when she realized what the other two were getting at. “When the minds of two lovers are in ecstasy they drop their mental disciplines and flood everything with raw telepathic noise which acts like a localized jamming field.”

“I am glad that they at least taught you that in the Listel academy.” Shadowcloud teased the fact that the Listel just recollected that.

“I…wasn’t thinking…when I…”

“The things one misses when young and easy to impregnate.” Shadowcloud continued unabated, drawing a giggle out Calmwater.

“So what does the mind conflict have to do with the Shell Lotai?” Sulfur insisted in order to change the subject.

“The Lotai is the jamming field produced by the mind conflict. For us this happens when those who touch lose control of their minds but the Shell has a completely alien thinking process and as such the jamming field is the direct result of the partial melding of two minds that are incompatible with one another.” Shadowcloud explained.

“Keep in mind that its because of this that Farseers have to take certain precautions when mating, in the past we went to carefully prepared and secluded areas, now we mostly use suppressors.” Calmwater pointed out.

“I think I understand.” Sulfur replied.

“Now tell me Listel, why aren’t any of the aliens we have met telepaths?” Shadowcloud asked.

“Because of the way their higher brain and nervous systems are structured.” Sulfur recollected.

“The prevalent theory that the Shells have now proved at least partially false.” Shadowcloud commented. “Now tell me, why do aliens have different mental signatures?”

“Because of the way their higher brain and nervous systems are structured.” The Listel repeated.

“The same answer but one that comes under question with each species we come in contact with; do you know why?”

“Because we can send to some alien species, not in the same way as to a Loroi but some aliens can reply and converse vocally with us when we use Sanzai with them and then there are the Golim to consider.” Sulfur replied.

“True but there is also how our minds interact with the minds of aliens when we touch them; the aliens can telepathically sense us when we touch them and they can all receive our sending then. Those aliens who can keep themselves focused through the experience can read some of our surface thoughts as well.” Shadowcloud added.

“You didn’t say anything about that to the humans.” Sulfur pointed out.

“Both the Mizol and Teidar castes agreed that knowledge about this should not be disclosed to aliens and since very few Loroi touch aliens the knowledge hasn’t spread much. Out of all of the castes only the Torrai, the Listel and the Doranzer are told all this.” Shadowcloud explained.

“I remember being told that everything that the aliens sensed is just a side effect of our mind trying to make a connection with theirs.” Sulfur commented.

“Another prevalent theory; which is challenged by the fact that all aliens clearly recollect everything in the exact same way regardless of their species. Some Mizol and Teidar theorize that this is because telepathy is universally recognized by all sentient species.” Shadowcloud replied.

“That would require the aliens to be telepaths!” Sulfur pointed out.

“True. Now can you tell why we could still use telepathy when we were within the range of the Shell jamming field?” Shadowcloud asked.

“I… don’t know.”


“Calmwater?”

“I don’t know either.”


“The answer is simple; it’s because the jamming field only covered the telepathic frequencies that the Shells can perceive which are the exact same ones as the frequencies we can sense them.” Shadowcloud replied.

“I don’t understand.” Sulfur replied.

“That’s…”
Calmwater begun but stopped herself as she began thinking about it.

“It’s easy to understand Listel once you know everything that I observed during the attack on the Shell ship and what I learned from the prisoners. The first thing I noticed was that my sensing range was shorter by 30 mannals, I immediately realized that this was down to whatever the Shells were doing but I only got confused when I realized that it was a jamming field. When their Farseer started shouting I also noticed that the Shells were completely unaffected while we struggled to keep our minds from being torn asunder.” Shadowcloud explained.

“The Shells should have been affected by a Farseer’s shouting.” Sulfur pointed out.

“They should and they were when the Humans disconnected the Shell from her which also cut off the power from her amplifier”
Shadowcloud replied. “Then there are the two severe limitations of their farsense whenever their Farseer is connected to a Shell. First is the fact that her range is at best a third of ours and second is the fact that she becomes unable to determine the exact position of someone when they are close. There is also the fact that she couldn’t identify the mental signatures she sensed but that is because she didn’t receive any training at all.”

“How close?” Sulfur asked.

“They don’t know exactly but she couldn’t sense our exact position when they approached the asteroid field we are in.”

“The Shell had full control of its frequencies, had cut her off them and the mind conflict stopped her from being able to pinpoint our position.” Calmwater commented

“That’s the only explanation that fits in regards to the limitations; we will have to run tests back in the Union to make sure that this is what causes them.” Shadowcloud agreed.

“Then the jamming field only covered the frequencies that the Shell used and the Shells were unaffected because the Farseer couldn’t use those frequencies in her shouting, which means that those telepathic frequencies are universal to the Shells regardless of their brain and nervous systems.”
Sulfur thought out loud.

“It’s worse than that, the Farseer’s thoughts leaked in the Shell frequencies while she was shouting; the modified Shell acting like a sender while that happened. For all intents and purposes the Shell was a telepath while connected to her and the Shells could pick up the raw thoughts the Farseer sent through it.” Shadowcloud added.

“Why didn’t anyone realize this frequency issue before?”
Sulfur asked.

“Because it isn’t the simplest explanation and because we don’t have a way to scientifically detect and measure telepathy. The false theories about the brain and nervous systems stopped most of us from pursuing this line of thought since they just explained everything!”
Shadowcloud replied in angry resignation.

“How do we counteract this Shell trick then?”
Sulfur asked.

“Both the Mizol and the Teidar castes have some rarely used and rarely taught techniques which can detect jamming fields even from a distance. As an eidetic I was taught such techniques early on, they are tricky and require preparation but I can teach them to Calmwater in order to test if she can sense the Shell Jamming fields with her farsense.” Shadowcloud replied.

“Shadowcloud…” Calmwater begun. “Could the Shell perceive what the farseer sensed?”

“No; it could sense her own raw thoughts which directed it to us but otherwise it couldn’t perceive what she sensed through her farsense. She could still sense the Shells through it without issue though.” Shadowcloud replied.

“I… understand now… what you mean by having to turn us Farseers into weapons.” Calmwater admitted in resignation.

“I still don’t understand.” Sulfur commented.

“Think Listel, since the Mezan expedition we Loroi knew that telepathy could be measured, analyzed and worked with by the Soians. We knew that we could do so as well when we would reach the appropriate tech level which is still too far ahead of us. We now know that our past theories are wrong and that each and every alien species can only telepathically perceive and be detected through certain frequencies while we have to train ourselves from childhood in order to use different frequencies for different tasks. We can sense all life around us should we focus or amplified enough, from basic bacteria to sentient species. Due to this we have to assume that we Loroi can access and use the full telepathic spectrum, something that is impossible to do for aliens. Now ask yourself what kind of a threat are we to a race advanced enough to unlock and use their telepathic frequencies?” Shadowcloud explained and the Listel finally realized the implication.

“The Soians and the Humans!”


“Exactly; the Soians are still unbelievably ahead of us in technology and for all intents and purposes the Humans couldn’t have any meaningful technology when the Soians met them. Why would the telepathic Soians block the humans and quite possibly hunt them to near extinction? We know that the Soians were warlike but they weren’t callous killers so they must have had a reason and that reason must be that they were tied to their telepathic frequency while the humans weren’t limited at all. If this is the case a single human of Farseer strength could easily kill countless Soians regardless of the tech disparity.” Shadowcloud added.

“A properly amplified Farseer can potentially decimate fleets in interstellar distances…”
Calmwater added to that.

“The Soians had no choice then, they had to telepathically block the humans and at least quarantine them if not outright exterminate them.”
Sulfur replied. “But why create us?”

“It stands to reason that the Soians weren’t the only telepathic species of their time and that they would want to harness the human kind of telepathy against their rivals. We don’t know how telepathy works but it’s probable that the Soians were still unable to alter their own frequencies in which case they would have to create another Soia-Liron species to experiment on. We must be the result of that experimentation, adapted for the kind of interstellar war that the Soians intended us for. Numerous and expendable crew for their fleets with Farseers that could not only detect all aliens in range but who could also shout and kill any and all telepathic enemies without destroying their infrastructure.”
Shadowcloud thought.

“The implant!”
Sulfur finally realized. “It’s a Soian construct to ensure loyalty.”

“It must be and for whatever reason the Historians had it and the Shells got it through them.” Shadowcloud agreed.

“Why don’t we have that implant ourselves then?”


“Who knows? No one knows anything about the time of the fall of the Soians. Perhaps they abandoned it as a project once they realized that other telepaths could get control of us through it or perhaps they only intended to use it on certain individuals.” Shadowcloud pushed that thought aside in irritation before continuing. “Such hypotheses are useless for the time being. All I know is that we have a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that any and all species who are advanced enough to attain the telepathic tech level will consider us a threat to their very existence. We have to prepare ourselves for the worse and as we are now the only deterrent we can bring to bear are our farseers.”

Chapter 18, part 3: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 886#p22886
Last edited by Guest on Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:07 pm, edited 9 times in total.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

So what is worse than being the only telepathic immune species caught in the war between two monstrously advanced superpowers which use telepathy?

This chapter still has one, maybe two parts left but the meat of the issue has been served already.

User avatar
dapple26
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:59 pm

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dapple26 »

Another great read, keep it up. :)

Krulle
Posts: 1413
Joined: Wed May 20, 2015 9:14 am

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Krulle »

SpoilerShow
dragoongfa wrote:Chapter 18, part 2

[...]

“It’s just a part of it…” Shadowcloud replied and paused to gather her thoughts again. “It confused me at first because I didn’t make the connection but both the Farseer and the Shell didn’t do anything in order to create the jamming field which hid the Shells, the Shells knew of its existence of course but they didn’t gdo anything to create it.”

[...]

“The things one misses when young and easy to impregnate.” Shadowcloud continued unabated, drawing a giggle out of Calmwater.

“So whyat does the mind conflict hasve to do with the Umiak Lotai?” Sulfur insisted in order to change the subject.
Another "solution" could be: So why does the mind conflict have anything to do with the Umiak?

[...]

“The Shell had full control of its frequencies, had cut her off them and the mind conflict stopped her from being able to pinpoint our position.” Calmwater commented.

[...]

“How do we counteract this Shell trick thaen?”
Sulfur asked.

[...]

“Exactly; the Soians are still unbelievably ahead of us in technology and for all intents and purposes the Humans couldn’t have any meaningful technology when the Soians met them. Why would the Soians as telepaths would telepathically block the humans and quite possibly hunt them to near extinction? We know that the Soians were warlike but they weren’t callous killers so they must have had a reason and that reason must be that they were locked in their telepathic frequency while the humans weren’t. If this is the case a single human of Farseer strength could easily kill countless Soians regardless of the tech disparity.” Shadowcloud added.

[...]

“Who knows? No one knows anything about the time of the fall of the Soians. Perhaps they abandoned it as a project once they realized that other telepaths could get control of us through it or perhaps they only intended to use it on certain individuals.” Shadowcloud pushed that thought aside in irritation before continuing. “Such hypotheses are useless for the time being. All I know is that we have a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that any and all species who are advanced enough to attain the telepathic tech level will consider us a threat to their very existence. We have to prepare ourselves for the worset and as we are now the only deterrent we can bring to bear are our farseers.”
Oh, f.... Quite some conclusions made.
If the Loroi are as conservative as I think they are, it will take quite some time for these conclusions to spread and replace the current theories.

But still, no good things for Humaniti: being killed by the Loroi to prevent anyone from finding out, the Loroi becoming overly protective of Humanity to prevent anyone from finding out, and all other races trying to get a hold on Human specimen to find out why the Loroi are so obsessed about Humanity.
And once they do get an idea, experimentation to get rid of the telepathic lock.


Great read, thank you again!
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195

Tamri
Posts: 313
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 8:55 pm

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Tamri »

An interesting hypothesis, but it is unlikely that it is true. Modern man according to the latest estimates, about 200k years, at least 100k years less than Loroi, if you count from falling Soya, likely - more. And traces of space war/mass genocide are not easy to hide that in your work as an example Tithrik was well illustrated. These trails are guaranteed to remain in some form.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by dragoongfa »

Time for some fan fic writer backed fiat :P :

Author's random rambling: The Evolution of telepathy.

In the Outsider universe the fall of the Soians happened about 275.000 years ago, indeed quite some time before the second long population bottleneck that humans went through (scientist believe it could have started around 200.000 ago and lasted until the late stone age). In this bottleneck the human population in sub-saharan Africa fell to as low as 2000 individuals. The Neanderthals of Europe and Asia didn't fare much better either; in short the modern absolute predator was an endangered species for at least 100.000 to quite possibly 200.000 years. Going even further than that scientists have recently found an other massive population bottleneck which started around 1 million years ago and ended a couple of hundred thousand years before the second bottleneck, right like the second bottleneck the first bottleneck also brought our ancestors to the brink of extinction.

We don't know what caused these bottlenecks in the real world but I can spill the beans in what caused these two bottlenecks in this fan fic :P

To cut a long story short the first population bottleneck happened because the then hominids started developing natural telepathy which at first was disastrous for the species. This ain't the Loroi kind of telepathy, it was botched, half arsed and practically uncontrollable for most of the population which just died out because of it. In this fan fic's 'canon' all sentient species went through this phase and the aliens adapted to their respective bottleneck by having their telepathic connection severed and cut off. The 'limited frequencies' described are the side effects of the telepathic evolutionary history that each and every species went through before their ancestors bred it away.

The Soians were such a species, they simply had their telepathy cut away by evolution in prehistoric eras only to unlock it and tame it when they reached tech level 15 or 16 and due to reasons they only know they couldn't unlock the rest of the frequencies of their species. All species can 'perceive' their frequencies and be affected only by them because those were the frequencies 'open' to their species before they got their telepathy cut away. In short all natural species had the least telepathic individuals breed in each consecutive generation until telepathy died out completely for them. The problem for every sentient species is that this telepathic bottleneck happened before their ancestors reached full sentience, they all got their telepathic foray as they transitioned from animalistic instincts to sentience at their early stone age and because of this transition most telepathic individuals were more or less insane.

Early stone age hominids however went against the walked evolutionary path; instead of having telepathy slowly bred out, the ancestral hominids went full steam ahead and for some reason the strongest telepaths bred even as their species was very close to extinction as most of the offspring were practically insane due to their botched telepathy and massive predators hunting the others at will. This could be because the 'first frequencies' that the early stone age hominids got were somewhat benign and allowed more sane individuals than other aliens or it could be because even non sentient hominids couldn't follow the simple advice to never breed with cray cray :mrgreen:

This unnatural and unique habit of the human ancestors allowed their telepathy to slowly open to all possible 'frequencies' right along the advancement of their cognitive abilities. In short prehistoric hominids did the impossible in regards to telepathy; they had their telepaths breed through the telepathic bottleneck and when they got out of it they were full fledged telepathic sentients which had a hold on all telepathic frequencies.

The early sentient humans became true absolute predators powered by telepathy and telekinesis; although still at the stone age they had telepathic and telekinetic abilities that surpassed all technologically advanced species who had managed to unlock their telepathy. Even as technological microbes the early humans were telepathic gods.

280.000 to 275.000 years ago the Soians met the impossible on a lone populated planet at the middle of the Great Wastelands. To them humans were a monster greater than we can imagine as they could use the full telepathic spectrum without issue with everything that entailed. They were a threat to all telepaths, as very few species had overlapping frequencies and as such no telepath strategist could consider such an avenue of attack.

The problem for the humans is that they were in the middle of their stone age era, they had no way to defend themselves from certain avenues of attack and because of this the Soians chose an unconventional method of removing the threat while keeping the species alive for study as even a fool could see plenty of uses for such a species. Using biological warfare they proceeded to alter certain cellular symbiotic organisms and the sudden disappearance of telepathy and telekinesis sparked the beginning of the second telepathic bottleneck for the humans (if anyone wonders: Either I took the liberty of extending the time of the bottleneck by 75.000 years or the fan fic's scientists just fell off their predictions by such a margin :P), due to the non existent technology of the early humans the Soians simply saw no need to use any other kind of weapon while there were still plenty of specimens left lying around which could be used for certain experiments.

What happens next, I leave to the imagination of the reader.
Last edited by Guest on Thu Jan 21, 2016 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Argron
Posts: 55
Joined: Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:34 pm

Re: [Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror

Post by Argron »

Holy cow man, thankfully the Loroi have quite a strong foundation as a society and if the Umiak don't win the war it is likely they will grow even stronger, but races that know about their potential will definitely be distrustful.
Makes you wonder if the Historians felt threatened and actually engineered this war to set both contenders back, specially the Loroi...
Is this fan fiction fully based on Outsider cannon? I know some of the things happening have been hinted in cannon, but you have reached some very interesting conclusions outside of what I think is common knowledge in these forums. Nevermind I just read your previous post.

Post Reply