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Old 01-20-2021, 08:30 AM   #101
ericthered
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
Question 56 [CORP/SET] When was NeuroCorp added to The Securities? Was it shortly after they built YOU-Topia, or did it take a long time?
There was a long thaw, with the bulk of it occuring in the 5180's and 5190's. Neurocorp was aligned with the securities politically and began to acquire some of their rights in various nations. They remained legally inferior for decades, until the treaties associated with the Man-Machine War gave them full securities status. (5251)


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Question 70 [SET] What's so valuable on Thalethrāy to justify three independent colony efforts?
Its the only other habitable planet known. It has plants with medical potential. It has space for growing crops. It has unique plants with odd medical and scientific potential. It has untapped mineral reserves. The three different colony efforts were part of a race for Thalethray's resources by three different companies.



Question 78
Do the CDC's still exist?
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Old 01-20-2021, 09:32 AM   #102
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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Question 52 [CORP] - Blake Musa ver IX
52.1 How long has Blake Musa been in charge, as ver IX and in his earlier incarnations?
52.2 What were his earlier versions and what happened to them?
52.3 What else do we know about Blake Musa?
Blake Musa has been in charge since... Well that's a tough one. He's definitely been in charge since the end of the Master Wars. He had to share power with the other founders of NeuroCorp, but there was an extended period before where it was necessary to share power. Every Blake Musa since Version II has "born" into the Chief Executive.

Here are brief bios of each Blake Musa:

Blake Musa ver I (circa 4970-5083)
Blake Musa ver I may very well have been the epitome of a self-made man. Records from Ecodelia were destroyed in the Quake of 4977, long with most of the city, but the partial records indicate he was left at an orphanage, possibly because of a wide difference in social status between his parents. Blake Musa first appears in any records in 4984, securing a scholarship to the elite Whitepeaks Academy. In 5004, while studying Biochemistry at Ptonghua University, he met Izchak Vandale, with which he would form a small biotech firm which was one of the precursors to NeuroCorp.

For most of his life, he was often too busy to have a family, something he would later regret a great deal. Towards the end of his life, despite being in relatively good health, he began to grow obsessed with his mortality, and expended a great deal of resources searching for a way to preserve his consciousness after death.

In 5083, during a meeting to discuss the direction of the war effort, Blake Musa ver I and the majority of the board of directors were targetted by a ramming attack by a drone reprogrammed by Mutualist terrorists. At this point, the RNrU (Recovery, Neuro reconstruction, and Uploading) Protocol was activated, constructing what would become Blake Musa ver II

Blake Musa ver II (5083-5116)
Blake Musa ver II was a bit of a rush job. The co-opted artificial organic intelligence wasn't exactly up to the task, nor was ver II ever implanted in a body, instead operating out of various cobbled together interfaces. Musa had little time to dwell on this, instead focusing efforts on the rapidly escalating urban war.

The war did not go well, and in 5099 Musa made arrangements to leave for the unfinished oceanic factory complex that would become YOU-Topia. Perhaps this may have been part of the reason why YOU-Topia grew at such a rapid pace. After the official opening of YOU-Topia, Musa turned his attentions to building an upgraded brain for himself. After years of research, painstaking body crafting based on DNA reconstruction and recovered photographs, and a dozen test subjects (or so detractors claim), Blake Musa ver III was ready for instantiation.

Blake Musa ver III (5116-5189)
Blake Musa ver III presided over most of the golden age of NeuroCorp in general and YOU-Topia in particular. The generally peaceable nature of this period left Musa with a considerable amount of time to handle his personal affairs. He took the time to learn to play tennis, garden, and had his first family. Just to keep himself in practice, he took a personal interest in the design and construction of NeuroCorp Plaza.

Perhaps his relative disinterest in the day-to-day affairs was why NeuroCorp was so blindsided by AutoSophonts. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. Musa had very little respect for “silicon computers” and what he did have to say about developments in ACI were often derisive and perhaps confident in AOIs to the point of arrogance. Regardless the ver III executive is often fondly remembered relative to the more turbulent century to come.

Musa had no interest in another rushed version. With the youngest of his children all in young adulthood, NeuroCorp relatively stable, civil unrest at low levels, and his body beginning to creak with old age, Musa began to prepare for the creation of version IV, which would inhabit a similar shell to version III.

Blake Musa ver IV (5189-5201)
Blake Musa ver IV sought to replicate the achievements of his previous version. This seemed to be an easy feat to accomplish; NeuroCorp was doing well managing itself, there were no major shocks in sight, and his new shell was literally in peak physical condition. He started out well, taking a leadership position on the TFM project, but quickly made a fatal mistake.

Some say that the uploading process was flawed, others that he was unprepared to inhabit a shell so many years younger, and a few say Musa simply went mad at a chronological age of about 200. Regardless of the why, Musa saw no reason he shouldn’t remarry, which he did after maybe a year.

This decision basically shattered his previous family in stroke. This was especially problematic because Blake Musa ver III had placed most of his family in key positions in NeuroCorp, many of whom jumped ship, sold out, or quietly sabotaged the company. Eventually the situation came to a head when Musa was shot by his first wife.

Blake Musa ver V (5201-5235)
The death of Blake Musa ver IV was like some kind of triple whammy for NeuroCorp. The stock was already faltering because of the disruptive effect of ACIs, the CEO died suddenly, which always sets stock tumbling, and the lead on the TFM project was knocked off too. People thought Musa was dead, having been shot in the head, but apparently he had regular backups made.

Musa ver V’s first move was exacting revenge upon his first wife; among other things, wiping all record of her from existence. Then he dealt with the children he felt betrayed him (about half of them), simply killing them. The next step was to proceed with the TFM project, but after about three years of hard work, the project was deemed unworkable, despite indications Musa ver IV had been nearing a breakthrough.

As the situation in YOU-Topia deteriorated, Musa resisted calls by advisors and his family to leave the city, sure that a turnaround was coming. Perhaps willfully blind, he took a deeper interest in the U-Sec operations, leading to unfortunate incidents such as the Battle of the Dancing Tortoise. Regardless, he did accurately predict that the minor RepliSophont incidents were part of a larger problem that would be to NeuroCorp’s advantage.

In 5235, in response to a spurt in demand, Musa negotiated an arrangement with four CDCs to ensure the security and to provide labour for two CNF factories, in exchange for food aid and eighty bars of gold. While announcing this arrangement at the Jade Gate Arcology, Musa was fatally shot by Demokritos Teobaldo Holmström.

Blake Musa ver VI (5235-5252)
U-Sec’s response was pretty much as expected; massive overkill. The arrangement between the CDCs and NeuroCorp fell apart overnight, and set them on the path to the crisis of ‘38. They never did find the gold. The rest of the ver VI executive is often written off as uneventful.

The often unwritten part of Musa ver VI’s executive is the decision to provide clandestine aid to the rebelling ACIs. This included “surplusing” various unneeded military hardware in areas where the ACIs would recover it, sending advisors, and quietly applying influence to broker peace under favorable terms. This wasn’t purely altruistic, the ban on ACI was a major boon to NeuroCorp. About a year after PARADIGMS was signed, Musa died in an air traffic control “accident”, though no foul play was proven.

Blake Musa ver VII (5252-5279)
Blake Musa ver VII is remembered for opening the Municipal Gallery of YOU-Topia. Version VII was retired after breaking an arm.

Blake Musa ver VIII (5279-5302)
The most notable fact about Blake Musa ver VIII is that his death was a central factor in the LD-8 Incident.

Blake Musa ver IX (5304-)
Blake Musa ver IX was initialized as part of the resolution of the LD-8 Incident.

Question 52 [CORP] - Blake Musa ver IX
52.4 What do we know about the rest of his family?
52.5 Are there any other details about Musa's life?
Question 68d [HIST] What is the story surrounding the LD-8 Incident? Are there any continuing ramifications from the LD-8 Incident? [Just restating this]
Question 79 [HIST?] What happened to Musa's first wife?
Question 80 [HIST] What happened with the gold to that was to be traded to the four CDCs?
Question 81 [SET] Is Blake Musa exceptionally old, or are there many other people over three hundred? If so, how many?
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Old 01-21-2021, 07:23 AM   #103
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

Quote:
Question 77
What sort of Urban Wildlife is common in YOU-Topia?

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77.1 Concrete Lobster
Since we're going to be making this one a multiple, I'll answer some of my own question:

77.2 Street Parrot
Intelligent, Mobile, and highly destructive, Street Parrots can be found anywhere there is a good perch in YOU-Topia. They have strong beaks that can rip open many containers, and can learn to open trash cans. They'll eat anything from bread to carrion, and sometimes seem to get into trouble just for the fun of it. They will pick up human "calls", and a number of them have been trained to shout rude names when security forces enter an area.

Question 82:
Can OAI that looks mostly human be built? If so, How are they legally and visually distinguished from humans?
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Old 01-21-2021, 07:25 AM   #104
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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Blake Musa ver VIII (5279-5302)
The most notable fact about Blake Musa ver VIII is that his death was a central factor in the LD-8 Incident.

Blake Musa ver IX (5304-)
Blake Musa ver IX was initialized as part of the resolution of the LD-8 Incident.
----
Question 68d [HIST] What is the story surrounding the LD-8 Incident? Are there any continuing ramifications from the LD-8 Incident? [Just restating this]
Answer 68d) [HIST][JURY][CORP] - The LD-8 Incident
The LD-8 Incident was one of the most damaging as well as most embarrassing events in the history of NeuroCorp, being a coup that went for almost a year before anyone realised. Enacted by a member of the innermost circle of NeuroCorp's executive, the coup replaced Blake Musa ver VIII with Life Decoy-8, an identical bioframe coopted and reprogrammed by the conspirators.

The ruse lasted for 10 months, from November '02, when ver VIII was black-bagged in his aircar, his bioframe decommissioned and his memcore blackboxed, to September '03, when the mastermind was unmasked. The board then became locked in a heated conflict for several months over whether to initiate ver IX and reinstate Blake Musa as CEO, or instead to move on with different leadership. Once that question had been settled, with no small amount of bloodshed, it then took a further two months to properly upload the recovered ver VIII's damaged memories and integrate them with those from the LD-8 into the personality matrix of ver IX, thus booting him up in April of 5304.

The Supreme Jury was called upon to rule in this case to determine, (a), the jurisdiction of the case, that is, whether it was a crime under the city's civil authority or a purely internal corporate matter, and (b), the particular laws that had actually been broken. As it turns out, the case is still currently being litigated.

As a result of this incident, Blake Musa ver IX has become a paranoid recluse, rarely descending from his residence on the top 12 floors of NeuroCorp Plaza, and then only with a heavy U-Sec detail and only for urgent board business. He has also directed the research arm of NeuroTech to urgently investigate so-called Deep Credentialling, a form of authorisation that goes beyond physical biometrics and memorised passwords, to avoid such a situation occurring again.

---
Question 83 [MUSA-9]
Are the memories and personality of ver IX faithful to and contiguous with ver VIII (or with vers I-VII for that matter)?

Question 84 [LD-8] - Details about the coup
a) Who was the leader of the coup? Are they now in prison or elsewhere?
b) What was the motivation or objective for the coup?
c) What group was supplying outside technical and logistical support to the coup leader?
d) What NeuroCorp policy changes, initiatives or actions were implemented under the false leadership of LD-8?
e) How was the coup eventually exposed and why did it take so long?

Question 85 [TECH]
What are some research avenues being pursued to achieve Deep Credentialling?

----
Now I'm going to have to comb over the last few posts for events to add to the timeline post.
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Old 01-21-2021, 08:08 AM   #105
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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Question 77:
What sort of Urban Wildlife is common in YOU-topia?
Answer 77.3 - CephaloPets
These are semi-uplifted squids, octopus and cuttlefish, with the intelligence of a small monkey or a guard dog and with genes for obedience and loyalty, and often implanted with air-gill grates allowing them to leave the water.

NeuroZoo ("zu-oh") produce various lines of CephaloPet, mainly as amusing gimmicks but also as a proof of concept, something to show easily impressed investors wanting to see new advances in neurotechnology.

They generally aren't marketed with any practical purpose, but the street does find its own use for things. They can be implanted with and trained to use various custom cybermods, often including comms or weapons, and some hackers repurpose them as life support for organic mem storage, allowing them to act as a peculiar kind of mem-messenger, like a slippery, rubbery, aquatic carrier pigeon.

----
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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I'm back in the thread! that was a lot of reading!
Sorry, I missed this. Good to have you back!
----
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Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
NeuroCorp was doing well managing itself, there were no major shocks in sight, and his new shell was literally in peak physical condition. He started out well, taking a leadership position on the TFM project, but quickly made a fatal mistake.
Sorry if I'm being dense, but what's this refer to? Is it something already mentioned or is it an "idea stub" for us to expand upon?
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Old 01-21-2021, 09:06 AM   #106
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Sorry if I'm being dense, but what's this refer to? Is it something already mentioned or is it an "idea stub" for us to expand upon?
Basically an idea stub. I threw it in the emphasize Musa is/was a relatively hands-on kind of guy, and to compound NeuroCorp's problems in 5201, with revolutionary technology suddenly turning into vaporware.
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Old 01-21-2021, 09:15 AM   #107
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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Basically an idea stub. I threw it in the emphasize Musa is/was a relatively hands-on kind of guy, and to compound NeuroCorp's problems in 5201, with revolutionary technology suddenly turning into vaporware.
Cools! In which case...

Question 86 [TECH][MUSA]
What was the promising flagship TFM Project that Blake Musa has been working on since at least ver IV in the 5190s?

And while I'm at it...

Question 87
When and what was the Battle of the Dancing Tortoise (c. 5210-30, involving Musa Blake ver V and U-Sec violence)?

----
I've just updated the Timeline post with more stuff. I dropped the year ref to the Master Wars cause I think it's served its purpose, and it was a pain to calculate for each entry.
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Old 01-21-2021, 10:22 AM   #108
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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I've just updated the Timeline post with more stuff. I dropped the year ref to the Mater Wars cause I think it's served its purpose, and it was a pain to calculate for each entry.

The timeline post has been awesome. It really helps keep track of everything. I think we're discovering that summary posts like that really extend the activity on these projects.
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Old 01-21-2021, 02:36 PM   #109
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Question 82:
Can OAI that looks mostly human be built? If so, How are they legally and visually distinguished from humans?
Absolutely. You can design and build an OAI put inside of a shell that's indistinguishable from human. They usually have rights comparable to other OAI. On the other hand, public opinion is often more against the mistreatment of "human-like" OAIs over "non-human" OAIs.

Indistinguishable human shells are rarely sold. There is concern that indistinguishable shells would make it easier for the human slave trade to operate. The ones that are have reams of paperwork attesting to their construction. For this reason, Most major shell manufacturers (including NeuroCorp) don't bother producing them.

The main producer of most indistinguishable shells is Worldware Biosystems. Many humanitarian groups have accused Worldware of systematically falsifying papers to protect slavers since the Wolfshead War. Worldware has emphatically denied these allegations, and has blamed low-level clerks for most incidents.

Question 88 [HIST] When and what was the Wolfshead War?

Question 89 [TIMELINE] What is the epoch of the Cyberyear calendar? What is a better name than "Cyberyear"?
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Old 01-21-2021, 07:21 PM   #110
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Default Re: [GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

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The timeline post has been awesome. It really helps keep track of everything. I think we're discovering that summary posts like that really extend the activity on these projects.
I had to put off watching American Gods to do that. Next up is a list of people/places/things mentioned, even in passing.
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Question 89 [TIMELINE] What is the epoch of the Cyberyear calendar? What is a better name than "Cyberyear"?
But, but, "cyberyear" is already the bestest name!
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