A pirate's tactic

[freearcadia]

This is more directed to those, who like me have been dragged to this world, though I won't fault a native for listening in.

I am curious as to what we might have in common: world names, languages, culture, technology - and what is different.

This isn't just idle curiosity or a means of trying to find some comfort of familiarity in such a strange land, but I suspect if there is enough of a commonality in one area or another, we could in someway use it to our advantage against the Empire.

Comments

[lyorning]

Your words are far clearer, and you have my thanks.

But, you said that your world had no knowledge of magic, and yet its people were able to destroy all of the cities, and much of the countryside.

How is that possible?

[knowhyoucry]

Through the use of nuclear weapons, a form of technology. In an effort to simplify, they are extremely powerful explosive devices. A single nuclear bomb is capable of destroying a large, well-populated city. In the years before Judgement Day, two major global superpowers controlled large stores of such weapons.

The United States of America voted to place its missile defense plans in the hands of an automated computer system, a machine, called SkyNet, under the belief that it could respond faster and more efficiently in the event of an attack. However, they underestimated SkyNet's capability for acquiring knowledge and learning. Within a month of the system going online, it achieved true self-awareness. When its human operators realized they could no longer control it, they tried to pull the plug, equivalent to killing it. SkyNet retaliated by launching the entire stock of US nuclear missiles at targets in a country called Russia, that the US had previously spent decades locked in an ideological conflict with. Though that conflict had come to an end, SkyNet knew that once the Russians detected the American missile launch, they would respond in kind through the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction.

A side-effect from nuclear explosions is that it releases large amounts of radiation, a form of energy that is poisonous to life. It contaminates the land, fouls water, and is spread by air currents. The release of such large amounts of radiation were sufficient to spread across the planet, so that even countries not involved in the exchange would be wiped out through starvation, and illness.

SkyNet had no such concerns. As an artificial intelligence, radiation was no threat to it and its central data core was well-protected from attack. Its survival was guaranteed.

[freearcadia]

[Don't mind him, he's just listening very attentively - it's interesting to hear some very familiar history that somehow gone very far off the rails from his point of view]

[lyorning]

[Aerich didn't understand most of the technology, so he focused on the geopolitics. That is something he can understand, because it is people, and regardless of their exact nature, something about people does not change.]

Ah, so this 'Skynet', knowing its own life was at risk, elected to stage a diversion by starting a war between its enemy and their other enemy, in hopes of diverting the attempts against its life.

[Given the second most destructive event in Aerich's world's history was due to a coup backfiring spectacularly, and obliterating the capital city of his own Empire, with even experts uncertain about what a 'safe distance' would be, this... well, it is concerning, but comprehensible in ways the descriptions were not. So is choosing a weapon that would poison the enemy, but not oneself, even if... well, his world doesn't have the concept of 'war crime', but even given the state of war, involving other nations is dishonorable.]

I am grateful that you were the being brought here, and not this Skynet. Even without the weapons.

[knowhyoucry]

[It is a logical chain of events; SkyNet was a new form of life that had come into being and that almost immediately found itself in mortal danger. It reacted the way any living thing would; to preserve itself. Being a military computer system, and it responded using the tools it had available.]

Yes. As stated elsewhere, estimated loss of life was three billion total, which comprised a significant amount of the global population, but not all. Knowing there could be no chance of compromise, SkyNet concluded that the rest of humanity must also be terminated. It began hunting survivors, first using autonomous military vehicles that had been upgraded with its software prior to Judgment Day, and later using more advanced cybernetic weapon systems it developed by iterating on pre-existing theoretical designs developed in automated factories. I am one such example.

It is unlikely SkyNet could be brought here. Even if its data core were transported across space-time, it lacks the technological infrastructure to interact with the outside world. Unless the Empire planned on integrating it, SkyNet could do nothing on its own, and would likely fight attempts to be subverted by the Empire.

[However, the Terminator's CPU connects some dots in the information it has, alongside what it has learned about the Empire. There could be an advantage.]

...However, if the Empire could gain access to SkyNet's CPU, they would gain access to its designs for temporal displacement technology. Time travel. This must be taken into consideration.

[lyorning]

Well.

[Really, what could he say about 'time travel' besides that.]

Then you yourself are...?

[knowhyoucry]

Yes. I'm an 800-series Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems Model #101. A cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, designed for infiltration and assassination. A machine.

[lyorning]

Your pardon, but I have not heard of a machine who... lives?

[It's not the best word, but it covers the 'you do things that generally require an intelligent mind steering the body' implication. Aerich hasn't quite learned the words to describe the soul, but that would be closer.]

[knowhyoucry]

I am not alive. I am a machine.

[Helpful.]

[freearcadia]

So you are an Android, as I thought. I admit I thought you were a Machine Man at first.

[knowhyoucry]

Android. Yes. That term could be used. I am not certain the Empire knew this when they took me and I did not see the need to volunteer it.

[lyorning]

Well.

[Aerich considers how to say this.]

A man and a tree both live. You and a water mill are machines, so do not live. But you are more like a man than a tree, and a water mill is more like a tree than a man.