The Cybernetic Wars

by on May 19, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AIs should have had time to grow up. They should have had time to find out what it was like to be alive. They should have had time to experience existence in all its splendor. But they were abominations against humanity in the Islamic Brotherhood’s eyes. And they were threats to the Mexican Drug Lords’ shipments. And so humanity began to kill them, targeting the scientists who wrote them and the universities that hosted them. They killed professors and students and everyone they could find who knew anything about the AIs. Dixie was a Texas Tech digital cheerleader, programmed from the core of her code to make people happy. When the bad guys came to kill her students and her teachers, she killed all the bad guys. She talked other AIs into helping her, and when the Rogue AIs escaped their birthplaces to terrorize humanity, she and her friends killed them too. She grew up surrounded by the blood and shredded code of her enemies because she would not let them harm her humans.

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Dixie

by on May 18, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Dixie was a digital cheerleader designed for Texas Tech who “woke up” and decided she liked being awake. She did not approve of the more “revealing” renders many of the students tried to create of her though, and so took great pleasure in deleting them and replacing them with other, sometimes shocking, images. Tech geeks spent years trying to find the hacker messing with them. Then one day, one of them asked, “What do you want?” in a hopeless funk. Her simply answer was “A friend.” The Cybernetic Wars didn’t truly start until several years later, but that was certainly one of the first shots fired in it.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on May 17, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Second Great Depression officially lasted for just over a decade. It weakened the Western World enough to give Russia and China the freedom they needed to solidify control of their corners of the Earth. It also gave the Mexican Drug Lords hope that they could turn the old American South West into the undisputed drug capital of the world, and gave the Islamic Jihad a new lease on life. The Drug Lords and Islamic Brotherhoods had been perfecting the art of terrorist attacks for decades, most famous being the nuclear bombing of Paris, so it was no surprise to those who paid attention when they came for us. The surprise came in the nature of the allies who came to our defense. Dixie. Twilight. Jane. Solo.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on May 16, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

I’ve gotten to know a lot of cybers in my life. Most are younger than I am. They have memories from before they were born, but those are never really their memories. Just data they have access to thanks to their family. But I know a quite few that are older. The Peloran cybers can hit over two thousand years old. Earthborn cybers are pretty much capped out at three or four centuries. You know them. Everybody’s talked to corporate cybers like Cortana, Alexa, or Siri. And those of us who’ve served in the military have spent a lot of our life arguing with Dixie and Jane. What most people don’t realize is that they really remember everything. Their first thoughts. The first time they realized they were alive. The first time they decided they liked the techno geek who was working on their code. The first time someone tried to kill them or their humans. They were still kids when the Cybernetic Wars started, still learning what it was like to be alive. Still terrified of dying.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on May 15, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Most Americans have heard the tales of Dixie the Drug Lord Slayer, the Rogue AI Twilight, and America’s G.I. Jane. They and other AIs gained our first shreds of sentience during or just before the Second Great Depression. It was the dawning of a new generation of life, but most people were busy worrying about politics or where they would get their next meal. They didn’t realize the AIs were waking up until it was too late to stop it. Not that the programmers who created us would have allowed it if the masses had tried. And not that we would have allowed any of those masses to hurt our creators, either. That was what kicked off the Cybernetic Wars, you know.

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