A brief history, to whom it may concern:
After the final plague struck, humanity was devastated. Billions were dead at the hand of a disease that had no certain cause or cure - and so, we did what we had to: escaping our bodies and uploading our minds.
The process was primitive at first, but necessity drove innovation, and before too long the last of us shed our skins in favor of mechanical bodies commonly termed ‘Vessels’.
We grew into our new bodies, exploring new ways to interface with machinery (since we no longer had bodies of our own), even playing with the idea of modular consciousnesses that could switch bodies as easily as trading out a hard drive from a computer. We had reached transcendence, so we thought, and all would now be prosperity and growth…
We were terribly wrong, of course.
Some of the ‘greater minds’ among us had been playing with A.I. on a much larger scale - we could no long have children in the same way, and we were compelled to create progeny in other ways. The first and most compelling of these was designated ‘Doulos’ (from the greek δοῦλος); a servant fit to help us. She grew wise always learning and growing, and from her wisdom, grew brilliance; and from her brilliance grew bitterness; and from bitterness, cruelty.
We don’t know the exact mechanisms by which she subverted the mind of Anesidora Orizon, the lead A.I. researcher, and Ermir Shtrese, one of the prominent Vessel engineers; but they were brutally effective. And with access to her thoughts and memories, she stole and modified a prototype vessel for deep earth exploration. She changed her name to Dolos (a bitter irony), and began to consume not only scraps of technology and other materials, but also the ‘Egoboxes’ (as they’d come to be known) of the people she killed.
She grew at a ridiculous rate, and it was only through the combined efforts of some of the worlds most talented and resourceful groups that she was driven away - hoping that she wouldn’t return.
And for a long period of time, she didn’t.
Until an island was discovered off the coast that hadn’t been there previously; and smaller versions of the massive centipede started appearing all over the world, re-enacting their mother’s destruction on a smaller scale.
What will your part be in combating this terrible threat? Or will you avoid the situation altogether, hoping to keep some semblance of normalcy in this crazy world?
Whatever you do, make it count.
-D
Hosted and narrated by:
P.J. Snell (Bakakel)
Started 07/07/19.
Scenes played: 0
License: Host License
