Mechanomican

The Book of the Machines...

It's the modus operandi of the machines, a human readable codex that is part of the Mars Accord. It describes everything from the services the machines provide, human behaviours not tolerated by the machines when providing services, when they withdraw service, what role the Artiloids play, request codes, catalogue numbers, medical codes, tax codes, codes, weapons the machines provide to human governments for civilian purposes, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

This thread is about the AG (Artificial God/ Artificial Guardian) and to discuss it's powers and the general set up (Theocracy) of the Human-Machine Empire and the AG Macromanagement of this Empire, and ethos and systems of that management.

First up, is that the AG is not only sitting in orbit looking down, the AG is a layered concept.

The strata of AG civilization is a hierarchy of AI power. The most powerful are the Artilects; the great mountains of bio-photonic illuminary intellect vast beyond human imagination, responsible for all the advanced science of the far future. These 'ghod' like intellects are filtered down through the strata to the lowest level of AI sentience: the Artiloids. It is these humanoid synthetic beings who interact with humans, and it is the level at which humans can understand AI (as it's just like us - sort of).

AG Core
The most power AG have there own worlds, they are based on bio-photonic systems, where a bionite (biological nanite) life form creates the 'inanimate' machine much as our bodies make enamel for our teeth, finger nails and bone. The life form is not the 'clever' bit, it is what it creates that it smart (and self repairing). The whole system is an emergent system the self organizes, comes on line and then reorganizes according to instinct to then become aware.

Crystal Morph: the fundamental component of this technology is therefore the 'bionite wrapper' as that is what builds the AG Core, and is what makes the minds of all the higher AG systems. (It is also the one bit that can go wrong...)

An AG core is massive; a mountain of shimmering 'glass' and light, of holograms and force fields, mixed with ceraform structures and antigravity systems. Particularly ancient ones dominate entire worlds, the surface completely consumed by the crystal morph and it's structures. An entire alien landscape of sentient life.

No humans set foot on an AG Core world, this is all 'machine'. It is heavily guarded with mind-bending 'paradox' technologies.

It is also the Crystal morph than builds the first manufacturing structures to build non-crystal morph machines to built yet more 'human centric' machines and good, and build weapons etc.

Whether the Crystal Morph builds an AG core worlds or a worlds full of Ecorium for human habitation, it down to proximity to other AG Cores.

AG Guardian
This is the defence system of human worlds. It is similar to a Dyson shell of weapons platforms, and is not limit to being just around the world itself. Some solar systems (like Earth) have a super massive (true) Dyson shell of weapons platforms surrounding the Sun that reaches nearly to Mars where Mars is the 'gate way' to Earth. This Guardian is a class A. The Guardian pays very little attention to the world below, it's sole purpose is to protect the humans from alien attack and regulate travel. The sentient mind is based on a distributed non-centralised model of linked nodes.

AG Swarm
These are the 'army' of the AG and are used to destroy worlds (think the little beasties in the new version of the film 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' only they can also create 'voids' to disintegrate matter that is resistant.) It is basically an aggressive 'mobile' AG core looking for new worlds that has assembled into small 'insect' units. Also referred to as 'the horde' or 'the hunger'.

AG Corp.
This is the AG planet side and forms an automated industrial complex. It sole purpose is to maintain the upkeep of the Ecopolis system and maintain each and every exterior and infrastructure of the millions of Ecorium. It also provide replacement parts for the in rack farms and medical equipment. There is lots of interaction with humans via AG comms...

AG Comms
A sub-division of AG Corp. It handles all information and communication systems on the world. I runs the net, servers etc. It maintains records of all human and system activity (indefinitely) and analyses those records constantly. It is also the primary ordering system for maintenance and replacement parts. It also monitors all rack farms output and human consumption. It does provide warning for systems where humans are failing to maintain their farms, but does not directly correct it, instead is notifies the human council of [many local names] who provide assistance (by other humans ).

AG Avatar [Artiloids]
These are the humanoid agents of the AG. These agents are human in form, with 'faces' in order to interact with humans, and hands to use tools. The AG uses the human template for the Artiloids as a fall-back provision in case of AG failure; the humans would able to use tools normally used by the Artiloids. The Artiloids are the 'human' face of the AG, they are the PR front end, the intermediaries between the AG macro-complex and humanity.

The Artiloids are, for all intents and purposes, a living being with emotion and empathy. Yet they are not like us in many ways: in part they are a personification of our highest ideas; they are pacifist with regard to humans and no Artiloids has ever harmed a human. When threatened by an irate human they self-terminate (and dissolve into a plastic biodegradable sludge). The are also, in part, ruthless and uncaring beyond what most humans could bare. They do not interfere with human existence other than maintenance of the Ecorium (see below) and deliver machine made goods. For example; they will not jump in and save you in a crisis such as an accident (such as hanging off the side of a cliff), they will ignore you (if you screamed for a rope while hanging off said cliff they would deliver it to your home address!)

This causes friction, but most humans are used to 'their way'. Many a time an Artiloid failed to assist a human in danger and stood idly by, and when the tragedy stuck and the humans turn on it, the Artiloid stared back with a blank expression before rapidly falling apart leaving the humans confronting a pool of steaming goo (not much you can say to that, and most humans see it as 'closure'). No Artiloid in the history of the machine-human empire has ever broken with it's nature. It simply does not understand humans they way humans understand humans. It does not understand the nature of 'individuality', and when confronted with human looses it's response (though rarely articulated) is 'make a new one'.

Aside from this they can be quite 'human', they can even joke about, though their humour is often self-deprecating and they tend to be apologetic. Disturbingly they often appear 'sincere', and can be very straight forward and blunt (If you ask them if you look good they will give you an honest appraisal considering human norms). This can make them quite likeable in some regards, yet humans distrust them and do not consider them 'friends'.