Basilisk Hacks
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:50 pm
So I'm a big Eclipse Phase fan and had this idea knocking around for awhile in my head.
So for those not familiar with EP here is the tl;dr version of the basic idea: Super AI have advanced for far in human understanding they can exploit or 'hack' certain natural biological processes of the human mind. So all it takes is the right fractal image, the right garbled sound, the right strobe pattern and then BAM. Hacked human. Ranging from simply stunning/killing a person to full on mindcontrol. It's a little hand wavey in setting but it's a cool idea.
So in SS13 the human body is already pretty much a plaything. The mind is not far behind what with MMI, positronic brains, AI, borgs and pAI.
On the actual mechanical code side of things, I imagine it as something like this
At the start of the round, a 'universal' code is generated. This is used as the base for everyones individual code and it represents the common parts of the human psyche. Maybe each species get's it's own generated code so lizardmen are different then human codes. So for this example I will use the random code AUYH734^AS2 as the sort of base human mind code. The actual length will likely vary for balance reasons as seen below.
Now we got Bob the greyshirt. One of the many numbers attached to his (ckey? whatever part of the mob the brain/mind is attached to really) would be something like
12BSITLSK835AXCY@TP39VBAS3SAW4$!ASEETBAMASTRALBEALSERJEPPPLAUYH734^AS248ASJVVASE3OSAJ3AS
I intentionally made it a very long code.
So now you got Bob the Greyshirts sort of mental code. It could be researched any number of ways. Maybe malfuctioning AI get a thing where they can dedicate CPU power to slowly figuring out the mental code for a certain target. Maybe research can make machines to figure it would by harvesting brains. Maybe syndie can buy bits of a code with telecrystals for their assassination target. Whatever way you get it it has a number of uses, depending on how much of the code you know.
Say you only know a part of it. Let's say like 1/5 of it. Or maybe that universal code segment. It Bob the greyshirt hears that code he suffers something. No idea what yet. For the lowest level let's go with something like a bit of brain damage. Sucks, but not totally crippling. So Hal9000 the malfuctioning AI has gotten this much of the code through whatever method and over the radio says 12BSITLSK835A and suddenly Bob's brain is not doing so good. Everyone with me so far?
What if Hal had more of the code? How does it scale? Like 2/5's is increased brain damage. 3/5's is severe brain damage. 4/5's is a stun of some length, and 5/5's is total brain death. No cloning, brain activity is gone. Or maybe it just shuts down the heart. Balance to figure out.
The point of the universal code is so that if you start researching multiple subjects, kind of like genetics it lets you start to spot the common ground. So after slowly putting together the code for 4 humanized monkeys you notice they all share the same 10 digit code somewhere in there now suddenly you got a great tool at your disposal.
I don't know. This is either a terrible idea I am just too in love with to see, or a neat idea that needs some work fleshing out. I skipped over some notes about it to just get it out there and see if anyone even likes the idea. I can see the main complaints so far. It's a radio range stun/damage/kill with no real way to defend yourself. Possible ideas for that would be putting a slight scrambler code into the radio network (For those that know NTL scripting) Could just turn off your radio. Or maybe make radio damage a thing. There are so many spare headsets laying around and hardy anyone ever loses theirs. So why not give things a chance to damage radios, so they garble stuff a bit and then eventually just stop working. I don't know. This is an idea that would have to have a lot change around it to accommodate.
So for those not familiar with EP here is the tl;dr version of the basic idea: Super AI have advanced for far in human understanding they can exploit or 'hack' certain natural biological processes of the human mind. So all it takes is the right fractal image, the right garbled sound, the right strobe pattern and then BAM. Hacked human. Ranging from simply stunning/killing a person to full on mindcontrol. It's a little hand wavey in setting but it's a cool idea.
So in SS13 the human body is already pretty much a plaything. The mind is not far behind what with MMI, positronic brains, AI, borgs and pAI.
On the actual mechanical code side of things, I imagine it as something like this
At the start of the round, a 'universal' code is generated. This is used as the base for everyones individual code and it represents the common parts of the human psyche. Maybe each species get's it's own generated code so lizardmen are different then human codes. So for this example I will use the random code AUYH734^AS2 as the sort of base human mind code. The actual length will likely vary for balance reasons as seen below.
Now we got Bob the greyshirt. One of the many numbers attached to his (ckey? whatever part of the mob the brain/mind is attached to really) would be something like
12BSITLSK835AXCY@TP39VBAS3SAW4$!ASEETBAMASTRALBEALSERJEPPPLAUYH734^AS248ASJVVASE3OSAJ3AS
I intentionally made it a very long code.
So now you got Bob the Greyshirts sort of mental code. It could be researched any number of ways. Maybe malfuctioning AI get a thing where they can dedicate CPU power to slowly figuring out the mental code for a certain target. Maybe research can make machines to figure it would by harvesting brains. Maybe syndie can buy bits of a code with telecrystals for their assassination target. Whatever way you get it it has a number of uses, depending on how much of the code you know.
Say you only know a part of it. Let's say like 1/5 of it. Or maybe that universal code segment. It Bob the greyshirt hears that code he suffers something. No idea what yet. For the lowest level let's go with something like a bit of brain damage. Sucks, but not totally crippling. So Hal9000 the malfuctioning AI has gotten this much of the code through whatever method and over the radio says 12BSITLSK835A and suddenly Bob's brain is not doing so good. Everyone with me so far?
What if Hal had more of the code? How does it scale? Like 2/5's is increased brain damage. 3/5's is severe brain damage. 4/5's is a stun of some length, and 5/5's is total brain death. No cloning, brain activity is gone. Or maybe it just shuts down the heart. Balance to figure out.
The point of the universal code is so that if you start researching multiple subjects, kind of like genetics it lets you start to spot the common ground. So after slowly putting together the code for 4 humanized monkeys you notice they all share the same 10 digit code somewhere in there now suddenly you got a great tool at your disposal.
I don't know. This is either a terrible idea I am just too in love with to see, or a neat idea that needs some work fleshing out. I skipped over some notes about it to just get it out there and see if anyone even likes the idea. I can see the main complaints so far. It's a radio range stun/damage/kill with no real way to defend yourself. Possible ideas for that would be putting a slight scrambler code into the radio network (For those that know NTL scripting) Could just turn off your radio. Or maybe make radio damage a thing. There are so many spare headsets laying around and hardy anyone ever loses theirs. So why not give things a chance to damage radios, so they garble stuff a bit and then eventually just stop working. I don't know. This is an idea that would have to have a lot change around it to accommodate.