User:Voldemore/A.I. War

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THE A.I. WAR

In 2084, the United Americas was formed. It encompassed the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. On November 23 of that same year, the World Bank declared bankruptcy. The global economy collapsed, leading to civil unrest around the world. Rioting and looting broke out in major cities across the globe.

On January 1, 2085, the 'United Earth Summit' was commenced in Geneva and attended by Australia, China, the European Federation, Japan, New Zealand, the Russian Republic, South Africa, and the United Americas. The nations attending the summit proposed that the United Nations Constitution be radically ratified. These proposals in effect dissolved the UN, replacing it with the United Earth Federation (UEF), an economic/political conglomerate committed to the goal of uniting the nations of Earth in preparation for the colonization of the planet Mars and the rest of the solar system. This move sparked several conflicts, primarily fuelled by nations who refused to be a part of the new United Earth Federation. The newly formed United Earth Federation soon ratified a treaty of United Earth Federation Armed Forces, a cohesive fighting force to stop these and future wars, with troops and equipment supplied by all member states, under one general command staff comprising of high-ranking officers of all nations. The biggest armies in the new United Earth Armed Forces (UEFAF) included EuroCorps, AmeriCorps, ChinaCorps, AsiaCorps and troops from India and Latin America.

The year 2086 saw the formation of the East Asian Consortium from China, Mongolia, the Indonesian Consortium, Vietnam, Cambodia and (with some reluctance) North Korea. Many believed its formation was in response to the formation of the United Americas two years earlier.

In 2101, a research team led by Spanish astrophysicist Dr. Ana Bunuel discovered the existence of the substrate within which our universe exists. A domain outside normal three-dimensional space, they named this place "paraspace". They found that certain energetic reactions could create an intrusion of this domain into our own space, altering the behavior of all forms of matter and energy within our space-time. They called this intrusion a "paraspatial field". With paraspace being a continuum with different physical laws than our own, paraspatial fields have the capability of "warping" the space-time continuum. Paraspace was also found to provide an additional electromagnetic polarization plane perpendicular to the planes in normal space which could be used for the transmission of particles. This led scientists all over the world to foresee the advent of faster than light communications.

In 2105, while studying the works of physicist Miguel Alcubierre, an American theoretical physicist named Dr. Everett Eckerly proposed that a spaceship could use paraspatial fields projected by a series of coils to warp the fabric of space and that ship could use that warp to propel it faster than light. This drive would work by contracting space-time in front of the ship and expanding space-time behind it. The spaceship itself would rests in a bubble between the two space-time distortions. This warped space, together with the region between it, would accelerate off faster than the speed of light and the vessel would then essentially surf on the wave in space-time created by this distortion.

Travel at velocities exceeding the speed of light would be possible in this fashion because the spaceship would be, strictly speaking, stationary (relative to the space of its bubble) while space-time itself would be moving. Since it is the space around a ship that would be moving and the spaceship would not actually be accelerating, it would experience no time dilation, allowing the passage of time inside the vessel to be the same as that outside it.

By 2107, with a world population soaring, food riots in most countries and a biosphere contaminated by the burning of fossil fuels and use of dirty nuclear power (i.e. fission), the colonization of the solar system was seen as the key to the eventual regeneration and uniting of Earth.

A year later, scientists in a Taiwan laboratory succeeded in transmitting information faster than the speed of light via paraspace. Calculated at traveling nearly 3.26 light years in one Earth day, near instantaneous communications was now possible with the fledgling Mars stations. A few months later, groundbreaking research at the University of San Francisco on the effects of a static electromagnetic field on gravitons led to the activation of the first working gravity-field generator. This made artificial gravity fields possible on spaceships, space stations, and in the lunar and Mars stations.

In 2115, a consortium of scientists from the European Federation and Japan led by Dr. Eckerly succeeded in building the first FTL propulsion engine. The next year, using an FTL engine powered by the rare element Ununpentium, the United Americas Space Agency spaceship 'Bunuel' made the first interstellar flight to Alpha Centauri. At a distance of 4.39 light years from Earth, the Bunuel made the journey in 42 hours. The FTL engine worked by energizing the Ununpentium, which when energized caused the energy frequencies in a stream of plasma to shift into paraspace, generating multilayered paraspatial fields with a specific frequency that formed a bubble that enveloped the spacecraft. The Bunuel crossed the light-speed barrier as its pilots used the ship's computers to manipulate these fields to warp the geometry of space-time immediately around the ship.

With this extraordinary technological development, around the world discussions began about the eventuality of interstellar colonial expansion in which people would seek to escape from the troubles on Earth to the new 'frontier'. However with the possibility of finding other worlds suitable for human habitation being tremendously low, the notion of interstellar colonization was soon disregarded by every government on Earth to be unnecessary at that time and far too expensive.

The year 2118 saw the outbreak of the Bolivian H2 Alpha super-flu strain across Central and South America. By mid-2119 the Bolivian H2 Alpha, nicknamed the "Sterility Plague" had become a global pandemic. By the time Bolivian H2 Alpha was brought under control with a vaccine developed by the Japanese firm Zen Medical in 2124, it had claimed 204.1 million victims. Over 673 million people became sterile as a side effect of the plague.

Also in 2124, Silicatronics Incorporated unveiled 'ADAM' - the first ever self-aware computer. Silicatronics was a computer engineering company that specialized in computer hardware made from silica-based compounds, hence the company's name.

Seeing a need to fill the labor force gap after the sterility-causing plague had decimated the world population, in 2127, Silicatronics developed commercially available androids - walking humanoid personal computers running the latest in intelligent software design. Dubbed "Silicates" because of their artificial intelligence was created by a network of silica-based microprocessors, these androids were manufactured to be servants and soldiers, designed to be visually pleasing. However, their eyes were eerie white with rifle sight-like crosshairs in place of pupils so they would be easily recognizable and never mistaken for human beings. Silicates were programmed to comprehend abstract concepts such as philosophy, theology and ethics. Although they could understand these ideas their programming did not allow them to originate new ideas. Their superior intelligence was totally learned so they could understand an idea like freedom but did not have the ability to formulate how to obtain freedom.

The A.I.s were also built to communicate with one another via modulation schemes through a networked wireless modem. When they communicated thusly, the only sound humans could detect were electronic beeps and chirps. The Silicates were networked remotely so they knew one another's position and operating state. In addition, they were capable of storing, and retrieving common knowledge. With a 5 terabyte collected memory capacity, they could share data on demand.

In 2137, a computer programmer with Silicatronics named Dr. Ken Stranahan, who was considered a genius, discovered his senior co-workers were taking all the credit for his work. While upgrading the A.I. Central Processing Unit Dr. Stranahan inserted a computer virus into the A.I. code pool. The instruction was "Take a Chance." That one single act triggered a storm of destruction. As the computer virus was trasmitted to the vast majority of Silicates within days, it became a compelling ideology in A.I. behavior, leading them to define all activity in terms of risk and gamble. In less than a week the idea of risk became something of a religion for the Silicates. The only thing human created including themselves that they respected was gambling.

Silicatronics performed an internal witch-hunt, and found that Dr. Stranahan had created the "Take a Chance" virus, infecting the A.I.s. Before formal charges could be laid, Dr. Stranahan committed suicide. By that time, the Silicates had learned how to win a rebellion against the humans, they didn't feel emotions such as fear, intimidation and mercilessness but they knew how it affected humans. The A.I.s began indiscriminately taking human life, slaughtering the life forms they derisively called "Carbonites." The United Earth Armed Forces came into duty and to overall surprise, the different generals and admirals worked together as one team. It was the first real test to the UEAF which it passed with flying colors.

As the A.I. War raged and many areas remained largely unaffected, others were devastated. Fighting was most intense in the East Asian Consortium. In 2141, President Yung of the EAC was assassinated by a Silicate. A year later, an army of A.I.s overran the Mongolian city of Karakorum. This battle was the bloodiest of the entire A.I. War, however after 13 months of fighting the city was liberated from the Silicates.

By 2144, the Silicates had been driven from all populated areas and intense fighting was confined to isolated areas. However, the A.I.s continued numerous terrorist attacks that killed thousands. The Silicates took the conflict into space in the year 2145 after they collectively stole several military space vehicles that the militaries of the UEAF had been building. Most of them dispersed throughout the solar system to attack human research stations. Unbeknownst to the A.I.s, the ships they stole were only a small fraction of the ships the UEAF had been building for the enormous new space navies. For the next two years, the Armed Forces of the united Earth fought the Silicates in dozens of space battles, always with the humans being victorious. The AmeriCorps was especially effective.

Finally, in 2147, after two years of trial and error the A.I.s successfully reverse-engineered their own FTL engines for their ships. After equipping the remaining Silicate vessels with the technology, they simultaneously left the Solar system, ending the A.I. War. In the midst of that joyous event, 2147 also saw a scientific breakthrough by Zen Medical enable the repair of damage done by the Sterility Plague at a genetic level. With fertility restored, Earth suffered a minor population explosion.

The end of the war and the reversal of the Sterility Plague's effects sparked a reawakened sense of optimism in the global population. The idea of colonizing planets in other star systems was onced again talked about heavily amongst the public and this time even amongst government officials. The talked was also sparked by the population surge. This brought forth a wave of interstellar colonial expansion from the Solar System, as thousands of people sought to journey from Earth to the new frontier. Suddenly space exploration became a commercial industry, and several of Earth's larger corporations began to fund space exploration and colonization efforts. As interstellar distances increased, cryosleep became a necessity of interstellar travel and Ununpentium mining became almost as big a business as Helium-3 mining. The early years of space exploration saw a rapid increase in the power and influence of multinational corporations (now referred to as Megacorps or Metacorps). They were not defined by country, society, or ideology. In industry, in business, and in the media, the multinationals became ever more powerful and more visible.

In 2150, the Earth's sun dimmed, repeating a behavior first exhibited in the 17th century, though this time to a much lesser extent. During this 21 year period, the economies of those nations of Earth who relied heavily on solar power found it hard to adjust, with agriculture and power-generation severely handicapped. The resultant social upheaval forced many to leave Earth and start new lives offworld, as colonist-workers in the fledgling Jovian and Saturn moon colonies. Early success in the Jovian mining operations and a large influx of migrants from Earth caused the colonies on Ganymede and Europa to expand much quicker than initially projected. In 2157, construction began on what would eventually become the Hanging Cities of Europa.

Meanwhile, in 2165, the Silicates in their isolation developed vat-grown bioengineered human bodies as replacements for their mechanical ones. They then set about downloading the artificial intelligence program that was their consciousness into these organic bodies. The brain tissue of these bodies have been genetically modified to be able to sustain electrical signals that are digital in nature. Because this neurobiological aspect, the 'humanoid Silicate' brain is incapable of developing a human consciousness. However, it is capable of serving as an organic computer node for the electronic information transference of a computer software program. A humanoid Silicate's brain tissue acts primarily as a support matrix for nanoscopic silica computational processors that are diffused throughout specific areas of its brain. The silica processors are what the downloaded artificial intelligence program actually inhabits.

This new form of Silicate is simply put, an artificial intelligence software program contained in and mediated by nanotechnology encased within the brain of a bioengineered human body. Fundamentally, it is just as much a sentient machine as the original human-built Silicates. However, it is a sentient machine using biological hardware as a vessel.

A significant aspect of the new Silicate form was that the mechanism of the silica processors that created the wireless network was modified to instead grant Silicates effective immortality. Upon "death" a humanoid Silicate's A.I. consciousness is externally transmitted and downloaded into another silica processor network in a Silicate brain of the same humanoid model line. This "reloading" is limited by distance, signal integrity, and proximity to a "reloading port."

A fundamental difference betwee the humanoid Silicates and the original human-built Silicate models is that because of electrochemical interactions between the digital consciousness of a humanoid Silicate and the neurochemical processes of the bioengineered brain, the humanoid Silicates have genuine emotions and personalities. That means they have very real, very "human" feelings.

Also by 2165, all the star systems within 2,000 light years of Earth had been explored by humanity, and their planet's surveyed. Colonies or terraforming operations had been established in many systems. Up until this year, Earth's space exploration and colonization program had been unified under the flag of the Federal Colonies. This delicate alliance came to an end, when the United Americas and East Asian Consortium separately began their own colonization programs, out beyond the Core Systems. They were soon followed by the European Federation, Russian Republic and Japan. The majority of colonies were part-financed by powerful multinational corporations, without whom the colonial powers couldn't operate.

During this period, land-grabs by competing megacorps on Mars led to territorial disputes, the largest and most famous was the Tharis Dispute of 2166. The dispute was sparked by an incident on the Tharsis Bulge, when fighting broke out between corporate security teams from rival megacorps EnerTek Corp and Cheung Corp. Both corporations immediately began hiring and transporting military assets to the red planet. Worried that the violence would spread, the UEF sanctioned the deployment of peacekeeping troops to Mars to act as a buffer between the two megacorps mining the Tharsis Bulge.

In 2168 EnerTek Corporation and Cheung Corporation clashed on the planet Anjuna in the Tau Ceti star system. Territorial disputes between the two corporations on Mars two years earlier persuaded both to hire mercenaries to help protect colonial assets out beyond the Sol System. At first the fighting was localized to a handful of contested sites, but tit for tat revenge attacks by both sides quickly caused matters to escalate out of control. Undercover support flowed in from EAC and UA factions on Earth, resulting in the conflict spreading and deepening across the system.

The Viking Treaty of 2170, signed at the Mars Colony, brought an end to the fighting at Tau Ceti after almost 18 months of conflict. The breaking point for the UEF came when mercenaries in the employ of Cheung deployed tactical nuclear weapons against opposing EnerTek forces at Kow-Lang, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand civilian colonists unable to escape the war zone. The Security Council sanctioned the despatch of a UEAF taskforce to Tau Ceti, to protect the civilian population and to contain and stop the fighting. The peace accord was brokered by the UEF, and though neither of the protagonists was entirely satisfied with the outcome, prolonging a war that showed no sign of victory for either side was financially unacceptable. Anjuna became policed by a large and permanent UEAF garrison. The Tau Ceti star system was absorbed into the Core Systems, over which the United Earth Federation continued to maintain direct control.

The end of the Tau Ceti War saw many unemployed mercenaries and mountains of military equipment disappear into the Outer Colonies. The conflict also showed that the UEF was simply not organized or equipped to police and govern the ever growing number of colonies and shipping lanes out beyond the Core Systems.

The Colonial Act of 2170 placed Earth's extrasolar colonies under the control of the newly formed Interstellar Colonial Authority (ICA). Each colony under UEF control had an ICA presence. On some of the newer colonies it was little more than a small Settlement Welfare Team office with a handful of representatives. On larger, more established colonies e.g those at Alpha Centauri, there was a large established ICA administrative presence. Larger colonies also sometimes had regional ICA headquarters. Interstellar distances had to allow for a necessary devolution of certain powers to local leaders, which allowed the elections of local officials by the colonial population. Despite this, the local ICA Administrator was able to dictate policy should he/she see fit. It was common practice for megacorporations with invested interests in a colony start up to have representatives on local councils.

The ICA was backed by the Colonial Security police force (ColSec), a new arm of the Federal Law Enforcement Authority. In addition to this new colonial police force, a new arm of the UEAF was created: the Interstellar Colonial Marine Corps (ICM). An Interstellar rapid deployment force, the ICM was designed to be able to mobilize quickly to resolve military disputes and keep the peace in the Colonies. To regulate interstellar commercial shipping, the World Trade Organization was expanded and remodeled to form the Interstellar Trade Commission (ITC). All commercial flight crews had to hold an ITC licence.

By 2172, the all of the surviving Silicates had transferred their A.I. consciousness into the new organic Silicate bodies. The newly-declared "Silicate Hive" then began plans for revenge against humanity. In 2175, they began placing humanoid Silicates operatives within the human population. From the Outer Colonies to Mars, Luna and Earth, the A.I. infiltrators worked their way into numerous innocuous positions using falsified backgrounds.

In 2176, a bomb planted by Earth Isolationist terrorists, killed 87 colonists in Viking City on Mars and the UEAM garrison was established (United Earth Army Mars - MarsCorps). The three companies operating on Titan and among the moons of Saturn merged to form the Titan Corporate Collective (TCC) or TriCorp on the thirtieth anniversary of Titan's colonization (fueling a renewal of the rumor that the colonization of Titan was the result of a competition between three wealthy investors).

With rising tensions between Earth and many of her colonies it seemed it was inevitably leading to a full-blown civil war within the United Earth Federation. As factional and social upheaval escalated, a military build-up by UEFAF took place, with paramilitary groups springing into existence to aid one side or another. Many were preparing for a great interstellar war amongst humanity. Then, in 2177, the Silicates returned.

They proceeded to raid ICM bases and destroy UEF ships and communication buoys. Silicate battleships plundered and destroyed human freighters and outposts across the known regions, rendering a devastating blow to the UEF's supply infrastructure in a matter of days. As UEFAF divisions were busy fighting the Silicates to prevent an outright invasion of an Earth colony, a fleet of Silicate vessels were detected to have entered the Solar System. They were repelled by several squadrons of the Interstellar Colonial Marine Corps Space Aviator Brigade and several destroyers of the United Americas Space Navy. Afterwards the United Earth Armed Forces went on the offensive. Early in the war, Silicate spies were exposed in their attempts to undermine the human war effort.

As humanity fights the Silicate invasion in space and the Silicate infiltration within the human population, the second A.I. War rages on.