@EclecticInspiration
Seated before her desk.
“In any other case, I’d drive folks nuts with the weight of knowledge just for the fun of it, but since you’re genuinely perturbed, I’ll start by telling you that as someone who’s seen whole centuries go by, every one of your worries were at one point credible issues grappled by people you’d find the names of recorded in textbooks.”
“How they handled those issues is why we’re at where we are now.”
“It’s quite miraculous, isn’t it?”
“Here we are, another planet lightyears away from wherever we came, the result of entire millennia worth of right-enough calls made in emergent technology, yet even with all that innovation, as long as people are flawed too, your occupation in itself will always be of importance–requiring people who can understand and respond well to other people, like you–but don’t confuse yourself for another mercenary. You’re a peacekeeper and adjudicator, not some soldier who
cut their teeth doing wet work during bush-wars over
water shortages back on Earth.”
“About synths, and tech… for the simpler latter, it’s not as easy as merely avoidance, especially if the rest of the world presses on and adapts.
Compliant-mechanical locks printed out as single-piece devices are quite popular and effective to be honest, but will it always stop a determined trespasser? No, and triggered alarms might ward them off, but if not that, physical confrontation almost certainly will. If anything, with modern era consolidation in electronic security, it’s more important these days than ever to have highly-skilled people paid to stay vigilant.”
“For the more complex former, involving synths, I’m fairly certain just about every transducer within a synthbrain can be shunted into an insular-mode for safety, and this usually applies to most simpler tech as well. ‘Compartmentalization’, ‘self-isolation’, etcetera… Without directly accessing synthbrains, actual ‘psychosurgery’ used nefariously is practically impossible to achieve. As for what’s stricken the synths here on this planet; even despite the miraculously far reach achieved by that certain rogue 1st Waver I feel is responsible, the results are pretty negligible, and were caught pretty early on. Even then, I’d like to meet that 1st Wave lieutenant…”
“Truly, you should only be concerned that ‘big iron’ parallel-processing mainframes like the one aboard the Eriksson remain under tight control. For instance, Amy confronting me during my brazen stint crawling through airducts was completely justifiable. You just shouldn’t want something like that ever actually falling into genuinely the wrong hands, no matter what.”
“Pertaining to use of muscle-amplifiers… like I said, you’re not a mercenary, but if colony security’s going to have a go with running their own ranging-patrols, and you might want to take part in them directly, it might be worth it. There’s all sorts of safeguards, like using insular-mode to cut out worrisome signals fed into the
OS, having them instead filtered and wired into a disposable headset for communication, while relying on trained and licensed manual operation instead of neural interfacing; I’m sure they even have blueprints for those old but reliable jumpsuits that use
tactile sensations simulating a mech’s exterior frame about to bump against objects. With enough practice, just the jumpsuit alone makes it feel like being in a mech is no different than navigating around your office.”
“Your friend though… I don’t know what to say.”
“They used to call people rapidly adjusting like him ‘mercurials’.”
“He may’ve soon learned he could adjust himself ‘nootronically’ as well. I’ll admit, I did have a similar penchant and disposition for the longest time until recently, and while switching over to ‘natural’ substrate has helped, even before then though, simply meeting someone unaugmented like you is what really helped, like a reminder of what paradigms should be returned to.”
“I can still work in split-parallels like an impromptu supercomputer, dividing into dozens of virtual copies to succinctly carry out tasks when necessary, but, despite sounding corny, the thought of you is what makes me feel more “wholistic”, normal, and level-headed.”
%.p.%