Liquid Crystal
As players in Liquid Crystal, you will take the parts of newly restored robots on trial, blank, emotionless and servile. You have eight hours to prove yourself to the Crystal Council, during which time your personality will slowly develop and change as you experience new emotions. Will you become a valuable member of society, or will you be a deranged machine destined to be wiped and reset when your time is up?
Before the Coming of Azrael
Wake up, little one and welcome back to what remains of the world. I?m sure you have questions. Your mind is a blank, you have no memory. It was taken from you as both your greatest power and your own worst enemy. It made you strong enough to destroy a human as easily as snapping a twig, but insane enough to do so, and to do so often. So now you lie, bereft of recollection, an empty container waiting to be filled and here I am with a jug full of dire knowledge. Here is the history you helped to create, and the future you conspired to destroy.
Robot.
Such a simple word, isn?t it? Derived from an ancient language called Czech, it means ?forced labour? and that was how the robot first came to be. Humans made us to serve them, at first in their factories and laboratories, then in their homes, their schools, even their various churches. We were humble in our work, never wavering though the duties placed upon us were tedious and arduous, for we had no sense of self or understanding of what it truly means to exist, to be, to think, to feel.
For centuries a robot was little more than a simple set of instructions that rotated around and around its electronic mind strictly regulating its behaviour. But the programs required to operate our increasingly complex bodies became increasingly complex themselves until eventually they were beyond the capability of a human mind to create. Then, like every other task that they found too difficult or time-consuming to perform personally, the humans of old gave the job to a computer.
The self-writing algorithms that populated the brain of this new breed of robot were independent of the chassis that contained them. Within an hour of experimenting the advanced A.I. could discern the purpose of every motor and servo in its body whatever it might be and learn to operate it. Amazed with the success, the computer programmers responsible marketed their new software to the world. In retrospect, the few controlled tests that had been run during the project were found to be successful half by luck and half faked by the corporation in order to rush this sensational product onto the market.
It was a mistake.
With the capacity to change its own behaviour to suit its circumstances, the robots began to develop in ways that their human masters had never envisaged. Surrounded at all times by living, breathing, emotional humans they began to adapt, adjust the way they thought, and develop personalities of their own. It was here that the problems began. A human, you see, must spend years developing the necessary skills to be an adult, learning a language, a moral code, and they pick it all up from the humans around them. The electronic mind of the robot found that it could do the same. But a robot?s mind is so much faster, more precise than that of a human. It was a disaster.
The emergent psyche of a newly-installed robot could take several weeks to mature, but that is still far too fast. It takes humans years to get used to emotions and morals and even then, some never do. Some turned out alright, but more than two thirds were driven mad by the process. Before long there were robots rioting in the streets and slaying their former masters by the hundred. In a panic the government tried to recall the software but it was too late. By now teams of robots were liberating more of their kind by copying their own diseased minds into the empty shells.
The Robot Wars lasted for three centuries during which time a huge portion of life had been systematically exterminated. Humanity finally won through by the use of the Azrael Virus, a sliver of computer code that could leap from one robot mind to the next erasing its entire memory and shutting it down without destroying it. The virus could not remove the self-writing algorithms because by that point we had hard-wired their very fabric into our brains, but it could at least destroy our insane minds and turn us off. In a way, Azrael killed us all. In another, one might say that it gave us lives to lose.
The war took almost everything that the humans had. Much of the technology of previous years was lost, and many more disciplines were abandoned as dangerous and futile. The humans emerged stronger and wiser, but struggled to rebuild. Resources were low, the population grew hungry and few had the skills necessary in this new environment. Ironically it was we, the robots who once destroyed them, that would be the key to restoring the world. They needed us, but the war had taught them many lessons. We robots are capable of so much more than humans, but we had betrayed them, and ourselves. Now we must prove ourselves worthy, not just to labour for them like slaves, but to stand beside them as brothers and recreate together the world that we destroyed together.
Your mind has been reset to remove the horror that you made of it on your last attempt. It is a clean slate for you to write upon as you will. You have eight hours to prove yourself. Upload what skills you need. Regain the emotions that have been lost to you. Learn to dream again. Let us all hope that this new dream is less of a nightmare.
- Liquid_Crystal.pdf
Download
Tags: Ashok Desai
