thisavrou | audio; a warning

[The audio message is posted to the network at midday. Alan’s voice is measured and serious, though some may catch a certain strained quality undercutting his words.]

This is Alan Bradley speaking. I’m posting this as a warning about one of the ship’s new arrivals -- a program named Clu. [There’s a link to Clu’s page on the MID directory here, which includes an image of the program in question. Those who were present the previous month may also recognize the name from the emergency post Alan had made some weeks earlier. For those who weren’t:] He was created as the admin of a server called the Grid. A few of you may have seen the Grid firsthand through the Ingress on Amissis-Re, in which case you know what he’s capable of. He rewrote programs against their will en masse and kept his own User trapped on the Grid for years. [Some of the anger Alan’s trying to keep in check slips through here and still lingers as he continues.] He’s a danger to everyone on the ship -- especially to any inorganics with accessible code. His only interest in rewriting programs on the Grid was to make them completely obedient and loyal to him and there’s no reason to believe he won’t do the same to any AI he can manipulate here.

Don’t let your guard down around him and don’t leave him alone with any of the AI onboard if you can help it. Death may not always be permanent here, but what Clu could do might be.

[There’s a pause that might be a sigh and then:] I think we can all agree that it’s a theory better left untested.

[And on that note, the audio message ends. He won't address Clu directly here; the program has an MID like everyone else. If he wants to respond directly, he can.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

you seem to know a lot about this

[ It's a question, sort of; he's testing the waters. ]

I’ve seen the kind of damage he can do. To programs and organics.

humor me for a second, but
exactly what kind of damage can a program do to an "organic"?

[Alan’s guessing this man wasn’t here for the fight between Rinzler and Peter.] The programs here aren’t contained in computers or servers anymore. They have physical bodies.

So a program can damage an organic just as easily as another organic can. [Probably easier given their seemingly innate skill with their disks.]

[ Alan guesses VERY correctly. What the hell. ]

oh
yup, that'll do it
how the hell did that happen?

My best guess is that the Ingress somehow pulled them out of their system. I don’t know how they’re able to exist physically here, but… they do. [It’s not like this is the first impossibility the Ingress has shown itself capable of, after all.]

well the great thing about giving them physical bodies
it makes them incredibly susceptible to our lowly human justice system

which this ship apparently doesn't have, as an aside

Technically, it has one. Just not a very good one. There don’t seem to be any consequences for trying to rewrite a synthetic, even if they’re sentient. [Alan would know. He’s tried it.] And you only get maybe a week in the hold for murder.

doesn't even count AIs as potential victims of murder or assault?
that's not a justice system, pal, that's a time out system

To be fair, it doesn’t seem to do much to punish assault and murder against organic beings either.

And punishing crimes committed before arrival is completely off the table, so I doubt anything will officially be done about Clu.

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