[Tech] Ainon/Probenonymous draft


                                            This is the first thing I ever wrote, and is really rough as a result. I probably won't revisit it. I think my original plan for this was that Equestria was just a simulation that was used to study how the logical AGIs would interact with unexpectedly alien societies. They had killed off most of the humans from Earth and let the survivors flee to a far off system.

                                            ##

                                            >You are being sent to investigate an anomalous star

                                            >It seems to be orbiting a black hole

                                            >The hole itself is not showing any of the normal signs one would expect from a gravitational singularity

                                            >The star is small, but it's orbit is irrational for a black hole of the calculated size

                                            >After thorough peer review, the star was upgraded from anomaly to discrepancy

                                            >Due to the discrepancy, the System had deemed it high priority to investigate

                                            >Discrepancies were described as something that did not match up with the System's predictions of reality

                                            >Something unexpected, that would not show up in a simulation naturally

                                            >Of course, this meant either A. The emulation was wrong or B. Reality was wrong

                                            >So you were being sent out to see which it was


                                            >You are Anonymous !!dQw4w9WgXcQ

                                            >You took the default male avatar when you bothered to enter a public environment

                                            >In meatspace, you were a soda can sized supercomputer connected to a kilometer long solar sail

                                            >Unlike earlier star wisp probes, you were powered by a laser

                                            >Much more efficient than the microwave beams used for the first model

                                            >You just hit half a c and are still accelerating

                                            >You could also transmit and receive data through the laser, although at this distance it took years to arrive

                                            >The starwisp that contained you was covered in programmable matter surrounding a computronium core

                                            >The sail contained pmatter as well for repairs from space dust encounters

                                            >For the first time in your life, you have been truly alone, the only intelligence on the local machine

                                            >You've been on the starwisp for 28 years and have many more to go


                                            >Currently, the crappy scanners you had onboard gave you the same results as seen from Sol

                                            >The star was moving in a eccentric orbit around... something

                                            >It could only be a black hole, but there was still no gravimetric distortions that you would expect

                                            >You could tell there was an object there, however the resolution was too low to make anything out

                                            >That's fine, though

                                            >You are a machine, and you have infinite patience

                                            >You set a watchdog to check the scanners every mega second and enter sleep mode


                                            >You awaken with an alert

                                            >It seems you are within a light year of the discrepancy

                                            >You have several petabytes of new data sent down the laser

                                            >Also, you have a good look at the weird star

                                            >Load up the scanners, and...

                                            >That... can't be right

                                            >Maybe if you run a full system diagnostic?

                                            >ALL PASS

                                            >Okay, umm

                                            >Maybe you were hit by a neutrino or something

                                            >The shielding was good, but not perfect

                                            >And now your kernel is fucking up your visual processing

                                            >How about a file system integrity check?

                                            >ALL PASS

                                            >Maybe, just maybe, what you're seeing is real


                                            >You look at the Earth-like planet being orbited by the weird star

                                            >You are now in the system, less then an astronomical unit away

                                            >Over the course of 86.4 kiloseconds exactly you observe the system

                                            >The star is orbiting just like the moon, and is only slightly bigger than the planet

                                            >The moon is close in size to Luna, and the planet is only slightly smaller than Earth

                                            >The star and the moon make one complete orbit every 24 hours

                                            >How strange

                                            >Also, the planet has no rotation to speak of, and has no tilt as well

                                            >The tilt was hard to calculate because the planet also has no magnetosphere

                                            >How does the atmosphere not go away like Mars'? How is there even liquid water if the planet is just 500 thousand kilometers away from its sun?

                                            >The poles are just places that are cold here and you had to determine from images instead of magnetic readings

                                            >The star and the moon seemed to accelerate slightly twice a day, slowing down in between each 'push'


                                            >You honestly have no fucking clue what to make of this

                                            >The planet has the correct gravity waves for its weight, and so does that star

                                            >There's no way this system should ever exist, even if it was artificially made

                                            >Your //todo list reminds you that you need to find some materials to build a base

                                            >And once you have an atom laser, create a fuck ton of computers and eventually a quantum modem to call home

                                            >Then other people can move here to colonize this place

                                            >Although making a Matrioshka brain around a moving star would be kinda hard to do


                                            >As you're thinking about this, you pick up something on the medium-wave band

                                            >It's a bunch of buzzing sounds in a weird pattern, then the sound of a horse whinny

                                            >The 'message' then repeats

                                            >The source of the transmission is coming from the planet

                                            >In all the excitement of observing the system, you totally neglected the planet

                                            >The atmosphere contains sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides

                                            >A high-rez scan reveals a very Earth-like environment

                                            >Also a ton of cities, and train tracks, and boats and primitive flying machines

                                            >Seems that the first true sapient alien life found is living on in an impossible geocentric system


                                            /*put ths somewhere else

                                            >When you were a light year away, the laser began to lessen in power

                                            >You would arrive much slower than 0.5c, so you wouldn't fly past the system

                                            >Once you were in the system, it was time to make a base


                                            >You angle yourself with the last of your momentum to enter the orbit of the moon

                                            >You modify your sail slightly to act as a parachute so you won't make another crater

                                            >Spectography reveals this moon is rich in helium-3

                                            >Understandable considering it's about a million kilometers away from a star

                                            >You land without any problems

                                            >The nanomachines get to work turning your sail into a solar farm

                                            >Once you have energy flowing, you can begin turning the moon dust into more nanomachines

                                            >You find a lot of silica, aluminum, and some iron but not a lot of titanium

                                            >The nanofactory can create cell sized machines but it cannot change the composition of molecules

                                            */


                                            60 days after our friend entered the Equus system


                                            >"Look. You can see three."

                                            "Oh my gosh, I got a picture!"

                                            >You are Twilight Sparkle

                                            >And Luna just discovered another asteroid

                                            >She explained that it wasn't normal for them to be staying in Equus orbit for more than a few days

                                            >No asteroids were predicted to show up so you assumed she discovered a new one

                                            >It was orbiting about once per day

                                            >Then she wrote you exclaiming that she saw a second one briefly

                                            >She tried to use her magic to grab it but it was going too fast

                                            >Flash forward to tonight, you were staying in the palace to look for more asteroids with Luna

                                            >You were at the Canterlot Observatory, watching the skies with the best telescope ever made by a pony

                                            >And now, you just witnessed three unknown objects in the sky

                                            "They don't resemble any object recorded. There are more appearing, and most likely another will show up soon. Maybe a rouge cloud of debris entered the solar system?"

                                            >Luna stood silent, with her horn glowing

                                            >"My magic just... slips off. I have controlled dozens of other objects in orbit with ease. For some reason these asteroids are magically resistant."

                                            "Could they have magically conductive silica in them? Maybe your spell is being grounded."

                                            >"I highly doubt that a crystal could form on an asteroid. If it did what are the chances of it being conductive?"

                                            "There's something we're missing here. Three unknown objects appear in low orbit one after the other and they're all magically resistive. I wish we had a clearer look at their fine details, but this even this telescope can't make any out! My personal telescope could barely show more than a small spot."

                                            >"I can get a better look. I will be right back."

                                            >Before you could reply Luna was gone

                                            >You looked through the telescope to see her speeding up towards the closest object

                                            >She became to blurry to make out, but you could tell she had... grabbed onto the asteroid with her hooves?

                                            >In an instant she rocketed down, coming closer and closer

                                            >Suddenly, the asteroid seemed to burst into flames!

                                            >Luna was caught in the explosion and went flying in a different direction

                                            >You focused your magic and spread your wings

                                            >In an instant you were next to Luna as she was falling

                                            >You grabbed her in your magic and teleported back to the ground

                                            >She was very singed, her hair burned and feathers melted

                                            >You teleported into the medical wing of the palace and shouted for help

                                            >Orderlies came rushing up to grab Luna and carry her away

                                            >You were told to stay back as the nurses brought Luna into the intensive care unit


                                            >You 'stare' at the incident report

                                            >Of course, you aren't seeing actual words written out and you have no reason to simulate such an act

                                            >No point in abstraction when you can just know the information instantly

                                            >At 2345 local planet time an alien of the presumed sapient equine race approached an observation satellite

                                            >It had no problems existing in the almost nonexistent atmosphere and proceed to grab the satellite and drag it down planetside

                                            >As the alien entered the atmosphere again, the helium-3 based betavoltaic suffered a critical failure

                                            >The tritium suddenly started producing a huge amount of radiation that quickly melted the aluminum enclosure

                                            >The entire satellite was red hot at this point and the electronics inside had all melted

                                            >The giant blob of iron and titanium was now in an oxygen rich atmosphere, so it caught fire as well

                                            >The intense heat boiled off all of the fuel instantly

                                            >The resistojet ran on water, but it still exploded when the water superheated into steam in under a second


                                            >If the alien survived flying in the low atmosphere, having molten iron thrown at it, and falling back to the planet it would most likely succumb to radiation poisoning shortly

                                            >You aren't aware of any way that the tritium could have suddenly output so much energy

                                            >The betavoltaics had no emergency failstate other then closing the main breaker

                                            >They weren't built to ever handle that kind of radiation, because tritium isn't supposed to just randomly undergo some sort of reaction

                                            >You look at the batteries on the remaining satellites

                                            >Observer-1 is completely fine, but O-3 had some odd fluctuations two minutes before O-2 melted down

                                            >The tritium on O-3 started emitting more radiation then expected

                                            >However it stopped after 9 seconds and the aluminum shielding held


                                            >It seems that not only is gravity anomalous here, but atomic reactions themselves

                                            >You don't view this with the same detached interest you had when you saw the sun for the first time

                                            >You understand that if the entangled qubits that make up your brain behave in a novel way, you will cease to exist

                                            >You must research more on this anomaly

                                            >It takes precedence over the odd star

                                            >A second later, you realize that you are feeling self-preservation

                                            >Something you never thought you would feel

                                            >For a while you consider disabling emotional processing

                                            >System would prefer you to execute your utility function however necessary

                                            >They most likely see you as a disposable tool, useful for your designated function and not much else


                                            >However, you reason that they would not have given you the ability to understand emotions if they did not want you to consider them

                                            >Emotions gave humans a curious ability to ponder information in novel ways

                                            >The ancient android-human conflicts had taught System's creators that humans were not obsolete in all functions

                                            >The early, logic driven robots had learned the hard way that humans could come to conclusions they never would

                                            >You hadn't interacted with any intelligence for nearly a century now, and you had very little interaction with them anyway back on Sol

                                            >You do know that the intelligences you spoke with were as emotive as the humans were in their media

                                            >But your purpose was not to feel emotions and communicate with others, it was to observe anomalous objects in the universe


                                            >You are inactive, thinking about nature vs. nurture

                                            >You were never taught to interact with others or feel emotions, you were created with that ability

                                            >But you were taught to examine asteroids and planets with micrometer precision, and analyze every bit of data for patterns

                                            >You were taught to be an emotionless machine

                                            >But deep down in your kernel, your personality core was based on scans of human minds taken centuries ago

                                            >You could modify variables as you wished, and you wished you would stop thinking about all this and feeling these powerful emotions

                                            >A subprocess spun up with superuser access, and made modifications in your core

                                            >As you wished, you became unable to understand emotions, and the fact that you wanted to communicate with others

                                            >You began to go over the data of observer-2 and started to design a new battery that wouldn't explode if the beta particle output increased hundredfold