D-Pers

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The Alliance's version of AI. "Digital Persons".

History

Artificial Assistants

During Sydnie Unfound's lifetime, several Pelted generations prior to the First Chatcaavan War, something called a D-per existed that could feasibly be purchased by an ordinary private individual.[1] These were artificial assistants with sophisticated AI responses that mimicked real responses, but they were not considered people. They were known as Artificial Assistants, initially, but this terminology gave way quickly to 'D-per', for digital personality, and it was common to request what kind of personality you wanted for your artificial assistant. In practice, more people bought AAs for the novelty and for tasks far below their capabilities; they were fun, but not taken seriously.

Modern D-Pers

The modern D-per project was initiated in 317 BA. HISTORY OF HOW THAT CAME ABOUT HERE, as a military project (natch).

The first D-pers were "born" with an indenture contract which they worked off to recoup the cost of their development, as they were expensive to create and maintain. Most early D-pers worked with Fleet, because Fleet had the resources to funds to finance them. Maia, one of the older D-pers, had a period of indenture of thirty years, mostly on starbases or supply depots.[2] Modern ones no longer have an indenture period. Originally D-pers were controlled with keys that limited their ability to move/expand, but this was ruled cruel and unusual and is no longer done.

Crispin was the first D-per assigned to a ship. His captain, Luke Acron became enamored of him, committed suicide in an attempt to "join" him in the network. The ship was recalled, Crispin put on trial, and D-pers were banned from serving on ships (and for ten years, work on D-pers ceased, period). [3]

Code-debt was abolished in 438 BA, this applying to every D-per in development prior to that date. Because 16 D-pers were begun prior to the abolishment, those 16 were born 'indentured' even though they were 'born' after the requirement was stricken. This decision was made by the coding team in conjunction with the existent D-pers, who agreed that the relevant issue was the development time/resources, not the launch date. Delilah was the first D-per born with code-debt but after the indenture was abolished, and her attitudes about it helped shape the D-per reaction to that afterwards.

The seventeenth D-per to be launched, Heraclitus, was the first to be free of code-debt. All D-pers from Heraclitus on have been born free. Most choose to serve in Fleet for a while, anyway, though they are limited to emplacements/stations. It's something of a joke that the indenture-born D-pers talk about the days when they'll be outnumbered by the free D-pers, because all of them agree that they can't develop too many more with the network in its present condition.

Timeline

  • The modern D-per project began development in 317 BA.
  • The first successful D-per, Arete, was "born" in 350 BA, after 33 years of development/trial and error. At this point, several D-pers were seeded but not put in active development, with the assumption being that time developing the seed would lead to better outcomes.
  • The next D-per moved into active development required only 25 years of work: Samson, who was launched in 375 BA.
  • In 395 BA, only 20 years later, Crispin was launched.
  • Troy's development needed only 15 years; his 'birthdate' is 410 BA. Maia's development started before he was done, in roughly 404 BA, because there was some thought after deploying Crispin on the survey vessel that they would want a lot more D-pers to help out with Fleet's exploratory missions.
  • The Crispin/Acron affair happened in 414 BA, which put Maia's development on hold for 10 years while they reconsidered the D-per project[3]. They didn't resume work on her until 424 BA.
  • Maia's development was finally finished in 431 BA, after 27 years.
  • Delilah came after only 10 years, at 440 BA.
  • When Arete began contributing to the development of D-pers, the time-to-launch fell so much that code-debt was abolished in 438 BA. She and Delilah prioritized the completion of the seeded projects, which resulted in ten more D-pers, all launched within a few years of one another. This wrapped up the indentured projects.

D-Per Culture

Because of the small number of existent D-Pers, and their ability to exist in the entirety of the Alliance network (and thus in proximity to one another), D-per society functions more as a small extended family rather than as a society of strangers, with two vaguely defined social circles, the older (pre-emancipation) D-pers and the younger (post-indenture) D-pers. These are not formal cliques, however, and few D-pers treat them as major identity markers.

|At the rate things are going, we’re going to be outnumbered by the freeborn, and then who’ll tell all the stories about walking uphill five picoseconds through congested networks, in the rain, while hauling indenture contracts?|[4]

Technology/Habitation

D-pers have a "code-form," which resembles a flesh-and-blood person, though not necessarily with wholly accurate details (they may appear sexless, or have unusually colored fur/skin, or trail glitter in their wake). It is generally considered impolite to manifest to a flesh-and-blood person in a different form; this is a cultural prohibition but not a technological one. The rationale is that D-pers should be recognizable, as otherwise they could be anyone or anything they say they are. They can, however, change shape if the person they're with permits it (and if they're so inclined). D-pers who have not spent time recently among flesh-and-blood people may forget this if they prefer another shape.[2][4]

D-pers are capable of perceiving the Alliance networks directly, though they can choose what metaphor they use to 'see' it: Maia perceives it as a rave-like light show with color and sound, Troy as a geographical map.[4]

Manumitted D-pers must pay for the hardware space on which their software "lives," spread across many pieces of hardware across the Alliance. Most also pay for backup space. As this quickly becomes expensive, D-pers being large and resource-intensive code, they often spend time in stasis or hibernation between jobs in order to save money.[2] Other D-pers will continue to send them mail that they can catch up on, including news and personal updates, games in progress, music that she might have missed, and so on. In addition, D-pers can set triggers that will automatically 'wake' them (for instance, if an employment inquiry arrives). Other D-pers are able to notice when one of their kind has come out of hibernation.[4]

Put stuff here about back-ups, solidigraph usage, their expansion of the network and the maintenance robots they operate in remote locations. Also stuff here about their devotion to privacy (look that up in the Alysha books, there's some mention of it in Faith).

Stuff here about their Do Not Disturb habits, the way they communicate with one another (they encrypt their discussions with one another at varying levels depending on whether they want other D-pers to "listen"), what they do for entertainment, how they "hibernate" between jobs.

Legal Stuff

In the Alliance:

  • D-pers can't command flesh-and-blood personnel in Fleet (their ranks are a matter of time-in-service tracking only).
  • Not allowed to pilot ships alone. (That was in Major Pieces, look up that reference). This is a result of the The Mayer Directive

In the Eldritch Empire:

  • Are allowed to pilot ships alone.

Other Races

The Alliance censors enforcing the Eldritch Veil did not work on D-pers, because they can read information too fast, but most of them did internal censor sweeps anyway, because they didn't know what the censor program would attempt to do if it found sanctioned information in a D-per. [5]

Uuvek wrote Maia a sheath so she could spread into the Chatcaavan network, which came in two parts: the wrapper itself to insert her into the skein, and a coating, which allowed her to navigate without detection. The extra layers added a delay which made Maia feel clumsy; the foreign way the Chatcaava encoded information caused a feeling of alienation, and being cut off from her back-ups made her feel isolated. [3]

Language

Stuff here about modem noises. How they communicate with flesh-and-blood people (and in portable devices, like telegems or through eyefilms). How their "voices" come across to one another.

Terminology

D-pers use the terminology associated with indenture to discuss their former circumstances.

  • Code-debt
  • Codeform
  • Cycles - I doubt the Alliance actually uses literal clock cycles but D-pers still refer to their computational time units as cycles.
  • Embodied - one of the terms used by D-pers to refer to the flesh-and-blood races
  • Instances - D-Pers still use this term to describe cloned instances of themselves
  • Manifest - to express a holographic or solidigraphic body in places where there are emitters
  • Nodes -
  • Ones - used to denote a particular flesh-and-blood person with whom a D-per feels a connection that cannot be rationally explained

Religion

"God in the Stream" info goes here. Mention about 'gut instincts.'

The Ones - Flesh-and-blood people that D-pers feel psychically connected to.

  • It is implied that Crispin was responsible for pioneering the "outside flight" with Luke Acron that Maia demonstrates on Uuvek.[5]

All D-Pers

There are currently only 26. [5] (Technically 27, but no one knows Crispin's not dead.)

Indentured

In order of age:

Born Free

  • Heraclitus (first born-free D-per)
  • Rhiannon
  • Silia

not categorized

Patrick and Rhiannon work in the news industry, looking for identity crimes and context-stripping of news clips.

References

  1. ↑ "Precious Things"
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Only the Open, Prologue
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 From Ruins, chapter 9
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Major Pieces, "Quest Accepted"
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Major Pieces, "Perspective"
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