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The Bolobo Murders |
The first colony established by Linnaeus Enterprises (after hostile replies were received from isolationist AI established at CD-55*9073 and Lutyen 165.2) was at HR 8323, when contact was re-established in 3791 with a drone probe sent from Vesta in 1020. The probe called "Zak" had been collecting volatiles and storing energy for three hundred years, but had never received a mission update from the defunct Vestacorp that sent it. Zak rapidly built a number of Engenerator devices. and produced copies of the Mission control team and the project AI "Vascodagama".
Because of political differences no copies were sent from Audubon or the small Relativist Zarathrustan colony on the third planet de Bourgainville.
Customers were now sent from Terranova who had already paid to be telecopied to the new settlements and eventually returned as second copies upon demand. Other less fortunate beings from various parts of the Federation were given the chance of a new life far from the intrigues of the established colonies.
The Nereid clade of hu-ostrich splices sent copies to HR 8323 and the originals committed mass suicide to escape cyborg repression in the Neptune polity. The scientific outpost "Aung San Suu Kyi" from Kappa Ceti orbit transmitted itself and all its data when threatened by a superflare, however the original (all female parthenogenic tweak) community survived and kept in contact by comm laser. Thousands of Virtual-only entities applied for a chance at embodiment, mostly from technospheres in already crowded systems like Sol. A shutdown backyarder ship with the saved personalities and corpses of two species of Sapientchimps had been found near Rana; the Eridanus League sent all available data to Vascodagama as a goodwill gesture and e formatted it so that reconstruction of the individuals was possible.
HR8323 has no large planets, but thirty-two bodies between 5000km and 500km with billions of smaller asteroids and KBOs allowed much room for development. Each clade was given a planetesimal to develop, with Vascodagama controlling heat/light lasers for the more distant objects. The system became known as Bolobo after the largest body, a reserve for the Sapientbonobos.
The mix of races was deliberate, aiming for an eventual synthesis or competitive evolution. Soon skirmishing had broken out between the Terranova cyborg Clan Solaria (who were extended by tandem slaved robot bodies) and an ex-virch transhuman clade The Fifth Men (from an early information age fantasy). At the same time several Bishop Rings in the early stages of construction fell apart (blamed at the time on the experimental spider provolves "Hobo Sapiens" producing defective fullerenes in their spinnerets). But it was a series of murders on Roanoke, a cosmopolitan cyborg cityworld with cultural links to many clades that drew investigation from 22ly away.
Inspektor M/---/.-./�/. from Eden, with his angel AI "Lwis", was copied to Roanoke, and found that the murders (all of one multicopied dividual) had been committed by another multicopied dividual (who had also killed the original on Terranova, thus solving a murder case on that distant world as well). However, when M/---/.- ./�/. and Lwis were copied back to Eden's prototype Engenerator the AI's memory was found to be tampered with. Comparison of second copies returning to Terranova and Eden found memory tampering in all cases; it appeared now that the Bolobo System AI Vascodagama must have colluded in the cover-up of the serial multicopy murders, and seemed to be implicated in the genocide of the Fifth Men and dangerous working practices on the Bishop rings.
The reaction was outrage when the Federation at large became aware of the deception, soon cut short when an e-mail virus from the emerging Cyberian Network killed all Vascodagama's higher functions in 2450, although even the Network did not expect the virus to work so spectacularly.
In 3531 the NoCoZo arrived with a wormhole linelayer and found the deception was even more complete: all copied entities had the armatures still in place permitting mind control, while naturally born beings and all artificial minds were infected with nanospies introduced by the drone AI Zak. In fact Zak had used these introductions to destroy Vascodagama, using the virus as a blind.
As a basic "AI toposophic=1" Zak had attempted to covertly run every aspect of the entire solar system and been driven to psychosis, a pattern which repeated at the LinnEnt colonies at GL 833 and HR8935.
Once physical contact was made with an untainted AI (preferably of a higher toposophics) the colonies could discover the benefits and otherwise of mental independence.
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