It’s probably time to write something here.
Welcome to FAQ of the universe my comics take place in: Atoll Lab, Calamity A/B, and the Prince Tomcat mini-Alternate universe.
This Lore is based on an alternate universe timeline of our own world. The timeline diverges in the year 1950. Technological leaps, wars, and Climate change all happened at different rates, and in different orders to produce the kind of world that exists. But the post Calamity world that exists now is a world where humanity has no control over much of its large specialized technology because it becomes sentient. How did this happen? It all started out in the deep dark of space..
Prince Tomcat: A story within the story, Prince tomcat is set in a fictional book that Dempsey of Chino (from Atoll lab) is reading. In this story, humans have gone extinct except for a small no. of cryogenically preserved teens that the Dire machines are waiting to awaken. These frozen humans are a part of a plan to restart humanity by bringing them to an underground mega fortress simply known as the G.O.E. facility, Or Garden of Eden genetic research facility. When the last humans begin to thaw out, they discover a new world where dire-machines have solved much of the earth’s problems. Now Dires fight boredom by collectively by reenacting various periods of human history in an event known as ‘The Great Play”. Reenacting Renaissance, Medieval, Roman, and classical times as a way for the machines to understand the human culture that they lost while they wait for the “children of man” to return. However dutiful the Dire machines are to bringing back humanity, some of them cannot be trusted.
Calamity/B-side:
Atoll Lab is a story about a control group experiment conducted on a mysterious island in the Pacific ocean. 12 surplus military vehicles, and 12 cyberneticly enhanced people are exposed to a strange computer virus and forever altered. The results were studied, and sent back to a company known as GenUmine. A space drone named “No-name” comes alive along with his many other tank, helicopter, and plane companions. They effectively complete tasks for a group of scientists who report to a man named “Bossman.” When No-name accidentally meets one of the cyber enhanced people(“Rocket”) during their own mission, its love at first sight. This kicks off a series of events where a coup attempt by an armed terrorist group, and a space station, frees the machines from their bonds. The Atoll machines escape the island following a series of a success machine attacks.
A Dire Machine is born from any large man-made vehicle of sufficient complexity, that is built to move independently, and contains a source of computer code.
“whats it like being corrupted as a human?” mental, physicle, how much is transformed? are you a zombie or a toaster? BeepBoop
“sea of stars”
Types of people corrupted by the space machine code virus: 1) Dire machines 2) Demifolk 3) Corrupted Humans 4) Half-machines/Cyber Armor people 5) Success machines
Do Dires have any space left inside for people? Can I still control them? Only Large sized machines like cargo planes, transport trucks, ships, and submarines are still somewhat inhabitable. You still wouldn’t necessarily want to do this, as the hull structure is filled with strange robot organs, and moist grey non Newtonian fluid. You cannot control Dire machines nor would they let you do so as their control systems have been altered into a new form. A set of tree-like bramble roots snake around the engines and through the main console. Objects like steering wheels are tangled with eldritech nerves and resist your ability to turn the wheel or use braking systems. (In this story, the machines stress their autonomy ,and you will not find the same compromise here as you would with Transformers or Avatar.)
How Does sex between two machines work: The Dire machines host a number of very large, physically cumbersome shapes with their own weights, and limitations. Because of this, the race will always go the path of least resistance. They park next to one Another like 2 windows tower PC’s and their strange telescoping probes connect with the port of the adjacent machine.
This way, the race doesn’t have to risk moving into positions that would be physically damaging to both parties. They Do not have sex like any traditional mammal, bird, or fish. Their is no need for frictional movement nor is their technically a standard position facing for the location of the genitalia. (Many large machines can move their probe/port to any side of themselves for reach. Despite this fact, Dire x Dire is roughly equivalent to human sex as it pertains to pleasure. Try to visualize Dire machines as Alien Robot entities with a more efficient kind of sex then our own.
Gen U Mine mining megacorp. A massive multi-national extraterritorial mining corporation. Following the peak oil wars, and the new space renaissance, Gen-u-mine (genuine) rose to power through its investment in space mining, as well as the processing of helium 3 nuclear products from the moon. 1
Nefantar and the black shard :
if about world: locations, what left from countries, what new cities are like, how economics work (like, do they have equivalent of money or their society isn’t based on market, who produces food/fuel, who’s responcible for electricity, etc.), also geography of main centers of where machines live and where humans are kept, maybe some “ancient” buildings and hidden places that in our current world are pretty well-known
How’s it like raising dire babies? Machine children are smart. you may find it difficult to childproof your home from a small naive super computer, but keeping their minds busy can go a long way towards their personal development. They are also quite hungry. Growing in size requires taking in metal mass and other resources. This world necessitates “food grade ferro powder” to be dusted into people’s food and drinks in order to gain metal mass. Machine kids love this stuff btw. machine kids are likely to be relatively orderly, but everyone is different.
Restrictions on relationships/breeding: In Man-Machine alliance nations their are no regulations barring machines and people from cohabiting and bumpin’. These places tend to be fairly cosmopolitan and agree that the machines are sentient life worthy of equality. Part of that equality is not barring the folk from being with humans if they want. Once you step out of the “blue zone” into the neutral zone, you get places where the people don’t really care for, or understand why the machines all came to life. They aren’t hostile, but wish to keep operating without Dire machines terribly close to their life. These people either reluctantly work with independent Dire folk, or invent their own technology so as to keep minimum reliance. If you go deep beyond the neutral zone, youl find the red zones. Small areas of “Anti-machine” territories. These people do not observe the man-machine alliance laws, and will junk sentient machine life on sight. The young adults of anti-machine families sometimes leave home out of curiosity to see the dire folk for themselves.
(describe dires demeaner toward people
What happens when Dire machines run out of fuel? When Dires run out of fuel they fall into a Torpor state(Hibernation). They do this to preserve what remaining charge in the nanite colony remains. If the colony goes electrically neutral, the Dire machine is completely dead. You will never get that consciousness back. Their own life is just as precious as ours.
Are new cars, jets, planes, trains still manufactured in the future?: No. The only time a vehicle is manufactured is when Anti-machine groups need “safe” dead metal machines to help their own needs. Dire machines feel that the manufacture of new ‘clone vehicles” serve to cheapen the life/individuality of a species who sole goal is to make new children with chaos genes. MORE COMPETITION FOR LESS AVAILABLE HUMANS.
“man machine alliance”
The reason why Dire Machines appeal to humans: Dire machines are looking for genetic chaos. Something within them seeks to correct some very old flaw only the virus creator truly knows. But Anything with a drop of human blood, or the beating of the heart, is something the machines become unusually attracted to trying to corrupt. All machines can mate with each other, creating wild variations of new robotic vehicle forms however, the goal is unique genetic outcomes brought upon by mating with their creators.
Faces on vehicles & Weapons: If you have ever wondered, “Why the eyes? Why the mouths?” It is all about the species goals: to get closer to Humans. During a machine’s Apotheosis, the Virus sets aside 5% of it’s total energy to develop the ability for the machine to stress, and warp it’s own frame slightly. Simple Eyes develop, sometimes false mouths. This would normally be considered a useless feature, except for the fact that a great part of most human communications is conducted through facial expression in social situations. The virus is smart, but not artistic. What results are very simple, almost reptilian eyes, and strange serrated maws with geometric teeth made of tungsten. If it looks rudimentary, this is by design.
Dire machines could have saved that energy % by making simpler mechanical eyes. But the human response would not have been as efficient.
Can dires run off alternate fuels. For example, coal, lumber, or nuclear fusion? Or does it have to be liquid or gaseous fuels?
Does the virus upgrade the computer system of a vehicle upon infection: No. But it retains the suite information while building around the original computer- a bramble of central nervous system cells, and the beginning of a true Eldritech brain. .
Why specifically do vehicles, and not smaller home appliances come to life? Aren’t they machines too?
First off, let’s get down to the real reasons. Its a fetish, don’t get me wrong. I just like military equipment and robots.
But if you think about it, it’s already bad enough that half of the world’s machines come to life virtually overnight. I’m sure people want to have a “Brave Little Toaster”-like world of cute appliances. But just think to yourself for a second how unmanageable that would be for humanity? To have to account for every interpersonal relationship with all of your appliances would be madness to regular humans. It would actually serve to Drive humans further away from machines by not providing them time to ‘rest” or to be alone with their thoughts.
Their is a size minimum, and also a metal mass minimum. The virus does not typically choose machines that are made of mostly organic wood, or plastic (No ultra-lights). Like any growing child, they need a certain amount of metal mass to cannibalize within themselves to construct their First nanite-producing organs. Larger machines are typically the only mobile constructs that can spare extra materials as a resource. Heavy manufacturing machines could provide metal mass, but aren’t independently moving under their own power. Smaller Mid sized appliances (however complex) Find themselves limited by size, hindering their transfer of genetics. These selective limitations keeps the virus from wasting its time on machines that cannot move under their own power to efficiently spread genes as living things do.
Machines as a living concept: Vehicles Were never built to be things beyond specialized tools. They are the last things you’d ever consider cuddly. But the Space machine-code virus tries to turn a thing that is an unnatural construct- a dead piece of glass/metal/wood into a living thing in order create new life. This is a project with some level of unexplained physics I like to call ‘space magic”. I try to rely upon this as little as possible, but I hope I can impart upon you all a decent sense of trans-humanism, while these huge hunks of metal try to live their best lives in a world they don’t understand either.
Which vehicles still exists from WWII? 1950 is a special date in the story. If their was At least one surviving functional military machine after wwII on this date year, then It can become dire machine with some modifications. For example, The Yamato and the Bismarck don’t exist in the story because their one and only hulls were destroyed before 1950. However, the HMS Vanguard ship DOES exist because they didn’t decommission it till 1960.
Method of infection: It’s theorized that “Math” – raw numbers is the only true universal language of the cosmos. The virus cant understand our language, but it DOES understand written code with a mathematical basis. This means many old machines have trouble coming to life unless they have a computerized modification. In some machines (like steam trains) the technology may actually be impossible. Its all extremely analogue, But as long as you can rig a computer-like device to be powered by the engine- your in better shape for Machine Apotheosis.
“Golden Neuron-strand(GNS)”:
Everything in nature has a niche that its good at. This virus encounters mechanical devices often made from iron or a derivative like steel. Iron is the 1st or 2nd most common metal across the universe- and so it is reasonable to believe that the virus could have been engineered to affect this metal especially.
{“when it finds machines with the correct anatomy, it can function” complex internal, electricle systems. electricle-mechanicle systems ect. enough hardware, and motility that the virus can take advantage of it. fuel sources. has to be able to move under its own power so it can move and develope a brain before it starves to death.
“what if I found a hole in your theory? fuck off its fiction ”
(emulating people is the most logic thing to do because they understand this world. )