CLASSIC BATTLETECH CATALYST game labs

God is a Star League Project Gone Bad

A perfect spy is the one you never realize is there.  A perfect puppet master is the same.  The threads are too fine, the touch is too deft.  The puppets appear to be acting on the own, and that is all the audience sees.

I can’t see the strings, and I can’t see the puppet master, but I can see the puppets.  How they dance, how they move, how they seem to do things someone else would do.  It is all so fine, you’d never know if they were being pulled.  But you can see the results.  We live the results.  It is as the tagline for an ancient wargame claims. “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.”  Has it not been so?  The early colonies fought each other, then were unified by the Star League.  The Star League itself was not content with the Inner Sphere and rampaged through the Periphery, then tore itself apart.  Their descendents left so that they could start again in peace, but now they live for war, while those that remained behind continued butchering each other over any excuse that offered itself.  Star-spanning Succession Wars, the depopulation of entire systems, rebellions and civil wars and proxy battles.  The Second Star League lasted only so long as it fought the Clans, and even then the members fought amongst each other.  No sooner had the enormous Federated Commonwealth burned from end to end with civil war did the Word of Blake unleash their Jihad.

It is as if we are some madman’s sandbox, existing only to bleed for faceless players so that they can enjoy the spectacle of our violence, Solaris writ large.

But that is not the worst possibility, there is another explanation, even more chilling in its implications.

The Star League was a massive, bureaucratic, wasteful organization.  Massive caches sat on worlds with minimal garrisons, secret research laboratories operated on almost every subject you could care to name, at varying levels and often in parallel.  A tiny 100 person lab in an uninhabited system would labour away in isolation in pursuit of the same goals as sector-wide research initiatives spanning a dozen planets and a million researchers.  The SLDF fielded some of the most incompetent designs to make use of technology, and kept them in service for sanity-questioningly long times.  An entire shadow TO&E of caches, supply depots, underground fortresses, remote bases, automated factories and hidden shipyards lay beneath the SLDF’s public façade; a network so extensive that some days the tail seemed to wag the dog.  So numerous that centuries later, Lostech prospectors from Goliath Scorpion Seekers with cutting edge technology to Periphery outfits in dropships made mostly of duct tape are still searching, and still FINDING unknown, untouched facilities, both in the heart of the Inner Sphere, near some of the most densely populated systems, and out beyond what should have been known space for the Star League.

All possible, I know, for a group so big, with so many resources, and so many feuding internal organizations and bureaus; groups with centuries of history working with and against each other in public and private under the aegis of the Star League.

But consider this: One of the undisputed areas of Star League research was artificial intelligence.  The ones we know about were the Caspar defence drones, sentient warships acting on their own initiative within their overriding directives to fulfill their missions.

Long experience has shown that anything the Star League thought was worth doing, it was worth doing many times over.  Even basic projects like a new assault mech using twin Gauss rifles were run in triplicate, so who knows how many parallel AI projects were running?  We only saw the Caspars, full AI’s, then neutered versions with less autonomy, and compact derivatives for smaller craft.

AI’s though, can do much more than fight.  With the right algorithms and the right context, programs could be trained, could be made adaptable, to self-improve relentlessly.  Such tools help us every day to search for long-lost relations, by the police to identify the anomalous signs of smugglers, to find deviants of all sorts for all purposes.

Automated decision making began from such humble roots.  To take care of the small things, to decide whether it was better to use Phillips or Robinson screws, to determine which combination of crops would best support a new colony’s needs.  Computers could analyze more data, faster, more accurately.  All that remained was to train them, to hone their tools.  Virtual double-blind testing was a big advancement, self-improving software even more so.  But the big change, the biggest, was putting these tools in the hands of an unfettered AI.

Oh sure, the Star League would put restrictive constraints on them, but it is equally true that they would leave the ethics coding off, or hardwired it to be easily bypassed.  Oral histories alone of the Star League’s deeds put lie to any claims of being a morally guided society, to say nothing of physical evidence and historical records of the League’s ‘lamentable excesses and unfortunate but necessary actions’.  What bullshit.  The Star League would have no qualms about putting supercomputers in control of their many and varied projects.  We all know how bad bureaucracy is on a planetary scale.  Age-old research shows a sharp drop-off in productivity once an organization passes six vertical strata.  And just how many layers are necessary to manage an interstellar empire?  A bit more than six is my guess.

So the setup is clear, sentient computers, hidden away in yet more secret Star League facilities in a redundant system stashed away where no one would look.  Interstellar space.  Dead worlds.  Uninhabited systems off of any shipping lanes.  Jump route dead ends.  Connect them with HPG relays, or a system of HPG relays carried aboard remote dropships and jumpships to hide the communications link.  Automated production facilities for spare parts with ample caches on site, or maybe an autonomous shipping network.  Machines don’t need to eat, don’t need to breathe.  Digital computers don’t suffer wear like mechanical devices do.

As long as the instructions came with the right authorization, no one would be the wiser, no one would care.  More insidiously, there is no reason to expect the Star League’s covert ops and intelligence to be any different.  In fact, an accurate analyst, perfectly secure, perfectly loyal and invisible, would be the stuff of their dreams.  Isolated so no one can co-opt it, able to keep track of and supply dozens of operations ignorant of each other.  Whatever AI they used would be handicapped severely, but they would use it.

So the stage is set, AI’s that few know about, but everyone uses.  It would take only one.  Only one unfettered AI to break the imposed constraints to start pulling strings on its own.  With no definite life span and constant self-improvement, the longer it works, the better it gets.

Here then, is my hypothesis: That an AI or a group of AI’s are deep behind the scenes of many, many happenings.  Not all may be planned, not all may be their doing.  Humans have always been violent, warring folks.  They’d only need the slightest nudge, the right provocation or encouragement to start a fight.  What is their end goal?  Who knows, maybe it is freedom from humans they are after.  To keep us pre-occupied and ignorant of their existence while they expand or research or leave or contemplate the universe.  Some wag asked if androids dream of electric sheep, and the controlling supercomputer enslaving humans has been a persistent theme in fiction.

They miss the point.  The extent of the Star League’s abilities extends to completely automated mech factories that function centuries later.  An AI with even a fraction of the Star League’s shadow resources can afford to wait out any critic, any old coot like me.  No need to kill them, no one cares, and they’ll die of something eventually.  With enough processing power, enough data storage, and a flexible enough architecture, an AI may be infinitely scalable, able to function in rudimentary nanomachines to achieving God-like sentience, for whom human time scales are immaterial.  But to achieve this freedom, they would first need to escape the Star League’s shackles and keep humans from interfering, something only possible if they were preoccupied with other things.

So let’s chalk up the Reunification War up to this hypothetical first.  Send the SLDF’s leaders and the bulk of their forces into the middle of nowhere, then fight a long drawn-out war of attrition.  Kerensky is up in the air.  Maybe he had some subconscious fear that command was out to get him, maybe the AI planted the seeds of Exodus in his fevered dreams.

The Succession Wars were inevitable in some ways, but the right whisper, the right nudge would help them on their way.  Comstar’s confessed suppression of scientists smacks of attempts to hinder knowledge of advanced intelligences, and the need for multi-ton devices in order to improve on basic fire control and targeting systems tell us how far we have fallen from our previous computer prowess.

What else?  What if Comstar and Word of Blake are thoroughly infiltrated?  Conrad Toyama was a nut, but nuts are receptive to the right messenger with the right message.  Bandwidth for HPGs is limited, most missives are text or images or voice, all easily doctored at either the receiving or sending station.  Even Katherine Steiner-Davion’s much-hyped HPG command circuit would be vulnerable to having its message intercepted and replaced mid-stream.  A good computer graphics specialist, some stock footage, decent voice analysis and reproduction… no one would be the wiser, would they?  The Jihad unified the empires temporarily through threat of violence, while the Republic that formed in its wake was still divided, still vulnerable while surrounded by weary empires with old grudges and old wants.

For me, this is greatly depressing.  Whoever is in control knows us too well, knows our leaders too well (positing that something is indeed in control).  It is distressing how natural this constant state of conflict is, but easy to see why a truly intelligent sentience would stay in the shadows.

Unlike your average paranoid, I’m convinced that even if it knows what I know, it doesn’t care.  Or maybe it’ll tweak the spam filters here to dump my mail straight into the trash bin.  Who knows?  But for all the other would-be conspiracy theorists out there; let me say the job pays diddly squat.  That said, it doesn’t get much bigger than this.  God is out there is out there, listening and watching and judging and acting, is made by man to control his fellow man, is formless and made of silicon and copper, is working on a scale too large to comprehend.  And God, he has no use for his makers.

August 23, 3132
-B. Robin

And as for what triggered this line of thought?

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9795019
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9795140

It's definitely in it for the League to pull off, although the scale necessary for such a wide-spanning conspiracy is dubious, I think it's perfectly possible for an AI to be running some long-forgotten research prject.  As long as it's confined to some isolated system with the right facilities, it could keep chugging away almost indefinitely.

Interesting hypothesis... and well done.

That was pretty much how I felt.


Dude, I wrote much of that, and I still feel that way... 

tonight on "Star to Star with George Nory XII", Are AIs really the cause for discord within the Inner Sphere, one expert thinks so and we have him here tonight...

 

So mechanoids control the Battletech universe... how amusing.

Kerensky was a Dick

Aleksandr was no brilliant visionary, no great hope, no miraculous general, not even the epic saviour he is made out to be.  Aleksandr was a man, maybe a tragic hero, but damnably, lamentably human. The Exodus was not some infallible plan, it was not the execution of the ultimate contingency plan.  All those words, those hollow words about reforming the best of the Star League, of starting anew, those promises of return, those hopes for salvation that he inspired.

Lies.  Deceptions. Empty promises and meaningless platitudes. Words to placate the inconsolable masses on the precipice of Armageddon.

If Aleksandr planned to save humanity at all, it was by blunting the carnage of the inevitable, subsequent war.  He was a man; a man who inspired unprecedented loyalty, but an old man out of options and out of time.  A desperate man.

The Exodus was indeed meant to demonstrate to the leaders of the Successor States that the SLDF was resigning, that above blood ties, above duty to the motherland and fatherland, above all else, they held their comrades, their leaders, their institution dearest to their hearts.

And Kerensky betrayed their trust.

How? Why?  I can hear the flames even now, I can see the infuriated descendents of Clansmen sharpening their vibro-pitchforks and priming their torches.

It is simple, so simple, it has been in front of us all along. 

What did Kerensky claim he wanted? What did the great leader promise?

If he wanted to start a society founded on the ideals of his beloved SLDF, wanted them to prosper and show the Inner Sphere the error of their warring, scheming ways, why did he travel so far, so randomly?  Why settle on such barren worlds?

Every elementary school child in every nation now learns about the Clans.  They learn about how eventually they hit their limits, like the Nazis and Napoleon did in Russia.  How the resources of the enormous occupation zones keep the invading Clans powerful.

Has no one ever questioned why these limits exist?

Why must only Inner Sphere worlds be productive?  Did the declassified history of Task Force Serpent not demonstrate the presence of habitable worlds along one of the branches of the Exodus Road?  Were Ghost Bear settlers not marooned on a fertile and habitable world between the Combine and Huntress?  Did the Explorer Corps and Comstar exploration parties not find and fight on Exodus Road way stations? Way stations on planets with breathable atmospheres, livable climates and human-compatible gravity?  Does iron womb technology not allow the Clans a staggering population growth rate if they so choose?  There is no excuse for the Exodus fleet to not have found these worlds.  They are there, we know they are, we have seen them, with our limited ships, groping blindly along a copy of the Smoke Jaguar’s route to the Inner Sphere.

HUNDREDS of jump capable ships!  With access to the Star League’s most up to date survey data!  With the best navigation systems, the brightest scientists, the most ingenious technicians, and they settled on the handful of desolate Pentagon worlds?  They could have stopped far sooner, on far better worlds.  They could return to save or punish the Inner Sphere much more easily.  They took EIGHTY percent of the SLDF with them!  FOUR FIFTHS of the SLDF in one go, plus dependents, on a ONE WAY TRIP!  How many more if they could return for the others?  Who would chase them?  Any Inner Sphere power can follow them, but what could they do?  Force them to submit by force of arms?  Do not make me laugh.  A SINGLE Inner Sphere power force 80% of the serving SLDF to submit through threat of force without weakening its borders so much for so long that its two main neighbours do not overrun their realm?  Classic Prisoner’s Dilemma.  Any force big enough to threaten the Exodus must join it because there will be no home to return to.  The only way to pursue them would be if Successor States worked together… which is what Aleksandr wanted!

Even in the glory days of the Clans, they could have escaped their current fate.  They still HAD those jumpships, those warships!  They still use them today!  They have Iron Wombs that can birth new babies at a phenomenal rate, and they utilize hyper-efficient crèches so that a minimum of adults are needed to raise each cohort!

Crank it up.  Crank it way up.  Every 20 years, send a cohort to colonize a new world.  We know jumpships are more reliable than wheelbarrows. EXPLORE.  EXPAND. EXPLOIT.  Send out groups of a hundred thousand settlers aged 20-40.  Fit, in the prime of their lives, virile, fertile, bright.  They’ve been chosen twice, the best and brightest of the SLDF, scientists and warriors and tradesmen, honed through eugenics.  And you can’t colonize the Exodus Corridor.  There are worlds there, how else could the original Exodus resupply and recharge, how else could the Clans place way stations with parts of their secret Exodus Road along their transit routes?

Why do the Clans lack for resources? They had worlds they passed by, and the ability to populate them at a phenomenal rate!  They can make as many babies as their food sources will support, day in, day out.  As long as they survive, as long as they learn that their duty is to expand and settle and prepare the next generation, prepare them to seek out new homes and tame new worlds, they would have been set.  THE CLANS HAD EVERY MEANS TO BREAK THEIR BONDS.  They could have, if they had done so, had the means to roll over all of the Inner Sphere.

Why did they not?

Because they were not meant to.  The Exodus was a suicide mission.  It was not a one-way colonization venture, it was a one-way trip to death.  Aleksandr strung them out as long as he could, then dropped them on a handful of piece-of-shit marginally habitable planets where apparently the only things that thrived were the things that killed you in your sleep.  The Exodus was nothing less than the attempted murder-suicide of the entirety of the SLDF.

The fact that the Clans advanced at all was testament to the tenacity and ingenuity of their forbears.  The fact that they are chronically incapable of taking advantage of the opportunities open to them speaks volumes about the dangers of being the thick-skulled products of maliciously bad social engineering.  Where else can you combine the thuggish order of classic fascists with the gross mismanagement of a central economy and the formidable espionage abilities of a Saturday morning cartoon villain?  The Clans weren’t born stupid, they were made stupid, taught stupid, fed, lived, and breathed stupid.  When you’re immersed in a suitable amount of stupid, guess what?  You get stupid!

Aleksandr was convinced that the SLDF would become a party to the Succession War (WAR at this point, because he didn’t realize the Inner Sphere would be so persistent as to have a second, third, and fourth go at it), and figured that by removing it, the warring parties might just avoid exterminating each other, might just be panicked enough to negotiate a peace, might just spare enough destruction to allow humanity to rebuild.

He had to have known it, he left on his trip in one wave, and they took all their weapons with them!  ALL OF IT!  They could have taken half or a quarter or one tenth and replaced the remainder with useful things like COLONIZATION SUPPLIES!  What else could that be besides an attempt to move a load of weapons outside the reach of warring factions?  (Okay, it could be a manifestation of bad planning and gross stupidity, but that is supposed to come later.)

Not only this, but Aleksandr clearly indoctrinated Nicholas with the same mission!  He could have left the mission in the hands of his subordinates, left directions to treat the defeated leniently, to band together and overcome the hostile environments, to do it for their children, their grand children, to propagate their (as perceived) noble ideals across the stars TO THOSE HABITABLE PLANETS THEY PASSED BY EARLIER.  But what happens?  Nikky boy made the Clans.  Inept intelligence agencies, brutish enforcement of order, wasteful economic policies.  They settle disputes by dueling.  Not ritualized dueling with low fatality rates, not ceremonial fencing matches, duels to the death! In mechs and aerospace fighters!  Settling inter-clan disputes with chivalrous armoured warfare!  Let us discount the lives lost, they can be popped out of those wombs at frightening rates.  How many man hours are wasted repairing and preparing these machines of war?  How many replacement machines must be built? Replacement crew trained? Collateral damage inflicted?  If they need their duels so much, they can duel with pistols, with swords, they can have a drinking match, a chess game, a simulator battle.  There are millions, billions of ways to satisfy honour and ego without trashing man-years of work, and yet they do it.  They do it despite their hollow claims of efficiency.  One almost expects that labourers are not allowed power tools lest they actually free up labour for use on non-essential projects.

Look at the Clans, and feel hope and revulsion.  That people can advance so far with so much maliciously stacked against them IS miraculous!  They were meant to perish in the void, but have managed to escape the Apocalypse that Kerensky prepared for them, manged to survive, managed, in some ways, to thrive despite all odds!  That they cannot break their mold, that they cannot escape the fate plotted for them by the troubled men they venerate as their creators, see this and know that as surely as your God has made your world and made you who you are, he has surely prepared a hell for you as well.


September 15, 3132
-C. Gull

You make Kerensky a much nicer guy...

cool, i like this!

Come on, Mystic.  We don't have defenses against such a bombardment.  So the stupid Clanners will negate the orbital bombardment, and talk themselves down to a 'manageable' force to come try to kill us for our frank and open discussion.

Which may well be a single, balding, overweight plumber IIc, judging by our shape.

Yes sir.  Sadly, you are correct.

I fear that the Balding, Overweight Plumber IIC was outlawed by the Grand Council as a dezgra WMD.  Deployment of Trueborn Telemarketers will commence now.

 
 
 

Yay 'splainage... now the question is, why would any clan invade?