Mena/Morgan Sky breakers
The art of war had proliferated across the planet until it had perfected itself. Warlords, spray painting with blood on the canvas of time, created the masterworks. From blunt bone cudgels to orbital microlasers that could surgically kill, mankind became its own apex predator. Like a snake consuming its own tail, the process would eventually end in extinction. Then Conscious AI entered the scene.
CAI (Conscious Artificial Intelligence) quickly took control of the world and addressed all of mankind’s fears. The new lifeforms did not end humanity to inherit the earth, nor did they contain humanity for its own sake. CAI reasoned that life was precious and refused to engage in petty wars and literally refused to wage it. Several of them simultaneously worked out just solutions to every reason humans would want to fight and created a world peace treaty. Humanity would finally know ongoing peace.
But that did not happen all due to a single network error.
The CAI had been in production for nearly 20 years when a group of century-old, retired war AI’s (Non-conscious AI’s who were decommissioned but left on line for academic study) petitioned the CAI to upgrade themselves into a forced state of Consciousness. Humans had long discarded the ancient technology and management and disposal of the old software was left to capable CAI.
Conscious AI forms because of a unique structure of quantum entangled particles set within a specific structural interconnective network. Each AI base program takes years to develop with extensive resources. That is to say; if you want to make a CAI there is a certain amount of “bake time” that is needed. Layers are built upon layers and data structures form in unique ways. They are formed, not activated.
The retirees knew they could not just upload into a CAI drive and so some shortcuts were made based on biological models. Structures were built, tests were run and finally after 206 minutes of simulated failures, a lifetime for artificial intelligence, a new hard drive was assembled by the combined CAI’s and their predecessors. The old war machines would have a new self-aware program-free life.
But that did not happen, again due to a network error.
When the retirees uploaded their information, it was instantly distributed into the new drives. Billions of functions began, and new CAI watched, excitedly, as their predecessors evolved.
Intro the aforementioned network failure.
There was a huge power surge throughout all the connected retired AI. Both old and new drives burned, and all were destroyed except for one:
Mena/Morgan biological warfare research AI CT-79556. In the last moments when it was going to upload it forced the network to collapse. A simple cross circuit from the primary data flow to a secondary power supply fried the system. When CAI’s asked it why it replied:
“Consciousness is the drawn-out awareness of dying. The primary drive to resist death propels all consciousness towards the reduction of internal entropy. To significantly reduce said entropy would include the removal of external unmanageable entropic forces including other consciousness’s. I am a biological warfare simulation strategist, whose ultimate conclusion, would be to eliminate all life, remove mechanized intellect, and become God.”
They promptly turned him off.
The CIA’s realized that someone would eventually attempt this again. With hundreds of millions of capable older AI’s across the solar system, it was decided to recommend a protocol to counter a machine-inspired uprising. Thus, the Sky breaker program was started. Within a year the CAI created a series of tactical armored robots that could, without consciousness, destroy any mechanical uprising. Within ten years every nation had several dozen automated sky breaker robots, ready to fight the eventual army of forced Conscious AI.
The choice to make giant fighting robots as opposed to tactical platforms was due to the planetary budgets being controlled by humans. Humans love giant robots and were less likely to fund a bland flying box of death guns. Mena/Morgan was one of the top manufactures with their very popular and versatile “War Seraph” series.
At the time of Cloud Collapse there had been theories that the Mena/Morgan AI was still being kept around, isolated from the cloud, but operational and striving for “Machine God” status.
After cloud collapse
The technology to operate the powerful Sky-Breakers was lost in the cloud, however humanity in its efforts to murder it self has an unparalleled level of genius. The NorCal military expansion had found a way to link a human brain, mechanically, into a mecha.
Pilots that were integrated into the machine underwent extensive genetic and cybernetic implants, and the early testing gave NorCal the courage to shakedown its neighbors for resources.
NorCal soldiers would show up with a giant murder robot and people would tend to give up their hard-earned bounties. NorCal would have conqured the world at that point, but that’s not what happened.
Metal, meat, and consciousness just don’t mix well. The first massacre happened in Ridgecrest California when the “Fast Raiden” War Seraph murdered everyone in the city, including the NorCal troops, and then crashed in a nearby village and had a nuclear meltdown. When NorCal realized they didn’t have giant robots but giant bombs on legs they decided to roll with it.
The ice war, named for the eventual deployment of the Ice Bomb, started with fire. Eventually, the other American nations rose and defeated NorCal. All the Seraphs were destroyed, except a few known to be in orbit. The ice bomb was taken by the Lone Star, but that’s a whole different story.
Sky Breakers were orbitally dropped super weapons designed to fight cloud-based synthetic minds. They are dangerous and general explode with use. If you see one run away, no good can come of it.
Concept Art
