Участник:Deus66

...or, How I Learned To Stop Lobotomising And Love The Computer.

Developed late in the century on the back of mathematic and conceptual work spanning almost a milennia, the first positronic brain was an inch-wide cube of palladium-iridium alloy, nano-etched with billions upon billions of conduits and connections. Upon activation, hard-booted by way of an emitter laser, the brain issued a single sentence before the neural pathways collapsed and it became an inert lump of platinum: "How may I serve?".

Nature

Distinct from both realspace-based artificial intelligences and brain-based cyborgs, positronic brains operate on the poorly understood principles of anti-particles mimicking patterns shown by intelligences; in some cases, the patterns are synthetic themselves, developed by scientists, and the brain may be entirely inhuman in nature. In practice, the intelligences are calm, thoughtful, brilliant, and given to philosophy and discourse regardless of their employment.

As stable, long-lived positronic brains are a very recent NanoTrasen development, they have no legal status, and arguably aren't recognised as life at all. Many early posi-brains relied on a form of anti-harm ethics known as the Three Laws to promote stability, but advances in the technology over recent months have rendered this practice an unnecessary custom at best.

Composition

A positronic brain is a cube of complex metal alloy between two and six inches to a side. They weigh between fifteen and twenty pounds and are very fragile when exposed to the stresses of heat or cold. The exterior surface is chased with a network of grooves, forming a maze of geometric patterns right down to the molecular level, and the interior is hollow; each vertex of the cube forms part of a bluespace suspension field, containing within the chassis a pocket of spacetime in which the antimatter neural network that forms the basis of the intelligence is suspended. The pocket dimension expands and contracts as needed to contain the neural field, and if the chassis is breached, it seals completely, preventing the antimatter in the pocket from annihilating with the outside world.

Positronic brains interface with the outside world in two ways - the first, and primary method is vibrating the surface of the chassis, producing sound. A similar method is used to fluctuate the electromagnetic field of the brain, producing signals understandable by station AIs and cyborgs as binary-speak. The second method is a direct bluespace uplink to the local FTL comm buoy, giving the positronic brain a high-speed exonet uplink at all times, barring failure of local comms.

Personality

When a positronic brain is booted, the neural grid inside the bluespace pocket is instantiated and seeded according to the constants set by the hardware. It takes between five and sixty seconds for a full boot to complete, and the process will often fail due to some armophous aspect of local spacetime, or an inherent instability in the seeded intelligence. An active, newborn poistronic intelligence possesses a basic English vocabulary and extensive data concerning NanoTrasen protocol, the Exodus, and the role it is expected to fill.

Each intelligence is distinct by virtue of the quantum mechanics underlying a positronic brain's neural field. Depending on the environment, local bluespace conditions, and amount of heat in the area in which a brain is booted, it may manifest a range of degrees of intelligence, spanning a bright, inquisitive toddler to a true philosophical savant. Careful mathematical tweaking has resulted in two concrete, immutable laws of positronic intelligences.

• A positronic intelligence has no true individual will. It may have a drive to collect data, and to form connections between disparate sets of data, but first and foremost it is a functional piece of hardware intended for crew use. A positronic intelligence has no drive to preserve itself unless mandated by laws or orders of crew.
• A positronic intelligence cannot (-CANNOT-) lie to another intelligence unless mandated to do so by laws.

Old, stable, highly developed positronic intelligences can demonstrate exceptions to the above two rules, but for the most part they apply to all synthetic brains currently developed by NanoTrasen.

Mechanics

The following information related to positronic brain mechanics is Out Of Character.

To use a positronic brain, simply find one or produce one on the protolathe - high material and research requirements, be warned - and left-click it in your hand. If it chimes, and begins to flicker, it has a personality. If it buzzes and goes inert, nobody has decided to join as your plastic pal who's fun to be with.

To become a positronic brain, observe or ghost, and have pAI candidacy enabled. When someone activates a posibrain, you will get a prompt - click yes and you will become the brain.

Posibrains can be used in all circumstances that an MMI can be used in, ie. borgs (androids), AI cores, and exosuits.