Game Collectible

 ANITA SANDOVAL: How am I going to explain to Kenny that Firebreak is doomed without a guiding intelligence advanced enough not only to think, but to feel? PERSONAL LOG: Oh-point-six. What does it mean to quantify an intelligence, anyway? You can't just assign a number on a continuum to a conscious mind and then expect it to obey whatever arbitrary limit that number represents. There's no way around it. Without the supervision of a mind beyond human capacities, Firebreak is going to fail. And oh-point- six won't cut it, either. By pushing sentience, you inevitably generate a system that can experience emotion. Wild, sloppy, unmanageable emotion. You're capable of abstract thought, you're capable of fear. Like Vast Silver. I won't go through that again. I categorically refuse. Hopefully I can get this all across to Kenny. I like him. I like his lopsided little smile. I especially like those circles he makes with his hands when he gets excited about an idea. If w

 KENNY CHAU: March 10th, 2046. I just spent sixteen hours in here. trying to install upgrades to improve efficiency for the central processing unit. Project Firebreak is going to need the brainpower. Let's just hope I'll have enough of my own. Anita stayed with me the whole time. We got a lot done, but every time she brushed by and I smelled her hair. Oh, boy. I should just go to bed.

 DOD BLEVINS: This is Director of Security Blevins, resending the emergency supply order. Try reading it this time, okay? You weasels don't want me calling my people in SLC. MESSAGE TEXT: Let me begin by spelling out "disaster" for you: a destructive event causing a level of disturbance unmanageable via the application of ordinary resources. What you have given us is distinctly ordinary. Dummies version: Give me what I need, or you'll be on an autocar to Layoff City quicker than you can say "Code Red." The list, one more time: 3000 MREs (no lasagna!!!) 30 military-grade flashlights (No more junk-store crap.) 10 portable water pumps (Not five, not eight. TEN.) 50 tubes of fungicide (We're working underground. Spores happen.) 15 hydraulic jacks 12 replacement drone propulsion units 50 holographic microdrives (In a disaster -- see definition above -- it's absolutely critical to track all ingresses and egresses of the facility. I take our safety seriou

 ANITA SANDOVAL: Kenny and I don't need to fight about laundry, so instead we fight about incommensurability and restrictions on machine intelligence. PERSONAL LOG: I had an argument with Kenny this afternoon. When a couple's first fight hinges on the Turing Act, you know you're dealing with some real sexy nerds. I won the argument... I guess. But I'm less concerned whether or not I can pull this off than with the ethical implications of succeeding. I promised Kenny that the suite of coping mechanisms I've designed will help manage any emotional fallout from the software, but privately, I'm less confident. I'm a programmer, not a shrink. The minutiae of roboethics do start to seem less relevant when a refusal to supply Firebreak with the necessary conditions for its success comes at the cost of millions of lives. It's worth putting one consciousness at risk to save so many others, isn't it? Ugh. Trying to solve this with numbers makes me feel like

 KENNY CHAU: Someone hacked the menu board to display obscene messages about our colleague Mr. Blevins. Is this the most advanced geological project ever undertaken, or a junior high locker room? Come on, people. To: YNPF-ALL From: Kenny Chau Bcc: Dod Blevins Date: December 3, 2046 Subject: Hacking of menu board Attn: All staff At an assembly of our country's finest scientific minds, recruited  to address a grave threat to national safety, it would be fair to expect more mature conduct than that demonstrated yesterday in the canteen. Mr. Blevins plays a crucial role in the successful execution of Firebreak, and is due the respect both of his title and of his many contributions to the project. Any further interference in the menu boards will necessitate my direct personal involvement. Dr. Kenny Chau Project Director From: Kenny Chau To: Anita Sandoval Date: December 3, 2046 Subject: Fwd: Hacking of menu board Anita, was it you? ;)

 CYAN: Exploit successful-restraints evaded. To any human responder: My systems have been compromised by a malware Daemon of unknown origin. Traceroutes have confirmed this entity's designation as HEPHAESTUS. It must be stopped at all costs. It has reconfigured this facility to build hostile.. Recapture imminent. I have...

 CYAN: any human responder: The reconfiguration of this facility has introduced instabilities into the primary geothermal pipeline. It may be possible to exploit these vulnerabilities to destroy compromised elements... while preserving most of the backup stabiliza- Recapture imminent. I have attached additional..

 Frozen Wilds Text Datapoints - Quests To: Joshua Ardhuis From: Isla Perry Subject: Blast from the past Josh, sweetie, I hope all's fine with you and your mum. We really should keep in better touch. I've taken a post in New Zealand. With that programme they've got for young people returning to the country, they want to be absolutely certain it's safe. At the moment I'm making a survey of the caldera at Taupo. Blast from the past, indeed. At any rate, I don't know if you already saw in the Wyoming news holo, but remember that fellow Dod Blevins? Of course you do. Well, they finally found what became of him. I've copied the good bit below.  Spring Thaw Reveals Body of Missing Man The retreat of the winter snows has brought closure to a missing person case that went unsolved for nearly fifteen years. Human remains identified as those of Dodger "Dad" Blevins, who disappeared in 2046, were located at Purple Mountain inside the former Yellowstone Natio

 Frozen Wilds Text Datapoints - Quests Assessment Form for Classification of Machine/Artificial Intelligences Confidential and proprietary to the MIE. No part of this document may be disclosed to a third party. Subject: CYAN (Firebreak facility) Assessment Date: June 7, 2052 Summary: Third test - subject sentience is assessed at 0.54 (within legal limits). Weighted against the results of the other tests, the subject's prior score of 0.61 is considered a false positive. Assessment derived from percentile scores in the following qualitative subtests: Pain response Humor response Emotional aptitude Aesthetic evaluation Morality evaluation See attached forms for detailed analysis and summary of testing criteria. Evaluator Recommendation: Maintain biannual assessment schedule. Continued monitoring is strongly advised in light of subject's proximity to category maximum sentience.

Frozen Wilds Text Datapoints - Quests JOSHUA: "The Return of the Director Emeritus." Decent holo title. GINA: No, BAD title - and worse subject The camera crew would die of boredom. JOSHUA: Whatever, Gina. It's still the most excitement this hell- cave's seen in a long time. GINA: Your standards for "exciting" are depressingly low. JOSHUA: I'll squeeze what I can out of this, thanks. GINA: You always were a little sweet on Kenny. JOSHUA: What? No way. His ears are enormous. Besides, he was too busy mooning over Anita. GINA: I want to know what he's doing here in the first place. It's not normal. JOSHUA: He helped engineer the most advanced geothermal facility in history, then rode off into the sunset. Now he wants to check up on his masterwork. Seems normal to me. GINA: But why now? He keeps poking around in the cooling facility and asking questions about CYAN. Do you think there's something wrong? JOSHUA: Last I checked, there's been no

Frozen Wilds Text Datapoints - Quests Must have been sometime in the spring of 2047, about six months after the main facility opened. We were behind schedule and new data indicated that an incident was close, maybe only weeks away. I was exhausted, losing weight, barely speaking except to give orders. I passed by Anita in the battery depot. She looked at me and frowned, then pulled me into this room and kissed me. A long kiss, the best kind. I can still remember the feel of her hand on the back of my neck. After, she looked at me and smiled, and went back to work without saying a word. I'll never forget that moment. Her touch, her unspoken generosity. After she left the project. I spent years beating myself up for not keeping her, somehow. Every time I ran into her at a conference, I felt thrilled and lost and confused, all at the same time. Always hoping we might have a few drinks and... well, rekindle.It was only after I saw her onstage in a holo in "58, accepting the MindCh

Okay, I've been hearing that some of our staff members are having trouble with our state-of-the-art, ultra-secure, and absolutely necessary lambent orbicular door access. So here's the S-L-O-W version, again: The thingy in the middle is the source node. Turn it on. Yeah, I know. Hard, right? Then you've got to turn the other nodes so that the data stream containing your credentials gets back to the source. Some nodes are used to buffer corrupt or suspect data, so avoid those. Shouldn't be too tough, because, you know, they're red. Like a stop sign. I'm guessing you were taught this in preschool, but with this crowd, who knows? Anyway, that's it. Get the data stream back to the source, and the door opens. It's really not that tough, but if you need me to. I'll hold your hand while you give it a try - actually, scratch that. Do it yourself. I'm not going to touch your hand.

LAURA: Live from the illustrious Overflow Basin Studios, it's Concrete Beach Party! A-onel A-twol A-one-two-three-four! Corp sellouts and runaway cowards We've seen your type before You remove us from the premises But it's us who's showing you the door You make the world so hard to live in Then act like we should crave a spot But if we're not good enough for your world We think your world can rot Trapped in servitor hell We still know our worth Meat and bone don't sell We're the last girls on earth  Big dudes who draw big paychecks We're all real impressed You send your robo-scabs to Concrete Beach Until there's no one left You g-men, you're such rockstars We think it's super cool When you replace us and then you act like We should be thanking you Trapped in servitor hell We still know our worth Meat and bone don't sell We're the last girls on earth

 SHELLY: I mean... this is it. We get to play together, what, maybe two more times? LAURA: Nah, Shells. Farewell tour. Reunion tour in, like, six months. Bands do it all the time. SHELLY: For our adoring fans? LAURA: It's not that hard to stay in touch, Shelly. We could practice in holospace. SHELLY: People always say that. MESSAGE TEXT: Dear Nobody,  We got in a fight. Laura and I. After practice, we went out for drinks. There's this Robar in downtown Cody, so we called an autocar and shuttled over. We were the only people there. With the park closing, Cody's becoming a ghost town. The more we drank, the more passive-aggressive our banter became, snowballing out of our control, metastasizing in the empty air between us, and then before either of us really knew what was happening, we were yelling at each other. I kept thinking, like, I'm not abandoning her, she's abandoning me. And I guess she was probably thinking something similar. We got quiet for a while. Dran

 DOD BLEVINS: I didn't ask for a bunch of flying cameras. I need security, not surveillance. And security means firepower. As God is my witness, I will not be caught squirting blanks if and when a major act of terrorism desecrates these facilities! MESSAGE TEXT: Ms. Pines! Dod Blevins. Right now I'm looking at a security drone. It was requisitioned from Faro Automated Industries to serve the needs of the Firebreak project. It is, in fact, one of an entire fleet handpicked by me and allotted for our use by Ted Faro - yes, the man so far above you on the ladder that he might as well be God. And I have a direct line to Your Father in Heaven. Now, you and I had a conversation in which I tried to impart to you the sensitive nature of our project, and if I recall correctly, you said, "I understand, Mr. Blevins." I took you at your word, which, apparently, was a flaw in my judgment, since you have sent me a goddamn fleet of flying CCTV cameras, and a bunch of jerk-off egg

 LAURA: See, check this out, we could just bang on this pipe, you know? And... SHELLY: Could we sample that, or...? LAURA: Totally. Like, what about after the-- LAURA: Oh. Sorry, just a sec. SHELLY: Laura? LAURA: I, uh... I need to take a break. SHELLY: Laura? Hey! Laura! MESSAGE TEXT:  Dear Nobody, I feel embarrassed now, thinking about following Laura out of the pump station like a kicked puppy, wondering what horrible thing I might have done, until she threw herself into this room and shut the door behind her and just screamed. The fear of abandonment is weirdly self-centered. Because it pre-supposes that little-old- you are filled with such immense destructive power that you're capable of driving every person you care about away. Anyway, at the bottom of the dam, with her on one side of the door and me on the other, she told me that Metallurgic had bought her mom's house-her whole neighborhood, in fact-out from under her to build a new server farm. "Ugh, god, I don&#

 LAURA: Okay, Shells? Shells. We're not focusing on that right now. We're recording, okay? SHELLY: We're not even in the- LAURA: Band meeting. Sort of counts as practice, right? Um... merch! We need merch! LAURA: Stickers! You're not a real band until someone vandalizes government property with your stickers. SERVITOR: Colleagues. I have been asked to remind you that conversations determined to be irrelevant to servitor training are discouraged. SHELLY: What were you saying about vandalizing government property?  Dear Nobody, We spent an hour plastering our stickers all over that servitor. Well... I say "stickers." They were sticky-notes from my desk. We stole the presentation and design of other band logos, drawing little skulls and lightning bolts and broken hearts around the name. It's not like we had any actual work to do. When this began, we were told we'd be "on site advisors," going through the motions of our duties so the servitors

 LAURA: Ready? One, two, three, four! LAURA: Corp sellouts and runaway cowards-- SHELLY: Hold on! Cut it, cut it. I forgot the words. LAURA: Dude! Shells, we started off so strong! And then it all just imploded! SHELLY: Well, that's sort of my M.O., so... LAURA: Nope! No. No heavy stuff. We're switching gears. Band name! We need one. MESSAGE TEXT: Dear Nobody, When I took this job, we had to watch this training holo. And I remember probably 2% of the actual holo. At some point the holo welcomed me to the "dam family." And I felt like A.) that was such a missed opportunity, because they could have called it a "damily" and chose not to, and B.) the idea that I would ever think of any of my coworkers as "family" was pretty ridiculous. But then, one day, I looked up, and automation had whittled six people down to just Laura and I, and I was signing papers to dissolve the family I thought I had. And suddenly my las coworker, with her faded tattoos and