Well, Renova 2nd, 3065 is gonna be another date on Copper 9 that lives in infamy… man, still can't believe fucking grade school made me memorize and regurgitate FDR's "Date that will live in Infamy" speech three fucking years in a row. I mean, it's an admittedly good speech, but still…
Anyways, to stay on topic for the 4th Wall audience that may or may not be looking at my first person POV as I stare at a ceiling with this document on my HUD, Copper 9 continues to horrify me in new and exciting ways! So, Outpost 12 is a place that was cold AF before the Core Collapse, the city above it being called Neo Juneau for the simple reason that the entire region was basically Alaska in Spaaaaaaaaace in terms of climate. As a quick aside, the continent of Minora is actually pretty cool-- yeah, the southern half of the continent is basically Alaska, but the northern coast was home to a vast temperate rainforest, that even after the careful introduction of Earth-native plants, was still dominated by giant ferns that looked like they came straight out of the Jurassic period, some of them reaching heights as high as 25 meters… or over 82 feet. Which is impressive for them, all things considered. Copper 9 was just coming out of an ice-age when humanity rolled up a few centuries back. Those ferns evolved fast to get where they were, and they adapted really well as humanity terraformed the planet from what would be a mountainous arctic world to the equivalent of an alpine world in Stellaris. While Neo Cascadia lies under the non-existent mercies of one of the better DD teams on the planet, Outpost 11 managed to raid seed and spore vaults in the wake of the Core Collapse but before the MD planetfall, and in vast, hermetically sealed, climate controlled underground chambers with their own atmospheres, entire carefully preserved and maintained acres of that region's ecosystems still survive. Definitely wanna visit Outpost 11 some day, and see the last greenery on Copper 9 in-person…
But I'm getting off-topic in an effort to distract myself from some of my deepest seated fears. Philosophically speaking, I reject the concepts of destiny and determinism, supporting free will enough to be willing to literally get into a philosophical debate with a Fae over it… I feel like I actually did that in my first life, but can't recall it. Probably buried in the parts of my memories that are still corrupted. And yeah, I could have Uzi try to fix that… but I am terrified of anything tampering with my mind or memories. It's not that I don't trust my sister, I just… I can't. I can't do it. The thought of it scares me too much. But I'm digressing again. Today, we got really disturbing news from Outpost 12, before they cut communications with the rest of the Outposts entirely. One of the MDs in Neo Juneau figured out how to hack into and basically mind control Workers, a concept of a lack of agency that horrifies me on a fundamental level. They evidently used a sleeper agent they hacked to breach Outpost 12, open the Doors, and fire off a massive EMP that let the team kidnap thousands of disabled workers to add to their Spire. While Outpost 12 took back the breached areas without a shot fired after the MDs left in the wake of the thousands they took, about forty-thousands drones that were living on the far side of the Outpost from the Doors there panicked and manufactured ten massive Khan-Grade-armored landcrawlers, before they up and fled the Bunker for Outpost 11. And while I'd normally say that doing so seemed like a stupid decision, it turns out they actually chose a smart course of action. And that's because the last, chilling report from Outpost 12 was that the MDs have more sleeper agents among them that are still kidnapping people, and they decided to destroy their own quantum comms before the MDs could use their mind-controlled agents to potentially breach the wider internet between all the Outposts, while deleting all data on how to build more. Just… that's fucking terrifying to contemplate, as fear and paranoia run rampant across Outpost 12 as no one knows who they can or can't trust, people disappearing as they get kidnapped for the MD team there. The workers of Outpost 12 have my utmost sympathies as my thoughts and hopes go out to them.
But… moving on to lighter topics, I thought I'd also elaborate on how quantum data transfer works, since I've put a lot more work into making sure it works as it should with everyone's black boxes in the background of all my other escapades. I've touched on it before, with me setting things up that I can transfer myself-- properly transfer my consciousness wirelessly out of my body after setting my CF cell to go nuclear --but again, I wanted to explain how it works a bit better. Basically, the conundrum of creating a backup of myself via conventional computer science runs into a simple issue: yes, they could have identical memories and an identical personality to me, but they're not me. If I die, I'm still dead, even if another me can take the helm, it's still a different me, even if he's identical to me in every other way that matters. Which is quite the problem, as while black-boxes are definitely a good step, I'd prefer even more means for my friends and I to be able to cheat death as we plan and will eventually attempt deicide.
Enter quantum mechanics being utter bullshit in the 3000s.
In a nutshell, I've made quantum backups for everyone in the group. Right now, every drone in the group exists in two places at the same time, with quantum computing allowing us to store an infinitesimally small part of ourselves in the quantum PC in Vault 3 (yes, the extra security layer is worth people potentially learning where it is in a worst case scenario). We connected to the PC with a wired connection and left an incredibly small part of ourselves in it. 99.9999 repeating percent of us is still in our black boxes, with the remainder still bound to the PC via quantum entanglement. This creates a bit of an interesting scenario where due to the quantum, sub-atomic connection, we can bypass conventional hardware limitations and again, exist in two places at once. Think of it like quantum entanglement comms in Mass Effect, where atoms are connected together despite being physically separated, and that connection of atoms between two QEC relays allows instant communications at any distance between both sides. Because both ends of the QEC exist in the same place at the same time despite being in two different places. In this case, a part of us so small it's all but non-existent (but, importantly, still does exist) is in Vault 3 at any given moment. As long as we're in range of the quantum PC via the relay network I've set up and then set up again with an extra two layers of redundancy, our existence is stretched across the (to borrow a term from "Murder Drones: Integration" by AxisRogue) Absolute Fabric of Reality like a rubber band, with almost all of us "tethered" to one end of the band, while the other, infinitely small part of us is "tethered" to the PC in Vault 3. Should a scenario occur where a black-box is likely to be destroyed, with one command, we can "let go" of our end of the rubber-band, and "snap back" to the PC at literally FTL speeds. By removing one of those "tethers" the universe suddenly realizes we're only supposed to exist in one spot, and it corrects that instantaneously, bypassing all conventional physics to do so. Even in the event where we can't send the command, and a black-box is destroyed outright, as long as we're still in range, when the "tether" on one end of the "stretched rubber band" is removed via destruction of the black-box, rather than, you know… dying, we "snap back" to the quantum PC in Vault 3 instead, as rather than saying that the data that makes us exist is gone, the universe suddenly says, "Wait a fucking second, you're supposed to be here, let me fix that real quick."
Uzi and I spent months after my decapitation making sure this worked and setting it up for everyone. And after wiping the trips to Vault 3 from their memories, everyone now basically has a phylactery. Yeah, even if Uzi, Yeva, or Dolly's Cores get destroyed, as long as the Solver doesn't fucking eat them, they would also snap back to Vault 3. Of course, I built a second quantum PC in Vault 3 solely to act as the safety net for our Solver Drones. Don't wanna risk contamination from their code. Best case scenario, the PC starts growing meat until it spits my sister, Dolly, or Yeva out as a core. Worst case scenario, if any of the rest of us were connected, we'd get the Solver too.
But yeah. Fuck you, Destiny!
Ain't no one dying on my godsdamned watch!
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A/N: Yep, some concerning developments in Outpost 12, as well as a bit of lore for Outpost 11 and the continent of Minora in general. And yes, Joe would be the kind of guy to take advantage of a better understanding of quantum physics to create a second means to cheat death to apply to his friends and family.