Attn: Unity Prime. An inquiry concerning technomancy

Enclosed is a standard videomessage to Prime.

"Prime, Grand Admiral Layne Yr managed to develop an interesting way to teach me the fundamentals of shadow leyas: she parked one of her people in orbit above Habitat III, and we are now going over some of the basic concepts. I am developing an understanding of the material far faster than I expected, and I am quite interested in expanding my new abilities. If you could send someone into orbit above Habitat III to teach me the basics of technomancy, assuming that such an idea is feasible for that kind of knowledge, I would greatly appreciate it."

Michael,

I'm sorry about my absence, I was spending considerable time in the Via station. At any rate, I strongly recommend you get a handle on general Leyas usage first before attempting Technomancy. As a discipline it requires an advanced understanding of fundamental entropic realignments which can only come with a very strong grasp on other disciplines.

This aside, how go your projects on developing Pathogens? We are going to be initiating an extermination campaign against E-strain tribes, and I would appreciate it if you could look over the neurotoxin suite I have prepared for the engagement. Your feedback, as always, would be welcome.

Prime

A reply was sent back in moments.

"Understood, though a bit disappointing. Hopefully I should progress to that point swiftly; I'm told I am learning much faster than normal. Hardly a surprise, but still.

And... I didn't realize I should really be developing any pathogens. Ar'yay threatened me with annihilation, so I dabbled a bit there, but I haven't been really doing much beyond that point. If you can provide me with some tissue samples of whatever you're trying to kill, I should be able to work something out.

I can certainly manage that quickly. I'll give it a few cycles and try to refine stuff a bit. Why do you want something new? It seems to be working quite well currently."

Michael,

I do hate to disappoint, but perhaps I can offer a consolation of sorts. If you are interested, I have a few joint projects that I would like to perform with you on CV Beta-4. It would involve the two of us spreading our horizions a bit, but I think the results could be excellent.

I've noticed that you now have singular control over the planet CV Beta-4. This is good, but from what I've surmised your systems work best when then are exposed to factors which encourage adaptation. In my personal experiments, I have been examining the creation of living computer viruses, modeling them on living and evolving systems. I was actually inspired to do this, in part, through your work. Further, the Neurotoxin cocktails that I've put together were based on a closed-evolution system to optimize a cocktail of compounds.

I would like to build complexes on your planet of CV Beta 4 in order to improve our mutual evolutionary optimization protocols. These complexes would do a few important things, which can be broken down into research components.

1) Extermination protocol optimization: You asked me once why I wanted a second opinion on my E-Strain extermination protocols, and the answer is simple. While they work now, they will as a species adapt. Thus, it will be important for us to stay one step ahead. The CV Beta 4 lab complexes could produce as many organisms as required on site for us to optimize new ways to efficiently eradicate them. This will let us stay one step ahead of the Nelif, Quall, and E-Strain attempts to evolve ahead of our protocols. These studies may also provide additional fundamental biological learnings which can have countless uses.

2) Computational pathogen/defense systems: Your systems can likely develop a machiene-neuron connection at a fast rate. Through the research complexes, which will be directly linked to your systems, we can each direct the evolution of electronic pathogens and counter-pathogens in a controlled and easy to observe environment. Considering the time-distortion on CV Beta 4, and the speed at which we both work, this should give us unparalleled abilities on this front. Further, you can use the complexes communication projection capacity to use our viruses in defense of your planet.

3) Biological pathogen systems: In the controlled and easy to study environment of the complexes, we can also wage biological warfare on CV Beta 4. You and I both could use the extensive biologics synthesizers to create new biologic threats of all sorts to introduce into your perfected habitat. It should be interesting, at the very least, to see what survives and to see how your systems adapt to our attacks.

Let me know what you think. If you don't think the Complexes could survive on the planet surface, we could try having the bulk of the complexes in orbit, connected to the surface by space-elevators.

I hope all is well and look forward to the creation of more excellent works.

Prime

Enclosed is a standard video message.

"Prime, I've been thinking over some of your proposals, and I have a few concerns.

The first is that you do not need to worry about mutation providing resistance to the neurotoxins, at least without an outside force directing it. The fact that multiple drugs are used makes it virtually impossible to generate any sort of resistant profile, so long as the drugs operate on different pathways. The only real concern is that these parties take what has been used in the past and try to develop resistances for that, and again, that shouldn't be a significant threat so long as more toxin variety is used.

After all, in order to keep ahead, we'd have to know in advance what they change themselves to, and we simply can't do that under the given circumstances. It's a nice thought, but I'm not entirely sure how it would work.

Secondly, I am not comfortable trying to develop any sort of interface to the network. Such an event would likely take a significant amount of research, and in the end I would expose myself to significant threats outside my control. Now, if you wanted to use my systems for simply number-crunching in order to advance evolutionary algorithms you've developed, I'd be more than happy to help.

Finally, my ecosystem does that to itself on a continual basis. I don't have any real objections to you adding a stronger evolutionary pressure, but it is difficult to say how advantageous it will really be. After all, even as it mutates itself to become more resistant to your attacks, those mutations will also introduce more vulnerabilities. We'll be switching out one for another.

Finally, I'd much prefer to have the complexes in orbit. It simply makes things much easier. Elevators are not the best option, however, given that the cabling would likely become overgrown quickly. I am not entirely sure what the best option would be in this case.

Great care would have to be taken to keep things low-key, however. I do not want too much attention drawn there if it can be avoided, for obvious reasons."