My concern about the weight was more whether Ingrid would still be able to pass for a normal human for her size after all the "modules" are installed, as I was under the impression that might be an objective for her creator.
Well she is a new thing, an AI on the level of humans and she comes on the eve of the attack of the Virus, so in many ways she is like a Traveller version of a Cylon as seen on shows like Caprica. If someone in some laboratory can cook up the Virus, something like her can be made as well. In another thread I brought up the idea of a Jumpgate to the Andromeda Galaxy, it has been in operation since 1104 and it is now 1130.
There has been a rebellion going on within the Imperium starting with the assassination of Emperor Strephron, and like many wars have done, this war has advanced the tech level, the technical maximum from 15 to 16, the Virus itself being a tech level 16 technology. At first the Andromeda colony started out as a penal colony to remove troublesome dissidents, pirates, and criminals, the Imperium also sent some volunteers, scientists and engineers to build the return jumpgate, it is quite an enterprise to build a jumpgate that can cross intergalactic distances, and lately a bunch or war refugees have been signing up to go to the colony, and recently the Sol System and the gate have fallen back into the hands of the Solomani Confederation, a government of sorts has been set up on the other side, by Solomani and Imperials, and many war refugees, some of the last people to use the gate have been Ingrid and her associates, and at some point the virus takes over. Maybe travels through the gate but is stopped with the combined effort of the colonists there and is defeated, the gate is shut though, maybe it was destroyed, nobody knows, but people had stopped coming across. The colonies are cut off and they must fend for themselves with what they have.
Ingrid and a few other AIs are viewed with a great deal of suspicion, and so they wish to keep a low profile. Ingrid wishes to keep a low profile but also wants to keep a few aces up her sleeve, she is a former pirate after all, she might have to be one again sometime in the near future, so she keeps her options open. The Andromeda galaxy has a facsimile of Earth's solar system called the Helios-Gaia star system named after the star and mainworld, this one has five gas Giants and four terrestrial planets similar to their Solar System counterparts, they are Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaia, Selene, Ares, Zeus, Hera, Kronos, Uranos, Poseidon, and an iceball named Hades. Zeus, Hera, Kronos, Uranos, and Poseidon are gas Giants, three large ones and two small ones in that order.
There are other races here, these would include Fraal. Mechanics, TSA, We'ren, plus some old races that traveled through the gate to get here. The Fraal have psionic talents, telepathy is very common among them, the colonists carried their suspicion of psionic Individuals with them so they give the Fraal a wide berth. Gaia has it's own native humans that were contacted while still in the stone age 26 years ago, tech level has been advanced by the colonists since and cities were built of Gaia, not very impressive ones but cities none the less, they also introduced the jump drive to the sector, which none of the native races had before. There are a lot of political tensions between the natives and the colonists, and the introduction of the Jump drive has changed things quite a bit and introduced a number of flashpoints as Interstellar nations have expanded beyond their star systems.
