Not too long after getting the TNE books (like, not too long after they were published), I noticed some ominous text saying something about, while vampires seem to be decreasing in numbers, it could actually mean a dramatic upswing in their numbers.
And I thought "How could that happen?"
And this is basically what I came up with:
A more mature virus takes control of a construction facility. Say maybe a Depot (but I didn't go that far). it would have to be far from Core, and after several mutations to make the thing a lot less insane. This gives it the ability to make things. Ships, tanks, warbots, fluffy electronic bunnies, whatever it wants. It goes and makes enough defenses to clear out the suidical and really crazy viruses floating all over the place, shooting themselves up.
Now that it's fairly safe, it decides to do research. It researches anything and everything. it's a computer. It doesn't sleep. It has endless patience, and can afford to do an experiment 1,000,000 times, making only minor changes. It can do brute force. Who says it can't think either? Thinking allows it to see shortcuts, kind of like what WE do. Brute force research isn't always necessary, but it does allow the thing to discover stuff WE wouldn't think of.
It's going to work on expanding its own processing capacity. Who doesn't want to think better, more clearly? It can build computer brains, infect them, and parallel-process them into a more powerful brain. It can build bigger and better brains, and simply transfer into them. It's got nearly unlimited intelligence expansion possibilities; it's just a matter of time.
70 years is a long time, especially in the life cycles of THESE critters. What kinds of things could such a machine do in that time? What would it have researched and gotten the most results from? What else would it be trying to learn? Would it be able to discover important things that have eluded scientists for years?
The secret to misjumps, perhaps? There IS a way to get more oomf out of a jump drive, you know. It is possible for a J1 drive (and J1's-worth of fuel) to perform a J36. All it would take is a lot of experimentation and time to find out how to get it to do this more reliably. The virus could then go pretty much anywhere really really quick. It has a much smaller jump drive than anyone else, so it can pack a lot more firepower. Kind of like an SDB or Battle Rider, but with a small J-drive.
New materials? Coherent Superdense, perhaps? With much of the Imperium's highest-tech worlds at TL16 (actually, if you read the descriptions right, those TL-G worlds have a MINIMUM TL of 16), it's not unreasonable to suppose that the Imperium wasn't that far from making such discoveries themselves.
New power-generation methods? Reread the above paragraph, and replace Coherent Superdense with Antimatter Reactor.
Better electronic fluffy bunnies? Oh, definitely! They'd be so realistic in their behavior, you'd swear they were alive, but keeping them away from your PC is generally a nuisance....
So, is this a far-fetched idea, or do you have a list of things that might become possible? (And what happens to human-space when it meets this high-tech juggernaut?)
And I thought "How could that happen?"
And this is basically what I came up with:
A more mature virus takes control of a construction facility. Say maybe a Depot (but I didn't go that far). it would have to be far from Core, and after several mutations to make the thing a lot less insane. This gives it the ability to make things. Ships, tanks, warbots, fluffy electronic bunnies, whatever it wants. It goes and makes enough defenses to clear out the suidical and really crazy viruses floating all over the place, shooting themselves up.
Now that it's fairly safe, it decides to do research. It researches anything and everything. it's a computer. It doesn't sleep. It has endless patience, and can afford to do an experiment 1,000,000 times, making only minor changes. It can do brute force. Who says it can't think either? Thinking allows it to see shortcuts, kind of like what WE do. Brute force research isn't always necessary, but it does allow the thing to discover stuff WE wouldn't think of.
It's going to work on expanding its own processing capacity. Who doesn't want to think better, more clearly? It can build computer brains, infect them, and parallel-process them into a more powerful brain. It can build bigger and better brains, and simply transfer into them. It's got nearly unlimited intelligence expansion possibilities; it's just a matter of time.
70 years is a long time, especially in the life cycles of THESE critters. What kinds of things could such a machine do in that time? What would it have researched and gotten the most results from? What else would it be trying to learn? Would it be able to discover important things that have eluded scientists for years?
The secret to misjumps, perhaps? There IS a way to get more oomf out of a jump drive, you know. It is possible for a J1 drive (and J1's-worth of fuel) to perform a J36. All it would take is a lot of experimentation and time to find out how to get it to do this more reliably. The virus could then go pretty much anywhere really really quick. It has a much smaller jump drive than anyone else, so it can pack a lot more firepower. Kind of like an SDB or Battle Rider, but with a small J-drive.
New materials? Coherent Superdense, perhaps? With much of the Imperium's highest-tech worlds at TL16 (actually, if you read the descriptions right, those TL-G worlds have a MINIMUM TL of 16), it's not unreasonable to suppose that the Imperium wasn't that far from making such discoveries themselves.
New power-generation methods? Reread the above paragraph, and replace Coherent Superdense with Antimatter Reactor.
Better electronic fluffy bunnies? Oh, definitely! They'd be so realistic in their behavior, you'd swear they were alive, but keeping them away from your PC is generally a nuisance....
So, is this a far-fetched idea, or do you have a list of things that might become possible? (And what happens to human-space when it meets this high-tech juggernaut?)