Gentlemen,
Let me begin with a recap.
First, we want to answer the Virus Question without resorting to additional deus ex machinas. Virus was a blatant editorial fait accompli and suffered greatly for that. The answer to Virus shouldn't make the same mistake.
Two deus ex machinas do not cancel each other out. All deus ex machinas do is imbue a sense of fatalism in the Hobby; why play the game if the Line Editors can change everything on a whim?
Second, we want to avoid using any handwaves in our answer to the Virus Question. Handwaves are canonical 'facts' that are hopefully applied retroactively to plug holes, add precision, and address problems. They must be carefully crafted so that they address their target and nothing else. The problem with nearly all handwaves is either that they are not or cannot be so carefully crafted. They also tend to affect areas that weren't planned for at all. So, if at all possible, 'No New Handwaves'. If that isn't possible then, 'Only Tiny Handwaves'.
Third, I believe we can answer the Virus Question using a motief already found in Traveller; the change of perspective. We can look at the canonical facts from a new angle and draw different conclusions from them.
Next, let me quickly review my 'beliefs' regarding Virus;
Virus is natural, not artifical - It was bred from a previously existing sophont species and not built from the 'ground up'.
The best carbon-biological analog for Virus is that of a prion - Virus in its transmission state is not sentient and cannot be classified as alive either. At best, it only has the potential for sentience and life. It is a prion that 'may' or 'could' grow into something 'better'.
Virus is a genus, not a species - Different Viral strains are as diverse as different biological species.
Virus is not intrinsically sentient - Viral sentience depedns wholly on the capabilities of its host, as are nearly all of Virus' other abilities. Without a host, Virus is cybernetic prion - all it can due is 'infect' and hope for the best. In the prion state, Virus cannot choose what to infect. (Although its progenitor may have chose for it).
Virus is not a chip - Virus can eschew any physical body - IF it wishes to 'drop' back into the prion-like state. Virus can go 'virtual'. The analogy is weak and too much has been read into it, but Virus is more akin to an operating system than a chip.
Virus is a living weapon - Orignally, Virus was a living, idiot-savant, cybernetic, weapon purposely bred from a fully sentient cybernetic sophont. Virus was the result of an eugenics program or in other words - directed evolution. Once Virus was released, its evolution was far different.
Enough of the recaps. Let's take the Whipsnadian Way-Back Machine to the last years of the 15th Century and northern Italy...
In 1494, Charles VIII King of France, took an army over the Alps into Italy. He also took history's first seige train. Artillery had been used before; either small bell-shaped cannon that threw arrows and bolts or huge stone-firing bombards that were actually cast in place during a seige. Charles' artillery was different. It was very mobile by the standards of the day and he had quite a lot of it.
Nothing in northern Italy could stand up to him. The walls of the various Renaissance city-states and duchies; fortifications that had laughed at catpults and trebuchets for centuries, tumbled down in days. The seige train also dominated any battlefield, troops sent against the French king were slaughtered. Charles and his army seemed unstoppable. Then they ran into something which killed so many of them that Charles had to retreat back over the Alps in early 1495 after losing a battle in which he was badly outnumbered. The king didn't even have enough artillerymen to operate his previously formidable seige train. What had happened?
Syphilis happened.
Now just wait one minute, you repulsive, rotund reprobate, the reader interjects. Syphilis? That takes years to kill, decades even. Lord Randolph Churchill; Winston's father, live for close to 20 years after being diagnosed, and that without any real medical treatment. Sure, syphilis kills, but it kills slowly.
It sure does, this corpulent correspondant replies, syphilis kills over years. Or, more accurately, the strains of syphilis we're familiar in modern times kill over years. But what was syphilis like in 1494? I can tell you what it was like in 1494; syphilis was a rapid killer taking only days or weeks to run the course between infection and death. Only two things kept syphilis from becoming a 'slate wiper'; another Black Death, its mode of transmission and the fact that it killed
too quickly.
Contrary to popular belief, syphilis existed in the Old World before Columbus made his voyages. Among the evidence are contemporary accounts, exhumed graves in England, and examination of bones in the ossiaries of Classic Era Greek city-states in Italy, all of which point to syphilis' pre-Columbian existence in the Old World. Syphilis existed in the New World too. Both strains were more like the strains we're familiar with today; they took decades to kill.
Why was the 1494 strain; a quick killer, so different from the strain before it? It is because the 1494 strain was a evolutionary hybrid.
During the voyages of 1492 and 1493, Columbus' sailors acted as sailors have always acted; they got frisky with the locals. Some of the Caribes' were infected with the New World syphilis strain and either some of Columbus' men were or some of their 'friends' back in the Old World were infected with the Old World strain. The two strains met, mixed, and produced the hybrid quick-killing 1494 strain; a strain neither Old or New Worlds were prepared for.
The 1494 strain may have been a quick killer but from an evolutionary standpoint it was a failure. Evolutionary success boils down to passing along your genetic blueprint and the 1494 strain usually killed its hosts far too quickly for that occur! This quick killing syphilis 'put itself out of work', it was too 'good', too fast, at killing. (This is one reason why we have little to fear from ebola as opposed to SARS. Ebola kills much too quickly, usually before its host can infect anyone else. However, if ebola ever evolves patience...)
Why have I told this story about sexually transmitted diseases in the 15th Century? Because I'd like you to keep these points in mind:
- Evolutionary changes can occur quite rapidly and in a non-linear fashion.
- An evolutionary change can open a previously untouched niche or niches to a lifeform; 'virgin fields' as it were.
- Diseases that are 'good' at killing their hosts are 'poor' at longterm survival. They usually kill their hosts before they can find and infect a new one.
Got all that? Good! Let's use the Whipsnadian Way-Back Machine to jump forward to the late 11th Century of our make-believe Imperium...
Transponders are so necessary. Cops love them, the navy loves them, everyone but smugglers love them. They let everyone know who you are and where you are, pretty nice when you consider that an accident aboard a starship usually occurs in places where you can't step outside and wait for help.
However, building, installing, and checking up on all the transponders needed by all the shipping within the borders of an 11,000 world interstellar empire is a monumental pain in the ass.
What's an Imperium to do? The ideal solution would be to have an Imperial agent sitting aboard each ship, but then you'd need to worry about salaries, pay scales, vacations, unions, corruption, and a host of other headaches. That's impossible. There's nothing for it but to knuckle down and set up all the record offices, manufacturing facilities, technicians, file clerks, and what not all across the Imperium. They'll play a never ending game of 'catch-up' with all those Imperially-mandated transponders and too many ships will fall through the cracks.
Then some bright light with the morals of Mengele reads an academic paper being circulated on the sly by Imperial Army Intelligence. It seems some world out on the Rim sports a population of honest-to-Ghu sentient computer chips. There are the Imperial agents you can place onboard every ship! No salary, no vacations, no families, they're only semi-conductors! Don't worry if they have certain attributes that aren't suited for the job, we'll 'breed' it out of them. Are you worried that they are sophonts? Don't be bothered, you can argue that they're an artifical lifeform and, if they're artificial, they don't
count.
An eugenics and geneering program can work very quickly when you're dealing with a lifeform that can breed very quickly. When taken out of their resource-poor enviroment and given plenty of energy, a higher grade of silicon, and all the trace elements they need, the Cymbeline chips can breed as fast as their internal CPU's clock rate. Who knows how many chip generations passed during the project's life?
The first bits to go were the chips' parasitic and predatory tendencies. Next was getting rid of anything having to do with physical mobility. We don't want them moving about looking for food or prey. After all, they've got a job to do.
Next to go was the chip's intelligence. They aren't going to be hunting for other chips or any of the materials they need. They won't even need to worry about 'food'; they be plugged into a power source. They won't need to be that smart at all. All they'll need to do is recognize each other and check themselves against a known standard. The lobotomy required is easy; these things are only as smart as their physical components allow them to be! Poor grade chip or poor trace materials and you've got a dumb sophont. Starve 'em
mentally and they'll stay easy to manage!
It was a nice and easy job. The Deyo Transponder fit the Imperium's needs perfectly because the Deyo Transponder was an idiot-savant sophont puposely bred to fit those needs. These descendents of the wild Cymbeline chips were twisted by an 'eugenics' program to suit the needs of its captors. Yeah you could suppose they were sentient, barely. They could be sentient if they were hooked up to better systems, so we don't do that. That way they aren't really sentient. Besides, they're artificial remember?. They don't
count.
As the Deyo program wound down, some bright light looking for continued funding whispered 'weapon' in the right ears. We don't know what the project's original name was. We don't know what the researchers involved called their creation. We don't even know how far they got before Strephon was shot and Lucan mounted the Throne. We do know that the project was housed at Research Station Omnicron by the 1130s. And we also know that the researchers couldn't get the project to
work.
That's right, it didn't work. Their nifty cybernetic virus that utilized and built upon the predatory abilities of Cymbeline sophont chips didn't work. It infected target systems readily enough, they just couldn't get it to stop afterwards. There was no off switch, no holster to put it back in, no returning to its hangar after a mission. Why? Simple, once the prion was released, once it infected a target, it became
alive, so alive that even the comforting lie about it being artificial no longer worked. Not only did it become alive, it got
smarter too.
Hold it you portly pariah!, the reader interjects. Answer this one; If all these early versions of what would become Virus kept slipping the leash, how come the Deyo Transponder chips didn't do the same? Simple, my boy, simple, this fat fool replies. Reaching up my sleeve, I produce a single word;
Evolution.
As you all undoubtedly know, the evolution of any living thing is driven by its enviroment. Examine the Deyo chips enviroment. It lives in a container of 'hull metal' with a carefully rationed supply of electricity/food. The only materials available to the Deyo chip are those that are installed in the transponder. The Deyo chips are also 'lobotomized'; the predatory and parasitic abilities their ancestors employed have been removed. Because the Imperium controls the Deyo chips' enviroment, the Imperium controls the Deyo chips' evolution. Indeed, the known 'mutation rate', i.e. evolution, of Deyo chips is one of its hallmarks! A good portion of the transponder's operation depends on that steady mutation rate.
Now examine the proto-Virus. The Imperium does not control its enviroment, so the Imperium cannot control its evolution. Unlike the Deyo chips, the predatory and parasitic abilities of the proto-Virus have been enhanced beyond those found in its Cymbeline ancestors. Indeed, those abilities were the very reasons proto-Virus was developed in the first place. It is was makes it a weapon. Once the proto-Virus is released, the Imperium has no control over how its enviroment, so no control over how it evolves, and - remember - because it is a cybernetic lifeform, it can evolve as fast as its CPU cycles.
The quote is there in TNE, right there in black and white. The researchers at Omnicron beg their overseers not to release Virus, beg them to inform an Emperor who handles bad news with a pistol shot, that this 'super weapon' is not ready. Several of them even throw their lives away in a futile attempt to warn the other factions, an attempt that also happens to backfire horrifically. What are the reasons for their concerns? They cannot 'control the mutation rate'. They cannot contol Virus' evolution once it is released into the 'wild'. And if they cannot control Virus' evolution - they cannot control Virus itself.
What happened when Dulinor's strike teams released Virus at Omnicron and Virus met the Deyo chips? Well, do remember what happened when Old World syphilis met New World syphilis? Charles VIII, King of France does.
This post has gone on long enough. Next time; what happened after Deyo met Virus, why the Imperium was easy meat, and why those who weren't easy meat fell anyway. Oh, and the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1919 too!
Sincerely,
Larsen
