Monday, April 6, 2015

96. Evolved Interrogation

Transhuman society produces, processes, and stores, immeasurable amounts of information every day. Information is power, and the roles of hackers and infosec specialists are secured by the wealth of information stored digitally. Some of the most useful information, however, still comes from transhuman egos, if they are willing to share. Even psychosurgical interrogation has its limits, and so Ozma has developed the evolved interrogation program.

The evolved interrogation techniques developed by Ozma require large amounts of computing power, but given enough time, success is inevitable. First, the ego to be interrogated is forked. Each fork is subjected to a series of random variations on sets of stimuli that were successful in previous interrogations. Those sets of stimuli that provoke the most useful responses in the ego are used as the seeds for the next generation. The effect is to generate, through genetic algorithm, programs of torture, illusion, pleasure and other, stranger, stimulations that will best prize information from an ego.

Plot Hook: The Ozma program has been running for so long, against so many egos that its methods are beginning to resemble primitive basilisk hacks. To fully pursue this line of research will require computing resources difficult even for Ozma to acquire. Firewall has become concerned with the sudden demand for computing power in the inner system, and tasks the players to investigate.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting!

    Reminds me of one of the Farcast posts!

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    Replies
    1. Do you remember which one? Accidentally copying Farcast is my great fear (-_-;)

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  2. Super creepy, perfect for Eclipse Phase.

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