etraya | un: shinra

I see the companion bots have been hard at work updating our skyline of late. A neat trick, reproducing such elaborate structures — for those of you familiar with what's gone up, have you found them to be faithful recreations? Or has a little Etrayan creativity found its way in?

Aurora went out of her way to make one thing clear in her initial communication to us: that we were selected for this exercise for a reason. That begs two immediate questions: why were our worlds the ones selected for representation, and why were we the ones selected to represent them?

Our hosts are unlikely to give us those answers, as we know the selection criteria is being withheld from us. So perhaps the only way we'll make any headway is by taking matters into our own hands.

Consider, then, an exercise of our own: to share something about your world and its circumstances. At best, we might find a common denominator that speaks to our hosts' interest in us. At worst, we'll all come away with a better idea of what's at stake for each of us.

I'm not proposing a forum to advocate for these worlds' continued existence; Aurora and her contemporaries have that much well in hand already. What I am suggesting is that we all better understand our purpose here, and its implications: that should we succeed, these are the worlds that will survive, even at the expense of others that weren't so lucky as to have people like us brought here to fight for them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Memo to self: keep artificial intelligence on a tight leash.]

Let me guess. It decided it knew better than its creators, and acted accordingly.

( so like, yes? but in rare defense of a.l.i.e, her programmers must have been complete amateurs to pose the simple question of "what is the root problem (with the world)?" and not completely trashed her hard drives when she'd churned "too many people". )

Something like that.

You don't sound all that shocked. Was there similar technology in your world?

More that it's just the logical conclusion. The problem with outsourcing power to a subordinate is, what happens if they decide they'd rather not remain subordinate.

Giving an artificial intelligence the ability to make decisions runs the risk that it might make ones that aren't in your own interest.

If ever given the opportunity, please feel free to pass along that feedback to Echo.

( #1 aurora hater here, like girl could you have not at least warned us the doppelgangers were going to be A Problem? )

Oh, I assume they're reading everything we say, even now.

And watching us everywhere except the sanctity of our own quarters. Unless it's mission dependent.

Anyways. I've told you a little bit about where I'm from. What about you?