The Unbound Mind

Summary:

Inspired by Homeworld and The Culture. Excuse for ship-names like "Insufficiently Incomplete".

The Unbound Mind

narfanator 06 Jun 2008 06:36

Pre-emptive Edit: First draft, sos I can get responses & thoughts. Sorry for the "mess"

The idea behind Ian M Bank's "Culture" is that you have really incredible AIs ("Minds") running the show, with humans riding along in the resulting post-scarcity mature anarchy. (To quote one Mind regarding why the Minds in ships keep the entirely unnecessary human crews; "They're entertaining").

However, in SA, you don't actually get to make AIs like that. They just end up as Aia.

Enter the Bentusi AKA "The Unbound" from Homeworld; they "solved" this problem by plugging themselves into their ships and turning their "human"-stock minds into Minds.

These guys are also, in many ways, extreme combinations of Stored, Cognitechnicians, and Titrogenia. That is, what they've done parallels, follows, or uses what these other groups have developed, but towards different ends, and without abandoning each level of consciousness.

The Unbound have used technology to expand, create, and upgrade their minds & brains to extreme levels with the express purpose of building themselves into ships. The Unbound run as many different versions of their minds at once; they have used Group Mind technology to "bind" the Organic and the Digital.

An important note is that the Unbound are actively attempting to prevent a religion or cult from occuring amongst them regarding the simple fact that in order to achieve true Unboundedness, you must undergo a replicator scan and print. Many see this as a reincarnative act; the Me that I was before becoming Unbound died so that the Unbound me could live; but to harp on this idea to much distracts from unbinding.

---

Suffice to say:
Bio - 4-8*
Nano - 4-10
Meta - 2-6
Cog - 6-10
String - 4-10

• The Unbound treat bio… differently. This stat actually represents the sophistication of the non-ex-human biological components or fabrications of the Unbound's ship-body. They use the higher of their Bio & Cog for lifespan. Additionally, you can't kill a an Unbound via Bio alone; you just take out the "organic processor" (Which hurts, don't get me wrong, but it's like killing one part of a group-mind).

CVs: Unbound & Benevolence
(The Unbound have a god-complex)

Benefit: You're a starship. No, really, you're a starship. That's what you are. Crews are optional but possible.

Names: Descriptive phrases! Proper nouns are highly discouraged, except when they're references. Examples: "Suggested Donation", "Insufficiently Incomplete", "Clearly Lacking Mileage", "When Buddha Met Nietzsche".

Re: The Unbound Mind

Colin_Fredericks 17 Jun 2008 03:05

I have just realized that these aren't a civilization - they're a neuroform, a form of sentient being. There might be few enough of them that they form their own civilization (as the Stored currently are), but there's no reason they couldn't join another.

I still want to include them in the setting. I'll consider whether Travelogue is the right place for it, but they'll be in at some point.

Re: The Unbound Mind

narfanator 17 Jun 2008 04:00

Neuroform? That's… perfect. I think.

Yeah, they're not really a civ. But they're not anything else. If you want, I can try to come up with other stuff that doesn't fit, so they can.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

narfanator 08 Jun 2008 06:28

There are things you cannot think; senses you do not have, limbs you don't possess. Can you fling yourself through the vastness of space? Can you live inside a Klein bottle? Can you appreciate all there is to the strangest of celestial phenomena?

Some people in the world address a few of these issues; none but us address them all.

None but us, who are freer than all others.
None but us, who make ourselves anew but never abandon the old.

And when exist in the all the ways we know for one to exist, and do all of the things we know that one can do,
well,
Then we are lacking incompleteness.
- The Unbound "Insufficient Incompleteness" when asked to explain it's name.

---

In less poetic terms, the Unbound are humans who have not only plugged themselves directly into spaceships, but have formed a group-mind made of both biological and digital minds, rendered in different materials and using different methods. A typical unbound will have a standard carbon-based biological mind linked to the same mind Stored, linked to one made of nanites instead of carbon-based cells, linked to various reconstructions and revisions of the above.

As a civilization they almost.. aren't. But they're not really a society either; for one, it is very hard to exist as a Unbound within another civilization. However, like the Mechanicans, they are unstable as a civilization, and, in fact, tend to be "loners", at least in Realspace. In the digital realm, well, they each have ansibles tied directly into their consciousness, so it's a bit hard to be "distant". There are also very few immigrants to the Unbound; the Replicants tend to not feel the pull, while other people have a problem with th necessary scan & print to achieve a dual bio/digital consciousness. The Unbound themselves view the original scan & print as a sort of rebirth or reincarnation, and otherwise consider themselves to be continuously alive so long as one of the brains/minds is functioning.

CV: Unbound. They also get an additional open choice. (Will better convey this CV in a later post)

Society Notes: An Unbound can have only one mind be a Heterolinguist, in which case, they can opt to use that mind for any given conversation. However, due to their highly linked group-mind nature, the effect is different. They don't have to talk as /bad/ as a full Heterolinguist, their offensive metatech is halved and their defensive is doubled, rather than being completely immune. Unbound cannot form Group Minds (among other reasons, they already are).

Capabilities: 6-10, all. Additionally, Unbound are rather big and have many redundant systems: you get extra reserve in each capability, but only to be used defensively. To recover this extra reserve, you must meet half-again the requirement for regaining it normally. Also, most weapons aren't capable of killing you outright. Remember, you're a starship.

Import: Being Unbound loses you a point of Import.

Equipment: Starship. Industrial sized fabbers. Wormhole generators. Gravity drives. If your GM allows them, Unbound do not take an additional Import loss for taking Transcendental Neurons.

Further Notes: The Unbound are hard to properly describe (for me) in these more formalized feilds, but I hope to have gotten the gist across. Play with the idea, once you think you understand it. Most Unbound are "immigrants"; have a story of who you were before you Unbinded. Come up with new methods for rendering your brain; one Unbound has even attempted to make a version of themselves using World-vine biology! Play with the way the Unbound interact with Societies; a High Society Unbound might host a great deal of parties (inside themselves, of course), while a Sleeper Unbound might eschew wormhole travel for light-speed and below.

Unbound Names: In some ways, this was the entire point of the Unbound. They are named after the way Homeworld's Bentusi describe themselves, but inspired in concept by Ian M Bank's "Minds" of "The Culture" (Wikipedia has a good article), mostly because I really like his ship names. Use descriptive phrases and avoid proper nouns that aren't references in some way (Naming yourself Phil is rather boring, whereas John Doe carries some meaning). The idea is more to describe a concept that is important to the Unbound and/or the way they view the world; "Insufficient Incompleteness" believes in making sure there's always something about you to improve upon, while "Clearly Lacking Mileage" revels in it's immaturity. "When Buddha Met Nietzsche" probably pretends to be a Heterolinguist.

So, in the end, remember, whatever else, you're a starship. A starship with a funny name.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

narfanator 08 Jun 2008 06:43

More names:

"John's Doe"
"Unrequited Harm"
"Shinier Than You"
"Unexpected Housemate"
"I can know what you look like naked"
"Waiting to go so I can take you."
"I blame hope."
"Kant forgot his eyeglasses."
"I could translate but I didn't."

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

Pneumonica 08 Jun 2008 20:24

How about these:

"No Mutinies on the Bounty, Please"
"Insert Credit to Continue"
"Sincerest Apologies"
"Women Have no Fury"
"Kinnison is a Mook"
"Apologetic Rock"

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

Colin_Fredericks 10 Jun 2008 00:33

"Philology"
"If You Put Our Names Together You Get A Sentence"
"Gold Into Lead"
"All Tied Up And No Place To Go"
"Rutabaga Surprise"
"It's The Sled's Name, The Sled!"
"In God We Trust"
"No Fatties"
"One Minute To Midnight"

These guys have an excellent chance of making it into Travelogue. Tell me more, I like 'em.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

narfanator 10 Jun 2008 02:53

Er… Okay, gimme another few hours to a day?

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

Pilgrim 11 Jun 2008 14:51

How about "Nothing to see here" and its sibling ship "Move along" - a Unbound security service.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

narfanator 14 Jun 2008 02:08

After some thought, actually, I don't really see you having two Unbound in the same place regularly at all. I mean, that's a lot of firepower.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

Pilgrim 17 Jun 2008 00:56

Well nothing says they have to be in the same system. And if the two of them turn up in the same vicinity, I imagine that most civilizations proceed to shit themselves sideways and reach for the contingency plans.

Re: The Unbound Mind; Descriptive Rehash

Pilgrim 11 Jun 2008 15:01

Narfanator,
Any chance you've read Tony Daniels Metaplanetary and Superluminal? These remind me an awful lot of the ships there too.

A Day in the Life

narfanator 10 Jun 2008 05:38

It's been awhile since I tried any fiction, and I've mostly tried to get all the ideas and illustrations out. Suggestions are very, very welcome!

---

Hosted a large party the other night. Built an entire observation deck for it, custom designed for the event by my good friend Kinnison is a Mook, although it declined to attend. At the advice of Rutabaga Surprise I invited Missing Insignificance, who insisted on having one avatar. We're really worried about the fellow; he spends a great deal of his time bound in a single incarnation. Communication logs show he doesn't even do anything else at the same time!

The party was a rather large success; I convinced the famous Masquerader Chef Diyorba to cater as my Stardweller friends raved about his restaurant from the last Convention. Considering the eclectic variety of biologies I'd invited someone with that kind of experience was really the only way to go, so I'm glad he accepted.

The entertainment for the night was a group of Taoists re-enacting a performance group from the late 20th century called "Cirque de Soleil". It took a bit of finagling, but I managed to convince them to work with me to plan a new show to make use of the impressive local Jovian. Only one I know of to feature both rings and moons, something really tore the hell out of whatever was in the 6th orbital some time ago, but the rest of the moons haven't yet managed to scoop up the debris. Use the right dopant in a reaction drive and all the little bits fluoresce pretty impressively.

Of course, everything was nearly ruined when my experimental mind (I've been playing around with the T's communication methods, seeing if I can render myself in them) managed to chuck a maneuver instruction into my gravity drives, steering me right into a rock anddestabilizing the inertial compensators on the observation deck! Some of the newbies caused a bit of a stir when they insisted I shouldn't be trying to pilot through such a hazardous environment after drinking so much, but as I explained to them; my organic brains do the partying and my solid state computing core handles the drives. The damage from the impact took a good two hours of attention from my 3rd and 4th silicate cores (usually the 2nd handles repairs, but I took it down for maintenance and upgrades).

Took me awhile to figure out why the experimental mind did that; had to review my internal surveillance footage before I figured it all out. Felt like a detective. Turned out - and you'll love this - that jolt meant John Botor's Tertius tripped into Sally, an Old-Worlder a friend in the Patent Office (from my bound days, too) asked me to take along. And I quote: "Show her the sights, Jack! She's been stuck on that backwards rock her whole life and can't even begin to contemplate what's out here." See if I ever take what he says at face value ever again.

Right, back to the story: They fell into each other, and, in classic romance fashion, the health-monitors show a mutual flush of oxytocin when things calmed down enough for them to notice. Well, you know Replicants, always the adventurous types - so he gets her to sneak off into some of my off-limits areas (Core 4 normally handles security, but it was busy - thankfully!) where they find a bomb. Sally was the one who noticed (John Tertius and Secundus were a bit busy trying to impress her with two-person Yoga), she said that "it didn't look like it had been designed by the same person; just didn't quite fit in with the rest of you."

The bomb was aimed directly at the surge protector for the power feed to my primary core - you know, the one that ties all the others together? - which meant that if it had gone off, I'd have died. Well, not quite - I mean, each rendition of me would have continued, but, well, look - I don't mind taking part of my consciousness off-line for a little while when necessary, but that kind of fragmentation? You don't really recover. We all watched it happen to Unexpected Housemate (now calls itself Have the Marbles, Missing the Bag), and it's not pretty.

I bet it was that criminal syndicate I've been helping RX-079 take down; the bomb was scheduled to go off when I while I was giving my expert testimony in the first round of hearings. Well, too bad for them! I'm going to drop off my passengers at the next wormhole nexus and focus completely on this investigation.

- All this determination and no where to put it

Last edited on 10 Jun 2008 05:42 by narfanator Show more

The Unbound Mind - Positive Light Self-Description

narfanator 17 Jun 2008 04:28

The question you've got to ask yourself, the relevant bit here, is: How many ways can you exist?

Now, some of you will take argument with me over this next statement, but I put forth to you: Humanity remains only on wetware. Sure, the Stored swim in a binary sea, but they're simulating, and to throw a bone to their insistence in the validity of their dataverse, they're just the same old wetware running on a different reality.

And, alright, if you're not born of Unbound, you've got to die to do it. But he's been quoted before and he'll be quoted again; You want to make an omelet? Break some eggs.

I have four standard wetware brains, with various experimental designs.
I have six standard dataverse brain running on different processors types, two of which are running in alternative physics models, one floats in a fractal space.
I have wetware brains built using antimatter, as well as three different biochemistries not based upon carbon or water.
I have silicate, quantum-bit, transcendental, and mixed-method neurons arranged into brain-like patterns and loaded with me.
I have a max-tech neural mesh I have been trained for twenty thousand years of effective time. It is no longer attached to another brain-like processor; it is one of my minds in and of itself.
I've laced miniaturized cabling throughout my hull and rendered myself in WorldVine. I've even expanded on the original design - I also use gravity to convey neural impulses.

I stopped being human when I stopped limiting my mind to one kind of processor. I fly through all the skies Mankind has found. When more have been discovered, I will fly in those, as well.

I am unbound.
-Spice of Life

Re: The Unbound Mind

Colin_Fredericks 01 Jul 2013 15:43

After talking symbiosis with someone, I was reminded of the Unbound again (and how much they need to get into SA2).

This phrase came into my head:

"Sorry, I can't come with you. I'm not a pilot, I'm an organelle."