Survey by Shan-Wei

Does her survey show information about the mineral
resources needed to build another PICA ?
It would be clever to have a senjin of medium heights to
give a wider variety of senjins to throw off the
curious and suspicious from reaching Nynian's
conclusions.

We don't know if Nimue's fabrication unit just needs minerals, or has to have precise elements, or, worst of all, some items may need prefabricated in higher spec devices like on "Hamilcar"

RFC will know, not us I fear :p

I think the larger problem is that Nimue was only 'created' because a second copy of Merlin's personality was discovered. Unless a full backup of that was made (which would have been smart if Owl could do it), where would the personality come from? I do agree though that making a medium sized PICA to allow for a broad variety of personalities would be good - and it would allow the IC to perhaps station a PICA in Gorath when Thirsk's grandson returns home. That could lead to interesting, and useful, results.

Erls wrote:I think the larger problem is that Nimue was only 'created' because a second copy of Merlin's personality was discovered. Unless a full backup of that was made (which would have been smart if Owl could do it), where would the personality come from? I do agree though that making a medium sized PICA to allow for a broad variety of personalities would be good - and it would allow the IC to perhaps station a PICA in Gorath when Thirsk's grandson returns home. That could lead to interesting, and useful, results.

There was a long discussion by Merlin and the IC about how nobody else could create a personality that could survive in a PICA. Which makes me wonder if Nimue was not only rich but lucky: she was one of the few people who could afford one and also one of the few people that could drive one.

Erls wrote:..where would the personality come from? ...

I'm sure that Nahrman would be more than happy to get out and about occasionally; Olyvya probably wouldn't mind, either.

SilverbladeTE wrote:We don't know if Nimue's fabrication unit just needs minerals, or has to have precise elements, or, worst of all, some items may need prefabricated in higher spec devices like on "Hamilcar"

RFC will know, not us I fear :p

I suspect it is not a case of some rare metal (or metal ore) or other element from the periodic table. If it were that simple, I don't think Merlin would have stopped at only building one. Even if Merlin and Nimue were the only personalities that could be uploaded into one, it might still be critically important at some moment in the future to have a 'hot spare' to transfer someone into.

My guess all along was that some manufactured item(s) were the limiting factor. It seems like the fabricator can do molycirc, but perhaps like doing home printed circuit boards to hold and interconnect SMD chips, the molycirc they can do might be too crude to make critical items, like the brain or controls of the fusion powerplant. I suspect that with more VR and real world experiments they can discover how to make the machines to make the machines to make the critical fine resolution, high density molycircs. Eventually. But it might also take much time away from all the current responsibilities, and may require setting up outside the cave proper and so risk detection by the OBS.

I am afraid that in this case, for 21 century Terrans as well as 900's Safeholdians, it makes about as much sense to say 'They ran out of Magic Pixie Dust' :D

Weird Harold wrote:

Erls wrote:..where would the personality come from? ...

I'm sure that Nahrman would be more than happy to get out and about occasionally; Olyvya probably wouldn't mind, either.

This was specifically addressed when they made Nimue. He's partially integrated with Owl.

Duckk wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:I'm sure that Nahrman would be more than happy to get out and about occasionally; Olyvya probably wouldn't mind, either.

This was specifically addressed when they made Nimue. He's partially integrated with Owl.

OWL could probably use a vacation from VR, too. :p

(FWIW, Both suggestions are mostly tongue-in-cheek)

I think the problem with another PICA is now lack of basic materials, rather than of personalities or pre-manufactured components.

Where would they get another personality? From the same place as the last one! It's like asking where you could get another copy of a document you copied from your hard drive to a memory stick.

OR while I don't remember all the details of the discussion of why no-one else's personality could be used for the second PICA, I do remember that a huge part of it was the impossibility of making the recording, at least in any reasonable time. But that was before the new wetware with high speed data ports. Just like everyone had back in the TF where lots of people used PICAs; at least for 10 days at a time, or for every shift they worked at their dangerous job or because they were severely disabled. Even if there is some psychological problem about creating a fully autonomous PICA out of some IC member, it should be possible for one of them equipped with wetware to 'drive' a PICA for limited periods at a time for specific missions. Indeed if

if new style PICA's can get round the hardwired limitation linking TF PICA's to a specific individual, maybe several of them could utilise it at different times.

Nahrman can't be used because his personality is incomplete due to the way it was recorded and depends on considerable ongoing support from OWL to function at all.

It seems unlikely the difficulty in making another PICA is due to a lack of pre-manufactured components. OWL made the second PICA to a significantly altered brain design, which would have been highly illegal in the TF, without any apparent difficulty in the manufacture. It is unlikely in the extreme that he happened to have a spare PICA brain, or power plant or control circuitry in stock to start from. He and Nahrman are working on figuring out a new brain for Merlin, which presupposes they don't see any obvious critical barrier to making it. It isn't conclusive, but is highly suggestive, that nothing they have ever asked him to make, which he has plans for has been turned down because it was too complicated. All makes most sense if they are short of some very rare basic material. Rare earth elements required for the fusion plant controls or something like that maybe?

Anyway, the ultimate reason they can't build another PICA right now is because the author says so!

Yes, the idea of making Merlin a new brain indicates that they think they can. But there's a lot more to a PICA than the brain. For example, the fusion reactor with a hundred years' fuel. Without that, a PICA is probably out of the question, and a fusion reactor would probably be a lot harder to manufacture from scratch than the solid chunk of molycircs of a PICA brain. We know they can do molycircs.

And they could have copied Nimue's original pattern, or upload her current one, even if the ability for IC members to upload their personalities to a VR wouldn't also let them run a PICA.