Freed PICA's

On re-reading HFQ, I came across p201 and the bit about emancipated PICA's.

I had been under the impression that all PICA's were subject to a 10 day limit.

But not so -

almost a million overall had been housed in PICAs free of the hardwired time limit of Nimue's PICA

Well - that was a bit of a suprise! Was that mentioned in any of the pearls?

I could imagine that they could have been very handy indeed in the TF Marines! I presume that by the time that was possible, all the fighting was ship based, so the Marines were not essential...

Yeah, this is a setup for the Go4 PICAs under the temple.

isaac_newton wrote:On re-reading HFQ, I came across p201 and the bit about emancipated PICA's.

I had been under the impression that all PICA's were subject to a 10 day limit.

But not so -

almost a million overall had been housed in PICAs free of the hardwired time limit of Nimue's PICA

Well - that was a bit of a suprise! Was that mentioned in any of the pearls?

Somewhere. I am pretty sure that wasn't the first instance of it being mentioned, although it may have been the first with any number given.

I could imagine that they could have been very handy indeed in the TF Marines! I presume that by the time that was possible, all the fighting was ship based, so the Marines were not essential...

True. Still, they'd be useful anywhere an AI could use a very handy "remote" (that, in this case, isn't remote at all).

I would suspect liberated AI's with non-humanoid bodies were legally recognized too and about somewhere. It's a pity ones with even the rudiments of the beginning of an intact tech base couldn't be evacuated far, far outside Gbaba observation before the Gbaba closed in.

Do we know they weren't? Operation Ark was so secret that someone else could have done another desperate covert project alongside it and nobody would have known. Wouldn't even had had to be government.

Wasn't there some evidence that Langhorne hated PICAs and wouldn't have any around? His successors might have changed their minds but they would have faced the same problems as OWL in building them.

Expert snuggler wrote:Do we know they weren't? Operation Ark was so secret that someone else could have done another desperate covert project alongside it and nobody would have known. Wouldn't even had had to be government.

Wasn't there some evidence that Langhorne hated PICAs and wouldn't have any around? His successors might have changed their minds but they would have faced the same problems as OWL in building them.

We know from previous post from the author that Nimue's PICA, covertly stowed away, was the only PICA that accompanied Operation Ark to Safehold.

There is no evidence either pro or con that one or more PICAs have been built on Safehold aside from the one constructed by Owl. One would have to assume that the resourses commanded by Chihiro and Scueler's partisans would have been greater than what was in Nimue's cave and that more capable AIs than Owl would also have been available aboard Hamiclar or even under the Temple. Therefore if someone with access to those resourses wanted PICAs, it could have been done.

Don

PS. RFC's post on this subject is found under the thread "Langhorne's Big Mistake", p.2, Aug 8, 2014.

I mean another parallel mission, unknown to the Operation Ark planners. What if a bunch of autonomous PICAs decided in secret that since they could live on planets useless to carbon-based people, that they were the best hope for carrying on the memory of the Terran Federation?

They'd be nowhere near Safehold especially since Safehold's existence must have been a deep secret.

Ohmigosh!
What if Seijin Khody was killed because he discovered PICAs were going to be built in violation of Holy Langhorne's wishes!!

Expert snuggler wrote:I mean another parallel mission, unknown to the Operation Ark planners. What if a bunch of autonomous PICAs decided in secret that since they could live on planets useless to carbon-based people, that they were the best hope for carrying on the memory of the Terran Federation?

They'd be nowhere near Safehold especially since Safehold's existence must have been a deep secret.

They'd need shipping able to evade the Gbaba surveillance net. By the time Ark launched, that took an entire decoy fleet, at least for the shipping Ark needed as the payload. Small PICA quantities would represent a vastly smaller payload, and a comparable mission may try swarming the Gbaba net: send out a lot of fast ships through in a fairly small area, so only a small number of Gbaba ships are well placed for pursuit, then scatter.

An issue though is that isolated PICA's or AI's would have a couple problems establishing a permanent stable settlement. Psychologically, without much or any company, they are likely to go crackers before long, and not spawn healthy descendant personalities. Industrially, things break. PICA's last a long time and handle rough treatment, but after long enough, they'll need a working industrial base for maintenance, much less reproduction. It's hard to get one of those going on a small enough shoe string, and it's hard to keep a larger operation hidden long-term, or sneaked past the Gbaba in the first place.

If they'd tried something of the sort early enough, maybe they could have managed before the Gbaba net closed in, but tht early, they were likely too focused - reasonably - on winning the war instead of flinging out AI survivors.

Expert snuggler wrote:I mean another parallel mission, unknown to the Operation Ark planners. What if a bunch of autonomous PICAs decided in secret that since they could live on planets useless to carbon-based people, that they were the best hope for carrying on the memory of the Terran Federation?

They'd be nowhere near Safehold especially since Safehold's existence must have been a deep secret.

You are really no longer doing Safehild here. While you are starting off from what we know of the TF, you are really proposing an altogether new story going in a different direction. Denude it from Safehold altogether and you can write a book! Sounds like fun...

Don

n7axw wrote:

Expert snuggler wrote:I mean another parallel mission, unknown to the Operation Ark planners. What if a bunch of autonomous PICAs decided in secret that since they could live on planets useless to carbon-based people, that they were the best hope for carrying on the memory of the Terran Federation?

They'd be nowhere near Safehold especially since Safehold's existence must have been a deep secret.

You are really no longer doing Safehild here. While you are starting off from what we know of the TF, you are really proposing an altogether new story going in a different direction. Denude it from Safehold altogether and you can write a book! Sounds like fun...

Don

This is the in between period here. We are speculating hard. We all love sci-fi. So we go to our sci fi roots. Lets play this down the most logical path. To me this makes sense. Let's have fun with this.