capturing Alignment agents

True, but also reasonably short to prevent this exact kind of thing. It probably depends on where the agent is located: someone like Firebrand who was supposed to operate in the backwaters of nowhere probably could remain in the field for 2 or 3 years without contact with a Mesan clinic. The operatives on Earth probably visited Mesan clinics (suitably disguised) far more frequently.

For Agents on earth the reset signal could be a call on the phone from their leading agent.

Theemile wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Right, I was thinking of Firebrand. His situation was close enough that I considered it the first instance of the particular lightning. For it to fall in the same place a second time it's highly unlikely.

The MAlign didn't use to make this type of mistakes. They were highly methodical, thinking things through and making plans. They didn't start reacting to events outside of their planning until recently. And that's when they started making mistakes. So it's possible they made more -- I do expect that Houdini did not erase all tracks, for example.

I would think there are 2 or more trigger levels necessary to trigger the nanites. Otherwise, people would be dropping dead on first dates, job interviews, near car collisions in bad weather, and the like over extreme stress and nervousness. There has to be separate triggers for stress, and maybe a memory location that have to happen simultaneously to trigger the nanites.

The triggering phrase seems to be "you're under arrest" for most cases. Not stress or nervousness, the nanites are capable of triggering off things said to or by the carrier. See also the agent who dies telling Victor "it's an onion".

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Theemile wrote:
I would think there are 2 or more trigger levels necessary to trigger the nanites. Otherwise, people would be dropping dead on first dates, job interviews, near car collisions in bad weather, and the like over extreme stress and nervousness. There has to be separate triggers for stress, and maybe a memory location that have to happen simultaneously to trigger the nanites.

The triggering phrase seems to be "you're under arrest" for most cases. Not stress or nervousness, the nanites are capable of triggering off things said to or by the carrier. See also the agent who dies telling Victor "it's an onion".

Nah, even when they 'arrested' Gweon right in front of Kingsford, the words "you're under arrested" merely served to piss him off, until they specified the exact name of his handler.

But since someone inevitably would have mentioned his handlers name in front of Gweon, since her specific cover was as an economist who dealt with investments, other people have to be able to bring her name up casually unless you want one of the very first conversations to go something like:
"hey Gweon, don't you get your investments handled by [cant find her name right this second]? Happen to know if she's looking for extra clients?.... Hey man, you don't look so great? Holy shit, someone call a medic!"

So a two-stage verbal trigger would make be almost a requirement, not a luxury, or your agents are going to die within weeks to months if you pick a bad trigger.


The suicide triggers surely must be more like the same nanotech that activates and takes over bodies. Remember how the one phonecall to Rajani basically consisted of a caller who he couldn't see (not a visual telltell) and never identified themselves asking for a 'Sid' mentions they had the wrong number, and then hung up... then Rajani helplessly reaches into his drawer for his own gun and blows his own head off. Similar triggers for Tim Meares when he tried to kill Honor, the Havenite driver gunning down Webster on Earth, the Solarian perfume guy going for Berry who had to visually see her before it took over; all of them complex triggers.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I would think there are 2 or more trigger levels necessary to trigger the nanites. Otherwise, people would be dropping dead on first dates, job interviews, near car collisions in bad weather, and the like over extreme stress and nervousness. There has to be separate triggers for stress, and maybe a memory location that have to happen simultaneously to trigger the nanites.

The triggering phrase seems to be "you're under arrest" for most cases. Not stress or nervousness, the nanites are capable of triggering off things said to or by the carrier. See also the agent who dies telling Victor "it's an onion".[/quote]

Imagine going for dinner with friends and saying "wow, the sauce is amazing. What's in it?", to which your host replies "it's an onion. I picked it up yesterday at the market. Hey, Gweon, you don't look so well. Are you ok? Gweon?"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:The triggering phrase seems to be "you're under arrest" for most cases. Not stress or nervousness, the nanites are capable of triggering off things said to or by the carrier. See also the agent who dies telling Victor "it's an onion".

Imagine going for dinner with friends and saying "wow, the sauce is amazing. What's in it?", to which your host replies "it's an onion. I picked it up yesterday at the market. Hey, Gweon, you don't look so well. Are you ok? Gweon?"

The nanite "secondary neural networks" or whatever the Mesans call that technology do have a limited AI that allows them to trigger on context and not straight phrases.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's an argument for my point: their nanites err on the side of "caution". If those nanites also do give you good health (as Firebrand was told), then there should be little reason for agents to go to hospitals and be subject to anaesthesia. Seeing as we have agents dropping dead just for asking a question, I wouldn't put past the MAlign high echelons to trigger on other reasons too.

The average working person ends up in the hospital due to accidents, not ill health.

I think communication is already in the loop here. How are the nanites determining that certain subjects were brought up? And how did the agents in Smoking Frog trigger the nanites? If there weren't any communication, then how would individual nanites know to terminate the host?

I figure the nanites must have some way to monitor the situation. I don't think the hosts are triggering them.

The MAlign didn't use to make this type of mistakes. They were highly methodical, thinking things through and making plans. They didn't start reacting to events outside of their planning until recently. And that's when they started making mistakes. So it's possible they made more -- I do expect that Houdini did not erase all tracks, for example.

Yeah, I think they have made a lot of mistakes.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's an argument for my point: their nanites err on the side of "caution". If those nanites also do give you good health (as Firebrand was told), then there should be little reason for agents to go to hospitals and be subject to anaesthesia. Seeing as we have agents dropping dead just for asking a question, I wouldn't put past the MAlign high echelons to trigger on other reasons too.

The average working person ends up in the hospital due to accidents, not ill health.

Exactly. And that's just about the last place you'd want an agent to die right after anesthesia was administered.
There will be an autopsy and investigation to determine any fault the hospital might have; and that immediate investigation is a non-trivial risk to the secret of those MAlign nanites.

I just can't see the MAlign killing an agent just because they received anesthesia. (Maybe the nanites are smart enough to recognize the difference between anesthesia applied in a hospital or ambulance and anesthesia applied in a kidnapping; but just anesthesia itself would be a risky trigger for the MAlign to use.

Better to have a trigger based on counteraction/filtering of the nanites; your concern is them becoming unprotected - not so much them being made unconscious or even them being kidnapped/arrested. After all you can't interrogate an unconscious person; and if you don't neutralize the nanites then once they do regain consciousness the nanites still prevent them from giving away your secrets.

Jonathan_S wrote:The average working person ends up in the hospital due to accidents, not ill health.

Exactly. And that's just about the last place you'd want an agent to die right after anesthesia was administered.
There will be an autopsy and investigation to determine any fault the hospital might have; and that immediate investigation is a non-trivial risk to the secret of those MAlign nanites.

I just can't see the MAlign killing an agent just because they received anesthesia. (Maybe the nanites are smart enough to recognize the difference between anesthesia applied in a hospital or ambulance and anesthesia applied in a kidnapping; but just anesthesia itself would be a risky trigger for the MAlign to use.

Better to have a trigger based on counteraction/filtering of the nanites; your concern is them becoming unprotected - not so much them being made unconscious or even them being kidnapped/arrested. After all you can't interrogate an unconscious person; and if you don't neutralize the nanites then once they do regain consciousness the nanites still prevent them from giving away your secrets.[/quote]

Note that the nanites disappeared from the blood stream quickly and they were hard to detect in the first place. Haven did find something they didn't know what it was, but from all we know, Manticore found nothing. And that's after Honor said she knew Tim Meares was being controlled, so his autopsy would have been deep and thorough.

There are probably levels of spycraft in place. Some agents would know to how to avoid being taken aboard an ambulance. For the others, you're probably right that the kill switch doesn't trigger on simple anaesthesia.

But I maintain some loss levels were deemed acceptable.

I think there would be many differences between the code words needed to set off the nanites in various agents. Of course, you say. but what about the differences between the levels of agent? Do Alpha lines have different nanites from Beta lines or Gamma lines? And every agent will have different methods of being eliminated. This might well mean that anyone captured would have to interrogated in a different manner from every other agent, and this when you're not certain that the prisoner you're trying to interrogate without killing is even an agent. And so this would seem (to me) that just setting off the nanites is all the information you're going to get from these prisoners. It's a pity that you can't obtain any usable information, but just the fact that they dropped dead while being interrogated would have to be sufficient.

It has just occurred to me that Rajampet's death, done in the manner that it was, was a mistake. Having him pull out his pistol and shoot himself was a clear indicator that the Manties had been telling the truth about their opponents' use of "mind-control". Had he received that call then had a "heart attack", the indications would have been much less clear to the investigators.