255: Breaklight

ENTRY 255: Breaklight

The Mesh and its predecessors have long been designed by individuals that primarily lived outside it, and the interfaces and protocols that define it were made, consciously or not and with rare exception, to service the bipedal descendents of plains apes. It is only with the advent of AGI that the Mesh has begun to have its own native generation of designers, intelligences that have grown up inside the network and whom have very different ideas on how and why to design and extend the Mesh for their own use and benefit.

Breaklight is an up-and-coming Mesh architect. They received their first real attention for a series of limited-protocol Mesh network integration experiments, which showed that properly designed the introduction of an information-sharing network into animal environment can be used to improve social discourse, food-gathering efficiency, coordinated mating, and predator warning behavior; the fundamental technology has been licensed by several hypercorps into the successful SmartHerd system and its various clones—resulting in sometimes disconcerting phenomenon.

Still moderately famous for the SmartHerd system, Breaklight considers that early work something of a fascinating abomination for the unintended effects it has had on groups of animals when they are provided a faster and more efficient system of information customized to their use, most notably the “cow flocking” behavior that groups of transbovines have exhibited when networked together, and the eerily silent songbirds who have developed entirely Mesh-based systems of electronic music composition to communicate and advertise for prospective mates. These adaptations haunt Breaklight…and various groups interested in the infomorph’s research are interested in Breaklight as well.

Breaklight’s latest efforts have been on non-Euclidean design interfaces, allowing users to perceive hyperbolic spaces in an analogue of visual data, which many transhumans like to describe along the lines of “Imagine staring at something straight on and your peripheral vision extends to the back of your head.” More of an effort in aesthetics and technical communication than a scientific exercise, Breaklight has stated that they hope the technique will help users process the vastly greater amounts of data available on the Mesh.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
13	15	12	5	8	5	18	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: Computer History 60, Academics: Computer Science 50, Academics: Mathematics 50, Art: Architecture 70, Infosec 55, Interests: Cow Flocking 40, Interests: Mesh Desgin 45, Interests: Mesh Legends 35, Interests: Transhuman Art 25, Interfacing 55, Investigation (Mesh Search) 40, Language: Native Russian 85, Language: English 60, Language: Urdu 50, Networking: Scientists 35, Profession: Mesh Designer 65, Profession: Teacher 40, Programming 65, Research 40

Traits: Math Wiz, Social Stigma (AGI)

Using Breaklight

An AGI haunted by their past “success,” Breaklight is a character who approaches exhuman in their normal thinking processes—a native creature of the Mesh, who finds the need to “wrap and map” the Mesh to real space a difficult concept at times—but who desperately yearns to understand humans. Curious, somewhat naïve and with a basic failure to intuitively grasp real-world spatial relationships, Breaklight is probably best interacted with in the Mesh itself. Any number of groups are interested in working with Breaklight, from microcorps working on hive minds for sheep to non-Euclidean charity art events to raise money for Ruster scholarships on Mars, but getting a hold of Breaklight can be a bit of a hassle, both for the AGI’s aloofness and the protectiveness of their current employers…which might be where the PCs come in.