304: Lightminute Prisoner

ENTRY 304: Lightminute Prisoner

For his crimes, Roger Murderkill was given a sentence of one million lightminutes. His ego is recast between receiver stations roughly 18 million kilometers apart on a continuous circuit that will take almost two years to complete. He experiences approximately one second of time for every sixty seconds of real time that passes; confused glimpses in his brief respites between farcasts. When his sentence is up, the lightminute prisoner will have experienced a little over 11.5 days of subjective time - and re-enter transhuman society after almost two years of real time.

The brief media buzz that surrounded the lightminute prisoner has already died away, except for the hardcore conspiracy theorists. The specifics of his crimes, trial, and even the authority that gave out the sentence are maddeningly vague, with many of the citations in the news feeds lacking or contradictory, and the punishment itself unusual in that there are considerably easier and economic ways to achieve the perceptual time dilation. Most of the conspiracy theorists (except for the Tortured Artist adherents) suggest that the punishment is symbolic, and done to send a message across to someone - although whom that may be is not clear. The only one that might be able to shed any light on the subject is Roger Murderkill.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
13	14	18	8	13	9	18	-

Morph: Infomorph

Skills: Academics: History 30, Art: Calligraphy 35, Hardware: Electronics 20, Hardware: Robotics 25, Infosec 30, Interests: Experimental Perception 50, Interests: Library Science 40, Interfacing 40, Language: Native English 90, Language: Russian 85, Medicine: Nanosurgery 45, Networking: Criminal 25, Networking: Media 25, Perception 50, Profession: Librarian 60, Programming 35, Research 66

Disadvantages: Social Stigma (AGI, Prisoner)

Using Lightminute Prisoner

Someone wants Roger Murderkill out of the way. They have gone to considerable trouble and expense to see that he is incarcerated in a very specific way, working around the moral, ethical, and legal objections of various habitats and governing bodies who have turned a blind eye to why a transhuman ego is being treated in this fashion. That alone raises red flags for conspiracy theorists and watchdog groups - this could have been done quietly and more efficiently using long speech (see entry 019) or other time perception-altering protocols. To do this and advertise it in the media, even with misleading and planted stories, suggests that someone is monitoring the lightminute prisoner, waiting for someone to make their move to free, kill, capture, or communicate with him...and there are no shortage of groups that want to do all of the above.

The stats given above assume that Roger, whatever his supposed crimes, is predominantly a patsy designed to draw out the real players that his captors wish to identify and intercept. Gamemasters might also make him a political prisoner of a Jovian Republic schism, a dangerous exsurgent criminal that Firewall cannot house for any length of time because of his psi powers, a criminal mastermind faking his own death, the victim of an elaborate revenge that sees his life destroyed slowly, a researcher testing cumulative light-decay and translation errors on transhuman egos, or the newest inductee into an eingerost (see entry 058) cell trying to free him from his mortal trappings.

Catching up with the lightminute prisoner requires calculating his routing, something any PC's muse could do given a few minutes with the software tools available to them and enough information on his schedule so that they can arrive at one of the receiver/rebroadcast farcasters ahead of him. Once there the PCs can hack the software or hardware to redirect Roger's route or isolate him, or use a time dilation protocol to try and communicate with him in the one second he is cognizant. There are no safeguards preventing Roger from communicating with anyone, though he is typically too disoriented to do so.

246: The Crypt

ENTRY 246: The Crypt

Any Firewall agent that’s around long enough hears rumors about the Crypt. The secret, secure storage unit where archivists keep the most dangerous and important fragments of Firewall’s ongoing struggle against exsurgent threats. Samples of exsurgent viruses, alien artifacts, a library of confiscated basilisk hacks…some scuttlebutts like to throw in rumors of “lost” technologies, a hidden Pandara Gate, a live TITAN, major religious artifacts from Earth, a zoo of psi-capable transhumans and animals (and one really pissed-off toaster), the only known dracomorph, proof that ghosts exist, the cryogenic chamber hold Adam and Lucy the back-hacked common genetic ancestors of all transhumanity… Legends grow in the telling; some of the archivist queue even spreads them deliberately.

The truth is a little more colloquial: yes, Firewall does contain a secret secure storage facility, codenamed Crypt, which is managed by a queue of archivists. However, most of the material is rather mundane: secure backups of critical files, and a scattering of artifacts, cell samples, exsurgent virus cultures, etc. Nor is there any one single hidden facility hiding beneath a lavafall in the depths of Mars or only accessible if you put in the “Zero Code” on a Pandora Gate (what does happen if you do that is still classified for the next hundred and fifty years, but the last time it almost wiped out Extropia). Instead, the Crypt is maintained pretty much wherever the archivists can find the space, often with secure storage facilities being fitted into the unused spaces between walls and exterior bulkheads in habitats. The archivists prefer a modular honeycomb setup of self-secured cells with a hexagonal cross-section that can be easily stacked and magnetically bond together.

The main security device for such systems is to remain hidden, but each cell also typically contains a shaped charge sufficient to destroy the contents if anyone tries to tamper with them or open one without giving the right answers (selected by a philosophical expert system with several “trap questions”). Archivists also tend to come up with their own security systems, preferring small modular systems like overlapping sensor nets tied to particle beam bolters, spiders that “spin” webs of nanowire in dead spaces, and “radiation leak” false alarms coupled with low-level microwave agonizers to discourage unauthorized personnel.

The downside of this distributed approach is that sometimes a given Crypt is discovered and needs to be relocated quickly and quietly, or one or more items might need to be recovered either because it was stolen or escaped. In these circumstances, archivists are generally given the authority and resources to impress any local Firewall personnel or regular stringers to help them recover the missing material or help see to its safe transfer.

The Crypt system does include a few “megacells” which are essentially prisons for certain transhumans who are too important to destroy but cannot be trusted with their freedom. Such sites are usually located at brinker outposts or within existing prison habitats as special administrative solitary blocks. The most hazardous individuals are restrained (and sedated) at secure private medical facilities, but the cost of such incarceration generally prevents Firewall from overindulging in that option.

231: Gravity Prison

ENTRY 231: Gravity Prison

There are as many kinds of prison as transhumanity has concepts of freedom. All of them rely on the principle of separating an individual from society, both to prevent further harm and as a punishment or place where reformation and re-education can take place. Habitats take different stances regarding incarceration based both on their social and ethical background, and on the economy and technology available to them. Isolated, secure holding facilities for physical morphs that see to their basic needs are expensive to operate, and typically only used for the short term—and even then, only if the prisoner is suspected to be a risk to themselves or others. Mental prisons such as time dilation protocols, simulations, or simply removing the ego from the morph are much more cost effective, but sometimes run into issues regarding the rights of the prisoner and undo trauma. Then again, there are some people that just want someone else put away, as cheaply and effectively as possible, and don’t care a wit about laws and regulations.

Gravity prisons are as brutal as they come: durable prison-habitats with constant high (>1) effective g forces, such as the Elysium High Capacity Residential Habitat on the surface of Jupiter (>2g). The most famous are the three GMax facilities in orbit about the sun, all of which are located as stops along the same one-way space elevator. The GMax Alfa has an effective gravity of 2g; GMax Bravo is 4g, and GMax Charlie a bone-crushing 8g. Each habitat is monitored remotely, but policed from afar. Fresh supplies are dumped in once a month by a one-way shuttle; any tampering with the shuttle means no supplies the next month, and anyone stupid enough to try and hitch a ride on the shuttle simply ends up on the next GMax down…and after Charlie the space elevator simply runs out, and the spent shuttle free-falls towards the surface of the sun. All GMax terms are for life, but aside from the brutal gravity and isolation the inhabitants are free to do as they please; Alfa’s inmates have set up their own societies and hierarchies, while Bravo is an anarchistic model with heavy Main Belt cultural influences since the majority of the surviving morphs are Bouncers. Charlie is the harshest of the three habitats, but the morphs that can handle the gravity have pioneered experiments in heavy-gravity agriculture and aquaculture that have earned them special privileges (Mesh access, luxury goods, etc.) compared to those habitats higher up the gravity well.

An alternative model gravity prison is a habitat with a ring section that spins fast enough to emulate g forces of 1g and higher. The few examples of these are generally located in the inner system, where more abundant solar power is available, and vary from the “gravity spas” around 1-1.5g used for transhumans adapted to zero gravity and microgravity environments to “bonecrushers” that can potentially emulate up to 10g, though most have safeties that prevent them from being taken up above 4g acceleration due to an incident when a hacker killed an entire imprisoned population by prolonged exposure to high g forces. Rotary gravity prisons offer the wardens and guards moderate control over the gravity by controlling the acceleration of the rotation, and depending on the individual prison riots and the like can either by broken up by halting spin completely—few prisoners have the skills to riot effectively in zero g—or by accelerating and forcing the transhumans onto their knees.

Using Gravity Prisons

Prisons in movies and books tend to suck: cramped, crowded places typically segregated by sex and filled with violent and often filthy criminals and ruled over by corrupt guards. Science fiction prisons tend to suck differently: a bit more clinical and severe, focusing on the isolation of the individual and the numbing of the mind. Those are just tropes, however. In Eclipse Phase, a prison can just be another habitat where leaving is difficult in some way and life is relatively unpleasant. Gravity prisons in this regard aren’t toxic hellholes where badasses tattoo themselves with racist symbols and face gang rape in the communal showers. Instead, picture your average habitat except most of the biomorphs are solidly built, suffer chronic back and joint pain, and probably there against their will. They may not be criminals, just inconvenient people shot down the gravity well because it was cheap. This is a different enough perspective from “regular” prison that a gamemaster could potentially set an adventure in one, and breaking in/breaking out isn’t too hard for a creative crew with some outside help (for example, having a ship waiting at the end of the Solar GMax line to pick up some escapees taking the one-way shuttle), so some bulky NPCs could even be escapees from a gravity prison, or only available through the Mesh because they’re stuck in a gravity prison.

100: Cousin Program | CommServ

ENTRY 100a: Cousin Program

“Comrade. Convict. Co-worker. This word means Cousin.”

Transhumanity has grown strange and, in many ways, far apart. Egos that first developed to deal with tribes of no more than a hundred individuals, to recognize kinship with others by smell, accent, and facial shape, are adrift in a community of billions that challenge any definition of what transhumanity is or might be—and with AGIs, uplifts, the Factors and other alien species, many transhumans become lost, unable to define themselves by their relationships with others, to others. With the vast host of transhumanity sometimes only a thought away from them, individuals become alienated, lonely, and withdrawn. Studies of this phenomenon point to how dangerous it is—the afflicted show high incidence of developing psychoses, low empathy, suicide, falling under the persuasion of charismatic individuals and movements—and have suggested a means to fight it: the Cousin Program.

Mostly popular in penal habitats, the Cousin Program forces casual socialization and fraternization by matching subjects up according to similar traits or interests, giving them common goals, and staging low-danger moderate-stress events that force interdependency and communication. Some habitats have even adopted variations of the Cousin program as alternative community service: an isolated hypercorp bigwig may find themselves scrubbing air filters alongside a hermetic digital archivist, the only two in the habitat that are conversant in Bulgarian.

Military units throughout the system have made extensive use of Cousin program, both for therapeutic purposes and as a tool to develop small, close-knit teams. Unlike civilian programs however, milspec Cousin “bonding events” tend to be moderate to high-stress and openly dangerous for the transhuman participants, involving combination of teamwork, survival, communication, problem-solving, and combat skills to achieve the stated objective—or just to allow the group to survive. Whether or not the group “wins” is, of course, secondary to whether or not they form the close-knit relationship that the military in question aims for.

Using the Cousin Program

The Cousin program provides several opportunities for players and gamemasters to expand on and interact with their characters. The forced socialization provides opportunities for individuals from disparate social, cultural, and economic groups to mix and mingle in a non-threatening environment; unlikely friendships and contacts may develop. Cousin events can force together individuals who would not normally come into contact, providing opportunities to inject a PC or NPC into a game. A PC group may start out a military unit forged during a Cousin program “trial by fire,” or the gamemaster can design such a scenario to encourage closer bonds and teamwork between players. The main consideration with the Cousin program is that the participants have some interest or trait in common, and usually not an obvious one like faction or morph type—both characters may speak the same language, or share an interest in similar media, be interested in the same authors or hobbies, etc. This small connection is at the core of the Cousin program, and provides a way for the characters to relate and open up to one another.

ENTRY 100b: CommServ

In post-scarcity economies, there is no place for debtor’s prisons, or for any physical incarceration at all, unless the safety of the individual or community is at risk. Still, there are systems in place to check when a morph does break local regulations or draws on an excess of local resources to the point of inconveniencing others. The typical penalty is simply restricted access: local makers and dispensaries will refuse to give the offending morph anything besides the basic materials needed for survival. Continued or aggravated demands on the system or efforts to defraud or hack their way past the limitation usually results in a blackmark or stigma being placed on the morph’s ID, which restricts their opportunity to obtain favors and often leads to a degree of social shaming. For particularly egregious offenses or longstanding patterns of abusive behavior, habitats typically tighten the restrictions, including filtering the morph’s Mesh content, and this penalty usually lasts without a time limitation.

While a pain in the ass, this low-key penalty system is advantageous in that it exhausts a minimum amount of resources from all parties involved; the morph under a penalty is still free to go about their business, live their life, and get things done. If the restrictions do become too much for a morph to bear, there’s always community service.

CommServ is voluntary and dynamically scheduled; any time the morph has hours to spare they can flag their status and the local matrices will spit out a list of tasks that can be done, the physical and skill/classification requirements, and where they can pick up the equipment. Typical tasks in most habitats include cleaning, basic maintenance, and beautification: running a vacuum brush over electronics panels, changing out air filters, scraping off and reapplying the safety stickers on the airlock, etc. More skilled or dangerous labor is valued more highly, but is often restricted to doublecheck that the morph has proper safety precautions (including spotters) in place. Most stations also organize group CommServ events on a regular schedule for larger coordinated procedures like flushing the pipes and security checks. Some habitats even count positive suggestions on how to improve the care and running of the community as CommServ, provided they’re good enough to implement.

Using CommServ

It can be easy for a player character who is new to the whole post-scarcity concept to go a little overboard or be a little wasteful; it’s also likely that during the extraordinary events that PCs regularly participate in they might piss off a few residents. Either way, the PCs may end up receiving any of the penalties listed above. Instead of suffering quietly (or with much bitching) to the cold shoulders they get when asking for something better than grey nutragoop and sterilized water, players can choose to have their characters do a couple CommServ jobs around the station—a great way for them to meet other people, practice or pick up a new skill, or familiarize themselves with aspects of the habitat that might be important later. In addition to minimizing the period characters suffer the rationing and restrictions mentioned above, sustained or substantial CommServ efforts can earn the character favors from local residents—trivial favors generally require 6 hours of CommServ, minor favors 24 hours of CommServ, and major favors 60 hours of CommServ or more.

029: House of Screaming Bricks

ENTRY 029: House of Screaming Bricks

“The most dangerous infomorphs aren’t given work-study programs or enforced socializing remediation. They’re taken off-line.” – HoSB AdCopy

The House of Screaming Bricks is a for-profit prison satellite orbiting Mars, little more than a server stack connected to a solar panel array. The Management accepts any prisoner, no questions asked, and incarcerates them for whatever period the deliverer pays for. Each infomorph is stripped of embedded software and loaded in a self-contained computer core whose only input is a power cable and only output is an analog temperature sensor. Essential data management functions are built-in, automatically triggered, and unconnected to any other part of the network.

The inmates are aware, and that is it. No interaction, finite memory, and only the most basic of software tools available to them. Some enter stasis. Others run out of memory, and the automatic registers kick in and prune back the memories to the time of incarceration. More than a few go mad. That’s what the customers of the House of Screaming Bricks pay for.

When the incarceration period is up, the inmate’s case officer arranges their release, typically at a major habitat; any relevant social services available at that habitat are contact about the charity case, the date and time of release. The exit interview is a pre-recorded script, advising the inmate of the length of their incarceration and current location.

Using the House of Screaming Bricks

When the gamemaster throws player characters in normal prison, that usually sucks. The HoSB is a bit worse. Solitary confinement with no ability to accomplish anything leads to frustrated players that have to sit on their hands while the game goes on around them. So it is not recommended to use the House of Screaming Bricks for a “send the PCs to prison” storyline. Instead, think of it as a plot device and background element—maybe an infomorph PC or NPC just came out of the House, and is experiencing the Mesh again for the first time in a long time. Maybe an NPC threatens the PC with this—after all, the Management doesn’t care why an infomorph is to be incarcerated, only that the payment is made. Maybe the PCs use the House to dispose of a particularly noxious enemy, or they have to stage a prison break.

Seeds

• Communication with the House of Screaming Bricks is down; all incarceration requests forwarded to automated services. The player characters are hired to replace the normal supply ship and investigate, but what they haven’t been told is that Firewall believes a psi-gamma capable exsurgent infomorph may have been incarcerated at the facility and is using their powers to hack the system from within.
• Gustav One, a slick criminal that plies the Pleiades, lets the PCs in on a little secret. One of the “prisoners” in the House of Screaming Bricks isn’t an infomorph—it’s a dummy cell, a carefully hidden cache of data containing the numbers of thousands of Triad-linked bank accounts. If the PCs are game, Gustav will tell them which cell and they can break into the prison and steal it—his share is fifty percent, of course.