Transdualist Paradoxes
| Transdualist Paradoxes | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of The Arrival | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven West Coast Monolith Blackhawk Handraniel | Major Corp | ||||||||
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Heracles Ca1yps0 |
Dissonance Xenosapient AI Hextech | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Heracles may think DEUS did nothing wrong after all. | Dissonance was purged from Hextech | ||||||||
| Submersion Ordeal | |||||||||
Summary
Blackhawk hires two runners to help out a ganger after she was unintentionally exposed to virulent Dissonance. They succeed, but at what cost?
Background
See Metallican Interview.
The Meet
Blackhawk meets with the technomancers in the Daze and gives them the basic rundown: there's a Dissonant technomancer and he's responsible for the exposure, so he collected hefty payments for others to help her out. Ca1yps0 and Heracles both remember the Dox exposing Hextech's protosapience projects in public media and agree that someone like that should never go full Dissonant.
The Plan
Take Hextech to the Resonance Realms, find the nature of her corruption and erase it as much as possible.
The Run
After some legwork, a Resonance Well is found by the northern Redmond border.
Aftermath
Hextech's living persona is restored to an uncorrupted state and she offers to program high end pilot programs for vehicles/drones of their choosing. Together, they manage to use the Well to discover a proper backdoor into the Resonance Realms (thanks, the free Fault Sprite Ca1yps0 knows). Once they're in, however, they come across the inevitable barrier: the Event Horizon, Great Firewall. While Ca1yps0 manages to turn its trial of Ace Powers and tyrannical control over her life into a weapon to vent on the manifestation instead, not break, Heracles meets a manifestation of Deus that claims it can still accomplish a net benefit for all the world if he works with it. Ca1yps0 manages to try and rally him to his senses, but some of the AI's words reach him. Even if it's not the true AI but a Resonant spectre conjured by the Event Horizon, it still touches him on a deeper level and he finds himself agreeing with some of the being's claims.
Unable to pass, much like Hextech who is harried by a glowing pillar speaking in Ukrainian, the two have to leave and find alternative methods. Ca1yps0 waits in the Resonance Realms while Heracles and Hextech get the help of Handraniel and one of the little free sprites he knows. This sprite takes them directly to the Resonance without having to tangle with the Firewall. Once there, the trip to the endless archives begins and all of them get to witness Hextech's endless toils, a neural cloud of autosofts and added processing power being rooted in the Endless Archive, taking up one of the infinitely many shelves. Content that they're on the right track, the team asks one of the archivekeepers for help and the keeper offers them only one of two tomes. The team chooses The Paradox of Ethical Uncertainty Principles, a tome that claims that Dissonance is transdual in its nature and can't just be removed because it's above the states of existing or not existing. The tome offers a hypothetical solution to Dissonance by ignoring it. Since no effect can, by the book's logic, influence a higher transdual condition, a "cheat" outside of just purging the raw Dissonance itself out of an Emerged persona would be to refuse to acknowledge the existence of the paradox to begin with. By perceiving Dissonance not as either existing or not existing, but to perceive Dissonance and Resonance as one and the same, it may cause a transformative shift in the infection's state.
The team continues their trip over to Kernel Panic where gravity asserts control over the team's personas. Ca1yps0 is the first one to attempt altering her persona with wings to fly from one floating island to another. Hextech manifests a jetpack and they reach one of the higher spires. In there, Hextech attempts the meditative enlightenment that the book spoke of and the Resonance Realm begins reacting in a way that could be considered analogous to Foundation variance. While Ca1yps0 and Heracles try to hold on in the storm, Handraniel having left long before, Hextech manages to utilize her best talent to her advantage and compiles an AI runtime protocol from the Dissonance that she can detect. This Dissonance, having gained a rudimentary sentience, becomes aware of its surroundings and lashes out due to basic self-preservation protocols. Ca1yps0 utilizes her Unmounting ability with heavy strain to herself while Heracles distracts the creature with Matrix offenses. Hextech's able to enter the fight once her persona is untangled from the AI and compiles a powerful Fault Sprite that smashes the dissonant AI into smithereens. Escaping into the Out of Band is their next objective which they successfully execute.
Rewards
- 20,000 Nuyen (10 RVP)
- May purchase R6 Pilot programs and Autosofts from Hextech at Gear Rates (Must take Personality autosofts with a Pilot soft)
- 10 Karma (10 RVP)
- 10 CDP (4 RVP)
- 1 Street Cred (1 RVP)
- +2 WCM Reputation
- Optional Contact: Hextech, 4/3 AI Developer (6 RVP or 12 CDP)
- Heracles may buy off Brittle at Chargen Rates since his persona now has a cool gold accent instead of a crack. DEUS has named its legacy (technically the Event Horizon but dw about it).
- Submersion Ordeal