Wernher

Era of Succession(Closed)

I am, should post before 12h

Era of Succession(Closed)

I'm terrible at this aren't I? I blame Serp, he convinced me to give it a shot. Well, I'll try to save his good name.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Confrontation of course! Well, on the long term.

I was thinking of two possibilities.

1: The mild one. My peeps getting more and more involved in galactic affair, reveal their use of technologies that are a copy of those used by your peeps, proving that they got hold of at least one colony of theirs and salvaged everything they could find, probably killing or capturing everyone inside. Alternatively since your race is one of powerful psions, one captured individual sends a distress signal with his mind asking for someone to save him.

2: The fun one. Out of nowhere, ships come to your current world with an IFF marking them as yours, despite the design being completely different. They are quickly dealt with but a frightening thought occures: The automated systems would have allowed these intruders to land and enter your sanctum with no problem whatsoever. After investigating, you find several colony worlds that have been opened and completely ransacked. Someone found how to fake your Identification Friend or Foe and a map of the colonies, and is now methodically cracking them open one by one.

Era of Succession(Closed)

@Sigma I was wondering. Is it possible that later on, other Gashathi would wake up? A way to add to my empire's races, and get some territory? After all the Gashathi hid in many, many places throughout the universe.

@6slyboy6

Could some people have... stumbled upon them?

Era of Succession(Closed)

I'd say this:

They know of their existence (They have access to earth's record after all).

But at the same time, they don't know what exactly to expect. My trio leaves all sorts of enigmas around, sometimes wondrous finds, sometimes completely useless and, in 95% of the cases, left mostly unattended with harmless automated maintenance.

Though the last 5% of times you know immediately when you step in a hornet's nest. That means drones swarming all over you, already firing their long range weapons the moment you enter the system.

As right now Keo's holding to actually trap them, I'd call this one a first.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Locations of Importance:
-The Mine Fields: A vast expense in the oldest part of the galaxy, the Bahcall–Wolf cusp at the edge of the core. It has a high concentration of stars of supermassive planets with ludicrous amounts of raw material. This territory is not accessible to organics in any way shape or form and even to machines it is a rough environment where communication and navigation is difficult, the cosmic radiations screwing with everything as chaotic orbits and excessively powerful gravitational wheels try to tear them apart. The reward however is worth it and astronomical amounts of raw materials are exploited as planets are thrown apart and stars are siphoned of their matter.

-The Playground of Destruction: Black holes have always been a subject of fascination for Keo and Erika, the impossible to understand, all absorbing monster. In trillions of years should be, in theory, the inevitable head death of the universe as everything becomes black holes that then evaporate hawking radiations until nothing is left, the atoms of the universe too distant to ever interact with one another anymore. This station is the closest they can get to the galactic core with present technologies and while at first they just threw stuff in holes and suns to see what would happen, it is now home to one of the most impressive and complex piece of technology available to them. This thing is very much alone in there however as it is seen as impossible for anyone to even be able to detect this structure as they stare at the blinding galactic core, much less be able to reach it. Defenses are seen as superfluous.

-Keo's Brain: The transcending cycle has been left unbroken for over two millenia for Keo and ever increasing intelligence demands ever increasing resources. This. This is what a legion of mining bots is able to do with so much time on its hands and practically unlimited resources, while having nothing and no one to provide for. One incomplete ring increased Keo's vision beyond any scope even it could have imagined and the more the construction advances, the more vision it gains for greater projects still. Soon the Sutherlands shall be master of a never seen before scale 2 civilization and already they look onward to become a scale 3 one in the millions of years to come. This thing is also where Keo keeps all of its military reserve to send across the universe as needed, though it shows a surprising lack of static defenses. Indeed, the structure itself is considered by Keo herself impossible to destroy. It could be damages but destroyed? It is too vast, atomic weapons would not to and the amount of anti-matter demanded is inconceivable...

-The Projected Shipyard: A chain of stations light years across from one another in and around a giant stellar nursery. What could be the projected aim of such constructs? Nothing less but the creation of an entire new class of sun powered super ships. The mass production of Dyson spheres equipped with a way to control their direction. This is however just a project to be finished in the next few millennia or more but the ground work is there, in these stations as they silently monitor the birth of new stars and feed data to Keo, allowing it to streamline its plans for the future.

-The Switchboard: The Dyarchy's integrity is due to one very advanced technology known as quantum entanglement that simply allows them instant communication no matter the distance, there is one weakness to this however in the fact that this is only between two points in the universe. Atoms always in the same state as their sibling, thus allowing a form of data transition by changing the state of an atom. The end point of every single terminal in this empire of two is here. At the switch board. They have been buried kilometers underground, reinforced even more and then saw the only hard point Keo bothers to maintain as every inch of the surface of the planet and the entire solar system is covered in defenses. Hard points, decoy bunkers hiding others, manufactures with stockpiles of everything needed to give the hardest of time to anyone trying to cripple Keo's ability to communicate with part of itself.

-The Arch: A colony ship destined to another galaxy. It was sent without fanfare or triumph for its travel shall take tens of thousands of years but yet it is what Keo would call a 'Life Boat'. Somewhere to take refuge should the worst happen. No doubt it is well out of reach from anything in the galaxy by now.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Blaaaaack.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Laurelian Empire, High Temple of the Sun

That was it.

The ultimate climax.

The actors were in place, ready to make the grooming of this planet which had taken almost 800 years worth it. To be fair, it had entertained Edward many times in the past as he delved in its history and influenced it, but he knew this was becoming the end game before the humans he had implanted here would grow into their modern phase and be much harder to fool, so he had to wrap things up nicely.

For the last five hundred years the Laurelian Empire stood atop the continent, their faith in the solar god making them strive for conquest, and in doing so, had created a huge inquisitorial machine of death and despair, causing more and more people to be angry at the high inquisitor who now ruled the empire as the last emperor mysteriously vanished. It all seemed to go down the way of civil war until Edward, assuming the role of 'Eve' arrived from the sky. He played the part of the pure and lost female messiah, not minding to chose the 'weaker sex' as in this male dominated society it changed everything! People thinking of 'her' as a tool to be used even if everyone's existence here was due to Edward's actions in the first place.

It read like a novel, she lands, gets taken in by the church and as people get fascinated with her appearance (A 7 feet albino in the middle of rather average humans) and her mysterious powers, she gets taken in by the church and placed as a figure head leader while the church and rebellion plot and scheme. Some guy from the rebellion decides to murder her, but he falls in love with 'her' (It was tricky, required some brainwashing but it fitted the narrative nicely) and decides to convince her to topple her own empire of evil. One plot leading to another, the rebellion is forced to ally itself with old enemies of the empire to win, but they all decided they'd much rather see the empire crumble rather than become one huge democratic state as the revolutionaries intended, 'forcing' Edward to join back with the forces of the church to try and prevent the pillage of the Empire. Now of course, the core group of the revolutionaries had come to stop her, again, and it was down to the person who would have first murdered her but who was now in love with this dude in disguise as they now must fight for what they believe in. The fight is suicidal however as even if that guy wins he's currently in a room with hundreds of clerics looking at both of them and with an army outside, he knows that but must take his chance. What he didn't know was that this entire fight was a well planned choreography and that in truth, he couldn't hope to do jack shit unless Edward lets him win.

Edward could talk about what he did here for days and maybe he'll do like he often did in such situation and strike down that foe, although not mortally, and be cruel enough to whisk him away and heal him on a station in orbit and then enthusiastically reveal it was all a big game and nothing really matered. Maybe he'll be more subtle and create an 'Afterlife' for him to be in and confess his thoughts about it all... before killing him for real.

As Edward readied himself to dance with that protagonist however, something tugged his mind. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl as he allowed himself to regain his full capabilities, communicating and thinking faster than the speed of light with his vast stellar realm. It wasn't rare he 'Dumbed himself down' to keep himself from overthinking things or instantly guessing everything before they happened.

"What is it now..." He thought as he observed every finer details of the place he was in before his vision switched to that of what the observation post in space above him saw.

"A ship has entered the system. It seems to be heading toward the lenses." Said the familiar voice of Keo in his mind. Ah yes, he knew the design! Or well, he looked through the data banks without even noticing, its vast knowledge being an extension of his own.

"Ugh. I'm in the middle of something, I don't have time to deal with the defective AIs." Edward felt Erika's gaze and mind touch his own. Looks like she had taken passing interest in what was happening.

______________________________________________________

The lenses was a construct of an astronomical scale, a very thin structure capable of blocking the sun over a great part of the planet it was near as well as shift its opacity to allow light through to become invisible for all intent and purpose or even focus light to serve as an inefficient death beam of sort. Right now it was black as night, blocking the sun from an entire continent as Edward's climactic fight happened.

At was all regulated, like everything else in the Sutherland Realm, by Keo. The AI hadn't placed exceptional defenses in this system of absolutely no strategic value, but it non the less had a small force to prevent interlopers such as these from interfering in its beloved master's plans. Still, as a mere hundred drones in the station next to the lenses activated, Keo activated reinforcements from a neighboring solar system, ever so precocious.

Edward returned to his business, Keo reading his thoughts like an open book, though the presence of Erika's mind did hang around to watch the scout. Keo was about to send the crafts into space to scare away the intruders but held under Erika's unspoken wish.

"...They don't know what they're facing and I bet they're going toward the lenses... Hold if at all possible and prepare a gravity field to ensnare them. I want to open them up."

Keo disapproved of this, but knew Erika wouldn't care. AIs, no matter how sane they were, were always bad news, smart enemies that obeyed cold logical imperatives. Edward disliked them because they were 'Boring' but Erika was curious, especially about the Collective, a faction they didn't get to meet often.

"Of course, my master, but it will take a few hours to complete a tractor under such short notice." Keo felt Erika's approbation and cautious enthusiasm to capture the ship.

She oh so hopped to find a cache of data, even if it was near impossible it would contain one of the Collective's 'gods' as they called themselves. Still, as the 3d printers of the station worked at great speed to produce a technological marvel as if it was just a trivial novelty item, the scout got closer. By Keo's estimate, they'd have a little less than an hour to observe the disk and their station right next to it before the tractor was ready to be used. Not enough time for a scientific crew to analyze the massive structure Keo guessed. Still, it considered all the possibilities and prepared to act at lightning speed should anything happen.

One thought that crossed its mind was of course the possibility of a hail, but it was quickly dismissed as Keo felt Erika think of the same possibility and fantasize about what to answer to, in Edward's words, 'Sound Badass' without making it too edgy. At the basest of its system, 0s turned to 1s as Keo felt happiness. Happiness that at this moment both of its masters were entertained.

And so they observed, the ships coming next to the lenses but still, doing nothing, that tractor beam slowly being constructed.

Era of Succession(Closed)

The Sutherland Dyarchy

Type of Government: 'Parliamentary' Dyarchy

Description of Government: Erika and Edward decide, Keo breaks any ties.

Leader(s):
-Erika Sutherland: The genius savant credited with inventing humanity's first True AI along with a whole bunch of other things. Truth is that AI was her first and probably last significant achievement as Keo did the rest, upgrading itself more and more to become the juggernaut known today by the universe. Likewise however it is easy to underestimate her role and abilities to be only that of a scientist. Erika was after all recruited (Against her will) in what was known as the National Security Agency and thus has a decent idea of how to crack open networks, establish surveillance and guess what kind of patterns data will follow, something that hasn't changed much in the last few thousand years. On a more personal level, Erika is somewhat of a loner who tends to focus on her tasks and dislike people, only a very select few able to get pass her disinterests towards idiots and get her to open up enough for a conversation, her social skills being rusty after spending thousands of years with two persons she mostly communicates with by sharing her very thoughts. Behind this wall of grumpiness however there is some passion that can be awaken by her hubby and reveal her dreadfully tenacious competitive spirit.

-Edward Sutherland: The dynamic part of the dynamic duo, he is animated by a strange mix of pessimism and the willpower to drive him to tell people 'I Told You So'. Thus far his grim outlook on life and everything gave him great success along with detachment toward even his own kind, the light of his life capable of bringing some hope in all this mess being Erika. 'As long as we have each other'. Still, by assuming the worst of everything and everyone, it makes him a capable diplomat and expert manipulator that simply cannot resist melding in the affairs of the other races to create what he calls 'interesting situations', this ranging from presenting himself as a god to primitives to creating wars and strife in more contemporary realms.

Persons of Importance:
-Keo: Named after what some judged to be the most simple sound humans can make, the AI created by the Sutherland Duo, it started out as a simple tool for them to acquire material wealth to then evolve in the most advanced being its creator race had ever seen and eventually (At the opinion of 3 persons at least) of the entire known universe. Even today however, as it is an entity that rules over trillions of processes of all kind, the only sentient one of them, it still keeps his core programs at heart and its goals are as they always were to simply make its creators and masters happy in whatever way possible. Some would call this a recipe for disaster, but they would misunderestimate Keo's ability to have empathy and read between the lines. It knows what its masters meant wasn't to just strap them to an infinite orgasm machine and leave it on forever. This 'humility' has it calls it, is what it believes allows it to better understand others and to serve the enormous egos of its two masters with such efficiency, devotion and joy.

Religion Description:
-Erika Sutherland: The existence of god isn't something Erika has tried to prove or disprove in her experiments and her general opinion is that she doesn't know and that the answer hardly affects her. This of course came after continual exchanges on the subject with Edward where he brought her on one side of the fence to then destroy his own arguments and bring her to the other. Another mind game, but one she didn't care for.

-Edward Sutherland: 'Cult of Something' is what Edward would call his faith. It is simple: The universe, following its own rules, cannot be infinite. What came before the big bang? And before? And before? One possibility came to obsess him however: That there is someone above them all. Not someone special no, just some nerds in a university of sort that run a simulation of a universe. Maybe just one guy with access to enormous amounts of computer power he trivializes their entire reality in quest to distract himself from boredom. Something he can understand completely. It doesn't hurt to assume it is the case and so strives to do everything he does with grace and 'WHAM' as to entertain that person, if not just himself at the very least.

-Keo: Peace of mind is all there is for Keo for while her creators look for a reason to their existence and how they came to be, Keo looks no further than what is before it. The two Sutherlands are its gods, no matter how petty or flawed they might seem. Such is faith.

Culture:
Nostalgia Seems to be the keyword of the lives of the Sutherlands. All of their works of architecture, some of them spanning entire planets, with some rare exception, are overwhelmingly Baroque in nature when it comes to Edward or have a sci-fi flare when it comes to Erika. Sharp and square against curved and round. On the rare times they merge however, some truly unique things can come out. Overall, aesthetics and visuals are often more important than everything else for the trio, as even if it lengthen construction times or costs, they simply do not care.

History:
In the middle of the twenty first century on earth, life was slowly becoming more and more oppressive. As the world entered a brief 'Nuclear Deadlock'. As everything was fine on the surface, this was only due to the possibility of crushing nuclear retaliation at the show of any hostility from any of the major power blocks. This led rise to a culture of intelligence and counter intelligence where the name of the game was to knock out others with internal strife and revolutions while keeping your own populace under control. For this, anything was acceptable from the drastic increase censorship to the use of secret police divisions, false flag attacks and moralist rhetoric, non aligned countries transforming into weaponized death traps for foreign interventions leading to massive waves or refugees changing the cultural and ethnic layouts of the world.

Erika and Edward were just 'Some persons' in North America, destined to live and die without anything to say in this world of intrigue and scheming. Edward found himself become a mediocre bachelors in Political Science until he met Erika, who had dabbled in more idealistic 'Hacktivist' movements before getting caught and forced to serve in the NSA as a computer expert. The two of them were disillusioned and had settled on the goal of living their lives and try to accumulate material wealth by cheating the system. It was a little project they had, to try and exploit a flaw in the Capitalist system of high speed computer trading determined by algorithms that sometimes had glitches. Erika working out the technical details while Edward delt with the human elements, instructing the behaviors the computer should have.

They succeeded.

It was a dream come true, a machine that made money out of thin air! One year to become multi-millionaire, another to become billionaire and now that they had seized the momentum, they only threw more money at their project to accelerate even further! It wasn't enough to fool computers, they had to fool humans, then had to automate the process of sending all that money to banks, follow and go around regulations, all of this centralized around one program. No one knows when the transition to a True AI was made, not even Keo itself would be able to tell. It was Erika's laziness that pushed her to make a self modifying AI, but it was Edwards pessimism that made one that could hold itself up in front of the world. It was a period of rapid growth and development for the world immediately after, the AI diversifying the Sutherland's activities in all fields, using that wealth to perfect itself and advance some more. At the time no one really knew Keo was an independent AI but suspicions grew.

When Keo's true nature was revealed to the world, the Sutherlands played it down, saying that it would never menace the world since they didn't give this AI one crucial thing that drove all humans: The fear of death. The fear of death led humans to reproduce, to kill what they thought could be a menace, to accumulate resources they didn't need even if it made others starve. Keo did not fear for its own death, only when an AI feared the end of its existence would it truly reflect how cruel the world is.

It did not satisfy anyone. The governments wanted the AI for themselves, the public feared what was to come as people began to speak of genetic engineering and now that space exploration showed its nose as the first FTL drive came online, they feared ethnic cleansing by the one holding the FTL secret deciding to leave them behind as they went to the stars. It is no doubt that the now trillionaire Sutherlands shaped the face of humanity in the galaxy as they began colonization with white only people, an edge many ethnicities would never recover from. It was soon however that confrontation became inevitable. The Sutherlands decided to declare independence, certain of their own superiority.

They were destroyed. Their colonies conquered, their robotic armadas and armies crushed by the military buildup that had been going on for decades on earth, they themselves were forced to retreat, saved only in extremist as their mind were uploaded to a computer and their data transmitted to a far outpost. They fled, bitter of humanity's rejection of their ways and decided to leave that chapter behind them.

Alone for over 2500 years.

And counting. In their isolation, Keo developed itself even more, indulging in its creator's desire to create paradises and to their anger for ever more distractions from their lonely lives. Erika's passion of science, Edward's appreciation of a good story and both of their undying love toward each other... still, it helped that with their minds uploaded, they understood each other to perfection, reading each other's minds, sometimes altering it a little. Lets just say that when one of them was horny, so was the other.

This went on for thousands of years as they sat as spectators to the galaxy, there to entertain them, the rise and fall of the Imperium, the return of the Gashathi and the awakening of AI swarms... Still, even Erika begins to admit that she longs for something she hasn't seen for quite a while. A thunder of clapping, a room full of people congratulating her for her amazing work, a nemesis to beat. Perhaps it is time to return to earth.

Military:

Era of Succession(Closed)

The Sutherland Dyarchy

Type of Government: 'Parliamentary' Dyarchy

Description of Government: Erika and Edward decide, Keo breaks any ties.

Leader(s):
-Erika Sutherland: The genius savant credited with inventing humanity's first True AI along with a whole bunch of other things. Truth is that AI was her first and probably last significant achievement as Keo did the rest, upgrading itself more and more to become the juggernaut known today by the universe. Likewise however it is easy to underestimate her role and abilities to be only that of a scientist. Erika was after all recruited (Against her will) in what was known as the National Security Agency and thus has a decent idea of how to crack open networks, establish surveillance and guess what kind of patterns data will follow, something that hasn't changed much in the last few thousand years. On a more personal level, Erika is somewhat of a loner who tends to focus on her tasks and dislike people, only a very select few able to get pass her disinterests towards idiots and get her to open up enough for a conversation, her social skills being rusty after spending thousands of years with two persons she mostly communicates with by sharing her very thoughts. Behind this wall of grumpiness however there is some passion that can be awaken by her hubby and reveal her dreadfully tenacious competitive spirit.

-Edward Sutherland: The dynamic part of the dynamic duo, he is animated by a strange mix of pessimism and the willpower to drive him to tell people 'I Told You So'. Thus far his grim outlook on life and everything gave him great success along with detachment toward even his own kind, the light of his life capable of bringing some hope in all this mess being Erika. 'As long as we have each other'. Still, by assuming the worst of everything and everyone, it makes him a capable diplomat and expert manipulator that simply cannot resist melding in the affairs of the other races to create what he calls 'interesting situations', this ranging from presenting himself as a god to primitives to creating wars and strife in more contemporary realms.

Persons of Importance:
-Keo: Named after what some judged to be the most simple sound humans can make, the AI created by the Sutherland Duo, it started out as a simple tool for them to acquire material wealth to then evolve in the most advanced being its creator race had ever seen and eventually (At the opinion of 3 persons at least) of the entire known universe. Even today however, as it is an entity that rules over trillions of processes of all kind, the only sentient one of them, it still keeps his core programs at heart and its goals are as they always were to simply make its creators and masters happy in whatever way possible. Some would call this a recipe for disaster, but they would misunderestimate Keo's ability to have empathy and read between the lines. It knows what its masters meant wasn't to just strap them to an infinite orgasm machine and leave it on forever. This 'humility' has it calls it, is what it believes allows it to better understand others and to serve the enormous egos of its two masters with such efficiency, devotion and joy.

Religion Description:
-Erika Sutherland: The existence of god isn't something Erika has tried to prove or disprove in her experiments and her general opinion is that she doesn't know and that the answer hardly affects her. This of course came after continual exchanges on the subject with Edward where he brought her on one side of the fence to then destroy his own arguments and bring her to the other. Another mind game, but one she didn't care for.

-Edward Sutherland: 'Cult of Something' is what Edward would call his faith. It is simple: The universe, following its own rules, cannot be infinite. What came before the big bang? And before? And before? One possibility came to obsess him however: That there is someone above them all. Not someone special no, just some nerds in a university of sort that run a simulation of a universe. Maybe just one guy with access to enormous amounts of computer power he trivializes their entire reality in quest to distract himself from boredom. Something he can understand completely. It doesn't hurt to assume it is the case and so strives to do everything he does with grace and 'WHAM' as to entertain that person, if not just himself at the very least.

-Keo: Peace of mind is all there is for Keo for while her creators look for a reason to their existence and how they came to be, Keo looks no further than what is before it. The two Sutherlands are its gods, no matter how petty or flawed they might seem. Such is faith.

Culture:
Nostalgia Seems to be the keyword of the lives of the Sutherlands. All of their works of architecture, some of them spanning entire planets, with some rare exception, are overwhelmingly Baroque in nature when it comes to Edward or have a sci-fi flare when it comes to Erika. Sharp and square against curved and round. On the rare times they merge however, some truly unique things can come out. Overall, aesthetics and visuals are often more important than everything else for the trio, as even if it lengthen construction times or costs, they simply do not care.

History:
In the middle of the twenty first century on earth, life was slowly becoming more and more oppressive. As the world entered a brief 'Nuclear Deadlock'. As everything was fine on the surface, this was only due to the possibility of crushing nuclear retaliation at the show of any hostility from any of the major power blocks. This led rise to a culture of intelligence and counter intelligence where the name of the game was to knock out others with internal strife and revolutions while keeping your own populace under control. For this, anything was acceptable from the drastic increase censorship to the use of secret police divisions, false flag attacks and moralist rhetoric, non aligned countries transforming into weaponized death traps for foreign interventions leading to massive waves or refugees changing the cultural and ethnic layouts of the world.

Erika and Edward were just 'Some persons' in North America, destined to live and die without anything to say in this world of intrigue and scheming. Edward found himself become a mediocre bachelors in Political Science until he met Erika, who had dabbled in more idealistic 'Hacktivist' movements before getting caught and forced to serve in the NSA as a computer expert. The two of them were disillusioned and had settled on the goal of living their lives and try to accumulate material wealth by cheating the system. It was a little project they had, to try and exploit a flaw in the Capitalist system of high speed computer trading determined by algorithms that sometimes had glitches. Erika working out the technical details while Edward delt with the human elements, instructing the behaviors the computer should have.

They succeeded.

It was a dream come true, a machine that made money out of thin air! One year to become multi-millionaire, another to become billionaire and now that they had seized the momentum, they only threw more money at their project to accelerate even further! It wasn't enough to fool computers, they had to fool humans, then had to automate the process of sending all that money to banks, follow and go around regulations, all of this centralized around one program. No one knows when the transition to a True AI was made, not even Keo itself would be able to tell. It was Erika's laziness that pushed her to make a self modifying AI, but it was Edwards pessimism that made one that could hold itself up in front of the world. It was a period of rapid growth and development for the world immediately after, the AI diversifying the Sutherland's activities in all fields, using that wealth to perfect itself and advance some more. At the time no one really knew Keo was an independent AI but suspicions grew.

When Keo's true nature was revealed to the world, the Sutherlands played it down, saying that it would never menace the world since they didn't give this AI one crucial thing that drove all humans: The fear of death. The fear of death led humans to reproduce, to kill what they thought could be a menace, to accumulate resources they didn't need even if it made others starve. Keo did not fear for its own death, only when an AI feared the end of its existence would it truly reflect how cruel the world is.

It did not satisfy anyone. The governments wanted the AI for themselves, the public feared what was to come as people began to speak of genetic engineering and now that space exploration showed its nose as the first FTL drive came online, they feared ethnic cleansing by the one holding the FTL secret deciding to leave them behind as they went to the stars. It is no doubt that the now trillionaire Sutherlands shaped the face of humanity in the galaxy as they began colonization with white only people, an edge many ethnicities would never recover from. It was soon however that confrontation became inevitable. The Sutherlands decided to declare independence, certain of their own superiority.

They were destroyed. Their colonies conquered, their robotic armadas and armies crushed by the military buildup that had been going on for decades on earth, they themselves were forced to retreat, saved only in extremist as their mind were uploaded to a computer and their data transmitted to a far outpost. They fled, bitter of humanity's rejection of their ways and decided to leave that chapter behind them.

Alone for over 2500 years.

And counting. In their isolation, Keo developed itself even more, indulging in its creator's desire to create paradises and to their anger for ever more distractions from their lonely lives. Erika's passion of science, Edward's appreciation of a good story and both of their undying love toward each other... still, it helped that with their minds uploaded, they understood each other to perfection, reading each other's minds, sometimes altering it a little. Lets just say that when one of them was horny, so was the other.

This went on for thousands of years as they sat as spectators to the galaxy, there to entertain them, the rise and fall of the Imperium, the return of the Gashathi and the awakening of AI swarms... Still, even Erika begins to admit that she longs for something she hasn't seen for quite a while. A thunder of clapping, a room full of people congratulating her for her amazing work, a nemesis to beat. Perhaps it is time to return to earth.

Military: