I had forgotten, Ani’s other sister, cousin Jenny now assists as a trump advisor to Spec Ops. She teamed with me for the investigation.
“The two suits you have to look at have both had the first stage
re-programming that was done by Spec Ops when they were first discovered
back in March (it’s now August 2009). This means that they don’t
immediately turn their wearers into slaves of Ghostwheel. They do leave
the wearer with a strong instinct to defend and protect Earth.
They are a symbiotic life form with a very odd artificial intelligence,
that amounts to programming rather than thinking. The basic OS melds
with the wearer’s mind, immediately augments combat and presence by 20
points, augments strength and endurance by 10 points, this is paid for
by reducing psyche by 20 points, and adds a layer of armour, a high
degree of magic resistance, and the thing that nobody spotted the first
time through – a back channel Trump link to – ???
They have also got a variety of Shape Shift that has been termed ‘Self
Repair’ and can be extended to the wearer, unless the wearer’s own shape
shift ability is already better than that. They are almost as good as a
Goa’uld sarcophagus at keeping their wearer’s body alive. They
automatically re-size themselves to fit their wearer, and wearers that
do not conform to a 1960s version of Superhero classic body shape will
find themselves being changed to that shape over extended wearing
(moderate amount of muscles, clean, healthy, no excess body fat).
They are very anatomically correct, with gender specific versions, and
they include a level of ‘calming’ that basically is sexual stimulation
for the wearer. They are powered (fed) partly by consuming all
excretions of the wearer except from the head (and the top of the thighs
in the case of the female version) and also by another means that was
also missed during the early investigations, but has now become
apparent, namely Ley energy. And Yes – they can eat from the St. James
Ley lines.
They actively encourage (or demand depending on how you look at it) a
higher than normal level of eating and drinking in the wearer (sexual
pleasure as a reward), and use shape shift extruded anal and urethral
probes to ensure that they get their share of the excess consumed.
Wearers end up with zero body hair from the neck down minutes after
putting one on.
They use electro-stimulation to exercise muscles in the wearer if they
stay immobile for extended periods of time, and they have limited
ability to awaken a sleeping wearer if their own danger sense is
triggered.
Good and bad. It assumes the reprogramming was 100 percent effective
>and there are no lurking backdoor bits of code to cause problems later.
>Who did the reprogramming?
Spec Ops has much better hackers than it does sorcerers. There are any
number that could do it. In this case Special Agent Riki Fukushima.
Feels like a bit of demon in there. Not a lot, but some.
they dig
themselves into their wearer with a view to becoming even more
indispensable – and when you’ve been living for a while with
significantly increased physical abilities, never having any longer to
bother about social graces like visiting a lavatory, and getting your
rocks off pretty much full time, they sure can be indispensable.
In summary, they turn you into a dumbed down, sex addict who feels all powerful and hot while making you want to defend earth.
My notes from my conversation with Anabelle suggest that if you become brain damaged or dead while wearing a suit that:
“the suit actually downloaded a personality into the body and effectively created a new person. The unexpected result was the the suits seem to have access to a wide range of remarkably powerful powers. They are capable of Trumping the primary node. However, what they are able to do via trump is fairly limited. Ghost Specter, which is what she calls herself, is rather keen on getting back and ‘fixing’ the problems with the primary node.”
Learning this, I recommended recall and destruction.
If it had only been a matter of distributing technology and having botched the initial testing…it would have seriously shaken my confidence.
But to distribute equipment which is known to be addictive, decrease intelligence, and impart a loyalty imperitive? That they did know before handing them out.
They did not share that information with the agents in advance.
I find that unacceptable.
Thank you for ensuring that this information gets to those most directly affected! But the critical down sides were in fact listed to everyone I know who chose to put on a supersuit: these essential points being that the suits affected your mind, making you more impressionable and more into protecting the Earth and rescuing kittens and righting wrongs and suchlike “Superheroic” things; and that they were very pleasurable and difficult to choose to take off. People made plans for these instances before donning suits, and those plans were later enacted. I am surprised to hear that it was you who informed the Empire of all this, and not Praefectus Classis Honoured Lady Olivia North, on whose behest the major suit-enabled mission that I am aware of was created (alas, outside of Broyle’s awareness, to the best of my knowledge).
The loyalty directive, as you note above, was in the suits from long before they came to Spec Ops. Did Fukushima speak to you of some addition to divert it to Spec Ops specifically, or to extend it beyond the time that the suit was actively being worn?
It is possible Admiral North did inform the Empire through separate channels. If she did, I am not aware of it.
I did not note that the loyalty directive was original to the hardware.
The original directive as I understood it was to become a Ghostwheel slave, that was removed. The directive to communicate back to the main nodes and download a personality transplant were not originally discovered and remained until Anabelle’s investigations and later ours, took place.
Your understanding was protecting the earth and rescuing kittens was supposedly present from the original along side the Ghostwheel slave directive? and the directive to go back and repair the main nodes?
It sounds rather like a pharmaceutical ad on tv where the pouty faced person suddenly perks up after taking their pill, the sun breaks out from behind the clouds, and all is right with the world. Followed shortly thereafter by a voice over of someone reeling off a list of life threatening conditions that may result so quickly that you can barely follow what they said.
Ghostwheel strikes you as the Greenpeace, save the baby seals, help old ladies across the street sort of artifact? Truth, justice and the American way as the motto went?
The doomesday artifact is interested in saving kittens?
That seems inconsistent.
Forgive me, but I have two questions…perhaps you would care to ask them of Fukushima?
What programmer would put all those directives along side each other in the original hardware and not expect a system error code to result?
Given that the Ghostwheel slavery directive, core to the function of the suit, was successfully removed by Spec Ops personnel…why leave the loyalty compulsion in place? Shouldn’t that have been removed at the same time before handing it to an operative? There was no good reason for it to remain if it had been there from the start. Why subject operatives to that condition?
Who signed off on the requirements document for the suit features modification? Why was the loyalty condition either retained (as you suggest) or installed?
Who approved the final code acceptance tests for the suits?
I suspect you will find that it would be Col Broyles. If it isn’t, you have other organizational problems.
I received the solicitation from Col. Broyles about the suits…no disclosure statement was included.
When I spoke to Col Broyles in person after learning the details and expressed my shock, amazement and anger that he would endanger his agents through permitting these suits to be used…he made no effort to defend his choice to distribute these suits.
At a minimum, operatives were endangered by equipment which had not been competently tested. The were used as on-going experimental subjects under field conditions.
Those suits are designed to make you want to keep wearing them and to make you fairly excited about putting them back on again. No exposure limits tests were done…if they had been, as they would have been on an alien medication protocol even, the other deficits might well have shown up in the lab under controlled conditions well before the agents in the field were subjected to that risk.
How many wearings before those compulsions leave a permanent impression? No one knows. Possibly because you were the guinea pigs for finding out.
I remember turning to Broyles and asking, “Sir, why would you endanger your agents by allowing them to use a piece of addictive, self-programming, arcane bio-technology? I got that memo…come and get it, free to all comers!
“Even before we get to the point that the trump link to the Main Ghost node was missed?”
I felt sick at heart standing there. Cold to the bone. I recommended their destruction.
“I suggest the suits be destroyed immediately before they can be retrieved and put to their original use.”
His only reply:
“These ones will be. So far – my agents haven’t returned the remaining
ones.”
Getting those suits back was evidently not so easy from everyone.
I will say this…why would Admiral North, one of the most able and competent and undeniably deadly, military minds in the Empire…hunt up a mission with Spec Ops personnel…not Empire personnel that she could whistle up by the legion…that just happened to only be possible to accomplish using those suits?
And not want anyone to tell Broyles about it?
I can make a conjecture.
It would make a lot of sense if Admiral North had gotten intel regarding the suits’ existence, recognized their military potential, and wanted to arrange a field test of the equipment. Particularly if she might be a tad bit worried that Broyles might somehow object to his people being borrowed in a weapons demonstration scenario or might have realized that it was part of an intelligence gathering activity on her part.
May I ask why you accepted a mission at the direction of an officer of an external service who explicitly made it clear that they did not have authorization to employ you and who explicitly expressed a desire that you keep this a secret from your superior?
Have you wondered what Admiral North’s response might be should any of her personnel go freelance at the behest of a foreign power who specifically wanted her in the dark?
Based on accounts of Lauren, one of the original designers of Ghostwheel, the original purpose of Ghostwheel and the suits was to protect St. James.
“…and we had this really cool idea – why not build a computer that could run the world defences so that the people could make love – not war – without having to worry about all that shit? Of course – it would need to be able to think for itself – which was going to mean some serious blue sky work – and it would need a bunch of loyal servants to help it do the things that you just need a pair of hands to do – which was going to take another bunch of blue sky research – but – hey – we were young, in love, and sleep was for wimps – right?”
https://www.aurellis.org/wiki/npc-pages/lauren/
Given that Lauren put herself in the position of protecting St. James from Ghostwheel when things went wrong, I am inclined to believe that her intentions were noble.
Lydia,
The original intent may have been protection of St. James. But Lauren spent decades with an AI that thought the best way to accomplish that was to pre-emptively blow up a world.
Perhaps, from that reasoning it might extend that the suits’ could perhaps be expected over time to display some few flaws in what their logic viewed protecting the earth to be…that this might have an effect on the wearer…or that the wearer themselves interacting with this protocol might produce some fairly crazy results?
There is a joke in the US military services, Aunt Kari told it to me once. The order goes out to the services to “Secure this location!”
The Army contingent goes in, sweeps the area, sets up a perimeter guard, establishes and access list, and sets up a 24/7 guard.
The Marines go in, napalm the area eradicate all structures, wildlife and flora; sets up a perimeter guard, establishes and access list, and sets up a 24/7 guard.
The Navy parks a carrier group off shore, interdicts the airspace with jets, and was the one to send the marines in to do the above.
The Air Force sends in two JAG lawyers and a cultural affairs team to negotiate a host-tenant agreement with the local authorities, then heads to the nearest hotel for drinks in the bar.
The point being…protect and defend can take on some interesting character and perspective depending on the mindset and organizational viewpoint involved.
Perhaps if nothing else this entire episode points out two things:
The sometimes disastrous consequences of good intentions without resort to mature consideration.
That nothing was learned and the mistake perpetuated, spawning more problems.
I agree Lauren and Merlin and their group were most probably well intended, but they were not wise. And, going back to a different thread, their arrogance in believing that they should carry out their plans without resort to any judgement but their own has resulted in several near disasters, one actual disaster spanning multiple shadows, and several new life forms/species that are now concerns in themselves.
Lauren and Merlin did not obtain approval from anyone but themselves for a project that resulted in an insane infant AI that was then left contained on our world, unsupervised externally, to become a problem down the road.
Lauren’s colleagues lacked the integrity, after hooking her up to that machine to babysit the insane AI domesday device for decades local time and hundreds of years experientially, left her there to rot without bothering to come back to see if she needed assistance of if the arrangements were going to go south.
When rediscovered, the ultimate outcome was that the destruction of the device resulted in the deaths of thousands across multiple shadows. Given, better than billions, but still not without consequence.
The chain of consequence continued, In the new creation undertaken to stabilize the rift created by Ghostwheel’s end…which would have killed even more people…Lauren was wearing the suit when she undertook the ordeal, even though she knew better, spawning an entire new race of creatures to deal with…ooops.
Then Spec Ops inherits the some of the suits.
One team member…with the same philosophy as the original inventors…takes off with one for personal experiments without the knowledge, authorization, support, or institutional review of anyone but herself.
She meant well. And truly, she found out a lot. And also created a new life form from the combination of one of the suits with a brain dead human. This ostensibly is a new problem to contend with.
Where was the human experiments review committee?
And when Broyles, to his credit, attempted to discipline and incarcerate the offender…who at best was a leading candidate for the Dr. Creepy award, and at worse may have accidentally touched off a communication with a main node due to the research…it took a while before the individual even cottoned on to the fact that maybe stealing the suit and performing ad hoc research with dangerous stuff was possibly a problem someone else might get stuck fixing.
Then, the other suits with modification, get handed out to Spec Ops personnel to wreck their own havoc.
Good intentions.
Everyone had them!
Presumably even Broyles when he said take out the Ghostwheel enslavement but either change it to a defend earth or leave the compulsion to be loyal to earth in.
What harm could that cause?
Through all of this, the same mistake recurs…
Exposure of humans to untested, or poorly tested, experimental gear without any process of human subject review and with dubious disclosures about the known affects of the technology.
Might I suggest that Spec Ops undertake that their operators submit any such experiments to an experimental review board, and periodic checks, PRIOR to involving human subjects?
And that the internal review board consists of more than just Broyles?
Like say, and ethics committee?
Perhaps all personnel might undertake formally, that they will not engage in any research that is not approved by the board both for its ethical content but its long term wisdom and short term ability to be contained with known means?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Most of your questions have answers that relevant personnel are and were aware of. Some of the statements you make are inaccurate. The story of the suits is consistent internally, and externally with the otherwise demonstrated actions of the various related parties.
If anyone would like to know more, please get in touch with me, on St. James or in Animus!
Questions remain:
Why was the St. James loyalty compulsion left in or included before releasing the suits when the capability to remove such compulsions had already been demonstrated?
Why were incompetently tested suits released for use?
Was informed consent truly obtained from all wearers and was that information adequate for an informed choice? Was an experimental subjects agreement sought?
Did that agreement include the use of suits in an alternative gender form? An untested combination that left lingering affects for the individual involved?
Why did a Spec Ops teams undertake a mission with a foreign power deliberately wishing to keep their superiors in ignorance?
Bad judgement.
Lack of competence.
Lack of integrity.
Failure to learn from experience.
Poor procedure safeguarding the materials (stolen for private use).
Unauthorized and unsupervised experiments. (Times two for that particular individual who had exhibited the same behavior previously with Gou’ald artifacts and Aphrodite’s Kiss.)
No safeguards in place to counter or contain potential consequences, no contingency plan.
Possibly treason in acting for a foreign power after undertaking the oath as an operative for the United States.
If you keep making the same mistakes, the same results follow.
As a disclaimer, I am the twice damned Dr Creepy earlier referred to, so take what I have with a grain of salt. However, I don’t exactly agree with the vilification Gundrun likes to direct my way. I’d argue that my character flaws are pretty similar to her’s, we both suffer from fits of hubris and are inclined to speak with authority or knowledge that we might not actually possess. It is probably why we get along as poorly as we do.
I’ll try to answer some of the questions, but don’t take non-answers for support of Gundrun’s conclusions.
“Why was the St. James loyalty compulsion left in or included before releasing the suits when the capability to remove such compulsions had already been demonstrated?”
It is my understanding that the compulsions delivered by the suits were very deeply tied to their fundamental nature and could not be entirely removed. Faced with the inability to remove the compulsion, the compulsion was redirected to something close enough to not be rejected by the suits. They already wanted to defend St James, so loyalty to an organization with that objective was accepted by the suits.
“Why were incompetently tested suits released for use?”
First of all, it is insulting to assume the suits were incompetently tested before release. Those that studied their programing and their effects upon the user were quite competent and did a fine job. Yes, they missed the trump connection embedded in the suits. In their defense, this embedding was VERY well concealed. The pitfalls were simply out of our league and the league of just about anyone I’ve ever heard of.
When the suits were released for use Spec Ops had every reason to believe they were suitably vetted and a dangerous but known risk. Even so, to my knowledge at least, everyone given a suit was given a very sobering assessment on the risks involved. This was not done lightly.
“Was informed consent truly obtained from all wearers and was that information adequate for an informed choice? Was an experimental subjects agreement sought?”
To my knowledge, yes. There was also very real concern that some might agree and not have the capacity to object later. Such potential subjects were not permitted to don the suits.
“Did that agreement include the use of suits in an alternative gender form? An untested combination that left lingering affects for the individual involved?”
I don’t know all the details here, so I’m not going to even attempt to answer. However, from what I do know I suspect you are making incorrect assumptions that make your query irrelevant.
As for the last bit of your ‘observations,’ I’m sure someone appreciates your critique and values your input. Personally, I would find it more helpful if you were far less inclined to assume the worst of us. I think most of us are very open to a conversation about our actual deficiencies and how they can be addressed, but that doesn’t seem to be what you are interested in.
Anabelle,
If I come off as arrogant, I apologize. I am pretty deeply concerned.
Spec Ops has been around for a while, but the records I have and the personal experience I’ve had with you leave me wondering, what level of insistence will be required to get people to actually look at the effects of their behavior?
It very much seems like the same things get repeated time and again.
Gentle urgings and hints maybe don’t work?
When I came to see you in Leavenworth, it wasn’t till nearly the end of our discussion that you seemed to seriously get the idea that people might be deeply concerned and that there could be far reaching consequences for your research. Your initial attitude was one of bemused tolerance…very much a case of ‘well I’m humoring them, when they feel better about themselves they’ll let me out.’ The idea that perhaps something serious might be afoot was late coming…despite you standing in a supermax cell wearing orange.
Speaking to one of our other colleagues they similarly expressed a casual view towards your detention, and was quite surprised to learn the conditions of your incarceration…because surely they wouldn’t have put you in a place like that!
Not that the best St. James has to offer in terms of prisons was much use anyway. (Which has serious consequences as it means that capturing enemy prisoners is really not viable because you don’t have reliable containment depending on their type. Interrogation would not be viable, and it means people in the field may be forced to kill any opposition they meet, or release them on the field because there is no middle ground.)
I guess what I’m saying is, that I have no faith that gentle words and persuasion can be of help when having people banged up in a cell fails to communicate that maybe there are concerns about how things are going.
As for Dr. Creepy, honestly Annabelle, you created a suit zombie life form from a brain dead human stuffed in a suit. I think a few people might see that as pretty creepy.
We’re getting some real differences of view about the suit compulsion issue depending on who did the research. Some saying it was there before, some saying it was there but morphed, some saying it was put in by Spec Ops.
I think it is possible all three views may be legitimate depending who we talked to and what impression was formed.
I was not left with the impression that the loyalty compulsion was not removable, which is what stimulates my concern.
I am still left with the notion that perhaps some things simply ought not to be used, especially till we explore them further. There was no need to release those suits for general use.
It seems very predictable to me that these things would create problems, I do not understand why others…seeing what had happened with the whole Ghostwheel project…did not have a strong concern.
What is arrogant here is that we do not self assess. Spec Ops may have tested to the best of its ability…yet we all know that those resources were limited. When you can’t test an item on several major powers category and have no plan to deal with that…perhaps it should be concluded that the item is unreleasable.
Its like checking out a submarine in a desert…sure, everything looks like it should work but we haven’t tried it in water yet.
Spec Ops needs to know its limits and respect them, and make some decisions that reflect the boundaries of that information.
It won’t do that when it cannot, short of a brow beating, take a look at itself and when it breezes over these defects.
Command and leadership is there to ensure that organizational deficiencies are identified. It is there to make some decisions, including the decision not to risk agents in equipment that they know they don’t have the ability to thoroughly check, that has been associated with series mad AI problems, and whose consequences they don’t have a plan for.
It is no crime to be out of one’s league. It is foolish to press forward failing to identify it or in spite of it when it is not necessary to meet an immediate threat.
I do not think this group is open to a conversation about addressing deficiencies. It seems there are two reactions:
Everything is hunky dory, whatever happens is justified because the alternative must have been worse even if we create more problems down the road and we are totally going to keep doing things the way we always have.
or
Your criticism is harsh and mean, we don’t want to hear it, maybe we’d listen if you’d talk nicer, except if you did we’d ignore that too.
Ani and I have seen some pretty nasty stuff with this group. She had longer to observe but I see no change.
People selling information and technology obtained on mission for profit.
Swiping materials/weapons for personal use.
Working for other powers without authorization.
Making shady deals with demons.
Use of excessive and destructive force on missions.
Unnecessary killing of civilians in collateral actions.
Unregulated and unsupervised technology research without oversight.
Torturing prisoners.
Failing to hold yourselves and your leadership accountable.
Those things are not all blasts from the past. There are perhaps reasons for a negative bias to be present?
But as I said to AC…I am obviously in the wrong. I should not have continued the discussion. I apologize for attempting to inject a different perspective.
You are all thoroughly correct and are an outstanding organization. Keep doing what you do!
This isn’t a conversation for public airing. I strongly disagree with many of your assessments, assumptions and even facts but so be it.
I’m sorry I provoked you further. That was my bad. In the future, I’ll do my best to leave your holier than thou views to yourself.
I apologize for having upset you.
I respect your disagreement.
It is evident that my views are not shared or considered helpful.
I will not comment further. You may rest assured I have finally learned my lesson, slow as it has been in coming.
I am sorry to have participated in a disagreement.