Restless Souls/Technology: Difference between revisions

While RS might display many technologies, currently this page focuses only on the four most important ones.

In RS the DC is a very complex genetic ''program'' designed to upgrade the human host and his [[wikipedia:Human_microbiome|microbiom]].

Each symbiosis consists of two or more symbionts. The term '''primer symbiont''' refers to the human host and his microbiom because they are the more important partner. The human body and his flora are a complete living being while the DC was just made for their support and couldn't exist on its own.

After the DC upgraded all cells there's no more primer and secondary symbiont. At this time point we have a new life form known as '''Imago'''.

Humans' use of nuclear material contaminated whole countrysides. - At least [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W_lLhBt8Vg&t=4m19s nuclear weapons] aren’t fired or tested these days but their remnants are still there. - To date, nuclear power plants produce radioactive waste while suitable locations for repositories are still subject of controversial debates. Due to that radioactive waste was [[wikipedia:Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste|officially]] and [[wikipedia:Radioactive_waste#Illegal_dumping|unofficially]] sunk in oceans. It was just a matter of time until the barrels would leak from rust. Besides the catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, there was also a sneaking contamination of agriculture by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Radioactive_element_accumulation phosphate fertilizers]. Alone in Germany it's 160 metric tons uran each year<ref name="dangerous drinking water">The documentation "Gefährliches Trinkwasser" ("Dangerous drinking water") aired on German (public broadcasting) TV channel "NDR": https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/139715/OniGalore/Gefaehrliches_Trinkwasser.flv<br>Textual summary on the website of the German (public broadcasting) TV channel "3sat": http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/ard/165954/index.html ([https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/139715/OniGalore/RS_T_Sources/Gefaehrliches_Trinkwasser.zip mirror])</ref>.

When the World Coalition Government took over, they had undoubtedly a PR problem. So in the same year they came up with a media-effective distraction. Laboratories under WCG authority should realized plans to undo nuclear contaminations and present it to the public with the slogan "together we can go everywhere". Their solution was an artificial created [[wikipedia:Mycorrhiza|mycorrhiza]]. That symbiosis of plants and fungi is supposed to absorb radioactive isotopes and store them in a kind of nut. Drones were going to collect them. The hull contained bitters so that animals didn't feed on them. The mycorrhiza organisms were unable to propagate because their cells, including DNA and its mutations, dissolve when required fertilizer aren't used anymore. This kind of control was necessary because the mycorrhiza would not only clean the soil but also devour whole forests to collect the radionuclides inside non-animal organisms. To accelerate the development, all mechanisms were tested [[wikipedia:In_silico|in silico]] against critical mutations. In the lab it seemed stable enough so the officials pushed for field tests.

In nature the mycorrhiza accumulated mutations in an unpredicted way. With the silenced fail-safe measures, the mycorrhiza was able to spread out uncontrolled. During the next years it influenced other organisms. This marked the beginning of the BioCrisis. Since then reclamation teams are fighting back the wilderness and WCG is trying to hide their fatal errors from public. Nobody wanted to take the blame.

Jamie and Prof. Hasegawa searched in the Wilderness Preserves for minimal mutated mycorrhiza to prove that the problem was man-made. On their way into the wilderness Jamie got infected by the fungus. It liquefied her leg tissue. The CDC believed that it was caused by a virus because these symptoms reminded them of Ebola. Hasegawa caught later a tissue samples of Jamie and the fungus in the quarantine zone. He realized that it would need other and better security measures for the Daodan Chryalis to [[#Contamination_of_the_ecosystem|not endanger the environment]].

On one hand they require fertilizers with [http://phys.org/news/2015-06-scientists-molecular-key-potential-gmos.html artificial amino acids.] When the plant and the fungi can't consume more of these components they stop growing. Eventually too low concentration trigger cell death whereby all the genetic information in dissolved as last action, only leaving the hard shells with radioactive material behind.

Also each mycorrhiza partner produces components for the other. They can only grow with the other partner around.

Since the two depend on each other, new emerging symbioses shouldn’t have effects on the mycorrhiza in aspects of biocontainment.

None of the crucial partner could have been replaced by another symbiont while keeping the dangerous decontamination process intact.

However, the plant can have multiple symbionts. While our engineered radiotrophic fungi was crucial, other fungi and bacteria supported the plant in common task like nitrogen fixation.

What led to the catastrophe was the horizontal gene transfer with secondary symbionts that occur in nature.

Either the fungi exchanged directly genetic material or bacteria acted as a carrier between the primary, artificially created fungi and the secondary, natural occurring fungi.

In the new fugal hosts the decontamination codes had enough time to experience mutations which replaced the artificial amino acids. The mutation rate was quite high due to the radioactive test sides.

The most dangerous mutants appeared where fertilizer were no longer dropped. The evolutionary pressure favored fungal species that were able to fully recycle all the few surrounding nutrients and snatching other organisms for more transfers of potentially useful genetic material.

Eventually the new fungi escaped. Some organisms that survive an attack gained defense mechanisms (making them on par with the original mutant) and abilities to easily exchange genes via HGT. If the WCG would't have employed bio-decontamination teams our city flora and crop plants would have already overrun by this green hell.

The government desperately tried to kill the mutated mycorrhiza by applying aggressive herbicides and fungicides. The chemical remnants were steadily accumulating in air, water and soil. The air was becoming toxic even to humans in a foreseeable time. This again forced the WCG to build the so-called Atmospheric Conversion Centers. They were trading a big evil against a marginal smaller one.

'''NEO TOKYO''' – A horrible scene unfolded yesterday at the Fuji Region Wilderness Preserve. Jamie Kerr Hasegawa, environment activist, top grad student, mother of two was found dead. Her grief-stricken husband, Prof. Hasegawa, is being held suspect for murder or homicide. Officials from the Center for Disease Control, however, attest that Hasegawa shot his wife to give her a merciful death. Mrs. Hasegawa had apparently contracted a new fatal viral infection

that caused complete cellular breakdown. Investigators fail to identify the DNA trace of the virus which has the CDC in a panic.

The Hasegawas had embarked on an unauthorized investigation to uncover the truth behind the WPS territories and the government’s supposed land reclamation project. According to Mr. Hasegawa they had gone into the Fuji Region Wilderness where his wife brushed her leg against a little thorned twig of a flowering shrub. They went on with no concern. Within minutes of taking the diminutive injury the little scratch became a swelling wound then changing into a large ulcer. The intense pain overwhelmed Mrs. Hasegawa, the wound infections spread away from the scratch and lanced slowly the ulcers. Mr. Hasegawa applied antibiotic hypos but in less than an

hour and wailful waiting the whole leg tissue was wracked wildly by deep chaps. By now it was clear that the virus would cause a total breakdown of the nervous system because of its all-devouring raging. The internal tissue was going to liquefy and bleed out. Mr. Hasegawa stated that it was an unbearable scene.

Note to self: merge the critics stuff with "What arguments speak for/against the Daodan?" ?

The Daodan was here and then criticized to be unethical especially by geyser. (But I'm happy he did. That way we have more points of view). He said that with the Daodan a human loses / gives up a not unimportant amount of control over body and mind.

* Sort of ''just look what happened to Muro''. In that point I disagree: Muro's personality might be the one of an anarchist but it could be very possibly formed by education / influences of an certain super-criminal organization and not by the Daodan.

* Also in his opinion Kerr is [http://oni.bungie.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=273#p273 biased] against Mai: The preservation of Mai personality is a wishful thinking. Indeed, it would be interesting to know from where Kerr takes the assumption that the personality change the Daodan body and not vice versa.

At least Kerr admits that the Daodan is unknown terrain.

And now we are back to the term "control". I think it's one of our greatest modern fears to lose control. geyser described well how the Daodan can be feared: missing control, the emerging unknown, and possible (or not) mind changes.

We are used to the thinking that having control is good. But what if Hasegawa came to the conclusion that the world is in the hands of too many ''unwise'' men. The WCG doesn't represent their citizens.  And for that reason passing on that kind of control wouldn't be so unethical.

GV's "Chrysalis" work group thinks that the Daodan will contaminate the environment sooner or later (in case it didn't already happen) because of [[wikipedia:Horizontal_gene_transfer#Prokaryotes|horizontal gene transfer]] causing unseen threats. Hence the Daodan needs a patch. The idea was and is to protect the primer symbiont, the human host. To ensure that the microbial Daodan cells stays only at the human flora these cells need to die in absent of the primer symbiont by dissolving their genetic material with an enhanced lysosome.