Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Digest: Difference between revisions

::I don't have a "full picture" to show you right now, but imagine - if you can - that both the Daodan and Screamers (and Phase entities in general), are ''transdimensional'', i.e., they are either 100% "latent" (fully residing in their home dimension), 100% "present" (pulled entirely into our world), or something in between. In some conditions the entities can flow freely back-and-forth between the two worlds. In other cases there will be little bits - "tips of the iceberg" - sticking into our dimension while the bulk of the entity remains "home". Force fields, for example, can be seen as "slices" of the other dimension temporarily inserted into ours - light can travel through such a slice, but for matter it will behave like a solid barrier. As another example, phase cloak wearers are still mostly in "our" dimension, but the agitation slightly "displaces" them in the direction of the Phase (a dangerous process that can lead to cellular damage or disintegration). Teleportation is similar to cloaking, but it's an even deeper (and more dangerous) excursion towards the Phase - thus, in the TNZ view, only fully integrated Daodan symbiotes can survive a teleport.

::Screaming Cells are an example of entities that normally live "elsewhere" (out of Earth phase, as Oni puts it), but can venture into our dimension - the higher or lower "presence" of a Screamer can be seen as a larger or smaller projection of its transdimensional/multi-dimensional form onto our familiar 3D space (see [https://gifer.com/en/Rpck HERE] for a typical illustration of how a "hypersphere" is perceived in lower dimensions as a sphere of variable size). A Screaming Cannon's projectiles are material pieces of Phase tech that "hook" the Cell in our world and make sure it sticks around for long enough to do some damage (without the hook, the Cell could probably disappear into the Phase right away, and wouldn't need to fly around looking for "food").

::The Chrysalis biomass can also be seen as a portal between dimensions. When the process is initiated, the portal/hook is the size of a single cell, so there is a narrow "bottleneck" in terms of the energy and information that can come through "from the other side" (thus the growth and adaptability of the Chrysalis are slow at this stage). However, as the Chrysalis grows further and produces "metastases", the "energy throughput" and informational "bandwidth" increase dramatically - allowing faster, more powerful and more intelligent transformations. It is important that this process is not rushed, otherwise there's a risk of "instability" (integrity loss; deformity, inhuman features, insanity, etc). Finally the whole body of the host turns into a transdimensional portal, and the "aura" has direct access from the Phase to any of the host's cells - what happens then is anyone's guess, but "the possibilities are endless!!!" (teleportation, telekinesis, flight, summoning...).

::Seen from that perspective, the Daodan is "just" a benevolent Screamer. Instead of draining energy from living cells, it provides them with extra energy and strength. Hasegawa's first experiments may have been with Screaming Cells as a tunable "source of damage" (trying to genetically engineer cells that would resist a Screamer's draining for as long as possible) - until one day the parameters of the "Phase hook" changed and, instead of "fishing" a Screamer as usual, it is a Daodan that came out of the Phase and "bit" the tissue sample. The amazing properties of this new entity became clear immediately: the sample doesn't die from energy draining; in fact the cells look healthy and start dividing/mutating, even without a [wp:growth medium|growth medium] (!); the mutant cells are able to infiltrate/assimilate other cells from the same organism; they resist surgery; if extended to larger samples, they inexplicably enhance the original while preserving its integrity.

::My other "subjective objection" is that you have computers and AIs elsewhere in your story. This trivialization of advanced AI is nowhere to be seen in Oni. Instead Oni has rather stupid droids, not-quite-reliable SLDs, rampant Deadly Brains, and lots of human operators supervising all this "artificial stupidity", ready to flip the killswitch at a moment's notice. In my view, AI science in Oni is nowhere close to a complex man-made computer designing another free-running "biocomputer" that somehow will - by design - perform major upgrades on human beings while preserving their overall integrity.

::My "terminological" problem with AVATARA is that "AVATARA" is sort of reserved for a VIP surveillance/intelligence/communication network, so you should call your AI "Deep Thought" or something. Or maybe you want to recycle the "STURMANDERUNG supercomputer" and imply that its main task - at the time of Oni's events - is to "predict" the evolution of Muro's Chrysalis (and that earlier it was built/repurposed to analyze/design the whole Daodan technology - supposedly it was smaller then, and located elsewhere).

::My most objective problem is that the "team of two" would have needed a genius AI coder, and - if the Daodan is indeed the fruit of Computer-Assisted Design - it is this improbable "AI specialist" who should get most of the credit for the invention. As far as we can see, Kerr and Hasegawa are both biologists with a background in computing science, not the other way around. So they might know a thing or two about protein folding, but when it comes to designing completely new life processes on a computer - if that's even possible! - someone else would need to formulate the problem, set up the "deep learning" scheme, and more generally do some regular maintenance work on those q-bit arrays (of which there would need to be a ''lot'').

::To me, Daodan symbiosis works as a "leap of faith" (both for an unwitting subject such as Mai and for the "designers" of the project, like Hasegawa - Kerr's "true nature" tirades are a good example). It is much less convincing as "controlled technology" or "calculated risk" - Griffin's failure is a testament to that. The only guarantees about the Daodan is that it will deceive ''any'' expectations - other than expressing the "true nature" of its host (whatever that means) - and elude ''any'' form of control. It can be "invented"/"discovered", but not "mastered" or "harnessed" --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 20:47, 21 May 2020 (CEST)