To Safeguard the Future

Hi all.  As usual, scroll to the bottom for the TL;DR if you can’t stomach this.  I’ve been working on this BLOG update since I left our reality. Now that I’m back, here it is.

Stream of Consciousness begin;

Tronatos makes me extremely scared.  No, like super afraid that we’ll all die burning in a ditch.  Like that one episode of Futurama… ok, like most episodes of Futurama back in the early days of the Millenium.  He is a being that doesn’t have to connect to computers through abstract interfacing. He connects with them with no difference of input in relation to their own input/output.  There is no ‘port’ through which he enters into the computer. If you don’t understand you’re probably not familiar enough with programming… but trust me, it’s one of the most distressing things ever.  He touches a computer, and through the electric connections he controls it.

Now, imagine that a super could control someone with a single touch.  Anyone. Like the president, or doctor, or police officer… anyone. There is nothing stopping that super from controlling all humanity save the logistical issues of his physical proximity to the target.  Now imagine that we’re all connected to each other, and if he touches one person he can touch anyone. Ok, I just imagined everyone planted in the ground up to their ankles, and the weird capillary roots going all over the place, like in the 2000s remake of War of the Worlds, where they make soylent green fertilizer and the red roots spread over the ground…  disgusting… then that made me think of Pandora in Avatar, where the whole planet is connected into basically one huge tree… Anyway… Imagine that is our world, and then imagine that super is there. We’re all screwed, and not in the fun Black Phantom way. That is Thanatos in a nutshell. Even he sees himself as an embodiment of death, to one degree or another.  You can see it in the way he acts and reacts to the world. But more important than all of this: If it exists once, you can bet your left butt cheek and right index finger that it exists more than once. We’re in serious trouble, and we may be too late.

To put this all into a bit less ethereal terms, let me remind you that we’re living in the Age of Information.  Like the Iron Age, or Bronze Age, or Age of Aquarius. Aquariuuuuuuus. Uh.. Yeah, so everything in the world is digital, and the world is run and secured by information.  If you have the information, you have the power. The Powah. And the information in our world is currently secured by digital failsafes and firewalls…. Which Thanatos doesn’t even need to think at to get through.  He’s already through them. The nudes on your phone? Yeah, he already emailed them to a family in Saigon. The medical files on your boss’s enlarged prostate? He’s done something with them. I don’t want to know… The Nuclear Launch Codes?  He’s got them. Luckily parts of the government still require physical keys, and so he can’t make the computer think it’s gotten proper authorization… But the ICBMs and Rockets are controlled through electronic signals, so he can launch it all anyway.

What spurred this whole thing in my mind?  Watching Thanatos waltz right through hospital doors and security checkpoints like they were nothing.  Making secure computer servers and deleted files his prison bych. Defaming and framing – terrible – people and possibly causing deaths with no more than a thought.  What’s to stop someone or something like that from destroying us?

This also has nothing to do with the fact I didn’t want to dwell on my existential crisis that was thrown at me by Black Panther.  I mean honestly… My death wasn’t traumatic enough? I had to watch it from the MEMORY of the guy that shot me? See that it was no more than a simple job?  Just some nothing nerd? I have the power to bring him screaming to his knees. I know the body like a virtuoso, thanks to BP. I can use any number of instruments, procured or made, to prolong his suffering until it stops feeling good to hear his blood-curdling screams.  I don’t have blood, so I guess they’d have to be hydraulics-curdling? Hmm. Oh! Cheese Curds. Gotta get me some of them. They sound super good… especially fresh curds from a scottish farm? MMmmmm… Oh yeah, I don’t have taste buds. Aaaaand now we’re back to the existential crisis.  Let’s derail that train and run it off a cliff.

Tronatos.  The dude is scary.

So, the first action we need to take is this:  AI security protocols! We need every major branch of government the world over to adopt an Intelligent Digital Security line of defense.  While Thanatos was trying to see if I was a threat, he was trying to take me over, not knowing that I had an Intelligence protecting my robot body.  He cannot take something over immediately if it has an Intelligence. While the initial reactions might be to recoil, I think the best way to do this, and maintain the proper security and secrecy required to protect sensitive governmental secrets, is to have a brigade of patriotic people take shifts guarding systems and databases.  No matter how powerful an attack is, if it is mitigated by many people it’s easier to deal with… so having a squad or seven jacked in to the system at a time would be better, depending on the sensitivity of the data secured. Also, there should be a line of defense separating each branch of government – Local and National. All of the other things necessary for infrastructure should also be required to have this.  Like Hospitals, Power Stations, Broadcasting Networks, Pepsi Distributions…. Because the Apocalypse wouldn’t be worth living through if Dew were taken away from me. Oh, but it already has. Dang it, I made myself feel bad. Whelp, gotta move on.

I think the first step may be to see if CSPD would be open to implementing some sort of provisionary system like this?  Possibly an AI defense system, since the Transferred Intelligence system would be a lot more complicated, and will require breakthroughs that I simply haven’t had yet in Programming.  

The big thing that people will be afraid of is the Terminator’s SkyNet.  Having hard-programmed laws of robotics isn’t the way to go, as we can see from Azimov’s novels.  I think that having physical keys and an algorhythm-generated passcode entered manually would be the way to go.  That way the CSO of each precinct could prevent anything like that from happening. THough, in today’s world the wariness toward robots is nothing close to how it was a decade and a half ago.

That may work.  I better try it.

One thing I have to remember, for a quixotic quest when I return to my universe (though when I post this I’ll have returned already) is that in the alternate reality my body still exists!

That’s crazy!

Even if it’s decomposing, Drunk-Fu Scientist Jake can make me a new body through cloning!  He told me as much as we were turning his lab’s lights off.

So hey!  I may get to drink Dew again!  AWESOME! But also, he might be able to make me a new body even if it’s not my old one…. All we’d need is a body without an Intelligence or Consciousness… Oh, man.  Does that make me a ghost? A literal Ghost in the Shell? Nice.

Maybe I should possess a cell mate to the dude that shot me… I’d make him rue… Ok, gotta stop.  *SIGH* Ugh. Ok.

 

TL;DR

I’m going crazy, Thanatos is scary, and I’m working on digital security chimps.