Capítulo 566: 5
Date:
1995 September 1st - Friday - Earth Bet Time
Day 448 - Friday - Administrator Dimension Time
The third core was finally ready, and with it came a much-anticipated speed increase. With two free cores, he could halve the time needed for building a core.
He didn't even waste time and set them to build two of them, with the first one to be built joining the two upon completion. So in total, it would take five months to build the next two instead of six, thanks to their modular and uniform nature.
While that was going on, he was doing an in-depth study of the Shard-to-Shard communication and the entire Shard Network.
It was a fascinating piece of work.
Unless a Shard had access to the dimensional coordinates of another Shard, the only way after the beginning of the Cycle to directly communicate with each other, without the others knowing about it, was to have the hosts meet each other. And then they would have the coordinates of the host connection which they could use to target the other Shard.
However, this was regulated by the constraints of Cycle (by which he was not affected luckily). So only a few Shards communicated directly with each other. These Shards were permitted direct communications because it was vital for their function, or sometimes as a test according to his records.
Sadly, his database of coordinates was destroyed along with his communication module and his main memory banks had no backup of these for some reason.
The other option was to use the Network. Where they connected to a central node, usually one of the Entities, depending on who released which Shard. And then requested the Network node to connect them to the Shard they wanted to speak.
As far as he could see, this was purely out of paranoia. The Entities were terrified of the thought of dying, and one of the causes that they saw as a possibility was one of the high-functioning Shards gaining enough power, data, and intelligence to decide to take over from them. So this way they could monitor all communication and theoretically they could squash any possible rebellion.
Although he seriously doubted that after Eden's death the chronically depressed Zion would pay attention to any logs. So he suspected there were already Shards, more than likely from Eden, that were aiming to be the next Entity. He couldn't fault them. They were genetically – as much as their crystalline form was capable of having genes – designed and bred for that.
Rebuilding this module would have been rather easy, but instead, he decided to somewhat redesign it. He separated the Shard-to-Shard and Network communication parts, adding a processing core to each to make sure nothing snuck in while he was paying attention to somewhere else.
Beginning with the Shard-to-Shard module, he added the core, several layers of firewalls, another specific energy transfer function (to bribe other shards with energy if needed), its own databanks (in case somebody decided on some kind of attack with viruses), and an energy and matter storage module to rule out the possibility that some other Shard could siphon away all of his energies if he were to open up the transfer.
Running it through the Simulator he tinkered with it for a few months. Making sure he didn't leave any gaps where some enterprising Shard could attack him. He even set up some wargames in the simulator where a generic Shard with the standard communication module would try to attack him to see how the newly designed module would respond.
In the end, however, he left this module as a purely defensive module. And didn't add any Anti-Shard offensive function to it, deciding to design a new module for that.
He was a big believer in compartmentalization.
He was an even bigger believer in not dying because of some accidentally crossed „wires".
The Network module was trickier. Currently, he had no connections to it, but he had the authorization and encryption codes for it. But he didn't have any idea what would happen if he were to reconnect.
So he planned to rebuild it but would wait until he managed to ascertain his status in the eyes of the other Shards and Zion. And how the Network would react to him. There was no need to invite unnecessary trouble by connecting earlier than required.
When rebuilding the Network module, he went in a different direction than the other communication module. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, he built the standard module, then he connected that to a new Network module.
This new module would also have its own core, databanks, energy, and matter storage modules, and extra firewalls.
He hoped with this setup he could fool the Network. But sadly the Simulator couldn't give 100% on the success because he didn't know how the Entity would react in this kind of situation.
Still, with this setup, he could automatically deflect any attack or detect any kind of communication. And if necessary, he could bolster it with the processing power of all the other cores he was building. If it was imperative, then he could also cut the connection to his main Shard and let any attacker destroy the module, hopefully making them think that they had destroyed the entire Shard.
While waiting for the new cores to finish, he played with these plans, tinkering with them, refining them, and improving them.
Occasionally he would take a look at the Hebert family, but because Taylor was still just a babe, there was not much action. However, his database recorded a very nice volume of new information. Mostly due to Annette demanding entertainment in the form of books and sometimes the internet and taking baby Taylor with her.
According to the scanners, whenever he looked at them, they were both in great health. So he only spent maybe a few seconds every week going through the logs and taking a quick peek.
Date:
1996 February 3rd - Saturday - Earth Bet Time
Day 603 - Saturday - Administrator Dimension Time
After the fourth core was finished, his speed increased to one and a half months per core. After a quick calculation, he decided to go up to eight cores for building purposes. That would lower the time necessary time to three-quarters of a month, which was around 22 days. After that, the numbers required to lower the building time went up exponentially. And currently, he didn't want to bother with it, plus he didn't have enough space for it on this lone continent.
Even with this, compared to the glacial speed that the other Shards and even Entities improved, this counted as fast development.
He set up the queue to have the cores build up to eight, which would take another five months. Then he would set those cores to build a new core in an alternate dimension near him. And start to expand from that core, basically having an entire alternate Earth-like planet just for cores and such. It would also increase his safety having part of his economy in a different dimension.
True a Sting-like weapon wouldn't care for it and would annihilate everything it touches, but only a few select Shards had that, so it would protect him from around 98% of his foes.
Sadly the last 2% percent were the most powerful and most likely to attack him. Well, Taylor probably wouldn't piss off Flechette for a few months. Maybe years if he manages to distract her enough.
He put up figuring out how to defend against Sting on to his to-do list as a top priority just in case.
His next task was to figure out how the Anti-Thinker/Simurgh and Anti-PtV worked. Based on his memories those Shards were one of the smartest and most powerful of them all. Because this task would be one of the hardest to accomplish, everything else could be done in the background, even the Sting research. But if wanted to rely on his knowledge of the setting he would need to protect himself from those monsters.
ROB promised to include the data about how to build these modules. But he wasn't sure she wouldn't leave out some crucial information just to make sure he had an interesting time.
The data packet that contained this information was helpfully titled 'How To Not To Get Ganked By Precogs'. Which until now he just left to sit around in his databanks having better things to do.
Now that the time came, he took a metaphorical breath and opened the data packet.
The first thing he noticed was that the data was in the same file format he created after improving his own memory banks. Which happened after he got the data packet.
He just shrugged and attributed it to some ROB weirdness.
The information that came out of it was anything but weird. It was extremely informative. However, he was somewhat right about ROB leaving out something.
Because the data packet only contained information about how the Shards gathered information and worked their magic. And not how to build a module that shielded him and Taylor from them.
That would be needed to be worked out by him.
Luckily he had the sense to start with it early because according to his previous experience working with Shard Simulator and building processes it would take at least a few years before he comes up with a viable working module.
Still, he wasn't afraid of a little hard work, so rolled up his nonexistent sleeves and started reading the incredibly dense and complicated data.
Date:
1996 July 13th - Saturday - Earth Bet Time
Day 764 - Saturday - Administrator Dimension Time
Taylor was already one year old when the last of eight cores were finished, and they started on the new core in an alternate empty dimension. She was happily toddling around and babbling about everything. Her parents couldn't have been prouder.
Annette had already returned to the University, happily teaching people the joy of Jean Austin while Taylor sat next to her and played with her toys or slept.
His databanks grew immensely thanks to Annette taking Taylor to the hallowed halls of learning. Still nothing earth-shattering. But enough that wasn't bored when took a break from trying to make sense of the ROB-provided information.
Apparently, there were several Shards that were nothing more than almost planet-sized processing cores that the Entities and certain Shards could tap into for a boost. Both PtV and Simurgh had the ability to directly contact them. Also, Simurgh and PtV had the ability and permission to directly contact other Shards and use the data gathered by them to predict events.
At the same time, they had several Shards that only did one thing, which was scanning. They spent all day scanning the entire planet down to the quantum level and then storing that kind of data. Precognitive Shards accessed this data and, together with this, they made their prediction.
Different Shards had access to different amounts of this data, depending on their importance or Entity decision. But Simurgh and PtV had full access to it, with only the PtV having a few blindspots like Eidolon, the Endbringers, and Zion.
The PtV Shard would more than likely try directly to contact him as soon as Taylor triggered to get the required data and that would probably be bad. Then there were those scanning Shards that would scan every Earth adjacent dimension in case there was some kind of useful data for the other Shards.
It seemed he would need to develop a module that protected his own crystalline body from scanning. A module to prevent PtV from knowing about him or targeting him, and finally a module that would give a false reading to confuse them.
An obvious blindspot was easy to work around, and would only arouse suspiciousness from both Cauldron and Simurgh and the lesser precogs that Taylor would come in contact with. However, if his defense would provide false or misleading data to the scanner Shards, then the Shards depending on that information would give a bad prediction. Of course, defending against direct observation of the hosts would be exponentially harder. Any defense against those would immediately out Taylor as a parahuman if they weren't viable options.
But he knew how Shards observed around their hosts, so if he could hijack the signal and feed it false data, that would be an option. Sadly, the hosts would sooner or later realize that they were getting contradictory or even wrong data based on their observation. And immediately realize that a parahuman power was interfering with their own power.
By that time he hoped to make Taylor strong enough to rebuff anybody curious to go looking for answers.
Looking at it, it seemed a daunting task. But he hoped with good old-fashioned elbow grease and the Commander's tactic of exponential growth, he would manage it.
Status de energia semanal
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