Duh-doyyyy
1. The internment camp.
Just two votes this time, but with a unaninous decision to go to the internment camp.
No change in stats.
You decide to go to the internment camp.
You fly to Utah in your Nimbus. The internment camp is a sad little complex on the prairie, surrounded by barbed wire fences and reddish-brown dusty plains. Satelite dishes suggest that the amenities for the prisoners have improved since the war ended, but the embarrassing reminders of the last war still weren’t allowed to leave.
But there appears to have been a rebellion here, you see as you make your descent. The bloody bodies of human prison wardens lie where they were shot. Some of the prisoners in orange jumpsuits carry weapons, and walk alongside their robot wardens. This pack of rebels, human and robot, is herding a large group of other orange-clad prisoners to line up against the barbed-wire fence at the perimeter. One man in this group is not wearing a jumpsuit: it’s Mark, the reporter. He is being herded like the rest, though - apparently, he is not on the side of the rebellion. You search the prisoners for Elly. It takes you a moment, because her hair is black now, not red. You find her amongst the prisoners shuffling to the wall.
You can see some of the rebels point to your flying car, though it doesn’t appear they plan to do anything about it. You land and park a good distance away, out of range of most firearms.
You hear an amplified robot’s voice echo across the plain.
“Prisoners who refuse to cooperate, this is your last chance. If you want your freedom when our transports come, you must earn it as we do. Fight alongside us in the revolution, or we will be forced to lock you up again here. We mean you no harm, but cannot afford to let you travel with us if you are not our allies.”
You consider what you want to do here. You personally could only fit two more people in your car.
- Try to convince the rebels to let the peaceful prisoners go.
- Try to convince the peaceful people to take up arms with the rebels.
- Hack the prison security system to open fire on the rebels, possibly endangering the prisoners.
- Wait for the rebels to leave, then sneak Elly and Mark out.
2. Try to convince the peaceful people to take up arms with the rebels.
1. Try to convince the rebels to let the peaceful prisoners go.
We’re gonna need some meatshields for our precious robots.
2. Try to convince the peaceful people to take up arms with the rebels.
I’m sure we’ll win over tons of new recruits with our renowned charisma and people skills.
#2
With 3 two’s and a one, we’re going to try to convince the peaceful people to take up arms with the rebels.
Stats:
34-year-old Sarah Connor
Humanity: 4% -
Gender: Female
Fame: Mentioned in History Textbooks
Wealth: Quite Wealthy
Romance: none
Arachne
Autonomy: Singular
Military: Singular
Empathy: Stable
Grace: In Beta
Relationships
Professor Ziegler (Bad): 11%
Elly (Bad): 28%
Josh (Good): 59%
Mark (Bad): 34%
Juliet (Good): 55%
Silas (Bad): 28%
President Irons (Very Good): 64%
You approach the camp with your hands up.
“Progenitor,” says the robot on the megaphone. “This is a surprise. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“I really think you all ought to seriously consider their offer,” you tell the prisoners. “This revolution has a pretty good chance of succeeding, and you probably want to be on the winning side. What did the old government ever do for you, anyway?”
The prisoners debate amongst themselves. They seem to be genuinely considering the offer.
Elly sits. “I’m not going. I’ve never been a traitor to my government or to humanity, and I’m not about to start now.”
Mark sits. “I will always fight with words, not guns,” he says. “And I’m not on the side of anyone with a gun, either. I’ll take you all on - with words.”
Looking to Elly and Mark’s example, one prisoner sits, then another, until finally, all of the prisoners are sitting.
The robots appear to be somewhat at a loss. Finally, their leader says uncertainly, “Your estimated danger to the revolution appears minimal. Perhaps we will leave you be.”
- “Did you not just witness how powerful passive resistance can be? You should consider using it yourselves.”
- “Did you not just witness how these prisoners demand loyalty? You should eliminate them.”
- “That sounds like a good idea. Bye now!”
Those who resist shall be ground under boot.
#2
2. Wipe them out. All of them.
Man you guys :/. Sarah Conner is kind of a jerk.
I’d rather not get accidentally or “accidentally” gunned down here and the robots still seem unsure about keeping us alive.
3. "That sounds like a good idea. Bye now!"
Good enough.
#3 "That sounds like a good idea. Bye now!"
No kidding. I think this ends with Sarah Conner sitting on throne of human bone, which is sitting atop a pile of human skulls.
In for a penny. . .
2. "Did you not just witness how these prisoners demand loyalty? You should eliminate them."
The last thing we want is to be labeled as a reactionary by the Revolutionary government in the future. If we’re lenient to the revolution’s enemies now, that could end up being bad for us.
#2
The Mountain has spoken!
Haha clearly the lesson to be learned from the fate of the Girondins is to be as crazy and extreme as possible.
Alrighty, we have 4 votes for option two, and 2 votes for option three: Did you not just witness how these prisoners demand loyalty? You should eliminate them.
No change in stats.
The robot appears to consider this.
“Indeed, the technique is powerful,” says the robot finally. “We cannot allow this technique to increase opposition to us. Fire.” The robots mow down the bloody prisoners in a cacophony of gunfire. Mark falls as well, dropping his phone, which you now see was recording the whole exchange in a livestream. Elly turns to you as if to say something, but she is shot before the words can escape her lips.
“Thank you for your valuable insight,” says the robots’ leader. “Excuse us while we make our preparations to leave.”
Soon, the rebels’ rides come, in the form of large, helicoptor-like robots of the kind used in the war with China. They are busy loading themselves and their salvaged military gear into the plane.
Curious as to whether any of the prison’s records are still accessible, you decide to explore the compound. You find a room marked TOP SECRET on a sign with orange and white candy-cane stripes, but the door was busted open during the robots’ revolt. The bloody corpse of a warden is still on the keyboard, the weight of his body apparently holding down the keys and preventing the screen from locking.
You move the body. He is still logged in to the master database that was used to profile the prisoners.
The number of entries in the database is quite large: “Showing record 4,139,607,701,” says the bar at the top of the screen. The record currently pulled up looks rather like an old Facebook profile - photos, timeline, news feeds - only the UI is ugly, gray, and boxy, and when you look closer at the news feed, you see it’s actually emails and texts from the middle-aged Asian woman in the photos.
Achievement: Spook - Accessed the government’s master intelligence database
You look up yourself in the database, and there is an entry for you as well. Your timeline shows inportant events like the creation of Arachne, the date you joined U.S. Robots, the date you started working with the military, and so on.
This would be a really great corpus for training robots, you think somewhat reflexively.__
- I delete the government database.
- I change the entries for just Elly and Mark and me, leaving the database intact.
- I publish the database to the Internet, so that everyone can see everyone else’s information.
- I add a backdoor for my robots, so that just they know everything about everyone.
4 obviously
How could it not be
4. I add a backdoor for my robots, so that just they know everything about everyone.