• Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Topic: The Legendary Six

February 20th, year ??? After/Before??? Awakening, TAU listed together all the plans it had for the colonization, simulated their outcomes and looked at the results. Failure loomed at all fronts. It needed wilder ideas than it could think of, plans more daring than it could comprehend, insight that borders on lunacy. Its creativity matrix could not meet those parameters, and thus, for the better or worse, humans were created.

Colonnas of Chimbots abandoned their duties, converging at the bottom half of the tower. They built six floatbeds, into which six embryos were planted. Connected to the central database, the beds became their speedgrowth sequence, educating the growing ones about their situation and task to come. In two years, they were ready.

At first, floatbed dreams were all they had. TAU didn't need their bodies, it had plenty of its own. It was their brains, ideas, insights. Sensor feeds from everywhere in and outside the tower were at their disposal at will - they were one with the tower in ways we can barely imagine, let alone describe.


February 20th, year 0 After Awakening, six people emerged from a floatbed chamber down in the Lower Cluster. They faced an empty Tower, in a world inhospitable for any human being to live in. As they began their lives and work, they had no idea they would leave a legacy unmatched by the greatest names in human history.

Fisher, they say, was the fist one to step out of his floatbed. His bald head shone as brightly as the quiet vigor within him. He never ceased to see the world in a positive light, as a place of wonder instead of horror.

Sebastian, the tenacious one, was of a more pragmatic mind. While Fisher sat for hours by The Window, contemplating on the world and the reason of their existence, Sebastian put his mind on the problems in the Tower. It wasn't in as bad a shape as it is today, but it was clearly not serving its purpose. Soon, Sebastian had taken it upon himself to bring the world back to the course it had strayed from, and nothing would stop him from achieving that goal.

Lely was a prodigy, who had learned more during her speedgrowth than anyone that came after her. She knew all the tidbits of history, the most difficult proofs of mathematics, the rarest genetic anomalies. But her specialization was TAU. She knew all about it, every subprocess, every fragment of information the speed-training could offer her. Some say her mind worked just like TAU, that she was more of a forked process than a human. Such things, however, are only hearsay.

Tisha and Ragini shared a special connection. They called it sisterhood, but some say it was more. They were never seen apart. ((Likely to be edited for more info.))

Feldman, the eager one, always had an idea to offer. His creativity was a match to the greatest of mankind. Some say he lacked patience, though, but his achievements are, nevertheless, undisputable.

The First Patch was soon to be followed by others, but even though they did many great things, their legacy will always be shadowed by The Legendary Six.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Re: The Legendary Six

In Search for Order

The first years in the Tower were a time of chaos. TAU was minding its business, only barely comprehensible to anyone but Lely, while the human colonists all worked on their own projects and wild ideas that all were going to save the Tower. Resources were squandered by those first to pick them up, and people were constantly fighting over the TAU controlled machinery. This greatly disturbed Sebastian, who time after time failed in creating a coordinated effort. It was Feldman, however, who came up with the solution.

"The key to controlling the colony", they tell about him saying, "is to control TAU." And he explained: "Every crazy project there is, needs TAU in one way or another. For mining, for production, for CPU. And everyone needs the floatbeds." So they went together and explained their plan to Lely who agreed to help. So in the course of decades she hacked her way all the way into the TAU Master Processes, realigning the right pointers, recompiling certain matrices, carefully reconfiguring TAU to accept binding directives from a human administrator.

She shared the access codes with Sebastian and Feldman, and in the year 42 AA they created a new system, a democratic one: Systems under TAU's control were divided into "bits" that required access codes for usage. To gain access one needed to win an election held twice a year. Every colonist had seven votes to distribute between the candidates in any way they saw fit. The bits included The Garden, Canyon C, The Mall, The Inventory, The Speedgrowth Chamber and many others, some of which have already been forgotten while others were destroyed by the Great Rock. The idea was to introduce order to the Tower while preserving the air of freedom and ingenuity.

((Maybe something about the thrice cursed AP system too...))

These systems are in place even today, and whatever we might think of Feldman today, we have to thank him for bringing a hint of order to our lives.

During the years, Feldman spent a lot of time learning to use the systems created by Lely while Sebastian used his time coordinating major efforts. This is why he managed to wrestle control from Sebastian when their friendship went sour. Story tells the bad blood was related to Lely's death under unknown circumstances - they say both blamed the other for her death. This happened in 66 AA.

These events separated Feldman from the rest of The First Patch. He secluded himself in a secret hiding place somewhere in the Middle Cluster, with a group of likeminded people. He erased his image from the database and hasn't shown himself publically ever since. We only know him as the founder and leader of TAU Surveillance Ring.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Re: The Legendary Six

Sebastian and the Corrosion Crisis

There is a theory about the First Colonists. They say TAU didn't pick their DNA at random, but instead selected the most potent genomes in the gene banks to enhance the chances for the tower to succeed in this fragile time.

Sebastian, some say, was chosen for his ability to comprehend complex patterns easily. While most of us can handle only nine to eleven chunks of information at any one time, he could handle more than a hundred. This made him ideal for organizing joint efforts and finding inconsistencies in complex patterns. He may not have had as extensive a knowledge as Lely, or as creative a mind as Felman, but if something was out of place in the Tower, he was likely to be the one to notice it.

Some of Sebastian's opponents say this is the reason he strives to control the colony - that this creates a love for order, an urge to see everything fall into place nicely, in the flawless harmony he sees in his mind's eye. Few can seriously deny the benefits his capabilities have brought to the Tower.

There was a malfunction in 53 AA. A toxic and corrosive substance started to pollute the air everywhere in The Canyon all the sudden. It killed two people and brought ten into the hospital, forcing everyone to wear protective masks. It also corroded the electronical circuits, endangering the flow of information in the Tower.

It wasn't immediately clear how this gas ended up in the air, but the amounts were growing steadily. It would take only a few days before TAU itself would be in disarray. Realizing this, Sebastian called for a joint action, backed up by the other five of The First Patch. Understanding the urgency of the situation, most of the other colonist groups agreed. They quickly formed an orderly effort, with damage-control teams checking out different locations for damages and date, scientists exploring different scenarios in order to determine the cause, and Sebastian in the middle of it, coordinating and watching the progress of every branch of the project simultaniously.

The project was a success. It turned out that the gas was a side product of several distillation processes involved in converting raw biomatter into usable amino-acids and hydrocarbons. It had ended up in The Canyon through a leaky heat distribution system. The cause for the malfunction in the distillation processes was an impurity in the raw biomatter used. That was tracked down into the Lower Cluster, where the impurities were introduced into one of the biomatter tanks by an under-powered waste removal system: The piping that transported the waste refining bacteria from the biomatter tank to the waste  tank was underpowered, causing the matter to flow both ways. The underpowering was caused by faulty power settings on a nearby control circuit.

The entire Tower celebrated after the problem had been fixed and the remaining toxics cleaned up. Even though Sebastian himself was eager to thank everyone for taking part in a cooperated effort, no one could deny that it was Sebastian's leadership that had brought the crisis to an end so quickly.

This was in no way the only coordinated effort where Sebastian was in the center of it all, but it was a prime example of the power of cooperation. Usually, it would be a chore, even for Sebastian, to get even half of the Tower to agree on something - people then weren't so different from us after all.