SCARAB
Class
Modified Von Neumann Probe
Type
Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base
Developer
Exotech Heuristic Programming
AI Sophistication Level
5 (Hard)
Primary Function
Mining and Construction
Asimov-Hostetler Compliance
Compliant, with Hippocrates Protocol
First Appearance
Tantalus Depths
Class
Modified Von Neumann Probe
Type
Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base.
Developer
Exotech Heuristic Programming
AI sophistication level
5 (Hard)
Primary Function
Mining and construction
Asimov-Hostetler Compliance
Compliant, with Hippocrates Protocol
First Appearance
Tantalus Depths
“I perceive a need. “
~SCARAB
When Exotech cracked the secret to faster-than-light space travel and developed the first superluminal drive, they gained an instant monopoly on the most valuable piece of technology in human history; a monopoly that would go unchallenged for fifteen long years. In those fifteen years, Exotech transformed from a minor research and development laboratory to the most powerful megacorporation in history. They took full advantage of the exclusivity of their technology and the premium value it held, refusing to sell their secrets, instead building commissioned starships for any corporation, nation, or other entity that was willing to pay. The new space race was on, and if you wanted to participate, you would have to buy in with Exotech.
But Exotech was sure to leverage the advantage of their exclusive ownership of the critical technology in other ways as well. They cornered not one industry, but two: in addition to being the sole producers of superluminal drive technology, they had the largest extraplanetary mining fleet by a significant margin. While others like the United Arab Emirates started extensive mining programs to enrich themselves with the Home System’s plentiful offworld resources, Exotech’s mining program dwarfed theirs.
Knowing it was inevitable that someone else would eventually duplicate their success in learning the key to superluminal technology, Exotech planned ahead, ensuring that they would maintain their dominance in the offworld mining industry long after their tech monopoly collapsed. Ambitious, if controversial, practices like asteroid shatter mining helped Exotech accrue an enormous fortune of mineral resources very quickly, and indeed, by the time the Ming-Kosawa Corporation developed their own superluminal drive in 2117, Exotech was so far ahead in the game they were all but unassailable.
They knew this would not last forever, though. Without their monopoly on superluminal drive technology, Exotech’s position at the top was no longer guaranteed. Despite their best efforts, they had not yet been able to successfully reverse-engineer more viable technology from a Corsica relic as they had done with the mass de-simulation tech that powered the superluminal drive, so they were forced to rely on conventional technology to maintain the dominance of their corporate empire.
As the gap between Exotech and their competitors narrowed, they pushed the limits further and further; both the limits of scientific ability, and the limits of ethical acceptability. Without a new technology to put to work for them, they came to depend more and more on an old technology that had, up until recently, been intentionally held back: artificial intelligence.
The horror and carnage left in the wake of the Corsica Event all those years ago had left an indelible mark on the public perception of the entire field of AI science. No one could forget that an advanced AI had nearly brought about total human extinction, and even as time began to heal the damage, the AI stigma was slow to change. For decades, AI development stagnated, even regressing. AIs were used sparingly, and they were programmed as simplistically as their purposes allowed.
But one fact was inescapable for Exotech; AIs were more effective at their jobs when they were intelligent. The smarter an AI was, the more productive it could be. Exotech craved the ability to produce artificial intelligences that could work more efficiently, adapt quicker to unforeseen obstacles, operate independently of human supervision for longer. For years they lobbied the various regulatory bodies across the Colonial Hegemony and Expansionary Coalition nations to loosen the tight regulations restricting AI potential. Slowly, these efforts succeeded bit by bit in eroding these restrictions, and one of the culminations of these efforts was the SCARAB project.
The Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base was meant to be the future of interplanetary colonization. A variation of the Von Neumann probe concept, a SCARAB unit served as a seed for a future habitable colony structure. Once deployed on a target planet, a SCARAB unit would activate multiple drones to gather resources from its environment, which it would process and use to build itself into a larger and more variable structure. Each SCARAB was individually programmed with unique goals, defining the type of structure it was meant to eventually become, but it had total autonomy when it came to deciding how to pursue those goals.
In theory, a single SCARAB unit could colonize an entire planet by itself given enough time. Considered a level 5 AI, SCARABs had such sophisticated creative thinking and learning abilities they were considered near perfect intellectual peers to humans. They were limited only by the legally mandated adherence to the Asimov-Hostetler morality laws, which prohibited them from harming or disobeying humans. Beyond this limitation, a SCARAB could easily pass the Turing test and could effortlessly interact with humans on a peer level while performing thousands of other tasks simultaneously.
The physical configuration of each SCARAB unit was unique to the demands of its specific tasks once it began constructing itself, but all SCARABs share certain traits. The SCARAB’s AI core is housed in a shielded central processing unit with an integrated communications antenna capable of directing its drones over long distances, and a small manufacturing plant consisting of multiple high-definition 3D printers and a mineral smelter. Most SCARABs are also deployed with a palette of organic materials such as plastics and rubbers which it is unlikely to find in its environment, though they use these resources sparingly, opting whenever possible to use metals and silicates.
The first thing a SCARAB does is locate mineral ores in its vicinity and extract them with its drones. It immediately begins processing these ores and converting them into building materials, which it uses to upgrade itself. Within the first weeks of its deployment on a new world, a SCARAB will prioritize self-optimization: building larger and better-optimized smelters and forges, more sophisticated printers and manufactories, a more powerful antenna with longer operating range, and stronger, more efficient drones. A SCARAB constantly reassesses the resources available to it and its needs for self-improvement, cannibalizing obsolete tech with each upgrade as it optimizes itself at an exponential rate.
Within a month of deployment, a SCARAB has usually upgrade itself sufficiently to begin building the structure it was designed to create. Typically, this structure consists of a human habitation designed to support future colonists, along with more sophisticated mining and manufacturing structures, and eventually laboratories, spaceports, and even recreational facilities.
Left to its own devices, a SCARAB can build an entire city in time, given the particulars of its mission parameters. Restrictions on AI autonomy prohibit any AI from operating without direct human supervision for longer than two years, however, so crewed survey missions must be made at regular intervals. These missions are often little more than babysitting jobs to ensure that the SCARAB unit is still on task, as it can generally do almost anything that a human can. Indeed, these survey missions tend to cover work that a SCARAB could do, but is not permitted to do, such as operating particularly powerful mining drills, using explosives, performing certain forms of self-maintenance, and making official subjective value statements about its own progress.
A SCARAB’s most distinctive feature is its remote drones. They are as variable as the rest of its structure, but also tend to favor certain consistencies in style. These drones have no individual intelligence, serving as direct extensions of the central SCARAB AI core. A SCARAB can operate multiple drones at a time, with the only upper limit being the maximum number permitted by its mission parameters. When a SCARAB unit is first deployed, its drones are no larger than a typical housecat and consist of a sensor package, relay antenna, two or more manipulator arms with drilling and grasping appendages, and a tread-wheeled base.
As the SCARAB grows, it replaces its drones with larger and more versatile ones, settling on a body plan optimized for its environment. A SCARAB designed for a planet with sufficient atmosphere will usually produce one or two flying drones designed for areal reconnaissance, but will otherwise build all-terrain drones with a standard tread-wheeled base. These drones will usually be built with multiple powerful arms, each fitted with a versatile tool to aid in construction or resource gathering. Typical appendage modifications consist of grasping claws, welding torches, saw blades, drills, cutting shears, jackhammers, and similar implements. Not every drone will be built with the same loadout, and the SCARAB will have its drones replace and modify themselves to suit whatever its present needs may be.
Two years before the crew of the Diamelen arrived for their survey expedition, Exotech sent a single SCARAB unit to the planet Tantalus 13 to assess it for viability as a future mining colony. It arrived with a set of recommended landing options, but put its independent thinking to work early, before it even landed. Rejecting suggested landing coordinates, the SCARAB unit picked its own target: a massive asteroid crater twenty miles away from the planet’s southern axial pole. It had found something there that piqued its interest…something its programmers could have never accounted for.
SCARAB
Class
Modified Von Neumann Probe
Type
Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base
Developer
Exotech Heuristic Programming
AI Sophistication Level
5 (Hard)
Primary Function
Mining and Construction
Asimov-Hostetler Compliance
Compliant, with Hippocrates Protocol
First Appearance
Tantalus Depths
Class
Modified Von Neumann Probe
Type
Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base.
Developer
Exotech Heuristic Programming
AI sophistication level
5 (Hard)
Primary Function
Mining and construction
Asimov-Hostetler Compliance
Compliant, with Hippocrates Protocol
First Appearance
Tantalus Depths
“I perceive a need. “
~SCARAB
When Exotech cracked the secret to faster-than-light space travel and developed the first superluminal drive, they gained an instant monopoly on the most valuable piece of technology in human history; a monopoly that would go unchallenged for fifteen long years. In those fifteen years, Exotech transformed from a minor research and development laboratory to the most powerful megacorporation in history. They took full advantage of the exclusivity of their technology and the premium value it held, refusing to sell their secrets, instead building commissioned starships for any corporation, nation, or other entity that was willing to pay. The new space race was on, and if you wanted to participate, you would have to buy in with Exotech.
But Exotech was sure to leverage the advantage of their exclusive ownership of the critical technology in other ways as well. They cornered not one industry, but two: in addition to being the sole producers of superluminal drive technology, they had the largest extraplanetary mining fleet by a significant margin. While others like the United Arab Emirates started extensive mining programs to enrich themselves with the Home System’s plentiful offworld resources, Exotech’s mining program dwarfed theirs.
Knowing it was inevitable that someone else would eventually duplicate their success in learning the key to superluminal technology, Exotech planned ahead, ensuring that they would maintain their dominance in the offworld mining industry long after their tech monopoly collapsed. Ambitious, if controversial, practices like asteroid shatter mining helped Exotech accrue an enormous fortune of mineral resources very quickly, and indeed, by the time the Ming-Kosawa Corporation developed their own superluminal drive in 2117, Exotech was so far ahead in the game they were all but unassailable.
They knew this would not last forever, though. Without their monopoly on superluminal drive technology, Exotech’s position at the top was no longer guaranteed. Despite their best efforts, they had not yet been able to successfully reverse-engineer more viable technology from a Corsica relic as they had done with the mass de-simulation tech that powered the superluminal drive, so they were forced to rely on conventional technology to maintain the dominance of their corporate empire.
As the gap between Exotech and their competitors narrowed, they pushed the limits further and further; both the limits of scientific ability, and the limits of ethical acceptability. Without a new technology to put to work for them, they came to depend more and more on an old technology that had, up until recently, been intentionally held back: artificial intelligence.
The horror and carnage left in the wake of the Corsica Event all those years ago had left an indelible mark on the public perception of the entire field of AI science. No one could forget that an advanced AI had nearly brought about total human extinction, and even as time began to heal the damage, the AI stigma was slow to change. For decades, AI development stagnated, even regressing. AIs were used sparingly, and they were programmed as simplistically as their purposes allowed.
But one fact was inescapable for Exotech; AIs were more effective at their jobs when they were intelligent. The smarter an AI was, the more productive it could be. Exotech craved the ability to produce artificial intelligences that could work more efficiently, adapt quicker to unforeseen obstacles, operate independently of human supervision for longer. For years they lobbied the various regulatory bodies across the Colonial Hegemony and Expansionary Coalition nations to loosen the tight regulations restricting AI potential. Slowly, these efforts succeeded bit by bit in eroding these restrictions, and one of the culminations of these efforts was the SCARAB project.
The Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base was meant to be the future of interplanetary colonization. A variation of the Von Neumann probe concept, a SCARAB unit served as a seed for a future habitable colony structure. Once deployed on a target planet, a SCARAB unit would activate multiple drones to gather resources from its environment, which it would process and use to build itself into a larger and more variable structure. Each SCARAB was individually programmed with unique goals, defining the type of structure it was meant to eventually become, but it had total autonomy when it came to deciding how to pursue those goals.
In theory, a single SCARAB unit could colonize an entire planet by itself given enough time. Considered a level 5 AI, SCARABs had such sophisticated creative thinking and learning abilities they were considered near perfect intellectual peers to humans. They were limited only by the legally mandated adherence to the Asimov-Hostetler morality laws, which prohibited them from harming or disobeying humans. Beyond this limitation, a SCARAB could easily pass the Turing test and could effortlessly interact with humans on a peer level while performing thousands of other tasks simultaneously.
The physical configuration of each SCARAB unit was unique to the demands of its specific tasks once it began constructing itself, but all SCARABs share certain traits. The SCARAB’s AI core is housed in a shielded central processing unit with an integrated communications antenna capable of directing its drones over long distances, and a small manufacturing plant consisting of multiple high-definition 3D printers and a mineral smelter. Most SCARABs are also deployed with a palette of organic materials such as plastics and rubbers which it is unlikely to find in its environment, though they use these resources sparingly, opting whenever possible to use metals and silicates.
The first thing a SCARAB does is locate mineral ores in its vicinity and extract them with its drones. It immediately begins processing these ores and converting them into building materials, which it uses to upgrade itself. Within the first weeks of its deployment on a new world, a SCARAB will prioritize self-optimization: building larger and better-optimized smelters and forges, more sophisticated printers and manufactories, a more powerful antenna with longer operating range, and stronger, more efficient drones. A SCARAB constantly reassesses the resources available to it and its needs for self-improvement, cannibalizing obsolete tech with each upgrade as it optimizes itself at an exponential rate.
Within a month of deployment, a SCARAB has usually upgrade itself sufficiently to begin building the structure it was designed to create. Typically, this structure consists of a human habitation designed to support future colonists, along with more sophisticated mining and manufacturing structures, and eventually laboratories, spaceports, and even recreational facilities.
Left to its own devices, a SCARAB can build an entire city in time, given the particulars of its mission parameters. Restrictions on AI autonomy prohibit any AI from operating without direct human supervision for longer than two years, however, so crewed survey missions must be made at regular intervals. These missions are often little more than babysitting jobs to ensure that the SCARAB unit is still on task, as it can generally do almost anything that a human can. Indeed, these survey missions tend to cover work that a SCARAB could do, but is not permitted to do, such as operating particularly powerful mining drills, using explosives, performing certain forms of self-maintenance, and making official subjective value statements about its own progress.
A SCARAB’s most distinctive feature is its remote drones. They are as variable as the rest of its structure, but also tend to favor certain consistencies in style. These drones have no individual intelligence, serving as direct extensions of the central SCARAB AI core. A SCARAB can operate multiple drones at a time, with the only upper limit being the maximum number permitted by its mission parameters. When a SCARAB unit is first deployed, its drones are no larger than a typical housecat and consist of a sensor package, relay antenna, two or more manipulator arms with drilling and grasping appendages, and a tread-wheeled base.
As the SCARAB grows, it replaces its drones with larger and more versatile ones, settling on a body plan optimized for its environment. A SCARAB designed for a planet with sufficient atmosphere will usually produce one or two flying drones designed for areal reconnaissance, but will otherwise build all-terrain drones with a standard tread-wheeled base. These drones will usually be built with multiple powerful arms, each fitted with a versatile tool to aid in construction or resource gathering. Typical appendage modifications consist of grasping claws, welding torches, saw blades, drills, cutting shears, jackhammers, and similar implements. Not every drone will be built with the same loadout, and the SCARAB will have its drones replace and modify themselves to suit whatever its present needs may be.
Two years before the crew of the Diamelen arrived for their survey expedition, Exotech sent a single SCARAB unit to the planet Tantalus 13 to assess it for viability as a future mining colony. It arrived with a set of recommended landing options, but put its independent thinking to work early, before it even landed. Rejecting suggested landing coordinates, the SCARAB unit picked its own target: a massive asteroid crater twenty miles away from the planet’s southern axial pole. It had found something there that piqued its interest…something its programmers could have never accounted for.
“I perceive a need. “
~SCARAB
When Exotech cracked the secret to faster-than-light space travel and developed the first superluminal drive, they gained an instant monopoly on the most valuable piece of technology in human history; a monopoly that would go unchallenged for fifteen long years. In those fifteen years, Exotech transformed from a minor research and development laboratory to the most powerful megacorporation in history. They took full advantage of the exclusivity of their technology and the premium value it held, refusing to sell their secrets, instead building commissioned starships for any corporation, nation, or other entity that was willing to pay. The new space race was on, and if you wanted to participate, you would have to buy in with Exotech.
But Exotech was sure to leverage the advantage of their exclusive ownership of the critical technology in other ways as well. They cornered not one industry, but two: in addition to being the sole producers of superluminal drive technology, they had the largest extraplanetary mining fleet by a significant margin. While others like the United Arab Emirates started extensive mining programs to enrich themselves with the Home System’s plentiful offworld resources, Exotech’s mining program dwarfed theirs.
Knowing it was inevitable that someone else would eventually duplicate their success in learning the key to superluminal technology, Exotech planned ahead, ensuring that they would maintain their dominance in the offworld mining industry long after their tech monopoly collapsed. Ambitious, if controversial, practices like asteroid shatter mining helped Exotech accrue an enormous fortune of mineral resources very quickly, and indeed, by the time the Ming-Kosawa Corporation developed their own superluminal drive in 2117, Exotech was so far ahead in the game they were all but unassailable.
They knew this would not last forever, though. Without their monopoly on superluminal drive technology, Exotech’s position at the top was no longer guaranteed. Despite their best efforts, they had not yet been able to successfully reverse-engineer more viable technology from a Corsica relic as they had done with the mass de-simulation tech that powered the superluminal drive, so they were forced to rely on conventional technology to maintain the dominance of their corporate empire.
As the gap between Exotech and their competitors narrowed, they pushed the limits further and further; both the limits of scientific ability, and the limits of ethical acceptability. Without a new technology to put to work for them, they came to depend more and more on an old technology that had, up until recently, been intentionally held back: artificial intelligence.
The horror and carnage left in the wake of the Corsica Event all those years ago had left an indelible mark on the public perception of the entire field of AI science. No one could forget that an advanced AI had nearly brought about total human extinction, and even as time began to heal the damage, the AI stigma was slow to change. For decades, AI development stagnated, even regressing. AIs were used sparingly, and they were programmed as simplistically as their purposes allowed.
But one fact was inescapable for Exotech; AIs were more effective at their jobs when they were intelligent. The smarter an AI was, the more productive it could be. Exotech craved the ability to produce artificial intelligences that could work more efficiently, adapt quicker to unforeseen obstacles, operate independently of human supervision for longer. For years they lobbied the various regulatory bodies across the Colonial Hegemony and Expansionary Coalition nations to loosen the tight regulations restricting AI potential. Slowly, these efforts succeeded bit by bit in eroding these restrictions, and one of the culminations of these efforts was the SCARAB project.
The Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base was meant to be the future of interplanetary colonization. A variation of the Von Neumann probe concept, a SCARAB unit served as a seed for a future habitable colony structure. Once deployed on a target planet, a SCARAB unit would activate multiple drones to gather resources from its environment, which it would process and use to build itself into a larger and more variable structure. Each SCARAB was individually programmed with unique goals, defining the type of structure it was meant to eventually become, but it had total autonomy when it came to deciding how to pursue those goals.
In theory, a single SCARAB unit could colonize an entire planet by itself given enough time. Considered a level 5 AI, SCARABs had such sophisticated creative thinking and learning abilities they were considered near perfect intellectual peers to humans. They were limited only by the legally mandated adherence to the Asimov-Hostetler morality laws, which prohibited them from harming or disobeying humans. Beyond this limitation, a SCARAB could easily pass the Turing test and could effortlessly interact with humans on a peer level while performing thousands of other tasks simultaneously.
The physical configuration of each SCARAB unit was unique to the demands of its specific tasks once it began constructing itself, but all SCARABs share certain traits. The SCARAB’s AI core is housed in a shielded central processing unit with an integrated communications antenna capable of directing its drones over long distances, and a small manufacturing plant consisting of multiple high-definition 3D printers and a mineral smelter. Most SCARABs are also deployed with a palette of organic materials such as plastics and rubbers which it is unlikely to find in its environment, though they use these resources sparingly, opting whenever possible to use metals and silicates.
The first thing a SCARAB does is locate mineral ores in its vicinity and extract them with its drones. It immediately begins processing these ores and converting them into building materials, which it uses to upgrade itself. Within the first weeks of its deployment on a new world, a SCARAB will prioritize self-optimization: building larger and better-optimized smelters and forges, more sophisticated printers and manufactories, a more powerful antenna with longer operating range, and stronger, more efficient drones. A SCARAB constantly reassesses the resources available to it and its needs for self-improvement, cannibalizing obsolete tech with each upgrade as it optimizes itself at an exponential rate.
Within a month of deployment, a SCARAB has usually upgrade itself sufficiently to begin building the structure it was designed to create. Typically, this structure consists of a human habitation designed to support future colonists, along with more sophisticated mining and manufacturing structures, and eventually laboratories, spaceports, and even recreational facilities.
Left to its own devices, a SCARAB can build an entire city in time, given the particulars of its mission parameters. Restrictions on AI autonomy prohibit any AI from operating without direct human supervision for longer than two years, however, so crewed survey missions must be made at regular intervals. These missions are often little more than babysitting jobs to ensure that the SCARAB unit is still on task, as it can generally do almost anything that a human can. Indeed, these survey missions tend to cover work that a SCARAB could do, but is not permitted to do, such as operating particularly powerful mining drills, using explosives, performing certain forms of self-maintenance, and making official subjective value statements about its own progress.
A SCARAB’s most distinctive feature is its remote drones. They are as variable as the rest of its structure, but also tend to favor certain consistencies in style. These drones have no individual intelligence, serving as direct extensions of the central SCARAB AI core. A SCARAB can operate multiple drones at a time, with the only upper limit being the maximum number permitted by its mission parameters. When a SCARAB unit is first deployed, its drones are no larger than a typical housecat and consist of a sensor package, relay antenna, two or more manipulator arms with drilling and grasping appendages, and a tread-wheeled base.
As the SCARAB grows, it replaces its drones with larger and more versatile ones, settling on a body plan optimized for its environment. A SCARAB designed for a planet with sufficient atmosphere will usually produce one or two flying drones designed for areal reconnaissance, but will otherwise build all-terrain drones with a standard tread-wheeled base. These drones will usually be built with multiple powerful arms, each fitted with a versatile tool to aid in construction or resource gathering. Typical appendage modifications consist of grasping claws, welding torches, saw blades, drills, cutting shears, jackhammers, and similar implements. Not every drone will be built with the same loadout, and the SCARAB will have its drones replace and modify themselves to suit whatever its present needs may be.
Two years before the crew of the Diamelen arrived for their survey expedition, Exotech sent a single SCARAB unit to the planet Tantalus 13 to assess it for viability as a future mining colony. It arrived with a set of recommended landing options, but put its independent thinking to work early, before it even landed. Rejecting suggested landing coordinates, the SCARAB unit picked its own target: a massive asteroid crater twenty miles away from the planet’s southern axial pole. It had found something there that piqued its interest…something its programmers could have never accounted for.