[JustADude]

I blame bureaucrats and lawyers.  Of course, I blame them for almost everything, so that's not much of a stretch to the imagination. 

Hey! We've got a lawyer in our gaming group, and he's a pretty cool guy.

Must be a prosecutor. Everyone knows the bad rep is based off disability and defense attorneys.

Public defender actually.

Ah, the other exception to the "attorneys are scum" image. I figured it was one or the other. 

No, really, I did.

Honestly.

Why are you looking at me like that?

[CanRay]

You do have to stipulate what kind of defense attorneys.  There was a very good one that was private back home.  I admit he's probably a rarity, or an exception, but they do exist.

Scuzzball Defense Attorneys. 

[Mirikon]

Sorry for threadomancy, but, I had time on my hands while I was at work, and was reading back through Unwired, and I came across this:

RESONANCE REALM:
The Great Connection
Embedded deep within the resonance realms is a
giant tree whose roots are hidden in a lake of data:
The Great Connection. This realm is said to link to
every node in the Matrix, no matter how isolated or
secure. Each leaf reflects a node, with newly connected
nodes represented as sprouts, active nodes
as fully-grown leaves, and the leaves of disconnected
nodes withering and blowing away in the wind. The air
is full of pollen, reflecting the constant flow of data
traffiic. Sprites in the form of birds, bees, squirrels,
and other animals crawl the branches.

Now who do we know that also uses a giant tree motif, and was, at one point, trying to become a god in the Matrix... Could it be that the reason there's no sign of Deus in the Matrix is that he's 'ascended' to the Resonance Realms?

[JustADude]

Sorry for threadomancy, but, I had time on my hands while I was at work, and was reading back through Unwired, and I came across this:

RESONANCE REALM:
The Great Connection
Embedded deep within the resonance realms is a
giant tree whose roots are hidden in a lake of data:
The Great Connection. This realm is said to link to
every node in the Matrix, no matter how isolated or
secure. Each leaf reflects a node, with newly connected
nodes represented as sprouts, active nodes
as fully-grown leaves, and the leaves of disconnected
nodes withering and blowing away in the wind. The air
is full of pollen, reflecting the constant flow of data
traffiic. Sprites in the form of birds, bees, squirrels,
and other animals crawl the branches.

Now who do we know that also uses a giant tree motif, and was, at one point, trying to become a god in the Matrix... Could it be that the reason there's no sign of Deus in the Matrix is that he's 'ascended' to the Resonance Realms?

 

Okay, that's either horribly scary or incredibly awesome. Possibly both.

[Wakshaani]

That one's fairly well known to the Unwired fans, yes.

I do so love me some AI stuff.

[Sichr]

Sorry for threadomancy, but, I had time on my hands while I was at work, and was reading back through Unwired, and I came across this:

RESONANCE REALM:
The Great Connection
Embedded deep within the resonance realms is a
giant tree whose roots are hidden in a lake of data:
The Great Connection. This realm is said to link to
every node in the Matrix, no matter how isolated or
secure. Each leaf reflects a node, with newly connected
nodes represented as sprouts, active nodes
as fully-grown leaves, and the leaves of disconnected
nodes withering and blowing away in the wind. The air
is full of pollen, reflecting the constant flow of data
traffiic. Sprites in the form of birds, bees, squirrels,
and other animals crawl the branches.

Now who do we know that also uses a giant tree motif, and was, at one point, trying to become a god in the Matrix... Could it be that the reason there's no sign of Deus in the Matrix is that he's 'ascended' to the Resonance Realms?

Ascended like "Becoming one of them"? :O

[Twitchy D]

Gooble Gobble, Gooble Gobble, One of us, One of us...

[Mirikon]

Not quite, Sichr. The giant tree is the Great Connection, the resonance realm is the space in which it resides, and shares the name, for lack of a better one. If Deus ascended to the Resonance Realms, and sank his 'roots' into all the Matrix, then it could be the Great Connection.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

The World Tree is cross-cultural and far, far older than Deus; his use of that metaphor during his attempt at 'upgrading' was both deliberate and necessary.  The fact that there's a Resonance Realm that is (comparatively) recently defined and named out-of-game does not make Deus a de facto 'ascended' Matrix entity.  I would, in fact, expect the reverse - that he used that metaphor specifically in an attempt to copy himself over that Resonant realmspace.

[Mirikon]

Could the big three AIs actually access Resonance Realms? Deus took the Tree icon before calling the otaku to the Arcology, IIRC, so would he have even known of the Resonance Realm?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Considering his interactions with otaku even then, possibly, though not probably.  But once again, I think you're putting the cart before the horse.  I am pretty certain that he was originally programmed with that iconography; certainly in fiction, Morgan / Megaera post-rescue was portrayed as a tangled morass of tree growth that Dodger was trying to unclutter.  As well, the network setup of the SCIRE systems and the AEP/Deus was one of a vertical network that connected at every point, every level - the World Tree touching every point, basically.

In any case.  By the time of Crash 2.0, he certainly would have known of that Realm - presuming, naturally, that it existed.

[Ethan]

How does this all work with that freaky "morning sickness" code Netcat blurted out? The one with all the Deus references?...

[Mirikon]

Short answer: No fragging clue.

Long answer: That is just one of several things that keeps me believing that Deus (and possibly Mirage and Maegera) is still around someplace, though hiding. The fact is, there is too much we don't know. The events during the Crash itself, especially those on the floor of the ECSE, didn't exactly get recorded reliably. Given all the isolated places one could keep backup copies, and the fact that everything that has ever been on a computer, going back to things before the first Matrix, can be found in the Endless Archive, it isn't unreasonable to say that, without doing the digital equivalent of finding the body, chopping it into little pieces, burning it, throwing it through a wood chipper, and salting the earth where it falls, the big three AIs could have survived. All we know is "Well, we haven't seen them since the Crash, so they must be dead."

[CanRay]

Also remember that the Matrix Never Forgets...

...

...

[Sichr]

...
In any case.  By the time of Crash 2.0, he certainly would have known of that Realm - presuming, naturally, that it existed.

Im still playing with the idea that it took a few milion matrix killed/imprissoned metahuman souls to create resonance as such, so IMO there was no real Resonance...or its presence was very marginal before Shutdown incident...and not until Crash it become significant part of objective reality....