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Sybil virus: Clues and wild speculations

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psycho835

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« Reply #600 on: <06-16-14/0127:55> »
Wild speculation, remember?

In that case:

ITS THE EVIL PETTING ZOO BUNNIES!!!

Not the Vorpal Sheep?  :o  ::)

A what now? Would Holy Hand Grenade work against those?

DeathStrobe

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« Reply #601 on: <08-06-14/2357:29> »
I'm reading through System Failure, and I think I remember people speculating about this in this thread, but I figure I'd bring it up just in case it wasn't. Ronin and the handful of people he was able to save from the Network, they were trying to merge Megaera with meta humanity to make a metahuman/AI hybrid. The only known "cure" for CFD is to compromise with the AI and allow the host and AI personalities to merge into one. This sounds exactly like what Ronin and companies agenda was. I don't think Ronin was ever reported as dead, and since he was an Otaku, he'd probably be a Technomancer now. He could also be following the dissonance if he really thinks this is a good idea and have a cult like following of AIs. If he was really pursuing this agenda of combining AI and meta humanity, he might have helped with the construction of CFD.

I'm also a bit surprised at how sympathetic they make Pax and Puck in the events of System Failure. Sure they were the main cause of the crash, but they were doing it for the "right" reasons...kind of...

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #602 on: <08-07-14/0031:53> »
... are you reading the same System Failure the rest of us did?
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DeathStrobe

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« Reply #603 on: <08-07-14/0116:23> »
Puck just wanted to make the Matrix a better place, since the real world was so messed up. It wasn't until he started to see Deus was a big jerk through the Network that he joined up with Pax.

And Pax just didn't want to be mundane. If you got a ticking time bomb like fading, would you really do nothing to try and keep what little you have that makes you special?

Not saying what they did was right. But they be crazy Otakus. They have a deep connection to the Matrix. They just wanted to keep that going.
« Last Edit: <08-07-14/0211:28> by DeathStrobe »

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #604 on: <08-07-14/0200:11> »
... uh ... that's ... one way of reading it.  I'm not saying that elements of those don't exist, but neither of those are the driving elements in those characters' stories ...
Pananagutan & End/Line

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Zwischenzug

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« Reply #605 on: <09-29-14/2132:19> »
This thread is awesome. I apologize in advance for resurrecting it, but I believe the following has not yet been mentioned.

In Brainscan, the follow-up to System Failure, a certain Dr. Olivia Marchand is mentioned. The lead on Cross Applied Technologies' Project Legion, she was one of two survivors of the four person team who attempted to merge their personalities through some sort of shared ASIST interface.

The result was two team members dead of massive autonomic systems failure, one member in a coma, and Dr. Marchand displaying some pretty serious CFD like symptoms.

As the events of Brainscan take place mere months after the shutdown, this puts us at some point in 2060. Could Dr. Marchand, or the comatose Cross Applied Sciences scientist, be a possible Subject Zero?
« Last Edit: <09-30-14/0002:09> by Zwischenzug »

Reaver

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« Reply #606 on: <09-30-14/0000:43> »
.
..
...

NO!!! IT'S THE EVIL PETTING ZOO BUNNIES I TELL YOU!!!!


Actually, you may have something there.... but that doesn't explain why so many CFDs have a deep hatred of some Corps...

But somehow, I think you may be on to something...
Where am I going? And why am I in a hand basket ???

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Zwischenzug

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« Reply #607 on: <09-30-14/0005:37> »
The good Dr. does display some rather drastic personality changes, none of which I'd think we're consistent with the researchers of her team. Of the four, Legion is the most sympathetic to Deus at the time of Brainscan, but what happens to her and her various personalities is determined by the GM and/or players as of the end of the adventure.

The comatose Project Legion team member, however...

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #608 on: <09-30-14/0030:35> »
Yeah, Marchand is nowhere near 'patient zero' for this one.  She experienced a severe MPD issue due to, y'know, having several other people (actual people) trying to inhabit her brain at the same time as her, but nanotech wasn't involved.

The best 'patient zero' scenario is the lab break-in by Fastjack &. Co. down in the PCC.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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Zwischenzug

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« Reply #609 on: <09-30-14/0629:56> »
How can you so casually disregard the possibility of Project Legion begin the source of CFD? As far as I know, it's the first documented instance (perhaps excepting whatever Deus was working on in the SCIRE) of multiple personalities physically merging in a single metahuman mind.

Who knows what this could have caused in the long run. Sure, CFD presents with nanotech symptoms now, but like any terrible disease there's no telling where the origin point might have been if one accounts for the potential of mutation.

When I read the section on Project Legion, it figuratively screamed "headcase" to me. I will agree that FastJack's experiences in Albuquerque were definitely related, but I don't necessarily think of it as being the source; how else do you account for the Gagarin base, Richard Villiers, and the unnamed seamen? The timeline just doesn't add up as far as I'm concerned.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #610 on: <09-30-14/0729:16> »
Rather easily, really.  In metagaming terms, because 'active nanotechnology' in the form of nanite hives and the like was only really then being conceptualized; it was decided that the technology would be given a boost by the 'Mad AI in the Emerald Tower'.  So the very concept of nanites taking over a brain hadn't been forwarded.  The idea of an AI taking over a brain had - because that was the entire idea behind RA:S.

Moving in-game, though, just as easily - because when it comes to a disease (which CFD technically may not be, but which it functionally behaves as), you do not have Patient Zero infected and out and about twelve to fourteen years before the next cases.  Further, at the time of Project Legion's existence, there were a grand total of three AI, one quasi-documented e-ghost, and no known 'free sprites' at all; these are the code-sources for the CFD personalities.

You are muddling effects with causes.  If all your experience of people stumbling around is due to them being drunk, if you find me stumbling around you may assume that I am drunk, but the effect - me stumbling around - does not require the same cause of which you are familiar (being drunk).  Just in regards to me, there are at least two typical causes - I woke up less than half an hour ago, or I have a splitting headache, the latter of which itself could have several different causes.  Since I don't drink, however, the cause is never going to be that I am drunk, no matter your familiarity with drunk people stumbling around.

That Dr. Marchand is exhibiting dissociative identity disorder does not mean she has been brainjacked by psychotic AI / e-ghost personalities, any more than the original Sybil (Shirley Ardell Mason) might have been back in the 1920's.  While I can concede that I haven't been so determined to find Patient Zero that I've timelined the CFD events, I'm absolutely certain that it won't have happened before the 4th Edition start date (of what, 2068, 2069?) at the absolute earliest.  The technology simply wasn't developed, the inhabiting intelligences simply didn't exist to take over minds.

Sorry.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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"Oh, gee - it's Go-Frag-Yourself-O'Clock."
New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
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Zwischenzug

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« Reply #611 on: <09-30-14/0806:25> »
And you can be absolutely certain that the current attack vector (nanites) is consistent with the originator of the disease? Do you know something I don't? Because if you don't, as I suspect, then neither of us know the real root cause of CFD and we are both just speculating here. If you somehow have some insight I am not privy to as to the definitive source that can be conclusively proven, please do share.

I accept that you have an established position, but I will politely disagree that the origin of what we now know as CFD 1. must take place at some point after 2068, 2. must have been purposefully designed and/or the result of hostile intent, and 3. must have originated from or with nanotechnology. The simple fact that the possibility of Matrix induced multiple personalities (not multiple personality disorder, where a single mind is fractured into several aspects of itself, but actual honest-to-god separate, unique personalities existing within one psyche) occurs as early as 2060 with Dr. Marchand provides me with enough reasonable doubt that something, an unknown x-factor, could have taken place between Project Legion in 2060, the Crash 2.0 in 2064, and the first known symptoms of CFD (at some point before 2075). What that is I don't know, but I do know for a fact that I don't think these events cannot so easily be dismissed.

You'll also note that I did specify that the potential of mutation most certainly exists; while Dr. Marchand lacks some of the distinguishing features of CFD as we know it presents in 2075, there's no telling how CFD presented in it's infancy, or if it even began as what we now recognize it as.

Since neither of us know for sure, I'd like to ask you politely to leave that overbearing tone you so often exhibit at the door. Feel free to state your opinion, but please do not state your opinion as fact when we both know it cannot possibly be so.

Thanks.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #612 on: <09-30-14/0852:25> »
Y'know, I was casual.  You attacked me; I stayed, you know, pretty relaxed.  If you wanna read 'overbearing tone' into every single one of my posts, you go right on ahead, but you better understand that the tone is in your head, not in my writing.

And yeah, I can be absolutely certain that Marchand wasn't the first victim, and it's pretty clear I do know something you don't.  Make up theories all you like, but I suggest you clear them through BOTH the 'history of the 6th World' buffer and the 'what the game designers came up with and when' buffer, because while with some things they do really leave things wide open (fates of the Big Three AI, half the stuff from Dunkelhzahn's Will, etc.) there is other stuff that they pretty thoroughly nail down.  In this particular case?  Brainscan, pp. 69-70, 'The Minds of Olivia Marchand'.  She didn't get personalities crammed into her head, her own personality fractured.

By the by, the next time you ask 'Do you know something I don't", then answer yourself with 'if you don't, as I suspect', understand that I have been reading and playing this since the year it came out, and that people who do write for the game ask me questions, and that when posters here talk about 'people who know the backstory of Shadowrun', I'm invariably one of the first two people mentioned.  So yeah, the chances of me knowing something you don't are pretty damn good, and considering that my deductions have about an 85% accuracy rate, there's a reason people listen to what I say.

But hey, nobody's making you listen to me - or take umbrage with how I write.  You're doing that all on your own.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
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Namikaze

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« Reply #613 on: <09-30-14/1235:22> »
By the by, the next time you ask 'Do you know something I don't", then answer yourself with 'if you don't, as I suspect', understand that I have been reading and playing this since the year it came out, and that people who do write for the game ask me questions, and that when posters here talk about 'people who know the backstory of Shadowrun', I'm invariably one of the first two people mentioned.  So yeah, the chances of me knowing something you don't are pretty damn good, and considering that my deductions have about an 85% accuracy rate, there's a reason people listen to what I say.

Yeah, Wyrm is one of those folks that I love to see posting in the Secret History section, simply because of his vast knowledge of the game's world.  He's not all that keen on the rules of the world though, so if he's posting somewhere else just ignore him.  :P  Kidding!
Feel free to keep any karma you earned illicitly, it's on us.

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Sichr

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« Reply #614 on: <09-30-14/1828:47> »
Well I dont know what changed since the times this forums have been alive, but I dont recall Wyrm to sound this arogant before, nor in thread, that is called "Wild Speculations"