[Lorebane24]

Is there any info out there on what happened to the original 3 AIs after the crash of '69?  I was thinking of using them (well, a weakened Mirage and an icomplete Deus being recompiled by Horizon) in an upcoming game, but would love it if there were any tidbits available.

[RHat]

I *think* there's been no mention - plenty of speculation, but no real mention.

Deus got namedropped when Netcat was pregnant - some sort of virtual morning sickness that basically looked like a dump of random text.

[Ursus Maior]

There is quite a bit on Mirage, Deus and Megaera in SR4 books like "Emergence" and "Unwired". You might also like to look at SR3s final supplement "System Failure" (and "Matrix"). It deals with the crash of 2064 (not '69, there was no crash in 2069). It's not much, though.

[Mirikon]

All the Big 10 have scoured the Matrix looking for any sign of Deus or Megaera, at least, and no signs have been found. That does not mean they aren't out there, somewhere, just that they've been too good to get caught. As for what happened to them? It is possible they were destroyed by Jormungand. Or they could have escaped into isolated systems, and since hidden their trail (such as 'rebranding' themselves as other AIs). Or they could have somehow 'transcended' to the Resonance Realms. Dodger is STILL looking for Megaera, though there seems to be some evidence that he has become a Technomancer, and Megaera is his Paragon. The true answers are probably hidden somewhere in the Resonance Realms, such as the Endless Archive, where everything that ever was in the Matrix is stored.

[DeathStrobe]

Yeah, like Mirikon said, they're probably dead. The downside is that the Resonance Realms makes a backup of everything. So even if Jormungand erased them from the Matrix, they could still exist in the Resonance Realms.

However, for your campaign idea, there is no fluff that will contradict you since no one knows.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Best lack of evidence of existence is that the now-OCD Dodger has managed to get access to virtually all of the major computer corporations - Big 10, and a lot of the lesser AAs - and has found neither hide nor hair.

My personal theory is that they are together forming the core code that all of the new AI, E-Ghosts, and (perhaps) sprites work from as a baseline.  I mean, really - there are a hundred thousand AI, where there once were only three.  Mustn't there be something that allows them to do what it used to take huge amounts of time, programming, and oddities to achieve?  They have emerged above the level of sentience because they stand on the shoulders of submerged giants ...

[Lorebane24]

Well, my idea for Deus assumes that he was essentially shattered into little pieces of code during the last crash, and that Horizon has salvaged bits of it and are trying to recreate him on a closed system so they can study the way he repurposes and overtakes other systems, hoping they can do the same thing with people.  Meanwhile, the bits they didn't salvage start attaching themselves to e-ghosts like parasites, and this provides them with the spark of sentience they need to acquire a drive to attempt to re-unite, so they're trying to get to this top secret Horizon lab to reintegrate and escape.  That's all I've really got so far though.

[RHat]

The issue with that thinking, Wyrm, is that the post-Emergence AIs aren't doing the same thing as the pre-Crash AIs - they're an entirely different sort of entity.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Take three mountains in the middle of a lake.  The lake isn't that big, but it's pretty deep - so the mountains have to be pretty tall to break the surface, like the Hawaiian chain.  Now shake the place up - and level all three mountains out across the bottom of the sea.  You no longer need to have 8,000m worth of height to break the surface; now you just need 800m.  Same essential concept.

That they're not doing the same things is immaterial; they're utilizing the massive amount of pre-sentience code that is 'now available' in order to make the final leap to sentience.

Lorebane, what you just described is not ... unlike CFD / the Sybil virus ...

[Lorebane24]

What are those?  I've been pretty bad about following recent Shadowrun lore, so most of what I know about 2075 comes from the core rulebook.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Think ... e-ghosts, free sprites, and AIs of various sorts that got coded (or self-coded) into hard nanites, then loaded/injected into various people.  They reproduce, and start re-wiring the brains of the people they've been uploaded into.  Search this site for CFD, 'Sybil virus', and 'head case', and you'll get an eyeful ...

[Sengir]

Or they could have escaped into isolated systems, and since hidden their trail (such as 'rebranding' themselves as other AIs).

Problem is, the old AIs needed a mainframe worth of processing power. In their old form, their very existence should leave traces...