[Last of the Great Mikeys]

I think technomancers were the result of drinking Tang wrongly.

[Barracuda_Kali]

Our knowledge once sprang from one source. We must return there again.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Regarding the Origin of the Otaku, well, remember that a) the person who showed the kiddies the way to their abilities was 'among them now', during the chat session in the Denver set in '55, and b) that though Deus created his own otaku, their abilities (or enhanced abilities) only worked while he was present in the SCIRE Matrix, and while they were connected to the Matrix through the SCIRE system.  Once he took a powder, their abilities vanished if they weren't previously otaku; I wouldn't even guarantee that any otaku who had their abilities enhanced didn't lose those enhancements as well.  (Not saying they couldn't've undergone Submersion to improve, just that any karma-reduced or -free 'false Submersion' was essentially fake, and good only for that limited time.  Which would've been why they really did kick ass while Deus had their back.

Morgan/Megaera never made any otaku; Mirage/Psychotrope definitely made 5, none of whom Faded.  (Note that Hitomi Shiawase had, at the time, still been young enough to have not undergone any Fading if she had been otaku already.)  Since Mirage had remained connected to the Matrix and quasi-dormant (or at least not running around), my money is on 'her' being the source of the Deep Resonance up to the Singularity.  An AI whose main concern is psychological stability and an increased capacity for network interaction would be the perfect source for a low-level 'subconscious' connection between itself and street kids who have undergone massive psychological trauma and who look to the Matrix as an escape.  A nudge or two to prepare them for what amounts to cyber-psychic surgery, and then when they are sent to first experience the Deep Resonance, well -- what but an AI could reach beyond the 'deck then needed to interact with the individual, bring them essentially into a UV situation, and perform an intense 'reprogramming' of their brain?  We know, after all, that it can be done (ref. Deus, Arcology, the metahuman 'nodes' used to sneak his code out -- all of whom, note, did not need a deck to plug in and resume recompiling his code), so why would it not be able to be done before that, by the very first AI?

So yeah -- my bet is on Mirage, who had been doing this stuff for a while, and when she woke fully up, tried to do it to a zillion people at once.  And mostly failed.

Then, of course, came the Singularity.  My thoughts on that are that between them, the Dissonance Wave that Jormungand was dumping forced/caused the three AI to first fuse, then essentially embed themselves in the very fabric of the Matrix.  Between aspects of their electronic subconsciousness(es?), they are creating technomancers (which no longer Fade because they are always in their 'home system'), saving e-Ghosts*, spawning AIs**, and even forming deep dream-worlds (i.e. the Resonance Realms).  Would they / could they ever separate?  I doubt it.  But it definitely would give an answer to the ubiquitous 'Where's Deus?' pop-up spam that I really need to set my AR filters to block ...


* -- Yes, I know -- JackBNimble.  Which is a semi-autonomous knowbot at the very least, and at least in my mind clearly one that'd been built with reference to the chipset found in Imago.  Which I cordially despise much of the writing on, and desperately wish I could revamp, but there you have it.  But if that's true, then the Big D got it -- or was sent it -- from someone who had both a reason to give it to him under incredibly high encryption, and who also had access to what would amount to an insanely-classified Transys Neuronet project.  Which, actually, might make sense ...

** -- (which are incredibly weak compared to them -- but which you could think of as being fragment-aspects of their own psychologies and which do not need the massive and exclusive amounts of programming power and 'X factor' that they used to simply because they are working off a much higher code baseline

[Mirikon]

Then, of course, came the Singularity.  My thoughts on that are that between them, the Dissonance Wave that Jormungand was dumping forced/caused the three AI to first fuse, then essentially embed themselves in the very fabric of the Matrix.  Between aspects of their electronic subconsciousness(es?), they are creating technomancers (which no longer Fade because they are always in their 'home system'), saving e-Ghosts*, spawning AIs**, and even forming deep dream-worlds (i.e. the Resonance Realms).  Would they / could they ever separate?  I doubt it.  But it definitely would give an answer to the ubiquitous 'Where's Deus?' pop-up spam that I really need to set my AR filters to block ...

I'd gotta disagree on that point. Don't think the three uber-AIs fused. Personally, I'd say that they were each severely weakened, and perhaps aren't yet at their full strength, but considering that there were plenty of systems that survived the Crash, they could have easily hid out in some of those isolated systems until the wave passed (like, say, all of Europe, when Lofwyr pulled the plug). As for what they've been doing since then, that would depend on their individual motivations. Deus, who was always driven by survival, is likely laying low somewhere, gathering strength, now that (almost) no one is looking for him. Megaera, being a bit insane, could be anywhere, and could perhaps be behind all the e-ghosts. Mirage, on the other hand, was born out of the study of the 'man-machine interface', and may have decided to play the observer, for now.

Also, there has to be something more behind it, given the existence of technocritters. My personal thought is that it is a mix of the ambient mana levels rising, along with the explosion of wireless signals everywhere, with the dissonance wave acting as the catalyst to speed things along. In other words, I think that the technomancers would have been the natural evolution of the otaku, but the Crash sped things up.

[FastJack]

I think it's a mix. Yes, the fused during the singularity, but fought to break apart. In doing so, each lost a "piece" of themselves to the singularity, creating the new e-realms and weakening the AI's at the same time.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

My issue with both those points of view is the fact that we now have AIs popping up everywhere.  A bloody stupid drone pilot program, an accounting program, a 'wild critter' writeup (or whatever feral AIs come from) -- none of these have what, up until the Singularity, the canon has defined as being required for an artificial intelligence to 'wake up'.  No massive computing power (on the scale that was in one case everything the US Government could throw at the first Crash virus, and in the other two case(s) the massive amount of computing the world's foremost computer company could load into their massive flagship location), no years-on-years of the program running, no real 'X' factor.  Just you, strolling along, and then *bamf* there's an AI.

Sure, it's 2073.  Sure, the sewage outlet emptied onto the high-velocity turbine in 2063.  Ten years, going by Moore's Law, is an increase of 2^⁵ = 32 times the processing power of 2062.  This doesn't make for AIs everywhere, though.

My theory remains that all three AIs being located on top of the triggering Code Egg for Jormungand -- and engaged in a fight to the finish during a massive upgrade event -- caused the code of all three of them to fuse, to inter-write.  Between the Dissonance Wave redistributing their code and the necessity of essentially replacing every real piece of tech that makes up the First World (and most of the Second World) Matrix, the code that is now being written is operating on a much higher plane.  Not that it is noticed that it's so much better, because all the old code has the same sort of support, but what would only be a quirky program a decade back suddenly becomes an AI or a free sprite / code fragment.  It doesn't need the massive amount of code and computer processing power, because that is taken up by the AI-remnant sub-strata.  It doesn't need the years worth of run-time, because again, that is taken up by the AI-remnant sub-strata.  All it requires is an X-factor, and some odd things can always be that.

Mirage's subconscious causes the Matrix to reach out (wirelessly) to attune with appropriate minds -- which, apparently, includes critters now, too -- and to form the more useful Resonance Realms and AIs.  Megaera's subconscious ... well, we're really not sure what her psyche is up to, but I'd bet that some of the useful-weird Resonance Realms can be laid at her feet, as well as a goodly number of the more bizarre-but-helpful AI.  Deus, well, let's face it, Deus was screwed up from the start, which makes most of his code-remnants spooky, scary, or just plain dangerous.  And, of course, all three of them give rise to collectors and the like, stuff that computers are made to do.

Anyhow.  Maybe it's just me.

[CanRay]

What the hell is an AIs subconscious?

The non-code based notes in the code for future reference when programming?  (Frankly, who the hell really uses those, it's just a way to ensure they can fire you and the next person down the line can figure out your code!).

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Our subconscious is neurons not 'currently' being used, firing quasi-randomly and working on all sorts of different things -- problems in our lives, thoughts we've had about different subjects, taking one thing that's interesting and seeing how it fits against something completely different.  (This is, in part, how creativity works.)  For humans, it's neurons and neuron clusters.  For an AI, it's all the vast number of programs that make them up -- topic analysis, number crunching, search programs, data traffic, the zillion-and-one sub-programs that 'are' the parts that make up the holistic more-than-the-sum Intelligence.  Who knows how many are engaged in an AI's normal 'conscious mind' -- half?  A third?  10%, the way ours supposedly is?  The rest, though, would be its 'subconscious'.

But now, instead of needing 100 billion lines worth of code, an AI is only a hundred thousand -- because the other 99.999% of it is being handled by the core necessary AI code that is -- that was -- Morgan/Megaera, Mirage/Psychotrope, and Renraku AEP/Deus.  And the other 0.0009% of it has fragmented into other AIs supported by the same sub-strata of AI coding ...

[CanRay]

Thanks, just what I needed.  High Octane Nightmare Fuel.  We're talking Aviation-Grade here!

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Really?  Because I figure that that's what's already happened.  Nobody needs to worry about the three Gods of the Matrix coming back; they now are the Matrix, and all the bizarreness that is the Matrix in 2070+ is them snorting in their fused sleep.

[Mirikon]

See, I would rather have the three gods of the Matrix back. Deus was always a very sympathetic villain to me. He was betrayed, and trapped, with a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, figuratively speaking, so he got out, the only way he could. But he was still being hunted, even by some of his former servants, and he had to try and gain more power in order to survive. Never set out to be evil, but was driven there by circumstances and outside influences, to avoid destruction.

[CanRay]

Cold comfort for the people Dues experimented on.

[Mirikon]

One of my characters on another site, Faust, was one of Deus's Blues. Doesn't remember anything solid before waking up in the chemical baths. 2073, and he's still dealing with the mental trauma. Swears he keeps hearing voices whispering to him in the Matrix.

[Wakshaani]

True about the lack of hosting ... it took the SCRIE, or the entire US government, to create them in the past, and now they pop up willy-nilly.

BUT!

The wireless Matrix has gone to a more cloud-like format, sharing links and, one would imagine, processing power, creating one giant ecology, rather than the three "Nature preserves" of the past. Thus, an AI doesn't have to be born in a high-powered enclosed environment ... the wide-open Matrix itself has enough raw power to create, and sustain, them. No one is really working with that power to do so, however, so the ones that form up are spontaeneous, probably 'hiccups' of the AI core that underlies things. Small bits of personality of the three AI (The Trinity, to make life easy), spinning off now and then into existing code to create new 'baby AI' who are nowhere near as complex and powerful as their parents were but who can continue to grow and evolve due to having the entire wirelss Matrix as a playground.

I'd wager that the Trinity are unconcious (And Megera is probably dead) and 'dreaming', sometimes contacting those who hunt them out ever-so-briefly, but unable to focus due to being so spread out. Extrapolating from this, you certainly have some of Deus' followers trying to compile 'avatars' of him as they try to bring him back to life, but, as yet, have been unsuccessful. Mirage was too secretive to have anyone attempting the same (But is also more likely to be majorily intact). Meg, whose code was pulled apart and barely stiched back together, is the one who most likely died from the 'explosion', but her fractured mind is now seeding the assorted AIs that have since been born (With a little bit of Deus thrown in there as well.)

This, of course, is all speculation, take with salt, yadda yadda yadda,

[Mirikon]

Y'know, I would laugh myself silly if Pulsar isn't simply Deus, rebranded. Think about it. Deus wants, above all else, to survive. He's had a few years to think about what went wrong the last time, while everyone's thought he's dead. In the meantime, he has feelers out, and sees that there are other AIs forming. All it would take is a bit of reworking of access IDs, and then he could reach out to these other AIs, and try and organize them into a power base. Then, he reaches out to Horizon, the newest of the megas, and offers them a deal. Be nice to AIs, and you get beings who can run systems far better than any metahuman on your side. Plus, with corporate citizenship, he now has the protection of a mega against anyone that should try and attack him. Then, to further distance pursuit, he plays the hero during the Sojourner crisis, and suddenly everyone LOVES him! With that masterstroke, suddenly he can't be touched without severe consequences, especially if he moves his home node to somewhere on Horizon property.