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The Exsurgent Virus

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Tue, 2012-03-13 15:08

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

The Exsurgent Virus

So what can't the virus do. It is depicted as a nano-bio-digital virus. Can it jump right off of your computer screen then? Or am I giving it too much 'magic'?

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Tue, 2012-03-13 16:33

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Prophet710 wrote:
So what can't the virus do. It is depicted as a nano-bio-digital virus. Can it jump right off of your computer screen then? Or am I giving it too much 'magic'?

I assume it can spread by first hypnotizing somebody with a basilisk hack, and then have them watch enough pictures to download a version. Think of the scene in Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" when the Cloud tries to communicate. The key idea seems to be that it is a multi-medium virus: it can translate itself into suitable forms with some effort. The bio or nano-virus rewrites brains to contain the digital or neural version of it, the nano-virus can make the bio-virus and maybe even the reverse, and the digital virus is good at hacking implants or fabbers to make other variants. Given its COG 40, it can probably figure out ways of infecting Babbage machines or cuneiform text too... (It is a pretty clear homage to the Asherah virus in Snow Crash) One issue is the size of the virus: it still has to get through. A big biological virus has a genome of 1.3 megabase-pairs, or 2.6 megabit. Is that large enough to house the exsurgent virus? If we assume the virus is about 2 megabit, then it could be transmitted by ~95 pages of text - but that will probably not work well for visual transmission, since it is unlikely to be accurately encoded in the receiving brain (photographic memory on the other hand...)

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Tue, 2012-03-13 17:22

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Ok because I had this vision in my mind of the virii itself jumping directly from digital to bio/nano at sheer volition, which seems impossible to just go from digital to physical but at the same time....

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Tue, 2012-03-13 17:24

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

So then my question is, if a drone is infected by the Exsurgent virus and just converted, not mutated/changed, its it just an enemy drone then, or is it still something more? The only reason I ask is because it seems to me, with the exceptions of self-replicating nano-clouds and TITAN mutation, cleaning the Sol system with a concerted effort wont be that costly to do, let alone impossible.

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Tue, 2012-03-13 20:53

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Prophet710 wrote:
So then my question is, if a drone is infected by the Exsurgent virus and just converted, not mutated/changed, its it just an enemy drone then, or is it still something more?

I would assume it is still a drone. Although the weird psi aspect might or might not be present (depending on GM take on it). Also, a subverted drone might find ways of making a nanoassembler using unusual means. "OK, what happened?" "The bot wandered around the flat for a minute, apparently at random. Then it picked up a decorative blobject, some smart toilet tissue and a potted plant. It sliced them together and put them in the sink. Then it continued wandering... and 4 hours later we had a nanoinfection in the sewers."

Quote:
The only reason I ask is because it seems to me, with the exceptions of self-replicating nano-clouds and TITAN mutation, cleaning the Sol system with a concerted effort wont be that costly to do, let alone impossible.

The solar system is big. Very big. And how do you clean it from something that might have predicted that you would clean it and planned ahead?

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Tue, 2012-03-13 21:33

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Arenamontanus wrote:
Prophet710 wrote:
So then my question is, if a drone is infected by the Exsurgent virus and just converted, not mutated/changed, its it just an enemy drone then, or is it still something more?
I would assume it is still a drone. Although the weird psi aspect might or might not be present (depending on GM take on it). Also, a subverted drone might find ways of making a nanoassembler using unusual means. "OK, what happened?" "The bot wandered around the flat for a minute, apparently at random. Then it picked up a decorative blobject, some smart toilet tissue and a potted plant. It sliced them together and put them in the sink. Then it continued wandering... and 4 hours later we had a nanoinfection in the sewers."
Quote:
The only reason I ask is because it seems to me, with the exceptions of self-replicating nano-clouds and TITAN mutation, cleaning the Sol system with a concerted effort wont be that costly to do, let alone impossible.
The solar system is big. Very big. And how do you clean it from something that might have predicted that you would clean it and planned ahead?

One damn dirty habitat at a time!

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Wed, 2012-03-14 00:15

Decivre

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Prophet710 wrote:
One damn dirty habitat at a time!

But you're still dealing with a multi-medium adaptable virus of posthuman intelligence. Cleaning it out of the system is likely harder than wiping out the entire human race.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-03-15 04:03

LatwPIAT

Re: The Exsurgent Virus

Arenamontanus wrote:
The key idea seems to be that it is a multi-medium virus: it can translate itself into suitable forms with some effort. The bio or nano-virus rewrites brains to contain the digital or neural version of it, the nano-virus can make the bio-virus and maybe even the reverse, and the digital virus is good at hacking implants or fabbers to make other variants. Given its COG 40, it can probably figure out ways of infecting Babbage machines or cuneiform text too... (It is a pretty clear homage to the Asherah virus in Snow Crash) One issue is the size of the virus: it still has to get through. A big biological virus has a genome of 1.3 megabase-pairs, or 2.6 megabit. Is that large enough to house the exsurgent virus? If we assume the virus is about 2 megabit, then it could be transmitted by ~95 pages of text - but that will probably not work well for visual transmission, since it is unlikely to be accurately encoded in the receiving brain (photographic memory on the other hand...)

Well, if the Exurgent Virus truly is a [i]virus[/i] (and not named as an extended Eclipse Phase metaphor), then it would function primarily by infecting cells and injecting their own "code" into the DNA of the cell, resulting in infected mRNA (for further spread) and protein synthesis. While the virus-cells themselves probably cannot in any way even possess an intelligence, it doesn't seem too unlikely that it bootstraps itself on the victims cognitive functions by infecting the brain and expanding its intelligence with some form of algorithm that effects behaviour towards Exurgent interests. (To back this up, take note of how Exurgent-infected transhumans are dangerous, while Exurgent-infected seed AI are [i]really[/i] dangerous. I also think one of the books mention Exurgent-infected dogs, which I seem to recall are less intelligent than transhuman Exurgents). In particular, stealing a page or two from Peter Watts' ever-excellent [i]Blindsight[/i], the Exurgent-virus might sequester proteins that produce omni-savant brain cells (hence the 40 COG) and then use simple behavioural modifications (like those made by Toxoplasma gondii in cats and humans, or even a high-functioning sociopath-type, if you can imagine that, of rabies) to cause more complex behaviour to emerge; while it's highly intelligent, the Exurgent-virus seems largely to works towards destructive and infectious behaviour in highly intelligent ways:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

It doesn't , as far as I'm able to tell, have an innate tendency to act as an extension of the ETI's will, except in capacity of a virulent bioweapon, much like ebola kills enemy troops but doesn't take orders.

So, to summarize, I believe that the virus itself doesn't possess an innate intelligence; rather, bootstraps itself on the victim's brain to attain the high level of intelligence. This could explain how a superintelligent virus can be coded into two megabit. Also, I'd like to note that since a virus can bootstrap itself on the host cell's mRNA and protein-sequestration by reprogramming the nucleus and/or cytoplasm (which provides a rather near symmetry with the above), it's "theoretically" possible that it could use those proteins to manufacture larger biological structures which can then be used to manufacture nanomachines, hence making the biological virus and the nanovirus just two phenotypes of the same vector.

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