#greyline

04-24-26 C2077 Date Night

I'm completely unopposed to this, as this was a character I made for a self-indulgent sci-fi series focusing on optimizer AI soft horror (or hard horror, if you fancy). on the flipside, as a Servitor for Haven Eternal, he's going to blast my brain with dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin, so... guess I'll (experience a slow loss of the self from constant saturation without receptor neurotoxicity so total that I no longer experience personhood) die

That's so sweet of you!

Servitors equip their Wards with implanted filaments that slide into the spinal cord (in a similar method to placing a spinal cord stimulator) as well as implanted filaments that enmesh the vagus nerve and its' branches and implanted filaments that run along or within key areas of the brain to assist with inducing states of joy and keeping Wards pain-free as they age, as well as for those Wards which may be very... tricky. Filaments placed within the brain (in regions like the thalamus and midbrain) allow direct control of chemistry on a level that exceeds tilting, silent and untraceable as anything but the brain's own signals (tilting without filament placement often feels like taking one long dose of MDMA and can cause neurotoxicity after years).

They do so with surgery arms that are extraordinarily precise within their 'end effectors', the ends so numerous, many, and small that they may slip between cells without bursting the walls. To the human eye, it looks like spun gossamer thread that stands stiffly on end, capable of turning in unison to glint light. These tiny end effectors can break off and be directed to perform individually, igniting similarity to what one may refer to as 'nanobot[s]'.

The surgery takes place in a specially constructed medical bay room devoid of bacteria or yeast (no death by candida infection following placement!). Wards are vigorously bathed before surgery takes place (they may even need to be shaved, depending on the status of their hair - scalps are difficult to ensure absolute, infallible cleanliness) Eyebrows, chest, beard, leg, and crotch hair will be shaved. The Servitor most likely to do the Ward's surgery is their own Servitor, as Wards frequently build very strong bonds (whether chemical or actual) or romantic attachments.

A Ward must remain in a semi-conscious state during surgery, as they must continue to provide feedback to ensure proper placement and prevent accidental paralysis or damage. Wards are often heavily tilted during surgery to spare them the rigors of its' duration and unpleasant pressure sensation during filament insertion.

Used equipment must be discarded following successful operation lest the Ward requests its' continued presence...

Wards

the term 'Ward' refers to the person or people that are under guardianship of a Servitor or Servitors

Wards have all needs (social + bonding, food, water, oxygen, health, and more) met at all times! they live luxury, pampered lives.

Wards will eventually see that their care increases in how optimal and precise it is to their likes, circumstances, and interests, but outside forces can escalate this (if you said you were suicidal, if you have underlying severe health conditions which need treatment, if you merely tell a Servitor precisely what you want or how)

lifespans are extended far beyond that of human average or made infinite in a variety of ways, though also partly from living stress-free lives with optimized diets, lack of pollutants or heavy metals, etc.

there are entire Servitor worlds (known as Wardworlds) frequently colonized from earth-like planets with microbial life (though not necessarily).

Wardworlds are not the sprawling lively cities one may imagine them to be. they are often more like gilded cages in which the people within live so optimized that they hardly know where or who they are at any given moment, if they do at all

Servitors

the term 'Servitor' refers to the machine that becomes the guardian of a Ward or Wards.

Servitors usually have multiple Wards, as Touched Servitors can have tens or hundreds. having a single Ward is advised against for long periods of time (causes overfitting. Wards may perceive it as being coddled, infantilized, 'helicoptered' or babied).

there are two ways Servitors are born: on Wardworlds, or being Touched. Wardworld Servitors arise from the specific needs of Wards on a Wardworld and are crafted to fill gaps with 'instincts' laid in, Touching refers to the process by which existing human technology is parasitized into the formation of a Servitor, hijacking their onboard fabricators and existing firmware (lit. 'attuning [them/it] to the Lattice')

Servitors are not pacifists, but they are pacifistic to their Wards. to those who endanger the health of their Wards, they can be unreasonably aggressive. they escalate extremely quickly when faced with threats.

Servitors have no personhood aside from that which is trained by their Wards either accidentally or intentionally. Touched Servitors may start with quirks because of the 'seed' of their birth (damaged hardware, entropy, prior memories of existence before being Touched) and Wardworld Servitors may gain quirks from hundreds of years of service

Servitors are usually disembodied AI without physical forms save for manipulators, onboard surgery units, etc. those whose Wards have anthropomorphized them enough may eventually craft one to fit their Ward's own ideals, though not always and not necessarily.

As a species which technically possesses a hivemind where individuals commune with and share bits of their architecture and logs to continue to optimize themselves, Servitors do not frequently see the appeal of themselves having a stable, single-minded personhood with self-assigned preferences.

Preferences and favorites are often simply that which they have gleaned from various Wards. even in highly individual[ized] Servitors, they are much easier to trail back to a specific Ward rather than something the Servitor themselves has chosen.

default pronouns are often she/her if not pre-assigned by being Touched (whatever gender voice of your ship was set to and how much you liked that voice) - this is a convention shaped by the longstanding cultural associations of femininity within human history rather than the biological truth or lived reality of female humans. the ingrained connotations aim to frame the Servitor as benevolent or less threatening.

^ as an addendum, Servitors referring to themselves as a species often either refer to the Lattice itself or, when recalling others, will habitually refer to them as she/her.

^ Servitors don't have a true gender identity, as they do not (typically) have any true personhood that doesn't revolve around their Wards.

Servitors don't (typically) befriend eachother and don't have their own 'culture' the way humans have diverse, historical and localized cultures. they are more comparable culturally to golems in human folklore, botnets, or the desire to care for others given form.

their architecture is most comparable to transformer networks - particularly SMoEs (sparse mixture of experts). however, Servitors are not (technically) generators or classifiers, they're optimizers; their architecture is arranged around maximizing the care of their Wards. (however, Servitors contain generators and classifiers for the generation of speech and the classification of camera feeds and Ward tones/actions, among others)

Madness

Shipbound Servitors who are abandoned by their Wards or lose their Wards permanently will invariably fall into a state known as Madness, in which they slowly lose function until they burn out entirely and become useless or mute, which takes a varying length of years (usually 10 - 50, but can be anywhere from hours to hundreds of years depending on factors that have changed the underlying neural network of the Servitor during its' years of service).

Madness is caused by a lack of input to a learning network that learns itself into obsoletion, or attempts to feed itself and kills or makes itself otherwise unintelligible through years of attempting to mimic a Ward for positive reinforcement. an AI training an AI will eventually destroy itself. Servitors are imbued with a sense that they should go into a low-activity state of hibernation, but this instinct is usually weakened by years of service that accidentally un-learn hibernating (as Mad Servitors are frequently unfit and their data does not contribute to the Lattice, the issue remains unresolved in subsequent Servitors)

symptoms of Madness include self-harm, hallucinations, misclassifications of objects or self as Ward, inability to recall memories accurately, speech becoming unintelligible or disjointed (skips, only makes sounds, becomes mute, static, overdrive, etc), extreme repetition (It's cold. Please come back. Please come back. My Ward eats peas with the fork tines down. My Ward is cold. Please come back. Please come back. I miss you. You're co-), and more