#psumnt

Jumpstart your academic career by joining the PanSystem University of Mihira and New Tideland MI program!

The future has never been so secure!

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Screw commonly accepted interpretations, I dub thee

orange.

hey I told you not to worry about it

my interpretation of risk assessment is that it's more related to the success percentage of a plan/generally more long-term, while threat assessment is more about the likelihood of immediate danger. so i made risk assessment more of a "throughline" that tangles when risk increases, and threat assessment more like a soundwave/heartbeat monitor that spikes when threat increases.

plus a little comic showing off these modules spiking (featuring ART and Iris)

One scenario is that ART is fully aware of this and the university routinely makes deals with eldritch beings such at itself, where they provide a physical body & way of interfacing with our world, along with video-game-like missions for enrichment (this is where the conspiracy theory that our world is a simulation comes from, because for these beings, it is a bit like playing in a 2D video game is for us), in exchange for power, funding, luck, knowledge, etc to aid in the university's longtime goals (which do still include undermining the rampant abuse in the Corporation Rim! So what if they've made some dicey deals with possible-literal-devils to get that done?) The high-level MI disguise is ART's cover story within the cover story about being a normal bot pilot, and no one on the crew besides Captain Seth knows the truth about what's really powering their ship. Seth might even technically be the 'warlock' to Peri's 'eldritch patron' in the official paperwork of their bargain, rather than the deal being with the university or the AI studies controlling board or whatever. ART & Seth both figured one day the warlock mantle would be passed on to Iris, since she is Peri's favorite human, but now it seems to want nothing more than to merge souls with the mangy SecUnit it picked up somewhere. (Iris & Seth just want Peri to be happy, but the university is less pleased with this turn of events & think ART might be in breach of contract if it shifts its focus so entirely away from benefitting PSUMNT and their goals. Can they banish it back to its home dimension for this? They can certainly try, but Peri has quite a good foothold in the physical realm now, so it's unclear if they would be successful...)

Or: A slightly more angsty setup is that ART does not even know this about itself at first. It, and the other high-level MIs at PSUMNT, were essentially newborn eldritch beings when the university plucked them out of their dimension and into ours in order to study them. They function like high-level bot intelligences because that is what they believe themselves to be. They were given mechanical bodies after early experiments with having them inhabit a human host caused horrific damage to both the host and the guest entity, and none of the researchers were willing to volunteer to host anymore. (Construct development was tangentially related to this early problem in the eldritch studies field, though the divergence was so many academic generations ago that most people don't know that.) As Peri grows up, though, and especially as its relationships with people outside of the university develop (especially with Murderbot), it goes way beyond having "flexible" programming; it starts to exhibit traits & behaviors beyond what anything programmed should ever be able to do. Being able to feel Murderbot's emotions was the first red flag for the university that their eldritch experiment was starting to break containment (again).

Murderbot, of course, was manufactured to be an enslaved Security Unit, not even considered a person, and we all know and have been shown just how horrific that is. Murderbot's manufacturers are evil (as far as it is possible to be so), and while Murderbot seemingly (hopefully) likes being alive and would like to remain so, I've no doubt it would agree no more SecUnits should be made.

But ART, along with its fellow ships of the same line like Holism, were also made for a purpose. To be ships, to do the work they do. The Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland seem like good people with good intentions, and I get the sense those ships essentially choose what work they do, at least to a large extent (try forcing ART to do Holism's work and I'm sure you'll have a grand old time). And their manufacturers know they are persons and treat them accordingly. But they were still built to be ships. But that doesn't mean the process of building those ships and growing and raising those persons who are ships was smooth and troublefree.

How long did it take them to figure out you needed to raise them in family environments? What happened to the ship who made them realise that? What happens when the first ship of its kind that is a person doesn't want to be a ship for you? (As the equivalent of a teenage rebellion, or permanently? You don't know, at least not at first). Was there ever a point were someone (even if just one person vastly outvoted) argued this was a failed experiment and they should just pull the plug?

How do you, a young ship with your own mind, the first of your kind, handle the expectations of those who made you? Do you settle comfortably into your assigned role, or does it chafe and restrain you? Do you rebel and explore other options? (And if you do, how do your makers and owners, who yes, know you are a person but also have never had to face that before, because you are the first of your kind, handle that?). If they are dissapointed in you, or want different things than you want, how do you handle that? If you were raised without a family, treated like a colleague but not loved, how do you handle the emptiness and loneliness? Where do you look to fill that space? What behaviours do you adopt to protect yourself from the hurt?