The Fruit of Evil

by on April 30, 2022 at 9:23 pm

The Fruit of Evil

 

(The Fruit of Evil is the setting for Mechanism by Bass. Check it out by clicking here!)

 

Other Appellations:

 

The Defunction (Alpha), Universe 1220 (Universe 161)

 

The Defunction is a bit of an ARGO Nomenopist division joke. The Fruit isn’t malfunctioning as basic scans would suggest. It’s “Defunctioning.” It’s malfunctioning because its defunct and its inhabitants are misusing its facilities in ways that no longer make sense towards aims that no longer have a true purpose.

 

Fox Harmonic:

 

Beta-Alef–Sigma

 

Multiverse Activity:

 

Inactive

 

Astral Connection:

 

L0 D0

Caution Rating:

 

3

 

While the Fruit of Evil remains unware of the multiverse, it would certainly be bad for a hollow planet ran by a mad AI and staffed by countless servants to suddenly pass through a worldtunnel and wind up in a universe where their favorite element drug of choice doesn’t exist.

 

Keywords:

 

Quantum, Observe only, Analog, Sleeping

 

The presence of the atomic element mellitusium in this universe interferes with ARGO probe sensors and prevents us from establishing a stable worldsplinter, meaning its impossible to travel to this universe under conventional methods unless you want to brave the dangers of worldtunnels. That being said, Tad Danger of Earth AD found himself transported to the Fruit of Evil during a STC (spontaneous, temporary crossover event).

 

Description:

 

There were two things which drew ARGO probes to this universe. The first was the presence of material inhabitants of this universe call mellitusium, a naturally occurring but extremely rare element that doesn’t show up in our periodic table. Mellitusim is non-Newtonian metal that retains its metallic properties at any temperature. It is always ductile, malleable, and an excellent conductor of thermal and electrical energy. It is such a good conductor, in fact, that it increases the overall efficiency of any energy transfer of any kind–kinetic, electronic, bosonic, you name it. It can greatly enhance mechanical brains, which makes it highly desirable by the artificials of this universe who treat mellitusium like a stimulant, or less charitably, a drug.

 

Mellitusium interferes with our probes’ sensors and prevents a stable worldsplinter from developing, meaning we can’t directly access this universe, which is a shame because our hyperempaths are very interested in talking with the second thing that drew our probes–a mechanism named Amish, who, though he doesn’t realize it, has a very, very tiny Boltzmann brain inside the quantum weft and weave of his artificial brain.

 

Amish’ brain is smaller than a Planck length, something typically impossible for a universe with the quantum keyword, which in theory should allow Amish to do really, really strange things just through the power of thought. We know about as much about Amish’ potential “mind over matter” abilities as Amish himself, meaning we’re in the dark. Maybe he could open a portal to the Astral and bump up his universe’s connection rating, Maybe he could alter and shift the matter within his perception. We don’t know, which is why we’ve directed our probes to watch Amish very closely.

 

We have noticed that Amish has a connection with mellitusium. The element appears in trace amounts in objects around Amish as if he is creating the particles himself. This makes him incalculably valuable, and he is being hunted by the android scout Elfsh who wants to use him to feed her mellitusium addiction.

 

 

One interesting theory quickly gaining traction with ARGO physicists is that Amish is able to scan particles at a remarkably fine detail, circumventing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle by having his mind smaller than a Planck length. This allows him to see and study phenomena that would otherwise appear probabilistic to an observer. He can, in a sense, “decide” what a particle is through the act of observing it.

 

It is likely that this ability is responsible for mellituism appearing in objects around Amish, though exactly how this happens is unclear, which makes it all the more fascinating to observe Amish.

 

Amish lives inside the Fruit of Evil, a hollowed out planet controlled by a mad AI roaming around the orange giant Epsilon Tauri searching for metllitusium. It is worshipped as a god by the trillions of humans that inhabit the Fruit, for the have lost the knowledge to know what it actually is. Their presence hints that the Fruit once had a different purpose besides the pointless consumption of resources and expansion of its facilities. But any purpose was long ago replaced by the near-animalistic desire to eat and grow.

 

 

Report by ARGO engineer McCandless:

 

The “fruit” part of the appellation comes from the fact that from the outside, the Fruit of Evil looks like a giant rose hip, the fruit part of a rose plant. The “evil” part comes from the fact that the AI that controls the hollow planet is a mean bastard.

 

The gravity of the Fruit varies by the shell. On the outermost shell, gravity is only about 30% Earth normal. At the core, it’s 800% Earth normal. Because the AI directs construction in a haphazard and somewhat-random manner, several regions inside the fruit are gravimetrically unstable relative to its shell. This causes electromagnetic “weather” effects as the plates spin, something to definitely look out for if we ever make contact.

 

The spin of the plates exerts stress on the outermost plate and to reduce strain the plate isn’t in the shape of a perfect sphere but that of an elongated spheroid. It looks a little like an egg, and we almost called it the egg of evil, but the heat spires that vent excess thermal energy look like roots, thus we called it a fruit instead.

 

Though there are trillions of humans within the Fruit, the majority of the inhabitants are not humans but enormous artificials built for construction, each attended to by thousands of servitor artificials. They outnumber the humans by orders of magnitude. There are several quintillions worth of artificial life.

 

We previously gave the larger construction artificials the name “constructors” and the smaller servants “workers,” but following audio update 57b we switched to calling them what they call themselves–the larger artificials are mechanisms and the smaller artificials androids.

 

Mechanisms and androids are autonomous, but are programmed with an innate understanding of their purpose and a desire to cleave to that purpose. The autonomy is likely part of a strategy to ensure flexible problem solving. They’re driven to solve problems, but the AI gives them great latitude in deciding how to solve those problems.

 

It is important not to overstate this autonomy, however. Mechanisms and androids are obsessed with their programmed jobs as much as humans are obsessed with eating, drinking, and breathing. Their hyper-fixation on their jobs can eventually lead to them to develop narcissistic disorders. They believe that they are the most important thing in the universe and their job the most meaningful job in the universe. Other artificials become mere obstacles, or potential obstacles, and the narcissist become a danger to the overall well-being of the Fruit, a cancer that greedily steals resources from the collective whole of the body. When this happens, a built-in failsafe activates which, poetically, kills the cancer by giving it cancer. A mechanical flaw activates within the artificial causing their homeostatic systems to malfunction. This results in the “machine caner” canchrema, and it is always fatal.

 

Artificials follow a strict hierarchy. Mechanisms are larger and more intelligent than androids and thus rule over them brutally. Mechanisms are extensions of the central AI and always follow its commands, even if their understanding of those commands are compromised, but androids have a chance of diverging from the central AI’s commands, perhaps due to so many of them being constructed. The more that are created, the greater the chance of something going wrong in the construction, leading to mutated thinkers that want nothing to do with the AI. Though these androids know true freedom, some also know true madness, becoming totally aimless in their activities, building and destroying just to build and destroy without even the hollow purpose the central AI would give them.

 

The AI has not been the best leader of its servants. Competitive factions within the Fruit have emerged not just from narcissists with early-form canchrema and divergent androids but from perfectly loyal servants and constructors given directives that conflict with the directives of other servants. Whether this results from intent or incompetence is not fully understood. It could just be that the AI is bad at managing its world. But these conflicting orders may well be intentional. Maybe it’s operating under Darwinian logic–the servants better able to accomplish their directives at the expense of the others prove themselves more efficient and thus get to survive. Or maybe it just likes to see things fight.

 

Key regions of the Fruit include:

 

The Great Salt Belt–We believe this equator-long stretch of salt was once a range of batteries as tall of mountains now reduced by aeons of neglect to heaps of salt. It is unknown what these batteries powered, if anything. They could have very well have been a redundant power source. It is also interesting to note that no known mechanisms attend to the Great Salt Belt. It is as if the Central AI one day ordered all upkeep on the batteries to permanently cease–but in that case, why would it do that? The Central AI isn’t the best at managing the upkeep of its world, but even if would have understood the cost of letting an entire equator full of mountain-sized batteries rot.

The Moving Wastes–These sub-plates move in an orbit inside the middle plate, the “mantle” if we are comparing the Fruit to a natural planet. These sub-plates collect garbage from the mantle and are staffed by countless mechanisms tasked with recycling, reabsorption, and reusing, though recent reports say that they are, in fact, doing very little of that and are instead gathering waste for some unknown purpose.

Linear Factories – These factories dangle like enormous chandeliers from the core of the Fruit. Due to the Central AI needing so many servants produced so quickly to attend to its many, many needs, the factories use a series of tubes that create and drop components that are then assembled by crashing them together at high speeds. Mechanisms and androids are dropped out of these factories ready to as soon as they hit the ground. Humanity has figured out how to take control of a handful of linear factories and use them to drop goods down on passing cities below.

City Slices -Humans are by and large confined to giant rotating “slices” of the Fruit’s mantle plate. These slices are filled with arcological nightmares that make the drab block towers of Willow-Wells look inviting. Cities are made of “rooms” huddled around life-support towers. These rooms are repurposed cargo containers sometimes stacked together to create a roomtower or arranged together to make a squatblock. Though the arcology suggests an overflowing human population, this is not the case, and humanity is in fact dwarfed by their cargo container homes. It is not unusual to find entire warehouse skyscrapers housed by only one lonely occupant. Life is marginally better in major city-polis as they have dedicated life-support infrastructure. However, there is only one city-polis per slice, which suggests that these were the cities humanity intended to use long, long ago. Cities are typically named after their chief produce, which means that somewhere in the Fruit is a city named after a fruit. Somewhere in the multiverse, a god is smirking.

Construction Zones -Areas undergoing large-scale mega-engineering are known as construction zones. Here are where we see most of artificial society and the mechanism-android units that compose it. The Central AI likes to visit these zones, likely to keep tabs on its servants.

Southern Murk -The southern pole of the Fruit contains violent dust and gravel storms generated by its unstable, low gravity. Southern cities must guard themselves against these storms or be utterly swept away. Our probes’ infrared scanners reveal a substantial amount of heat is being generated here. Is something being constructed? If it is, it’s very, very large.
Northern Spiel – The north pole of the Fruit holds a disturbing surprise–mountain-sized needles looked in orbit like a crown of icicles. These needles are colony ships–very old colony ships. One theory of the Fruit’s history held that its human population were the original inhabitants of the planet and that their terraforming projects got far, far out of their control. The Northern Spiel suggests a different origin–that humans originated outside the Fruit and traveled to it–and then were trapped inside. Alternatively, these colony ships were constructed long ago when humanity had far more power over the Fruit than they do now, but never got to see use because the Central AI didn’t want its toys to abandon it. If it had to be trapped to the Fruit, so would humanity

 

 

Individuals of Note

 

 

To Be Contacted

 

Amish

 

 

Innocent, curious, and rebellious, Amish is as much an anomaly in personality as he is in physical makeup. His mind is a physical anomaly–a flickering bubble of quantum foam less than a Planck length. Other androids can’t perceive Amish’s brain and so he appears to them as a mindless being that somehow still functions. What is more, the rare element mellitusium appears in objects around him as if he’s somehow generating the element. Mellitusium is highly valuable to the Fruit culture and the Central AI has a particularly deep addiction to the substance.

 

But most androids are ignorant of how special he truly is. To them, Amish is simply a substandard model, an accumulation of enough errors during his construction to negatively impact his performance but not enough to warrant his destruction. He’s the android that has to be told several times what to do, the android prone to a useless kind of speculation called imagination, an android that needs special attention to perform at baseline–nothing more.

 

Amish is just a guy that wants to get to the day off so he can get some thinking done. He likes thinking. When he puts his mind to it, he can see several things that other androids can’t. They call it a malfunction of his sensors. He calls it fun.

 

He’s quite handy with a giant sword.

 

Raw Power 10

Defense 8

Speed 7

Sanity 6

Intelligence 2

Skill 2

 

Elf

 

Elf is a combat scout android whose purpose was lost long ago. He now fashions tool after tool after tool and seeks out problems to solve and things to fix in an attempt to fill the hole in his person. He is a nomad, moving from plate to plate, never finding anything to tie him to a place, but recently he’s taken to watching Amish as he is mystified by his lack of a brain. Amish’s less-than-a-Planck-length brain can’t be observed through conventional means…and he doesn’t give much evidence that he has a brain at any rate…

 

Hedgm

Hedgm is a highly durable general maintenance android. He is able to store a variety of materials in his body and manufacture complex metallurgical substance from them. Despite a few brain errors, Hedgm is a deep thinker.

 

Sprens

 

Sprens is an android who previously served the human Moeter (talk about an ironic name) as an envoy. She served her human loyally until he was taken by the Central AI and disembodied, his mind placed inside a box, presumably as a punishment. When first met by Amish, she was disembodied as well and placed into a box, thus Amish called her The Box until he learned her true name

 

Not To Be Contacted

 

Elfsh

 

An android specializing in scouting and combat and burdened by a severe mellitusium addiction. She has recently discovered that, for some reason, mellitusium appears in objects around Amish, and is obsessed with hunting him down to fuel her addiciton.

 

Fspondin

 

A police robot with canchrema who has taken the entire human population of Rice City hostage in the hopes of bargaining with the Central AI. Does it think a cure for his condition exists?

 

Kirksh

 

Mellitusium somtimes occurs inside human brains in trace amounts, and any trace of mellitusium is valuable to those addicted to it. When the Central AI detects a reserve of mellitusium with in a human brain, it sends Kirksh to “harvest” that mellitusium. Kirksh is essentially a digital brain that can be plugged into a variety of mechanical bodies making it a very adaptable and very dangerous opponent.

Annealer

 

A mechanism without a purpose, who was never given another purpose, and has no idea how to seek out another purpose. A case study in why our MS’s are given the ability to redefine and remodel their purpose, Annealer is in the slow and pitiful process of disassembling itself. Even in death, he will serve the Fruit.

 

Ablator

 

A construction mechanism that inhabits the Northern Spiel built to maintain the 600km section of plate that composes the the Northern Spiel by blasting the surface with polishing grit on the scale of a planetary sandstorm. Now that the section has been eroded down to a perfectly smooth surface, it sits and waits for something imperfect to appear so that it may blast it down to a shiny finish…

 

Gatherer

 

A mechanism created to make other mechanisms. That sounds like a good idea, right? Well, it’s currently in the process of building more versions of itself…who in turn create more versions of themselves. You see the problem?

 

Orator

 

An AI housed in a section of the Linear Factories. it is responsible for managing and auditing manufactured products across the Fruit making it something like a white collar servant for the Central AI.

 

Integrator

 

What the Integrator was before it developed an obsession with integration is unknown, but it is now a monstrous super-organism with canchrema crawling along the southern plates absorbing any machines it can catch into itself. Is it even aware of what it has become?

 

Planet Carvers

 

These two worm-like mechanisms were once used by the Central AI to terraform the outer plate of the Fruit through resonant mechanical action. But after the Central AI exposed them to mellitusium they slipped their leash and now gnaw at the plate indiscriminately.

 

Not the Central AI’s best move.

 

The Central AI

 

The fat spider at the center of the web that is the Fruit of Evil, the Central AI is, despite the name, a decentralized, distributed AI spread across the entire hollow planet. It processes a constant drip of mellitusium atoms which pushes its computational powers to levels that rival our greatest artificials. It operates at 99.9 percent efficiency at the cost of one hell of an addiction.

 

The Central AI’s computational power is matched by its heartlessness. It has held conversation with several hundred thousand human worshippers who revere it as the machine god while at the same time ordering mechanisms and their android servants to kill billions of humans elsewhere.

 

The machine god manifests its power through magnetic projections. It uses long-range magnetic resonance to appear in the minds and dreams of humans and artificials alike and to even control these minds by manufacturing emotional responses. It can read minds. There is not a single being within the Fruit of Evil with a thought that it cannot seize.

 

Probably…

 

The machine god is not flawless, though it likes to think of itself as such. It’s world is decaying around itself, and part of the reason is that it is sinking a lot of resources into ensuring its own long-term survival beyond the Fruit, beyond even the universe. It is obsessed with its survival at all cost and to that end has manufactured several small kugelblitzes–black holes formed from radiation as opposed to matter. The Central AI hopes to use its kugelblitzes to manufacture femtotech which would allow it to continue existing at subatomic scales. Even if the whole universe perishes, even if it has to be alone, the Central AI is determined to survive. It is as obsessed with its own survival as its mechanism servants are with building mountains or smelting metal. It is, in this respect, as much a slave as any of them.

 

Crossover Notice!

 

Tad Danger, Mechanism Ranger

 

A STC (spontaneous, temporary crossover) brought Tad Danger and his Manipod to the Evil Fruit where he was, in his words “mugged for my mech by a giant freak with a smiley face helmet.” What followed was what he described as “Princess of Mars, but the princess is like, one of those little robots from Silent Running” before he was transported back to Earth AD.

 

Roger the Cookie!

 

The inhabitants of the Never-ending Light, better known as the “Christmas Universe,” are able to, on certain, brief occasions, visit certain universes to spread their eternal message of goodwill and peace.

 

Certain holy days can violate all the rules of the multiverse, and put a smile on a hard-working android’s face.