Abax Application

[syntheticsheep]

player information.

name: Sharn
are you over 18?: Yep!
personal dw: smiley_anon Though, as usual, I'm more likely to respond to PMs to this journal.
email/plurk: sharinganavenger@gmail.com / notglitching
characters in abax: Rinzler


in character information.

series: The Cassandra Kresnov novels (no other name), by Joel Shepard. Specific books referenced include Crossover, Breakaway, and Killswitch.
name: Cassandra Kresnov. Usually goes by Sandy; at one point used the alias April Cassidy.
age: 17
sex: F
race: GI (a kind of artificial human, or android.)
weight: 145 (headcanon)
height: 5'6"
canon point: Just before the end of Killswitch (the third book), midway through fighting Jane.
previous cr: Nope!

history:

Creation:

"You came into the world fully formed and structured in most respects, except for your lack of direct worldly experience. This experience was replicated on tape, to be fed into your brain with a precision completely unknown in everyday experience... You, Captain Kresnov, are purpose built, and purpose designed, by the will of a government that has already shown the greatest disrespect for the most basic of human dignities and moral values."
—Judge Pullman, Callayan Supreme Court interview

After the discovery of FTL (faster than light) transport, humans expanded out into the galaxy at a rapid pace. Some brought their traditions and histories with them, while others took the chance for a fresh start, unfettered by ties to Earth-based culture. These differences, and many others, compounded. Before long, there were two sides—the Federation, centered on Earth, which promoted the preservation of old values, and strict limits on technological expansionism, and the League, a group led by philosophers and scientists advocating a break with old ways. They argued for utility over tradition, independence over security, and first and foremost, for the free progress of human innovation without Earth's regulations to hold them back.

War broke out. The League had a technological advantage, but while their revolution had a strong following, they couldn't nearly match the Federation in sheer numbers. The established government had the established fleets and military forces, and it hardly mattered if you could arm or augment your soldiers to be twice as effective when the opposition had ten times the men.

The League's solution was simple. What they didn't have, they could create. Artificial intelligence was already a developing field, and even if the more computationally minded results were poorly suited to be soldiers, the League had a perfect model of a working system—the human brain. It took geniuses in neurobiology, human augmentation, developmental AI, and synthetic biology of all kinds, but the League was never short on genius. "GIs" were the result: artificial humans designed for war. Faster than humans, stronger, with perfect aim. Nearly invulnerable to an unprepared target. And ultimately, expendable—the League could always make more.

The disadvantage of GIs lay in intelligence. Where simple calculation or targeting were concerned, they could far outpace human limits. But GIs were for the most part lacking in lateral thinking—creativity—and once the Federation learned to adapt, the invulnerable robots were... if not easy to handle, certainly more manageable. GIs would run headfirst into traps, get outflanked and outmaneuvered, find carefully planned firing squads covering their retreats. While they were still extremely useful, and formed the backbone of the League war effort, the downsides were obvious.

Cassandra Kresnov was a unique project. A new type of GI, far higher designation than any of the regs (lower level GIs) or even the more advanced creations that filled their special ops teams. She was experimental—little physical difference, but mentally equipped to match (or exceed) human thought on every level. Physically designed as a functional adult, tape-fed (mentally implanted) the combat skills and tactics of an experienced soldier, she was made from the start to be the League's best combat leader. And in a lot of ways? It worked.

League Military and Defection:

"I know I'm not legally responsible for anything I did early on — I can't even remember it. At that age, GIs just do what they're told, no choice at all. But later on? Even when I knew the cause was pointless and possibly immoral? I was having doubts for three full years. That's a long, long time to keep fighting for something you're not certain you believe in any more."
—Cassandra Kresnov

Tape-teach could only go so far, and for any being based on a human's neural imprint, some developmental period was needed. For the majority of GIs, this lasted a year or two at most. Sandy took five. This part of her life is a complete blank—no memories retained. By hacking old records, she was later able to determine that even during this period, she showed some moral development—taking care to distinguish between enemies and noncombatants, applying force judiciously. That said, she has no personal record of what happened here, apart from the obvious skills she learned and later demonstrated.

Her first active memories, by her own description, are of killing people. At five, she was enlisted in Dark Star, the League's special ops department, at the starting rank of lieutenant. A year later, she was made captain. Mental function plateaued completely around age seven, all memories from then on crystal clear. She spent nine years, a solid majority of her life in the League's special forces, leading a team of GIs on some of the most effective missions of the war.

Sandy was their perfect soldier—a brilliant tactician, with a commando unit of high-designation GIs, and personal skills that arguably exceeded any being in the galaxy. This doesn't mean she never lost. Throughout her time in the League's service, there were missions she failed—more often than not through her own choice. Artificial or not, she was a soldier, not a robot, and would badger, protest, or outright refuse her superiors when they ordered her team on suicidal missions. Good soldiers were at least as irreplaceable a resource as whatever moon or station the League higher-ups wanted taken for the war effort, and if she was going to get her people killed, it had better be for something damn well worth it.

Unsurprisingly, her strongest bonds were with her team. GIs in the high thirties and lower forties (her own designation of fifty-seventy-four being the highest known to exist), they didn't tend towards genius level, but they were people nonetheless. Good people, by her standards, and good soldiers. Some would come and go, but others stayed, and she formed close ties with most of the longer-term members: Tran, Raju, Chu, and Mahud, to name a few.

Still, Sandy showed a lot of interest, even at an early age, in things her team could care less about. As a League officer, she had full privileges associated with her rank, and she took advantage of the library and databases, to educate herself on a number of topics: anything from politics to ancient literature. She was fascinated with culture and philosophy every bit as much as warfare, and quick to form her own opinions, many opposed to standard League policy. As time went on, their perfect warrior began to question the League itself—the reasons for its creation, the value of its existence, and most of all, the morality of its war.

Questions alone weren't enough to change her life. She'd been raised in the League, fed their philosophies and motives from an early age. Fought their battles for them, and never regretted what she was. For its part, the League treated her and her people as well as any straight (fully human) soldier—at least within the military. The existence of a GI of her level was unknown to the general population, and kept secret. With apologies.

As the war wound down to a stalemate, these secrets came back to threaten the military command. Regular model GIs were one thing; if ordered to stand down, or hold territory, they wouldn't think to want anything else. But Sandy and her team were different. There was less need for special forces with no active war, and those who ordered their creation didn't want to contemplate the chance that their constructs would choose to enter human society.

Sandy was too useful, too unique, to be disposed of. So they put her under for a surgical upgrade, and sent her team off under someone else's command. An explosion occurred, the potential troublemakers were destroyed, and she lost the people she'd valued more than any straight.

At that point, as she described it, it was a choice between leaving the League and killing every bastard behind Dark Star. She jumped ship, hacked her way into a temporary ID, and hopped transports to a Federation world. After that, Sandy spent a year traveling—learning what it meant to live as a civilian, experiencing the cultures and traditions she'd learned about. She blended in, forged herself an identity, and even held a job. But Sandy (or "April Cassidy", as she went by then) wanted something longer term. Next stop, Tanusha.

Tanusha and the CSA:

"Kresnov is naïve, inexperienced and principled. That means she's either our worst enemy or our best friend."
—Katia Nieland, President of Callay.

Tanusha, the capital and primary city of the world of Callay, held a few points of interest for Sandy. It was entirely civilian, with a strong tradition of blending Earth cultural standards and careful aesthetics. And it was the budding technology capital of the Federation—not for big corporations or established firms, but smaller to mid-size companies undergoing cutting-edge research. This last trait made it an ideal location for Sandy—with recommendations from her previous job on another world, and her (forged) academic credentials, she planned to find work as a software technician. Settle down for some years and live normally.

The rest of the galaxy planned differently. FIA (Federal Intelligence Agence) members stationed on Callay were alerted of her presence—or more specifically, of the presence of a high designation, ex-Dark-Star GI. To them, she posed both a threat and an opportunity, and one they moved immediately to take advantage of. They hunted her, trapped her, and took her down, and when Cassandra Kresnov woke up, she was strapped down in a lab being literally taken to pieces while an infiltrator virus ate through her mind. They were killing her. But before she died, they wanted to get every scrap of technology and information from her code and body that they could.

Within an hour, the process was interrupted—when a CSA (Callayan Security Agency) SWAT team moved in on the premises. They found a vivisected human torso and head belonging to a GI, with no visible signs of life. It took their team leader, Vanessa Rice, linking up and mentally diving into Sandy's coding to restore brain function. And just possibly, to bring back the faintest shred of her faith in people.

That belief was severely tried over the next few weeks. Sandy was put back together only to be held by the Callayan government, kept drugged and restrained, and put on trial by a court that first tried to deny her sentience, then her right to possess it. She was too dangerous to be trusted, and though they were glad enough for her information about League or FIA operations, she was at best bargaining for survival. A federal order could demand she be shipped back to Earth for trial, where the FIA or other such groups could use her as they liked.

Perhaps ironically, it was the FIA's actions that broke the stalemate. Their agents in Tanusha had support from certain factions in the League—a chance for the League to spread their technology and ideology within the Federation, and a chance for the FIA to gain useful weapons. In an attempt to grab power for Earth, the FIA planned an attack on the Callayan parliament, using GIs organized by a Dark Star member to kill the Callayan president. Amidst the chaos, Sandy got free, and instead of taking the chance to pull an escape, joined the battle on the Callayan side. She killed twenty-one regs, saved the president personally, and made it possible for Tanushan security forces to take down the others.

This changed everything. With security legislation in effect, the CSA received emergency powers, and on the president's personal guarantee, Sandy received an offer: work with them to catch the terrorists, and get guaranteed, legal Tanushan citizenship. She agreed, and was set to join SWAT under Lieutenant Vanessa Rice—the same team that had saved her before, in the FIA lab. Together, they were able to discover both the underpinning of the FIA plot, and the tools they were using to carry it out. Among these assets? Sandy's old Dark Star teammate Mahud.

Sandy sought him out, and learned the truth—the League had salvaged a few of her old team before ordering their destruction. Specifically, those estimated to be the most loyal, and least likely to question orders. But though Mahud had never matched his captain in initiative, he'd developed too over the years. On hearing the full story, both of what had happened with his team and of what the League members here had knowingly consigned Sandy to, he agreed to defect. Help take down the conspiracy, and join Sandy in a life within the Federation.

But the FIA were pulling out, and part of that involved cleanup—of each and every civilian group that could have named them. When ordered to assist, Mahud refused. They killed him for it. Sandy found him, watched him die, and promptly hunted down and killed the entire FIA team personally.

In the aftermath of the coup attempt, Sandy stayed with the CSA. Although the immediate problem was resolved, tensions between Callay and the Earth-based Federation were only building—not to mention tensions on Callay about her own existence. The CSA and its Director Ibrahim backed her, but she became a political and social target for a number of groups, including the SIB (Senate Investigatory Bureau), which hounded her efforts, attacked her on cases, and managed to get her suspended for a time.

The League's re-emergence in her life only served as further frustration. Shuffling within the League government resulted in a restaffing of their embassy on Callay. This included the assignment of one Major Mustafa Ramoja—a GI of fractionally higher designation than Sandy, commissioned for League Intel after her first half-decade proved a success. Her irritation at being shot by him on their initial meeting was only fractionally greater than her irritation when he later proved instrumental in helping the CIA retain a witness—one invaluable to their efforts to prove Earth's complicity to the rest of the Federation.

Not all of her new acquaintances were antagonistic, however. Sandy entered a grudging friendship with tech genius and CSA Intelligence agent Ari Ruben. This developed eventually into a longterm monogamous relationship—a change from Sandy's previous frequent one-night-stands. And her interactions with Ramoja might have been unwanted, but the old acquaintance he put her in contact with was anything but: Rhian Chu, the only other surviving member of her old Dark Star team.

Callayan Defense Force

"There is a GI, Captain, effectively running the Callayan Defense Force. An ex-League GI, from Dark Star itself. And would you believe it, she's becoming popular."
—Fleet Admiral Duong, Earth-allied Federation

In the end, Callay made an unexpected decision—instead of voting to secede from the Federation, they organized a restructuring of it. The new Federation capital would be moved to Tanusha, and more concern given to worlds besides Earth. A vote among Federation worlds, many of which had suffered from Earth's centrism, came out in support, and over the next few years, humanity prepared for the move. The Federation Fleet, on the other hand, was determined to make trouble, and Callay wound up with disputing factions in orbit—with enough firepower to blow their space station and level the city.

Despite these challenges, the next threat Sandy faced was on a much more personal level. In the two years following the vote, she helped redesign Callayan security, and build up an actual military force—the Callayan Defense Force, or CDF. She was the second in charge, and primary operational commander; her friend and then-housemate Vanessa Rice was third in command. Between terrorist threats, Fleet machinations, and internal conspiracies, Sandy was more than busy enough. And then her friend, lover, and network specialist, Ari Ruben, came to her with two pieces of news: someone was trying to kill her... and she'd been designed with a hair-trigger for the job.

An assassination attempt confirmed the first, and a medical examination the second. Sandy had been constructed from the start with a killswitch, capable of immediately frying all neural function, and triggerable through her network uplinks. If she accepted the wrong transmission, or left herself vulnerable in any way, she would die—and there was increasing evidence that at least one of her enemies was highly placed within Callay's government. Ari suspected it was President Nieland herself, and though he turned out to be wrong, the suspicion wasn't entirely unfounded—Nieland had been using Sandy as bait to draw out the actual mole.

To make matters worse, a new GI had come to Tanusha. High designation, a match to Sandy, and her twin in more than one way. Their physical forms were close enough to be sisters, and this "Jane"'s mental patterns were based off Sandy's own. The story got worse and worse as more intel surfaced. Jane was an old League project knowingly handed over to the FIA in the hopes that they would use it—an attempt to improve off the "failure" Sandy had turned out to be.

They were trying to create a GI that was intelligent, but unwaveringly, ruthlessly loyal. Jane's development was stunted, neural activation managed through data pulled from Sandy's own vivisection two years back, and pre-programmed with everything from (a)morality to combat experience. Where Sandy had grown and developed over years to become her own person, Jane was forced active before she should have even held a memory, mentally conditioned to be a completely sentient weapon instead of a soldier. It went against everything Sandy believed, everything she thought possible. And from all appearances? It was perfectly, terrifyingly effective.

Jane had come to Callay on the FIA's behalf, and was their agent in the recent instabilities. She deployed the killswitch and forced Sandy into hiding, then assassinated a Fleet Admiral to give the Earth-allied ships an excuse to seize control. But through a great deal of work and the help of Ari, Vanessa, Rhian, and others, Sandy and her people managed to reduce the killswitch viability, out the moles in Calayan Security, and organize a response to the now hostile ships in orbit. The CDF, under Sandy and Vanessa's command, took back control of the station, and their allies in the Fleet helped deal with the other ships.

The only threat left was Jane—now attempting to flee offworld with the League genius who designed her. Rhian went to intercept the League ship, and Sandy chased her warped "sister" into the station's depths. Shots were fired, hostilities engaged, combat begun against her moral opposite...


...and Sandy blacked out. Disappeared. And woke up in a morgue.

Yeah, she's gonna be pissed.



personality:

At heart, Sandy's an idealist. She's the oldest living GI in existence, but she's still young, and naïve, and at heart, believes people are good, and worth saving. Her views aren't simplistic, and she enjoys a moral or philosophical analysis as much as anyone. But when push comes to shove, she has a very strong core decency. When asked why she saved President Nieland instead of escaping, she answered that she did it because she couldn't imagine being herself, and not having made that choice. She didn't think people had the right to assassinate democratically elected presidents—and whether she thought of it that way or not, that took precedence over her own life.

In a way, her values go deeper. Sandy's not rigid in her morality, but she does believe in right and wrong—and she believes that sentience and conscience are inextricable. With herself, with the other GIs, with humanity. Not that everyone will do right, but that the fear of soul-less robots is idiotic—because any creation intelligent enough to pose a threat will be intelligent enough to ask why.

This is why Jane presented her with such utter horror. Jane was her double—her, more or less—but programmed from the start to believe, and obey, and kill without caring. Jane wasn't a robot, and she wasn't a fool. Her intelligence matched Sandy's, and she arguably even chose her own path. But her reasoning was fed to her in advance, and she was the stereotype of an utterly amoral GI that would gladly slaughter anyone in her path. Sandy and her team made a specific effort to spare civilians, even among the war. Jane tortured hostages, cleaned out buildings full of people who trusted her, and irrevocably marked herself to Sandy as an abomination that had to be destroyed.

Ideals or no, how Sandy executes a task is pure practicality. One of her favorite mottos is emblazoned on her friend Vanessa's helmet: K.I.S.S., or "Keep it simple, stupid." She refuses to put up with loose cannons, will break the law if a situation demands it, and has no patience for bureaucratic bullshit. At the same time, she's intelligent enough to know when she has to put up with it—which, given her delicate position in Callay, tends to be far more often than she'd like.

Her upbringing was military, and she still defaults to that sense of efficient competency at times. But Sandy is not, and never was a drone—she questions, and wonders, and acts on her own initiative first and foremost. This, as much as her team's death, is why she left the League—she couldn't agree with the decisions of her superiors, and she herself thought the war was wrong.

Sandy loves history, and philosophy. Tradition, religion, and the older aspects of humanity have more value for her than any ideal of pure logic. She likes art, and culture, and good food. She's a sensualist, in a few ways. Up until a year or two ago, she was sexually active to the point of nymphomania, but those urges lessened after she arrived on Tanusha, to the point of her entering a solely monogamous relationship for years. Her theory is that the new challenges and responsibilities took up mental energy that her brain was previously just funneling into an overactive sex drive. Accurate or not, her appreciation of other sensation hasn't faded. Her favorite sport is surfing—not because it holds any challenge for her, but because she loves to see the beauty in each wave. In her own words,"I make a much better civilian than I ever did a soldier."


abilities/powers:

GIs as a whole are based off human biology. They're detailed and complete in their appearance, and even internally, run off air and food and water just like humans do. They have organs and digestive tracts. Even their brains are neural imprints, though some with more detail than others.

But from the microbiology up, it's all designed. She has a ferro-enamelous bone structure—the same material starship hulls are made of. Muscles and flesh are synth-alloy myomer, which boosts strength and durability. On either muscle tension or a v-shaped impact (such as blades, or bullets), her flesh contracts to the density of solid body armor, and can generate enormous power and speed. She demonstrates this repeatedly—shrugging off low-caliber bullets, kicking down a half-ton blast door with five blows. Top running speed reaches 60 kilometers per hour, and she's capable of a six-story vertical leap—more in theory, but her legs are only long enough to provide a certain leverage, no matter the power.

Precision is mechanical. If a GI can see something, they can shoot it off. Sandy has an index finger reflex to allow her to fire single shots at automatic speeds, and unlike most GIs, has the lateral processing to compartmentalize and manage tracks in parallel. This, combined with her tactical skill, makes her a brilliant commander, able to manage both larger fights and smaller units simultaneously.

There are a few other small deviations in GI biology. Memory is cybernetic, vision adjustable through spectrum shifts and visual zoom. Her jugular is inside her spinal column for protection. Blood pressure is lower, but thicker consistency, and while she does need to breathe, she doesn't need as much oxygen as a straight; muscles are mechanical.

The last main ability she possesses would be her networking capabilities. In the 2500s, most humans have uplink implants—biotechnology that allows the wearer to mentally access and receive wireless transmissions. Since Sandy is entirely technology-based, her networking capacity is multiplicatively greater than any straight human. She processes electronic signals as easily as vision, and will frequently pick up on and follow transmissions through an area. Her computational skill is likewise innately simple, and between her own nature and her upbringing in the technologically brilliant League, Sandy's a software genius on every level, equipped to hack anything.

Where weaknesses are concerned, though, she's not lacking. Chemical combinations can paralyze, disable, or kill GIs in specific. Sandy in specific was built with a literal killswitch—if anyone were to get the necessary codes and transmit them to her, she'd at best black out (if the overrides Ari gave her kicked in), and failing that, simply die. While her synthetic nature gives her huge advantages on any networked system, it comes with a corresponding risk. Her codes need to be genius level, because if someone bypassed her defenses, her mind is actively, completely vulnerable to electronic attack of all kinds.

Physically, while her design does a good job of defending against most attack, it's not invulnerable. Joints can be damaged or broken, and she's subject to "impact concussion": widespread damage to the body from a single attack. While the contraction of her muscles protects against damage, it also conducts the force of an attack throughout the whole frame, where a human's soft tissue would dissipate it. Spinal damage, for instance, can happen from a shot to the leg, if the impact travels poorly. Moreover, her synthetic muscle substitute is prone to locking up and losing control even without that—she needs to stretch thoroughly for at least half an hour a day to minimize the risk.

In addition, it should be noted that while durable as hell, GIs are vulnerable to the same deaths humans are. Stop her brain, or her heart, and she'll die. She can be blown up, cut apart, or trapped. She needs to eat and sleep. And she can get sick—if anything, she's more vulnerable to disease than the pure organics in Abax, since the immunosupplements for her synthetic biology aren't present.


first person sample:

[The image takes a moment to come clear. There's a flash of sky and buildings, a harsh clatter as the phone hits the ground. Then a splash of bright blue fluid.

Ten seconds later, someone picks the phone up. It's wiped clean on a pair of pants that look like fatigues, raises briefly past a... somewhat unusual sight. A dead monkeywolf—with a large, still-leaking hole through the chest. The screen goes black for a moment as it's stuck into a pocket. Then pauses... then gets pulled back out.]

Huh.

[The view shifts properly to the phone's owner. A young woman with blond hair, an irritated expression, and a splatter of blue monkeywolf blood across one cheekbone.]

Right. [A sigh.]

Cassandra Kresnov. Commander, Callayan Defense Force. Not that I expect that to mean much if half of these transmissions are true. But introductions over. Now, if this link won't stay off anyway, I've got two questions.

One. What's the score on weapons in the city?

And two. [Expression shifts with faint amusement as she glances sideways towards the monkeywolf. The camera pulls back to include it—and her right arm, currently soaked and dripping with blue blood from fist to shoulder.]

Do the showers work?


third person sample:

Torso spread flat against the ground, face-down. Left leg bent, head against her knee as the right leg extended fully. Sandy reached out, grabbed her right foot, and pulled. Pressure flexed, half-locked muscles grinding with enough force to wreck a small car before the hip flexor shifted with a quiet pop and she felt the rigid tension melt down her thigh and leg. A low exhale, a faint squirm as the muscles relaxed, and she switched sides.

Easier with a friend. But a few brief talks or no, that was one thing Sandy felt conspicuously short of, here. At least, the kind of friend it took for this. She could put out a network post about it, she mused with a small smirk. Not much stranger than some of the things her fellow "citizens" posted.

Wanted: stretching assistant, possible friend. Preferred qualities: intelligent, trustworthy, augmented strength. Ogling acceptable.

Her quiet laugh broke the silence. She missed Vanessa. Vanessa, and Rhian, and Ari. Oh god, she missed Ari. She'd been weeks without a decent fuck. Smirk broke into an open grin and she dropped her head, shaking it slightly. She could only imagine what her old Dark Star team would've said. The Captain, pining after a single straight?

Sandy pushed up from the floor, limbs tensing and relaxing to test remaining points of lockup before she paced to the window and stared out, unblinking. She could joke about it. But she was alone here. Maybe for the best, given this place. The Fleet was dealt with; her friends in Callay were more than competent enough to handle the mopup. Safer there than here.

Except for Jane.

Breath hissed out through clenched teeth and she turned away. No. She'd been down that road already, and there was nothing she could do. GIs weren't invulnerable; she should damn well know herself. They could stop her. Or trap her, or at worst? Let her go. Jane was fleeing Callay already. Sandy just didn't want to give her the chance.

A flicker caught her attention at the edge of periphery, and she glanced off to see the faint stream of shared data, idly followed the link until it vanished past her range. This place was so quiet. Tanusha was a hub of networked systems and machines, barriers and transmissions in constant play and interplay. Even in Dark Star, shuffled from station to station, there had been systems, and uplinks, and silent messages flitting past at all times. Basic infotech. Hell, where wasn't that a factor?

Abax, apparently. Abax, with its phones and secrets, and vast empty space, where half the population thought the rest pure fiction. She'd have thought the whole place some elaborate sim, herself. But VR didn't work on her, and Sandy was never much of one for pretending. You worked with what you had. Here? That was dead air, isolation and distrust. A population made up of myths and stories, where no one fit in, and everyone was out of place.

Familiar enough to her.


case no: 19-50-74