#Lore 24 – Entry #118 – Sci-Fi Month II #27 – BDSM Cybersystems Model S/M-02 Scouting/Mapping Drones
From the Personal Journal of Chiasa Charity Chiasakaniki, Systems Analyst and Programmer, IT Division, assigned UEF-04, Maharani Morgiana.
I’ve always enjoyed playing with drones, and now that I’ve finally had the chance to mess around with these bleeding edge scouting drones they’ve loaded us up with on this mission, I’m like a kid again. These things are just awesome! Is the name of the manufacturer a bit on the shady side? Absolutely, but there’s no signs of whipped asses or kinky shit here, just the unfortunate naming scheme these people settled on way back when they just did custom tech mods. Or maybe it was fortunate? Certainly gets a lot more diverse crowd on your product, that’s for sure. I looked’em up before, seems like they do good work, and they hit it off big time back when Aphelion Station was barely a year old with their security bots, so I reckon they were brought in to handle some new drones for these exploration gigs too.
Anyway, these drones are preem! Their bodies are light weight and durable carbon fiber, and they make use of micro-grav field generators so they can fly around without worrying about getting propellers stuck or broken. They kinda look like little black flying saucers, about a foot in diameter, but once they’ve activated their adaptive camo, you won’t even notice. You can take control of them directly through a comm app or dedicated controller, and they’re packed with multiple small sensor packs, high-def multi-spectrum cameras, and an all-round laser mapping setup that’ll create super-accurate 3D maps of whatever they’re scanning. I almost couldn’t believe the amount of hardware they’re packing in these little things; total super-spy stuff right here! Curiously, I did get the sense there was magic in these things, so I’m thinking that maybe they’ve taken normal equipment that is usually much larger and micro-sized it.
Talk about one hell of a price tag! When I asked exactly how much these things cost, all my boss would say was that I’d better not break one, or I’d be paying it off the rest of this trip.
Luckily for me I didn’t have to be the one who broke one to get a look inside; once we arrived in the Vellion sector and picked up the scout teams, we found out a couple of the drones had been damaged, and I convinced one of the BDSMC techs to let me help out, being the super-talented IT tech and leet hacker I am and all. So, that’s when I learned these things are using the same kind of advanced AI as the security bots, specialized for evasion and recon operations. They’ve not really been field tested in extreme conditions, so bugs are bound to show up, and that’s what happened here. Some of the local wildlife didn’t like these things getting close, even if they are silent and almost invisible, and were able toss some rocks or bash them with sticks. Pretty lame way for these things to go down, but it’s a harsh world out there, I guess. Can’t make them invulnerable and this light; those electronics are protected from the elements, but an angry monkey with a rock is just too much.
So, like, I kinda maybe managed to make a copy of the AI code…not that I really intended to, of course, it just kinda happened when I wasn’t paying too much attention to what I might’ve been doing while running a diagnostic with the tech. I’ve been pouring through it, and like, holy shit, this is advanced stuff! There’s all kinds of options in here that aren’t even in the official specs, just waiting to be turned on or off or applied to different type bots! I am going to have so much fun playing around with this code! I gotta get my hands on some parts now, build my own little buddy bot!
You know…thinking it over, I might actually hint at the BDSMC techs that I could improve the AI on these things, make their evasive routines more responsive, that kind of thing. Or at least help them with the debugging stuff. I’m pretty good at running code, I’d say. And it’d like, be a lot less suspicious if I wound up building my own little bot, right? Seriously, sometimes my hands just do things without my mind even being there! I blame my tail-brains, lol. They’re always getting me in trouble, moving on their own without me realizing it. Kerryns and ferians probably get it.