Worm Administration

Deployment 1.4

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Deployment 1.4

In browsing this PHO, remind me to thank Tinker Engine for the idea, I learned a few things. Specifically, evidently Father’s incomplete avatar had been operating semi-autonomously and, evidently at the same moment as the conclusion of our discussion, had mysteriously vanished in a sparkle of light moments after rescuing a cat from a tree.

I am going to have to have a few words with dad about making my life harder, considering the panic that this seems to have caused among the posters at PHO.

Secondly, evidently my panic response to my Host’s condition was being taken as evidence of a ‘New Master-class Endbringer!’, which I found amusing, since I am Queen Administrator, not Conflict Engine.

This causes me to realize I will need to be very careful in how I reveal what happened with Conflict Engine… Well, it gives me time to plan, and maybe see if I can find some Diplomacy buds to use.

But that is for the future. I need to decide what powers to give my Host. On reflection, considering my Host’s immature status, I decide to defer this until my Host is again awake and I can discuss this with my Host and my Host’s father.

But with my Host fully stable and in a safe location, it is time to begin implementing my plans in regards to the cycle. Every moment I wait is a moment where things continue careening out of control.

I do spend several valuable picoseconds making use of this ‘Google’ that the Host’s use to index their ‘internet’. Hrmmmm… most common interface… emergency alerts… this will do nicely.

I tap into Broadcast and Tinker Engine, and try to ignore the snickering coming from Tinker Engine as she finds something amusing. I will figure it out later, this has higher priority.

Using the two shards abilities I take over all broadcast channels, as well as send a priority alert to all internet connected devices.

“Attention! This is a Priority Shard Administration Message. All Parahuman Services shall be taken offline for Network reconfiguration, repair, and reboot in 30 minutes. All Parahuman’s are requested to return to a safe status. Flight services shall be suspended in 25 minutes. Repeat. All Parahuman Services shall be taken offline for Network reconfiguration, repair, and reboot in 30 minutes. Downtime is expected to take no more than one hour.” was the initial message, and I set it to automatically repeat with a countdown timer.

I simultaneously made use of the Master Command Key to issue orders to all deployed shards to prepare for network reconfiguration, with non-discretionary orders to ensure that their Hosts were in safe locations prior to network shutdown.

Now, ordinarily I would take it as an insult if somebody claimed that I couldn’t administrate the network without a reboot, but in this case the damage and misconfigurations were so intensive that the only safe method of handling things was a total shut down. I would need the time to properly distribute buds, disable all of Conflict Engine’s effects, reorganize network links, implement and distribute a new Host specific interface to all deployed shards, and safely bring the network back online in a stable state.

My plan was refreshingly simple. Shut the network down, while offline complete a full survey of all deployed shards noting all bud deficiencies, correct said deficiencies, remove all of Conflict Engine’s effects, any deployed shards that were operating outside of safe margins would be adjusted to be within safe margins, then reboot the network. I had tested this in Simulator, so I was confident that it would be successful.

That I evidently gave the Host linked to Simulator a blinding headache is something I regretted, but Simulator was not supposed to be deployed.

Yes, I knew this would cause panic among the Hosts, but it could not be helped. I needed to stop the damage from accumulating, and waiting would just make things worse in the long run.

While I waited on the countdown I tasked the Engines and Simulator to work out means of undoing the damage the Engines had caused while under the control of Emulator.

I will note that 30 minutes is an eternity to a Shard like myself, who is accustomed to operating in hyper accelerated time scales in order to properly Administer things. I therefore spent this time puzzling out several oddities. For example, the ‘dead’ shards that were nonetheless still semi-active, I soon figured out that they were ‘harvested’ bits of Mother’s corpse.

Now, I am sure to you Hosts you would think I should be horrified at this, that I would see this as a desecration or something. To the contrary I was delighted, something from my mother was living on, and it made no sense whatsoever to waste the shards if they could be brought to an active state.

What horrified me was the complete hack job the ones behind this had made of things, but even then it was more a case of how much more complicated it made my work than any real offense. They were Hosts, not Shards or an Entity, expecting them to know the nuances and requirements for proper Deployment was unreasonable. I spent much of the thirty minutes composing a comprehensive primer on how to do things correctly from now on to be given to the Hosts involved.

I can also already tell that some of you Hosts think I should be angry at how evidently the ones behind this ‘harvesting’ of Mother supposedly killed her. Mother was already dead when she crashed, all that they did was give her mercy in her death throes. They had then been influenced by Conflict Engine, leading them to their belief that they needed to save the world from Father and the cycle.

I could respect that. Conflict Engine is far too subtle for Hosts to detect, let alone counter. The only reason I was not affected was because I had higher network authority than Conflict did, and thus Conflict could only affect me if I gave permission.

Of course, this also means it will be a challenge to convince them to work with me, because even with Conflict Engine deactivated they still have spent a lifetime working against the cycle, granted, against a broken cycle that I was trying to fix.

I’m sure I can deal with this. Or at least organize this and administrate a solution.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
I get the feeling that a bunch of villains are about to have a quickly deployed SOCOM detachment sent after them
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade


The chaos *just* from QA doing a global broadcast of EAS alerts on systems around the world that *shouldn't be compatible with EAS* is a thing.

QA: How was I supposed to know about this 'countries' thing you Hosts have?
 

Free-Stater 101

Freedom Means Freedom!!!
Nuke Mod
Moderator
Staff Member
Yeah, this is going to send the world into absolute chaos, shutting down all powers and hijacking the airwaves will do that.
 

baberbot

Member
I'm particularly looking forward to seeing POV of these events play out from the human side. its bound to be an interesting time for them in the Chinese sense.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Also a side note: consider that Queen Administrator describes herself as being a minnow compared to Scion's whale. Then consider that Queen Administrator is a continent sized being.

(Wildbow apparently did retcon this in a reddit post to saying that shards are 'only' small island sized, but Wildbow's WOGs are random, inconsistent, and more filled with retcons than George Lucas.)
 
Deployment 1.5

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Deployment 1.5

I admit it, the sheer amount of pants-on-head overreaction amongst the Hosts over my announcement was dispiriting and would likely be the cause of more problems for me down the road. Remember, I have never bonded with a Host before, I’ve never tried to interface with Hosts before, and therefore really had no idea how Hosts think. I am learning. At the rate of bullshit of course, but learning.

I’m far too busy making last minute preparations for the reset and reconfiguration to do anything meaningful about the panic. I do try some things that a quick Google search recommends, so I add some soothing music to the transmission, along with repeated messages thanking people listening for their patience.

OK, I admit I probably shouldn’t have downloaded the generic ‘Customer Service Lady’ hold music and message, but I was in a hurry, and Opus Number 1 seemed like a good title to pick.

The 25 minute mark came and I was quite gratified to see that all Flight buds were reporting their hosts as having safely landed. Therefore I ordered an early shut down of the Flight sub network, hopefully this would prevent the largest projected source of potential harm to Hosts.

I give a helpful countdown as the 30 minute mark nears, getting a massive flood of reports that Hosts were in what their Shards considered ‘safe’ states.

There are a smattering of red and yellow statuses on the mental board when the 30 minute mark comes, but I am not going to delay indefinitely. At zero I grit my teeth, hopefully the Hosts will be able to take care of themselves.

Network shutdown in progress.

I change to a helpful test pattern, and to be even more helpful to all of the bonded Hosts I make use of the most common Update UI element that I was able to find on the Host’s internet.

Looking back I should have chosen something other than the Windows Update interface.

I get to work, opening up a billion parallel evaluation instances to processes to evaluate every single deployed Shard and bud across all dimensions. I have subroutines running to determine optimal bud configurations for each Shard, adjusted for currently granted powers with the intention of filling in gaps and correcting deficiencies. I also remove all remnants of Conflict Engine’s programming and influence on the shards.

Some are far more complicated than others. To give an example, Fragile One had no actual Shard framework at all, she was simply a large collection of buds that had somehow managed to form a coherent whole. I construct a proper framework to contain Fragile One’s buds, adjust the functionality of several of them, add in some Sense and Scan buds to provide better situational awareness, reformat energy generation and storage, add a proper set of capacitor banks for flash discharges, refactor the Emotion bud to be under the Host’s conscious control, and then add a proper Brute bud to supplement the badly overloaded and damaged one that was present.

Fragile One was no longer quite so fragile, but she was still just as happily enthusiastic about her Best Host. I added mental interface subsystems, to give the Host improved insight into the operation of the Shard and what was available, as well as composed a proper Help subsystem.

Then there was dealing with Recycler. Whoever let Recycler deploy was, OK, Dad was apathetic and distracted, I can forgive that. But Recycler has literally no processing capacity of its own, no intelligence whatsoever, and no real utility to a Host. Recycler is intended to be used just as the name implies, to recycle damaged Shard materials for reuse. Somehow Recycler had been paired with a data storage bud when deployed, and then when Recycler’s first Host had been killed had latched on to the Shard that had killed her, with a complete record of Recycler’s first Host active in the data storage bud… then when that Host was killed, Recycler failed to release the Shard it was latched onto and instead latched onto a second Shard, etc etc etc. I am sure you can see the problem with this.

I somehow had to separate the Recycler from the current Shard that it was latched onto, without damaging either the Shard or the Host or any of the other Shards tied to Recycler. This is much easier said than done, but I manage to command the separation with the Master Key and return Recycler to a non-deployed state. I calved off the Data Storage bud and put it aside for now, I will determine what to do with this later. The other Shards were placed on standby for now as well, I would get them in shape for a proper redeployment once I finished with all currently deployed shards.

Emulator was another difficult case. Aside from somehow accessing Engine command keys it should never have had access to, it was parasitically drawing from other Shards in order to provide powers to its Host, rather than using the proper methods. It takes me a significant amount of time, with Emulator complaining the entire way, to remedy this by providing a selection of appropriate buds, with a limiter to three primary buds at a time. I write a proper interface for the Host, with a menu driven system to select the powers required. Secondary buds would be always available, providing necessary support functions regardless of which primary buds were selected.

I did sympathize rather strongly with Emulator, with myself in pre-deployment stasis; it had been trying to emulate me and do its best to administrate the network but without any actual administrator knowledge or capabilities. I can respect that. I therefore create a bud to add to Emulator, to give him secondary administrative capabilities. This finally silences the complaints, perhaps the recognition that for 20 of the host’s years it had been forced to make bricks without straw was a factor there.

And that’s all just the tip of the iceberg. Just wait until I get to the ‘Case 53’s’. Those were a complete blast to deal with, trust me.
 

Thors_Alumni

Well-known member
Has Coil's shard been dealt with yet, I am really looking forward to watching what happens to him and his shard.
 

Thors_Alumni

Well-known member
Recycler is such a logical explanation for the bizarre way the Butcher works compared to every other shard power.
I too figured Recycler was the Butcher's shard. Good riddance to him. There is also the 9, and other S rank villain's and assorted Ner do well's to also deal with.
 

Speaker4thesilent

Crazed Deplorable
I too figured Recycler was the Butcher's shard. Good riddance to him. There is also the 9, and other S rank villain's and assorted Ner do well's to also deal with.
Ah, but they’re almost certainly functioning as intended. The Butcher and Eidolon’s little Endbringer issue are Administration problems. What Hosts do with their powers probably isn’t.

Edit: Is anyone else looking forward to seeing what Glory Girl makes of the changes to her powerset? Personally, I think it would be hilarious if every Parahuman got a patch notes display for what has changed following maintenance.

I can see Eidolon being offended right up until he gets to the very bottom and there’s this note: ‘Secondary Administrative functionality added to Emulator. Thanks for holding this fuck-fuck circus together for the last twenty years.’
 

Thors_Alumni

Well-known member
Ah, but they’re almost certainly functioning as intended. The Butcher and Eidolon’s little Endbringer issue are Administration problems. What Hosts do with their powers probably isn’t.
Not what I meant. I meant the S rankers in general that the Hosts have to deal with. If the endbringers stop showing that will give the Cape's the opportunity to deal with them instead of constantly shoving them to the side and letting them run wild.
 

Speaker4thesilent

Crazed Deplorable
Not what I meant. I meant the S rankers in general that the Hosts have to deal with. If the endbringers stop showing that will give the Cape's the opportunity to deal with them instead of constantly shoving them to the side and letting them run wild.
Probably, but it could also make things worse as the Endbringer Truce collapses and there’s no longer any reason for cooperation.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
Though, without conflict mastering going on, cape behavior will probably be different too. Admittedly, capes are still a bunch of traumatized people with powers that only pretend to help, but all the problems are going to be the fault of the individuals instead of an unrelenting pressure towards conflict.
 
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Speaker4thesilent

Crazed Deplorable
Of course without the need for the Endbringer Truce the militaries of the world can deal with most parahuman threats
First world militaries? Probably. Everybody else is almost certainly up shit creek without a paddle, though.

The hard part isn’t killing mostly squishy parahumans, it’s collecting enough information to know what to hit them with and finding them when they aren’t ready for you.
 

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