You are a Hive Mind in 1750s australia (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario you wake up one day in an usual situation which is going to be fairly awkward for you. It all starts with you waking up on a strange bed with a sheet over you eyes and when you get out of bed you find that it is in a rather strange room. There is a single long glass widow which is on an 51 degree angle and goes on for about 50 meters in either direction overlooking a tropical bay that the sun is rising over. You are in a simple green shirt with green jeans with a pair of green socks on and a pair of black runners by the bed. The room itself is done in a simple modern style by someone who had a fondness for hexagons and there is a Roomba on patrol. There is a repeating sequence of beds, chairs and stairwells going up and down There is a bathroom behind your bed (which oddly enough contains thirty two toilets, thirty two bathtubs and thirty two sinks and zero attempt at partitioning them into stalls). The view is rather lovely but this does not explain what is going on. You also notice that there have been some changes, you are now 18 years old again (if you are older than 18) skin is now a light blue and you have a pair of 5cm long antenna growing out of your head.

Then things get really weird.

You begin to feel some weird sensations that gradually fade into your mind. They don't disrupt your concentration, but they are definitely there and they get more pronounced as time goes on. Soon they take on greater clarity and resolve themselves into being similar to the sensations that you had when you woke up as well as arms and legs, but not the ones you have standing around. Then you get another very weird situation as you can identify the source of these sensations, which is another thing outside of your body laying in one of the beds. When you inspect this what you find what looks like another person of the same age, though of opposite gender with the same blue skin and antennas. Then said body opens its eyes, a flood of new information comes in, most notably the fact that you can seek through said body's eyes and control what it says. Despite what you might have thought, that body was not another being. It's part of you just as your arms and your legs are. Then you notice more of these sensations which are happening in beds around you. There are some books around which explain this.

To go into fine detail this works is fairly simple: you've been converted into a being which uses homo sapiens as a foundation but has a fairly serious neural modification. Those antennae are less like those on an insect and more like those on an old timey TV or a Wi Fi router. What they do is transmit and receive electrical impulses to other such creatures which together act as parallel processors. The upside of this is that your consciousness is now distributed over some 1,024 such bodies made mostly from your genetic template but with some variation to prevent disease. In short, you are now a Hive Mind. The range of said antennae is about 500 meters. If a body goes out of range, it will act as an independent being until it gets back into range. As a bonus, each body has had some cleanups to make sure you don't have to suffer from diabetes, cancer or similar diseases as well a strong resistance to infectious diseases. This also means that you are technically immortal. If a body dies, the rest of you lives on.

As to where you are, you are currently in a 250 meter tall pyramidal building in what would be Sidney Australia in the year 1700. The outer layer is given over to habitation, with a large number of bedrooms able to accommodate up to 2,048 bodies. Inside are dining halls in which a machine makes passable sandwiches every day from hydroponically grown rice, vat grown pork, tank grown seaweed and damn good mustard as well as seaweed salad, rice donuts and green tea in sufficient quantities to feed up to 2,048 as many bodies. There are also games rooms with TVs with a solid library of stuff and pool tables, various well stocked workshops, conventional kitchens, an infirmary, a library, elevators and some storerooms. These storerooms contain a variety of things including 256 booster helmets (solar powered helmets with batteries and signal amplifiers which boost the signal range to 30 km) sixteen transceiver relay towers (collapsible solar powered microwave towers which have long range routers for Hive Mind transmissions). A transmission array for interfacing with said relays on the tip of the pyramid. There is also a few chambers which are sealed off. Many of them are for technical purposes such as the Reactor, air conditioning systems, water purification and so forth. Some of them are robotic systems which maintains the roombas and other such machines (they can also make four new booster helmets can be made a day and a new relay tower can be built in a month). Some are the vats and hydroponic gardens which provide the basic sustenance and the robokitchens which make the sandwiches and similar. Finally there are the tubes. One hundred and twenty eight exowombs which will automatically flash grow a new body every two years and program it with a copy of your memories so it can become of the Hive Mind that you now are. To save a lot of questions, it is possible for you to make more bodies the old fashioned way as well. A union between one of your bodies and a regular human has a six in ten chance of making a body with your distinct adaptations and by extension is more of you. You have no weapons beyond some crossbows, hunting knives and some riot gear armor.

Outside the Pyramid are some pens full of cows, sheep, pigs, llamas, chickens and ducks as well as some supplies of seedstock and a few spice and vegetable gardens in good shape for future and farm tools. You can easily expand beyond and make more farms. Even so in about 20 years Captain Cook will come and the Europeans are already snooting about the continent.

What do you do?

Zor

[Elheru Aran]

...What.

No, seriously. You've posted some weird stuff before, but this is a bit out there.

Anyway. Uh. I guess start reproducing? Maybe send some of my mates around the coast and start settling pre-emptively? If I have advanced tech, protect the Aborigines from any European landing parties? Something?

You sure the Archinist virus didn't get into the back of your head?

[Broomstick]

No, this is actually better thought out that Archinist's wackiness.

I'd start setting up colonies of myself throughout the continent, which of course means setting up transmission towers and the like. Be prepared to go into hiding.

Make friends with the Natives to the extent possible.

Make more of me. The more of me the better. It makes me harder to kill off completely.

[Khaat]

1) Raid the library, drill in teams; learn everything inside and outside: tech, languages, botany, zoology, geology, geography ("Australia's big, the parts toward the middle are more hellish, and most of it is trying to kill you, right?")
2) Develop offensive/defensive tech base/infrastructure, transport network
3) Body paint and hats (seriously? blue with My Favorite Martian antennae?)
4) Build/improve and disguise transceiver towers in exploratory push to contact natives, record & preserve knowledge
5) Develop skill with telepathy with non-hive persons, sending/receiving limited experience/data (have to try!)

[Patrick Ogaard]

Regarding the networking, what is the range of the transceiver relay towers? Also, do the helmets themselves work as hubs? That is, if a group is away from the central structure, are all members of the remote group connected to the main group if one member of the remote group is connected to the central structure by means of a helmet? If so, does that apply to relay towers, as well? Conceivably, one could daisy chain a very long string of settlements together by means of helmets and/or relay towers.

Beyond that, it would obviously be a good idea to cultivate political relations with the local Australian native groups. Going all genocidal imperialist on them would obviously be all kinds of wrong, though language is going to be a major barrier, even if the pyramid's library and databases have appropriate information. Once (or if) the local language barrier is down, trade and medical aid missions would be appropriate, especially to try to figure out effective vaccination procedures and try to convince the locals that getting vaccinated would be a good idea. Eventually, I would expect a modest hybrid population to come about, both bolstering the Slansmurf population and creating a friendly human population that would have to be integrated into Slansmurf society. It might even be possible to integrate some portions of the Slansmurf population into the local native groups over time to smooth out relations and keep the Slansmurf collective informed.

As soon as Cook or some other explorer shows up, they will be served with an elaborate proclamation to the effect that Australia and Tasmania are not terra nullius, but rather the Unified Empire of the Kingdoms of Andor and Numenor, with their Twin Emperors, the Blues Brothers. Also, all of the land and sea within two hundred nautical miles of the coasts of Australia and Tasmania are considered the exclusive trading and diplomatic domain of the Blue Sun Corporation, with violators facing the wrath of the Blue Man Group. (And, somehow, Blue Sun Corporation will manage to not gratuitously screw around with the local pre-existing cultures, and so those claims of exclusivity will be used primarily as a hammer of convenience.)

An important issue will be the development of a shipbuilding industry and military infrastructure. Since the pyramid is supposed to have workshops and a library, I would hope to be able to improve on the hunting knives and crossbows, especially given two decades to do so.

Shipbuilding would probably be a terrible bear to deal with, but the near-term aim would be to produce militarized imitations of large cabin cruisers and larger motor yachts. If the pyramid's automatic systems can produce photovoltaics and high-capacity batteries, electric propulsion would be the obvious choice. If not, then the emphasis would be on developing a crude biodiesel engine.

If there are sufficient resources for the production of knives, and if there is enough time to actually develop skill at it, then spears and bayonets become practical. Explosives and firearms would be the other side of that development coin. Given reasonably safe high explosives, and similarly safe impact fusing, oversized water-resistant crossbows firing explosive bolts become effective interim weapons. Beyond that, emphasis would be on mortars, including breechloading gun-mortars, smokeless powder and single-shot breechloading rifles and pistols.

Inevitably, at some point, probably sooner than later, everything goes sideways.

[Zor]

Regarding the networking, what is the range of the transceiver relay towers?

The Towers' routers have a 30km range, though without a booster helmet a body can only receive information up to 500 meters from it (unless there are other bodies acting as relays). The technical range of the microwave transmitters for sending signals over long distance. The problem is obstruction. The towers fully deployed are 50 meters tall.

Also, do the helmets themselves work as hubs? That is, if a group is away from the central structure, are all members of the remote group connected to the main group if one member of the remote group is connected to the central structure by means of a helmet?

This can work, but if the group gets too big this means shunting a lot of information through one body and problems will creep in.

Zor

[KraytKing]

Some questions:

How long does each body live?
Do the flash-grown new bodies come out as infants or teenagers?
How flexible is the factory? Can I tell it to solely build the PV part of a tower? Can I tell it to manufacture something completely different, like armor or weapons?
Are there any technical documents in the library, and, if so, how advanced to the blueprints get?

Full response in the works.

[Zor]

How long does each body live?

As long as a human lives.

Do the flash-grown new bodies come out as infants or teenagers?

New bodies are decanted at an effective age of 18

How flexible is the factory? Can I tell it to solely build the PV part of a tower? Can I tell it to manufacture something completely different, like armor or weapons?

It makes things from a fixed list. The only weapons it can make are hunting knives and crossbows.

Are there any technical documents in the library, and, if so, how advanced to the blueprints get?

There are blueprints for 19th century technology (up to about 1870) and broader outlines of principles for more modern stuff.

zor

[KraytKing]

How long does each body live?

As long as a human lives.

My point is, how does disease immunity affect lifespan? Based on a quick Google, I’d guess it pushes it to about 100 ± 10 years, barring mishap. Correct me if I’m wrong.


Befriend the locals. Gradually expand my base in Sydney as necessary to support my population. Once Cook arrives, show hospitality but make absolutely clear I intend to remain a separate state. Then show the advantages of friendship rather than extermination by volunteering a body to show my abilities of communication. Regardless of how the explorers react, I’ll prepare for the worst. One of my advantages is that I can practice constantly with only a few bodies while the others perform work in other areas, and still end up as a thoroughly trained army. While training, I’ll continue to expand my infrastructural base and generally make myself as inconvenient as possible to prosecute war against. One huge disadvantage is my physical appearance; I can’t hide from a genocide, I can only fight it off. A strong military is vital to survival, until a certain point.

As the years go on, I’ll eventually become a player on the world stage. I’ll open my borders to all refugees and victims of racial discrimination. By the nineteenth century, my growing experience will make my military the finest in the world. As my industrial power and population grows, I’ll be better able to take advantage of my library full of technology, as well as my knowledge from my previous existence. Australia will advance far more rapidly than any other country. By the twentieth century, I hope to run completely on renewable energy and be a leader in equal rights for all. As time progresses, I’ll simply seek to keep my own borders secure, my economy growing, and the globe safe. As my situation stabilizes, I'll make an effort to tour the world, see sights, experiment, make relationships, and do the other things real humans do. The only difference is that I'll have the resources of a world superpower behind me and I'll already be the most intelligent being on the planet.

I'll also probably do a lot of weird shit in the middle of the Australian desert just because I can. Shoot things. Build apartment buildings just to wreck them. Build a city, turn it into an independent state with it's own military, then invade them like a game of Call of Duty. Dig a canal to the ocean, turn the desert into a salt lake, then see how long and how many bodies it takes to drink it away. Push people into jet engines. Take a full 747 and fly it into another. Set an Abrams on fire and see how many people I can kill before I burn to death. See what happens when you sew half a monkey to half a human, each with all essential organs. Blow shit up. Nuke myself to see how much it hurts.

Sorry. Got a bit carried away.