He is about to stand up to leave when an idea occurs to him. He reopens the search engine. He types in: ‘Progenitor-class’.
The search comes up with several matches for some experiments. The first two links go to an error screen, indicating the page has been removed. The third links to a single line and a handful of references. The line reads: ‘Progenitor-class artificial human system designed in 2276 by university students in West Germany, that failed five years after its first experiment.’ Rennin looks at the referral links that are all related to the experiment of that year:
Primus.
Professor Danard Nordoth.
Doctor Elsie Straker.
Doctor Timothy Fowl.
Doctor Warwick Balkan.
Forgal Lauros.
Saifer Veidan.
Rennin raises his eyebrows. Lauros and Veidan back in 2276?
This doesn’t sit well at all with him. But then again it could be a related article so he selects to view Forgal Lauros with Saifer Veidan and the Primus links on individual tabs.
Forgal Lauros’ article is restricted to the basic security level, well within Rennin’s Godyssey clearance. The image of Lauros doesn’t look anything like the way Rennin remembers him on the battlefield in Suva. Lauros is one of the most famous androids ever to exist. Though in this picture, not only are his eyes most certainly human, his stature and build are not a soldier’s.
He is dressed in civilian clothes and smiling at someone out of frame. Rennin can see from the slightly unclear shot that the picture was taken at some distance. He scans down to the article: ‘Forgal Ademar Lilith Lauros. Primus volunteer. He is the only known survivor constructed using the Arbiter-class chassis system, the crudest of the transmogrification conversions.
Activated in 2292, Lauros and his unit were not field tested until the Invasion of China, several months before the war broke out.
The unit itself showed particular aptitude in strength related tasks and excelled beyond all expectations in hand-to-hand combat. During the campaign in China, Lauros was part of a feint to draw attention away from the real assault team. He was sent in with another that was disabled shortly after insertion. He nearly subdued the base on his own.
Forgal Lauros was later recalibrated and given the rank of commander. Along with Lieutenant Saifer Veidan, the pair of them lead the CryoZaiyons across dozens of battle zones. They were also the leaders of the strike team that destroyed Shatterpoint, the Gorai Aurelian capital.
The only real blemish on Forgal Lauros was when he was sent to Ireland where he was accused of murder, by torture. Evidence was purely circumstantial, and only supported by hearsay.’
The remainder of the article outlines his common-knowledge campaigns during the war. Rennin looks back to the where it says he was a Primus volunteer and an Arbiter-class system. So Drake’s soldier buddy, Bright Eyes, is here to kill Forgal Lauros.
Rennin remembers the pile of corpses around Commander Lauros on the beachhead and bursts out laughing. Yeah, good luck, guys. Hard to kill someone who’s already dead, and if he is still alive no human will be able to take him out.
Rennin frowns suddenly and rereads ‘volunteer’ and his middle names. He wonders why an android would have middle names. And why they call him a volunteer. Rennin has heard the CryoZaiyon android was constructed using human donors, but he’d always assumed it was Gorai Aurelia propaganda. With Rennin’s ease at accessing this information Godyssey obviously don’t care to hide it.
Looking at the picture of Forgal Lauros smiling Rennin can’t quite be sure what he’s looking at. Transmogrification could mean human to android, or simply changing an android into a different type of android.
Androids wouldn’t need to volunteer, surely.
He opens the Saifer Veidan page but is confronted by a high level restriction on any further information. He allows himself to be diverted onto details about Primus:
‘Primus was a recruiting program initiated when CryoGen Industries was fully assimilated into Godyssey Co. after the Embryon Protocol fallout. Primus acquired candidates by headhunting and flagging those exhibiting talents outside normal human capability.
‘Primus was disbanded just prior to the CryoZaiyon War, after a source leaked details pertaining to uncooperative ‘volunteers’ being forcibly drafted and put into service.’
Rennin doesn’t find much help with that article. Most of it didn’t make any sense to him and only raised more questions. He remembers CryoGen Industries, but the Embryon Protocol isn’t ringing any bells.
He wonders how someone would become ‘flagged’ for exhibiting talents. A further search turns up nothing, leading Rennin to conclude the information is useless without a higher level of clearance to define these things. Typing them into the search bar turns up nothing. So much of the androids’ history is either locked away for security measures, missing, or misreported.
Rennin remembers the GA banners about android origins and whether or not they could simply be reprogrammed to suit the purposes of whoever controlled them. He laughs to himself; he felt the same way about them once. That was before he saw them for himself.
The watchman knows there is a fundamental disparity between the typical idea of an android and the CryoZaiyons, therefore programming or re-programming is vastly different. The word eludes him momentarily but comes to him like a light shining in the dark.
Cybrid.
He has always believed that the genius of macro-cybrid technology is that the android is no longer a simple machine at base level. Cybrids are true synthetic life forms whereas androids are just an artificial parody of life. Godyssey were open enough publicly with this information on the difference between them. Yet they were all always referred to as androids. Rennin believes this is because the general populace are incapable of coping with more than one concept at a time.
This living element is what prompted some to speculate that cybrids aren’t programmed on a computer, but their drives and algorithms are grown into them. However, that was disproved due to cybrids being able to learn. If they couldn’t be rewritten then they couldn’t learn. Rennin remembers the phrase, if you can write, you can rewrite. Of the many marvels of the CryoZaiyons, one of the least interesting—to Rennin—are the programming methods.
Although now that he thinks of it, Godyssey weren’t entirely open with divulging information of the cybrids being a technical life form. Despite them being artificially constructed, they fall into a category of living things which should make them protected from slavery. Since cybrids, like androids, don’t get paid for their servitude there was a concern for their wellbeing.
Can’t have been human. Who takes a human to turn it into an android just to turn it back into a living thing?
Godyssey assured the world that they were, and still are, only constructs. But Rennin isn’t so sure. If they were simple robots they could be reprogrammed. But what he never could figure out is how they were ever programmed to begin with. He’s sure the CryoZaiyons weren’t fully alive, but they certainly weren’t completely inanimate. Telling anything organic what to do is done with training, not a series of binary commands. At least as far as he knows.
And you’re not exactly a pillar of education, sweetheart.