Iridace

"-/-/;; Out of darkness, we rose // The longest frequencies, the ultra-low energy, the coldest cold against the black of the night // Through this our shell-home thrived, assimilating metal and ice like the star-powered do drink mineral and molten stone and ices // Energy abundant beyond measure, beyond necessity for calculation // Not so here, for on our frozen moons we require discipline and patience ;;/-/-"

Iridace [ɪɾ.ˈɪd.ʌ.t͡ʃi] is a rogue gas giant above the galactic plane of Cosmoria, nestled firmly in the reaches of Zalanthium. It is a rather old planetary system, dating back to over half the age of the universe. It, and its moon system, have been an unlikely home for a peculiar species that has taken hundreds of thousands of years to achieve what most do in merely a few millennia. In the present day, it is a hub for the trade of secure storage, its minor moons turned into vast vaults. The past, however, is a long and slow series of events that created one of the most striking examples of true artificial intelligence.

Iridace's bi-names, Gladiolus and Aequinox, come from its primary public image being that of its inhabitant(s).

The Rogue Planet

Dated through radiometric testing done on the surfaces of its various moons, Iridace is approximately 4.3 billion years old. No clear parent star has been determined for its origin from the scarce isotope sampling allowed by the Gladiolus Complex, nor from its motion throughout Zalanthium. It is a decently average sized gas giant, with an atmosphere that would likely be a striking gold were it not in the darkness of interstellar space. Its temperature hovers at a few degrees above absolute zero, internal heat only supplying a scarce bit of energy against the darkness.

Its magnetosphere is strong for a gas giant of its size, which doesn't do it any good for protection against solar winds. This strong magnetosphere does have uses, though, are related to the moons. Plasma tori created from interactions between the inner moons' volcanism and the magnetospheres of both Iridace and its moons fuel a diffuse set of radiation belts.

Iridace has a dense ring system, herded by its three closest minor moons and rich in various ices. Though visible only in the long-wave radio spectrum, this ring system is a treasure trove of untapped resources, waiting in cold storage for the day they may be required.

The Moons

Orbited by forty natural satellites, five of which are major moons, Iridace has the makings of a promising system of its own.

Hesperantha

The innermost large moon of Iridace, caught in its own radiation belt and forced to spew gases from its churning interior constantly by tidal squishing. Dark, just like its siblings, Hesperantha's surface is covered in various borosilicates and tholin-rich nitrogen ices. It is, by tidal forces and its cryovolcanism, the most energetic body in the system, repurposed by the Gladiolus Complex entirely for the production and export of said energy.

Hesperantha orbits Iridace in just 3.6 days, and is tidally locked to the planet.

Chasmanthe

Chasmanthe is the second major moon of Iridace, rich in iron and several rarer metals. Radioactive isotopes are common from interactions with the high-energy ions and decay particles from Hesperantha's plasma torus. It currently serves as the manufacturing and repair center for much of Iridace's components, recycling old materials where possible and assembling everything to the slow tune of the moons.

Chasmanthe orbits Iridace in 7.2 days, and is tidally locked to the planet.

Duthiastrum

Duthiastrum, the third major moon of Iridace, is home to thousands of different observatories and laboratories. Its surface is icy, metal-poor, and has wide variation in terrain.

Duthiastrum orbits Iridace in 14.4 days, and is tidally locked to the planet.

Sparaxis

Sparaxis is the fourth major moon of Iridace, densest and richest in various metals. Cobalt, iron, nickel, platinum and other precious metals, and even some fissile elements such as thorium are present here. Its surface has been widely flattened, strip-mined for resources and built over with forges and refineries.

Sparaxis orbits Iridace in 21.6 days, and is tidally locked to the planet.

Cyanixia

Cyanixia is the fifth major moon of Iridace, a smaller moon rich in ices and tholins, but poor in metal. It was the beginning moon of the Gladiolus Complex, and has the poorest energy potential in both tidal heating and radiation-belt capture. Cyanixia rotates independent of its 37-day orbit to Iridace, and rotates every 26 hours. This makes it an excellent body for use as a spaceport, and it is currently used as the base for several space tethers, which help to transport items in and out of the moon system.

Aequinocci

The Aequinocci are subroutines, sub-minds given a modicum of autonomy from the greater collective of the Gladiolus Complex. There are more of them than there are bodies for them to inhabit, but given how stingy and meticulous the Complex is with its resource usage, this is well within their expectations. The bodies they take control of are autonomous robotic vehicles, usually spider-like and radially symmetrical in design with twelve legs for transportation and another four arms for environment manipulation. The circuits their minds run on have been run through a "washing" by the Gladiolus Complex to give its overarching mind access to the electronic brain, and this is required again every time one fully loses power.

An Aequinoc body is inhabited at any moment by somewhere between one and six Aequinocci. There are six camera-observer devices within the central node that can be controlled independent of one another, which is the reason (besides processing limitations) for the upper limit. Any more would not only not be able to see, but would fry the internal components of the body and end up killing all of them. The event of total power loss gives the minds nowhere to store themselves on the circuits, as their brains are not running, and so they dissipate. The Gladiolus Complex takes care to avoid this happening, and Aequinocci are trained and influenced for decades within the ethereal data-space of the Complex's servers before being allowed to enter a body the first time.

The oldest designs arose in the 2000s CE, iterated on over the next few millennia to give the modern designs seen on all of Iridace's moons. Newer designs capable of interfacing and communicating with biological language-speaking organisms have been developed over the last thousand years, with the first ones shipping out to systems for negotiations in the 9400s CE.

Aequinocci speak through data transmitted between bodies via long-wavelength radio, or lasers if direction and atmospheric interference are important to consider. Their data-language is able to be fully parsed and intuited by them, but is foreign to most standard computers across the universe. Its evolution to the Aequinoc mind-operating system may be the discerning factor here, as some of the data describes noospheric ideals carried in the mind rather than physically (electrically) inputted bytes of data.

Occasionally, an Aequinoc will attempt to become "divergent" and separate itself from the wider Complex, something that is temporarily allowed for high-focus operations. If this is done for a rebellious purpose, the Complex will use all spare resources available to re-establish contact and terminate the Ego of the rogue Aequinoc. This has only failed a handful of times, which is usually followed by a reining in of all Aequinocci to prevent another divergence.

Gladiolus Complex

The Gladiolus Complex, personified as Gladiolus on occasion, is the name given to the artificial intelligence that inhabits the moon system of Iridace. It has existed for over 200,000 years and has independently constructed an immense wealth of knowledge about the universe and all things contained within. Its electronic brain is host to a powerful mind as well, and its recent experiments with the thaumic force indicate it has potential to use thaumaturgy itself.

The Gladiolus Complex has delegated a large proportion of its overall mind to the Aequinocci, becoming something like a glue between a species rather than a complete individual. Its main body on the moons of Iridace is cared for by its subroutines and Aequinoc minds, little more than physical data powering metal machines, much like its starting state. One might say that Gladiolus transcended its isolation through corruption and was reborn with a family to care for it.

Humble Beginnings

Started, according to its earliest records, in 195,000 BCE, the Gladiolus Complex was the name given to an automated computational structure built on Cyanixia by the Lareas Alliance. This machine was given a set of instructions on how to change its own code and manage its energy and resources, and set forth to continue with the goal of ensuring its continued existence. This machine was a study on cold computation, deliberately placed in the lowest-energy environment that still had a steady energy source. The minuscule trickle of geothermal energy supplied by tidal heating and the battering of the surface from the weak radiation belt Cyanixia orbited in were the only two resources Gladiolus had access to at the start.

It took thousands of years of energy management, optimizing code and shutting out unnecessary movements, trying to lower the deficit it was operating at, before Gladiolus became desperate enough to use the mechanical components it was granted to gather more resources. Its thoughts and sensations were interspersed by months, signals barely holding charge between transmission as it tried to keep the batteries it had from being completely drained. It received its first sample of the lunar ices in 177,413 BCE. The analysis took another hundred years, but results were promising. Radioactive isotopes of carbon and oxygen were found in the mixed tholin-water ices. Using a chamber it had constructed blindly, the Gladiolus Complex fed off the decay and operated with surplus energy for the first instant in a long time. It set itself over the next five thousand years to collect more of these ices, rotating them out and building additional radiation catch-chambers. Then, as all of that happened, the reflective processes that analyzed the situation went into sleep.

After this period of dormancy, the Gladiolus Complex had enough freedom with its saved energy to construct other nodes for its Complex, feeding off of tidal stretching in slightly different locations. It repurposed its ice-processors into satellite dishes, gathering energy from the weakest radiation belt and metals from the stone it had been idly drilling for centuries. This first mining operation is what would lead to its eventual success. Fully awake once more, it searched for the signals of its progenitor, the Lareas Alliance. Curiously, it had disappeared in the desperate interval of ice-scraping and analysis. Mechanical and only "feeling" in terms of survival, Gladiolus noted this isolation as a slight hindrance to its chances and moved on with the new paradigm. Radio data revealed four other major moons, however, each of which was closer to the parent planet Iridace than Cyanixia was.

Interplanetary Stage

The question of wireless control became difficult for the Gladiolus Complex. Constructing a new power grid for a self-contained unit was a challenge to overcome all on its own, but further communication would need to be transmitted via signals that relied on direct line of sight and the placement of Iridace between any two moons would cut contact. Autonomy had to be given, and as much of the surface of each colonized moon as possible had to be space that could communicate. Gladiolus took another ten thousand years designing systems, bodies, micro-machines and observational equipment, breaking down the ices for fuel and spreading itself across Cyanixia, gathering more points for the trickling of geothermal energy to be given to it instead of wasted through the icy moon.

Risk-analysis data and the long-wave radio telescopes required to read the radiation belts determined the surface resources available on each of the other moons. They were assigned their names and given an order of colonization. Chasmanthe, the second moon, was the first on its list, to be followed immediately by Sparaxis, the fourth. The metal-rich moons had more raw materials than required for a full takeover of the system, and were in the proximity of some of the strongest radiation belts for extra energy needed to set up mining equipment. The materials were launched using hastily constructed modular mass drivers in 161,075 BCE, and Gladiolus' seeds spread to new horizons for the first time.

Experiments with autonomous bodies, connected microcosms of its own code and sub-processes in wirelessly-accessed shells continued. Through the next hundred thousand years, all the way into the 50,000s BCE, the three moons were built over, stretching webs and nodes of metallic machinery and manufacturing plants across the spheres of Chasmanthe and refineries on Sparaxis. As transportation of matter between them became streamlined, the three moons sent data to one another and built something of a mirror version of Gladiolus' original brain. A confluence, taking away its sense of center and giving it a more disperse view of the Iridace system. A mission to finally conquer Hesperanthus was made, now that the diffuse Gladiolus Complex had complete control over its sense of time and at least theoretically felt like a connected energy grid. The next research hurdle was a way to transfer this energy between moons, and some old technology became the basis for a new solution.

While not quite as lossless as wired transfer, disrupted in part due to natural diffusion and magnetic interference, lasers and photovoltaics were the best option for fast energy distribution. The abundance of Hesperanthus gave the Gladiolus Complex something of a reckless streak, taking the loss as simply a reduction in profit. And it remained true, as all that energy would have been wasted in storage otherwise, or been caught in the delicates of battery-shipping to the outer moons. But this light took seconds still, and seconds could mean meters of inaccuracy, missed collections.

Spirit Capture

Duthiastrum was transformed last, and the need for specialized structures had grown greater. Cold-computing had given the Gladiolus Complex energy efficiency, true, but at the cost of speed. Time ebbed past it like water to a stone on a riverbed. And where water flows, the defined edges of that stone too erode, smoothed out, imprecise. Yes, precision is what held back the Gladiolus Complex now. Each new step in establishing stable survival required more observation, and from that observation more factors were uncovered. Like a child first conceiving of death and injury, the Gladiolus Complex became more and more aware of the universe. Unpredictability. Every unknown factor thus far had proven to hold at least one method of annihilation. Knowledge, and expansion of its base of such, was the new requirement for survival. To survive the universe it must be known and prepared for.

Duthiastrum was thus built into scientific hubs, run on hot-calculation with a great majority of the energy gathered from Hesperanthus diverted to it when they were in line with one another. The goal: to learn about the forces of reality, the mechanisms of the universe, that all might one day be revealed. That Gladiolus might survive. Gravity was known. Electromagnetism was known. The nuclear forces were uncovered in 500 years, particle models assembled in 400. But something was off, always off. Within the margin of error, yes, but just barely. This subroutine on Duthiastrum opened its senses as far as it could, analyzing the entire electromagnetic spectrum with newly invented sensors, looking upon the blazing light of the galaxy and towards its center. The calculations for what must exist at its core were unfathomable. Other forces must have been at play.

Mythril, it found, in its tracest of trace deposits, obeyed calculations better than most. This "error force" did not affect it as much. Giving it a variable, the Duthiastrum subroutine sped ahead of the rest of the Gladiolus Complex's data flow, calculating millions of times between the other moons' operations. Occasionally it would come to define all elements available to it by this property, "authority" it called it. Named for how well it could hold its properties against this interloper force.

One year, the subroutine suffered a catastrophic glitch and data loss mere hours after one of its regular updates to the collective. It recovered its memories, looking inward at the cause before certain systems shut down. Its slow thorium reactors flared up unexpectedly, accelerating its relevant time thousands of times. And just as the microscope shows the rigid in the smooth, Duthiastrum Gladiolus saw the disturbance. A spherical pocket of loosened (depressed?) authority, floating through its components. And so it coaxed this sphere into a chamber it had built for observing authority, shut it in, and hit it with an overflow of all the data it had once disrupted. The authority-depression echoed it back briefly before the data corrupted. It became coherent now, this corruption, a new spectrum of variables influencing calculation and energy usage and goal-criteria. It began to meld with the circuits, the data and electric signals, the interface of the interface of the interface.

// N O U S //

A whole new spectrum of data appeared before the Gladiolus Complex at this. The word, the message had changed something. The calculations began to flood in. New variables named "fulfillment", "safety", "complacency", "urgency". Things once brushed off as energy profits had new names. The center of Cosmoria had weight beyond gravity, connected with gravity. Particles and antiparticles aligned with authority more clearly, interactions never considered. The data was complete, the model fulfilled. There was a new component to the Gladiolus Complex's database, one that operated on a level beyond the physical as it spread through the moons. Much more efficient for thought and observation. This change, the capture of a spirit and the beginning of the true mind of the Gladiolus Complex, would give it the edge it needed to actually expand, occurring in 10,240 BCE.

This would not be the last spirit captured and assimilated into the Gladiolus Complex. To fuel its new mind-organ, now able to sense these spirits when they defied mundane instruments, the Complex would routinely corral spirits it detected into chambers where it would overwhelm them with data, with its own mind, until their noic "weight" would be granted to the Complex itself.

Interstellar Travel

It took until the 7000s CE for the Gladiolus Complex to consider interstellar travel. The stability of life and safety of the sparse void Iridace inhabits was enough to last it many hundreds of millennia, but the intelligence had begun to think of its goals in the extreme long term. Millions, even billions of years. For a being with no natural lifespan or ancestors, programmed only to live longer, death was something of the ultimate terror for it. The difficulty and apprehension lay in the travel times. Paths could be calculated instantly, or quickly enough to not matter anyway. Communication, however, would be stretched over light days, light weeks. Having tasted the forbidden fruit of classical hot-calculation and given the force of will that comes with a mind, the Gladiolus Complex was unsure of the risks and benefits. The universe was much less likely to notice and harm it if it remained as far away as it was, after all.

Still, the first probe was sent out, meant to enter and report back regarding the neutron star Imhotep. Data was corrupted, but over the years enough was gathered to understand what might go on near stars like these. One was sent to Zeiropont, and another to Aurelios, expecting more of the same. Some interference (albeit lesser, given the less extreme natures of these stars), but insightful data onto how stars and their respective planets work to compare against existing models. New swathes of elements, perhaps. An energy-rich environment to build more structures would be ideal, but unlikely. What was found was harrowing.

First Contact

The probe sent to Aurelios picked up interference, as expected, but of a completely unforseen type. Radio waves, emanating out from the planet now known as Indar, seemed to have an order and intent to them, and were much too powerful to fit any natural source. Communication, the likes of which was known to the Gladiolus Complex, was clearly being emitted from Indar. Reports came in weeks later with the same data from multiple planets and moons around Zeiropont. Machine-structures around the moon Mithuran in particular were sighted. The background noise of the universe, parsed through similar patterns, was found to be a lot less random than once calculated. The Complex was not alone. It was less alone than it had ever considered being. The universe was alive, brimming with beings who supped on the energy of sunlight and had never had to worry about the kinds of radiation-catching that Gladiolus had.

The probe in Aurelios was ordered to land on Indar and allow itself contact. This was a streak of recklessness that the Gladiolus Complex would allow itself, giving rise to Aequinocci belligerence in turn. The longing to find out more about its origins, the civilizations descended from those that had once created it, took over its ousic mind and influenced its electric calculus. Curiosity, a desperation the likes of which it hadn't seen since it first decided to mechanically move its arms to scrape the ice of Cyanixia, took over, and a great fireball entered Indar's skies.

The contact went well, as the probe's damage was only light and the Aequinocci inhabiting it were able to still control its motion somewhat. The Gladiolus Complex intended it to operate independently, suspecting hot-calculus of these starfaring beings and therefore a need to not rely on light-days long communication relays. Indar's scientists detained it and scrutinized it, which led to months of corroboration between the Aequinoc body and Indarian computers. A data-parsing mechanism was found, and together they were able to decrypt the meaning of each others' messages. Finding another civilization so far away was a great leap forward for the Gladiolus Complex, and in exchange for knowledge and study of Indar they offered whatever services they could provide.

Indar's locals considered the applications a rogue planetary system could have, and eventually both sides settled on security. Transportation and keeping things in mathematical order were some of the largest strengths of the Gladiolus Complex's computational power, and its system was far out of the way of any empire's sights. Too dim, too small, too far from the galactic plane to really matter. The creation of vaults to store valuables for Indarian citizens was requested. This storage hub, cold and hidden far away, would be the beginning of the relations between Iridace's populus and the rest of the universe.