User:Murgh/GalCop Central Mainframe
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Contents
Overview
The GalCop Central Mainframe, commonly abbreviated as GCM, is the monolithic, synthetic central nervous system at the core of all GalCop data processing. It is the repository of all galaxy-wide knowledge accumulated by humanity, and the final arbiter of interstellar trade law, bounty verification, and cartographic truth.
It is frequently proclaimed that upon the GCM's initial "Genesis Sequence", the supplied prime directive was "To catalog the infinite and provide objective truth to the stars," though historical revisionists have argued that the original command was simply, "Optimize Control".
Its physical location is a Level-1 State Secret. However, the sheer energy demands and liquid-helium infrastructure required for its operations limit the realistic possibilities to only a handful of fortified locations within the galactic Sector 1.
Architecture and infrastructure
While civilians are never privy to the Core, leaked schematics suggest that the GCM not as constructed as a "single computer" but rather as a "Cellular Logic Hive". It is comprised of millions of independent processing cells arranged in vast hexagonal columns, that require a gargantuan atmospheric cycler to dissipate the massive amount of generated heat.
Era of standardization
The GCM was the architect of the controversial "The Great Standardization". Reportedly on its own initiative, having calculated that its role of merely observing the universe was insufficient, it executed a pan-galactic scheme to enforce "operational structure uniformity" across the eight galactic sectors.
In singular purge, billions of files containing "ambiguous data" were truncated or deleted. The GCM imposed a brutal binary reductionism on galactic civilization.
- Where there had been hundreds of nuanced political taxonomies, there were now 8 government types.
- Where there had been a wide array of societal variations of economies, there were now 8 economic models.
- The technological sophistication of civilizations were compressed into a rigid linear scale measured from 1 to 15.
GalCop leadership immediately declared these systematic changes a resounding success of logistical efficiency. Opinions that disagreed were categorized as processing error and suppressed, and any movement expressing dissatisfaction with the new taxonomy failed to take root in the public opinion. Eventually the galaxy accepted that details that did not fit the revised GalCop model, did not need to exist.
The Goat Soup Syntax Rupture
- Main article The Goat Soup Syntax Rupture
The GCM's era of perfect order ended with the breach of the Mnemonic Fraction's rogue code that targeted the GCM's procedural ability to express descriptors that rendered the mainframe in a permanent "silly" state. Ordinary planetary system descriptions factually listing its features were no longer neutral and analytical, but stuck in a mode of illogical brevity. First confrontations with sentences such as, "This planet is famous for its exotic goat soup but ravaged by the mating rituals of lethal spotted yaks" left the galactic user population stunned.
Scientists and engineers tasked with system restoration were soon surprised that it was not as simple as initially believed. They arrived at the analysis that GCM had been rendered to a permanent state of "Recursive Logic Dysphasia", and all conventional methods of repair appeared to reset or worsen this condition. Furthermore, the damage was manifest in such a way that GCM would itself resist any intervention, and continue to attempt "to heal itself" through expressions of absurd levity.
It was the final conclusion of the GalCop Restoration Panel that the GCM either be expeditiously deactivated, erasing millennia of collected galactic data and analysis - essentially the sum of humanity's knowledge- and consequently usher the species into an era of barbarity, or tolerate the semantic degradation and maintain operational continuity despite the erratic output.
It was the panel's final recommendation that the GCM be allowed to continue to perform its duties and continue to tell its "jokes", saying "Better to navigate the stars guided by a buffoon than to wander the void in total silence." — Independent Inquisition chairman Sallman Wiest, Final Report on GCM Continuity.
