[Unauthorized access-alarm 2521-]
[Security Breached 50-h-]
[* *BA1E$U2$ logical reset 67FC231]
[begin translator programs]
[downloading linguistic archives]
[compiling]
[Voice 1/Male]Ha! Another bleeding heart, pleading mercy for murderers! Would you be of the same opinion, had it been one of your own to be mauled by this beast!
[Vocie 2/Male]The target of its justified rage is of no interest. All life must be preserved, and what you are requesting is nothing short of genocide!
[Voice 1/Male]Don't you dare use that word, you incompetent fool! Culling a malfunctioning tool is a necessity, not the little show of horrors you so gleefully accuse!
[Voice 2/Male]And yet you give him epithets like murderer and beast! Do you also call your screwdriver a beast when it falls on your toe?
[Spurious Interrupt- Breach Disabled]
[Further Access Denied]
[Breach Location Undetermined]
The continual need for improvement forced the Quarian scientific community to add and pile on new and more complex code upon the Geth data-banks. Simple aspects like controlling automatic doors, automatic staircases and message systems could be easily handed by a handful of programs, but as Quarian ambition grew for its creations, the need for dozens, even hundreds of codes upon single platforms would be necessary. The shift from the heavy, impossible to move machines to the more... organic forms was seen as an aspect of the refinement of the Geth interface.
For the majority of the Quarians, their newest and brightest creation was not the great breakthrough its scientists proclaimed, but a mixture of troubles. The relatively cheap ability to adapt the programs to several tasks brought more unemployment, as the Geth permeated on every level of production and distribution on the economic cycle; bigger profits for the great corporations, which gnawed at each other for the most complex and new Geth they could churn out; and a point of contention with the Council, always panicking at the slightest increase of power from any of its associates. A highly autonomous machine, capable of basic interactions, and high adaptability to all platforms which only one race possessed was not something other races could take with ease.
Regardless of one's view, the Geth multiplied, and took a continuously greater role in the Quarian industrial backbone, eventually reaching every home as a novelty item, a must have with which no self-respecting Quarian could not live without. Soon they existed in every world of the Quarian Dominions, a moving testament of their prowess, the apex of creativity. Fools.
With increasingly complex programs, one would expect glitches. Random codes, created spontaneously, or degraded from existing code into something useless. Quirks, as one would call them. Bugs. Maybe they would slow the reaction of the platform. Maybe they would make one of its members jerk slightly. Understandable, given the rapid growth of the programs designed.
Some claimed the problem was the connection all Geth had with each other. They formed a global network, originally designed to ease the use and transfer of programs between platforms, and to speed up processing. Some negativists claimed it was unwittingly transferring unnecessary information between platforms, and creating additional, futile data, which was interfering with the basic service programs.
The first complaints came from the platforms with most programs, tales originally taken only as urban myths and exaggerations from uppity Luddites. They ranged from the fanciful Geth who learned to love, to the one who became a murderer of his unaware owners. Their builders of course dismissed all complaints, not wanting to lose profit margins, and not wanting their creations to lose the aura of great advancement they had, but even their best efforts could not hide the increasingly random pattern of new Geth code. The first publicized incident occurred at the Vikhram shipyards, where a bipedal unit, in the middle of the work-schedule, inquired the Quarian foreman about the nature of its soul. The religious Quarian panicked at the inquiry, and hastily contacted the units' constructors. Investigators later sent dismissed the incident as faulty code and a repetition of speech from a previous Quarian in the area as the most likely explanation, and quickly, and rather aggressively, shot down all rumours against its products. But regardless of effort, the first sparks in the debate had been lit with the Vikhram Incident. The Geth were mostly autonomous, and in most recent versions, capable of self-replicating code. Could the seed of complex thought take hold of their mechanical minds?
Following the incident, similar events spruced up across Rannoch, of platforms requesting their owners with explanations of their nature, of their value, of religion. The questions were for the most part infantile inquiries, showing a still not matured mind, but brought about the question of self-awareness. Incidents grew more violent, as several owners tried to forcefully shut down their platforms, resulting in several events of retaliation which brought the first Quarian casualties against Geth. Although these events appeared mostly in domestic settings, true panic came just four months later, in a Quarian military testing facility, in the Hasshim Deserts. A Geth experimental program, being outfitted into a mobile armored unit as part of the latest attempt to militarize the Geth, and expand Quarian power and influence in the Council, was prepared for prototype combat trials, where it was required to fire upon obsolete Geth construction platforms, labelled Enemy Armor . However, the prototype platform refused to fire at the target Geth, continuously marking them as Friendly in the IFF. On the scans made at the platform, no malfunction or bugs could be verified, which resulted in blame of hardware . In the ensuing attempt to wipe the program banks from the platform for review, which characterized the unit as faulty , the platform opened fire upon the Quarian engineers, in what apologists claimed was self defense , and launched havoc in the testing facility, requiring orbital bombardment from the Rannoch Garrison Fleets to put the unit offline.
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Audio file 5672.y Location: Haestrom Spaceport, Hangar 2.
[Voice 1/Male] How many can we carry in that one?
[Voice 2/Female] On this one? Two-hundred, maybe, with supplies for one week.
[Voice 1/Male] It s a six days journey to the rally point, it s going to be close. How will they be fed afterward?
[Voice 2/Female] I heard they rescued the harvest ships intact, so food supply won t be a problem short-term.
[Voice 1/Male] What a mess. What about the other two ships?
[Voice 2/Female] Forty on the first, maybe a hundred on the second. But supplies are more iffy on the second. They might have to stop somewhere to resupply.
[Voice 1/Male] I ll get the 564th to handle it. Good work, I ll be here tomorrow to see the rest. Don t forget to contact engineering and request those new engines.
[Voice 2/Female] Understood.
Hum, wait! Is it true what they are saying? That this evacuation is happening on all worlds?
[Voice 1/Male] ...Don t worry about it. It s only temporary.
Audio File Shutdown
Dissent could only grow in this atmosphere of fear. If their dear creations could indeed support the seed of a soul, the seed of free-will, how could the Quarian civilization continue its enslavement? Did they not deserve to be heard, given space to grow the gift within them? The spark of life had been made, but the petty scientists and engineers, terrorized by the lack of control a soul meant, terrorized by the very thought of not being masters of their creations' fate, mistook the spark for a wildfire, and rallied against their very child. The vanity of science created them, and vanity would end them.
The Quarian leaders had not choice but to hear those rallies, both from its great engineers and from its frightened populace. One the streets of the great cities of Rannoch, public violence against Geth multiplied. Partly fueled by the mob mentality, religious distaste of the Geth, and economic frustration, no mercy was given to those who had built so much of their power. Fearing a rebellion more than the costs of such an enterprise, the Quarian powers had to make a stand, and on each province of the Dominions, ordered the culling of every slave. The courts which judged the individual acts of Geth aggression declared it not self defense, but malice towards their creators, and proclaimed extermination the legal defense of the Quarians. In the midst of the panic, the few platforms capable of speech cried for their life in the assemblies, in the streets, pleaded for mercy, to be heard, offered the plans for a stable symbiosis, a Dominion of both Quarian and Geth, but the honesty within their pleads only frightened their creators even more, only confused them, only shadowed them with the spectre of guilt. From the great towers of the capital city of Yenisey, the Quarian leaders demanded the closure of all three Geth Foundries, the massive spherical behemoths of engineering, all located on Rannoch, which also held the great databanks storing their programs and the backbone of their network. The decision had been made, and the Dominions would be Quarian only indefinitely, the Geth would be banished into oblivion. Had to be banished to oblivion.
The production facilities were all temporarily closed down, and all Geth were ordered into curfew, alongside an order to present themselves for shut-down. On the night the order was given, Yenisey was at its calmest state after months of unrest. It would be the last night the Quarian government had to deal with the issue, for next morning, there would be peace.