IA IA disclaimer fhtagn!

Author's Note: Canon!Biotics = Not!Wizards. Over Analysis!Biotics = Ultimate speedblitz machines who can make people explode. Please remember that the Mass Effect side in this operates on the physics I determined in Over Analysis.

Any way, this chapter will deal with the ASB's reaction to contacting the Citadel, and vice versa.

ASB Capital Station (POV: Tiffy)

As the session started, I sent my Long Distance Humanoid Interface Platform (which I'd designed to look like a busty curly-haired blonde in her 20s) up the stairs to the Senate Chamber. Arriving in the cavernous room amid 148 other representatives almost gave me something resembling stage fright, but I fought through it. I had a job to do after all, I was the representative for Sol! Diverting a bit of my attention to my other projects for a moment (ah, the wonders of being a hivemind), I went to my seat and waited.

The currently appointed Orderly (called such because that's what he kept the Senate) opened up with "Ladies, Gentleman, and asexual organisms! Today we have made first contact with another alien society, and for the time being at least it is peaceful!" As I absorbed that, he continued with "However, they are fearful of engineered sapience of any sort, which at least 60% of the ASB consists of. We can therefore not stand to let them destroy almost all of our civilization, any ideas Gentlebeings?"

The representative for Gliese (a habitat mind known as Otir) stood up and said "I vote that we need an ultimatum, something that they can't ignore, and demonstrates enough firepower to make them leave us alone." The voting system came online for that idea, I voted no on it. Despite that, the vote still came up as 87 for, 62 against.

I spoke "If we're going to carry on with this 'ultimatum' plan, which I generally think is a bad idea, we've only really got a few options. First, we could send the Rock to this Citadel of theirs. This option shows the most of our hand, which could either make them leave us alone for a really long time, or backfire horribly. Second, we send a large but mostly conventional fleet to each of their home-worlds. This option doesn't reveal that we've got something as insanely powerful as the Rock, but might have even more clout because with this option we make it clear we can wipe them out at any time. Option 3 is to demonstrate a warp missile on some gas planet while explaining what we're doing. This also induces a MAD situation, but is less likely to make them panic."

The vote started, and I placed mine for demonstrating a warp missile. The vote closed after a few minutes, revealing 49 for option Rock, 56 for option Fleet, and 44 for option Missile. I sighed, oh well. And with that the topic changed to domestic policy, namely on how we'd go about informing the general public of the presence of aliens. I voted for full disclosure, but the rest is something of a haze as I shifted my attention back towards Venus. At least on Venus I was allowed to make a full disclosure.

As one of my millions of bodies sat petting a design of squirrelcat I'd gotten from Cooner, My mind was preparing a presentation for Venus' media network. I managed to keep it under an hour, but it generally was as honest about the situation as I thought I could be without inciting a panic.

My presentation began with "On this day, first contact has been made once more. We managed to have a peaceful conversation with the Turians, but there is no guarantee that things will stay peaceful, though I wish they would." As people started to notice (and panic in a few isolated cases) I continued "That does not mean they are likely to attack immediately, far from it. The problem is that these aliens have had several very bad experiences with artificial intelligence, and therefore made 60% of our population illegal within their system." with that 68% of my population tensed up "To dissuade them from attacking, we will therefore be ensuring a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario will take place if they attack and making sure they know it."

With that several people relaxed slightly. "In addition, they use a different method of FTL than us. Their version is faster, but takes a while to get up to top speed and is dependent upon an extremely rare element, limiting the size of ships they can build. As for weaponry, that same element allows for them to produce railguns and mass drivers far more powerful than they should be." Tension built again.

I continued with "However, it should be noted that their primary defenses are completely ineffective for defeating our weapons systems. Those systems are primarily optimized for dealing with kinetic weapons, but FELs aren't kinetic by any stretch of the imagination, and warp missiles circumvent the shield's zone of reduced c that makes any kinetic weapon we could produce almost worthless." Relief is apparent among 96% of my population, and I continue "The Turians are part of a larger government including several species that has settlements across most of the galaxy, however the density of these settlements is sparse. The reason for them being so spread out is that they are dependent on an ancient portal network for long distance travel, meaning that the whole of their civilization isn't much bigger than ours."

Council Chambers, Citadel (POV: Councilor Tevos)

As I entered the back room, the new Turian Councilor (I think his name was Sparatus) had an apprehensive look on his face, and said "We need to talk. A First Contact situation has occurred, and these aliens are in all likelihood a menace to everyone around them." As I sat down, I [raised 1 eyebrow] and asked "Your people didn't happen to shoot on sight when these aliens violated Citadel Law out of ignorance, did they?"

Sparatus said "Thankfully, no. There have been no shots fired as of present, but these aliens have integrated Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Engineering into their civilization to such an insane degree that they literally wouldn't be able to survive on the majority of their worlds without synthetic organisms." Thinking hard, I asked for him to clarify. The answer I got, "All but three of their almost 200 Garden Worlds were terraformed by self-replicating networked AIs, which have getting better at their function as one of their directives. In addition, only 54 are in a situation where they'll stay Garden Worlds without constant management." surprised me.

Not knowing what else to do I asked "Don't they know that's dangerous? What if they rebel? How are they managing to live with synthetics!?" The answers I got out of Sparatus were "They apparently had over 150 years of science fiction about possible AI revolutions or 'evil robots', and went ahead and made AIs anyway. They probably know that AIs are possibly dangerous, but that apparently hasn't stopped them. As for a possible AI revolt scenario, it seems the ASB managed to greatly reduce the probability of that by removing most of the factors that would act as motivation for revolt. And I'm fairly certain that if they did revolt no-one in the galaxy would really stand any chance of stopping them.