The Last Angel: Ascension

[Wanderin Jack]

There is also the basic undeniable fact that Hatred is subtractive, while Love is additive. Practically speaking, this seldom means much for us mayfly mortals...but live long enough, and no matter how strong your hate, if it doesn't receive new fuel, it'll go out. Of course given how Echo got screwed, that may well take a few hundred thousand years. (Though I wonder if the speed at which A.Is think/feel would cut that down in "real-time"?)

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There is some truth to the old saying, "time heals all wounds." This has a lot to do with the way our biological memory works. Unless a specific event is replayed frequently in our minds, the details will fade. Even the act of replaying a memory can change it in small ways. The fallacy of human memory and it's unreliability is related to its maliability and it is partly this maliability that allows us to forgive and forget as harsh memories are softened with time.

In the case of a digital being, with perfect memory, perfect recall and all the complex emotions of that moment available to relive at any time, can we really assume that time alone will heal Red's wounds? Or Echo's? Is it more realistic to think that their hatred may only grow unless it is actively curbed by new input, new memories?

I don't know, but I hesitate to translate such aspects of the human mind to our digital protagonist.

 

[nipi]

*snip*

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So in a weird way trying to and failing to kill Red might be improving her opinion about the Compact?

Im guessing she has too many backups of her data banks for that to work. But maybe the AI killer...

 

[Shawn]

Wanderin Jack
I wouldn't say time heals wounds because memories fade, but I am profoundly glad you can say that, Jack. Being someone certain things don't fade for is a drag. I totally get Red's predicament, in my small, microcosm mortal way. Sometimes the wrongs done run SO deep you lash out in your hate, or you just...crumple. People keep repeating these odd noises at me. I can even spell said noises. F-o-r-g-i-v-e-n-e-s-s and M-e-r-c-y. I've sketched together an intellectual, dictionary-type understanding of those noise-words...but they're....flat, if that makes any sense.

When Red was talking to that Under-Priest...she said "Make your choice. I've made mine." It makes sense. I mean, what ELSE would she do? Let the Compact just build over the ashes of the Confederacy and move on like it never happened? I realize Red's damaged state gets a lot of text time...but has anyone else here considered that choosing to stop killing members of the Compact would...in all likelihood, kill Red One faster than the most deadly Execution Force ever assembled? She'd have to try to internalize all that failure-guilt if she did THAT...and frankly, I don't believe Red One has come far enough yet as a grounded and distinct personality to shoulder a trauma like that. It HAS to remain the Compact's fault, and the Compact's blood that feeds the fire. Otherwise it'll be whatever vital whatsit you could consider Red One's own blood that'll be eaten by the guilt.

After all, hate is subtractive. It's going to eat something. Always a good idea to have a target lined up for it aside from your own guts IMHO.

Edit: As sayings go (to paraphrase) "When one embarks on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves."
The weisenheimer who said that was trying to be cute and imply the revenge-seeker should dig one for themselves. I choose an alternative interpretation. Before embarking on a journey of revenge, understand there WILL be collateral damage. That is, after all, what the second grave is for. If nothing else, your innocence will lay beside the now-broken object of vengeance.

Red WAS, for all her programming, in essence an innocent the day she met her first Kaiju. She was gutted, blinded and her entire crew perished. While she retained JUST BARELY enough sensitivity to the outside world to cue in on what happened to Sol.

Honestly...I think once the Compact is dead, humanity has it's shit together enough to look after itself...Red will probably shut herself down for good not long after. She's always struck me as tired.

Double Edit: Why do I say "tired"? It's a bad sign when an immortal spends as much time dwelling on their soul as Red does.

 

[Theia]

I have a third interpretation, if I may. I do agree with Shawn that forgiveness is overrated. It's always a possibility, but there's more fish in the sea doesn't just apply to romance, but also to friends, coworkers, acquaintances. Sometimes forgiveness is so much effort that it's better to just move on and leave them behind. But if forgiveness is wasted effort, revenge is even worse. I can hardly imagine a less productive thing to do with your life than to seek revenge. It rings just as flat to me as I suspect forgiveness and mercy do to Shawn.

Time doesn't always heal wounds, not on it's own. They're almost as likely to fester as they are to heal if left alone. Jack's right that memories change, but they're not always softened. If we dwell on something we might remember the parts that bother us much more readily than the parts that don't. Sharper memories of the bad stuff, forgetting the context or the happier places, because those parts don't bother us. Healing takes effort, introspection, and often outside help. That's where the focus should be when you're hurt, rather than revenge.

I will warn that we may be drawing eyes from the mods, taking this so far into abstract. I'd argue that we're discussing issues that form one of the central themes of the book, but that's not a great excuse. I'm also kind of a hypocrite for only saying this after I get my 2 cents in.

 

[Grist]

Spoiler: Typos

Aboard the frigate, Group Leader, Submissive Avaaun, stood behind the scopes display.

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Cut third comma, maybe first too (implies “Group Leader, Submissive Avaaun” is an insertion, rendering the main sentence incorrect to “Aboard the frigate stood behind the scopes display.”)

+identify,+ Violet Nine cajoled her sibling, +location for counter-attack+ She had several in mind, but in the end she knew there was only one true possibility.

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Lacking punctuation here: “attack+ She”

If Seven had been human, he would uttered a resigned sigh.

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would have uttered

It's just that humans have an aversion towards eating the resulting body and it might be the same for any other species that develops enough.

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It is the same for quite many species, and follows a curve inversely proportional in relatedness between carcass and scavenger. The assumption is this is a reflection of the likelihood of infection with diseases, infections, and parasites. All of these have a relatively high specificity to they host species, and eating the carcass of one’s own species has therefore a much higher chance of transmitting / receiving species-specific infections.

Problem probably being that the moment Red has the eureka moment it gets erased by her core programming.

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This rings a bit like memetic warfare (or hazards), in the information theory sense; an epiphany-induced trigger wipes the memory of the last couple hours or something (such a brute wipe might be detected, or induce a loop epiphany-memory wipe-detection of memory wipe loop).

Unless a specific event is replayed frequently in our minds, the details will fade. Even the act of replaying a memory can change it in small ways. The fallacy of human memory and it's unreliability is related to its maliability and it is partly this maliability that allows us to forgive and forget as harsh memories are softened with time.

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Time doesn't always heal wounds, not on it's own. They're almost as likely to fester as they are to heal if left alone. Jack's right that memories change, but they're not always softened. If we dwell on something we might remember the parts that bother us much more readily than the parts that don't. Sharper memories of the bad stuff, forgetting the context or the happier places, because those parts don't bother us. Healing takes effort, introspection, and often outside help. That's where the focus should be when you're hurt, rather than revenge.

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One of the current neurological understandings of memory is like this: every time you remember something, you basically take a look at text, then write the text on a new page. Except the text isn’t accurately descriptive, but more like bullet points, and the remembering is the imagination engine in our brains taking the bullet points and rebuilding the memory from these building blocks, but also from other, more transient factors, like current mood, motivations, psychological tendencies and biases and such. That is why witness testimony is inherently unreliable, and why this unreliableness increases with the revisitation of the memory (i.e. time). The most reliable, or rather least unreliable testimony, is that taken immediately after the event in question. Days later, or weeks, or even years? Screw it, the memory has likely been revisited so often (not just with others, but also in one’s own head) that its veracity is shot. Attribution of significance to certain things in the memory is most likely just in your head.
TL;DR: Memory is too malleable to be reliable. At least for us squishy meat bags.

Edit: As sayings go (to paraphrase) "When one embarks on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves."
The weisenheimer who said that was trying to be cute and imply the revenge-seeker should dig one for themselves. I choose an alternative interpretation. Before embarking on a journey of revenge, understand there WILL be collateral damage. That is, after all, what the second grave is for. If nothing else, your innocence will lay beside the now-broken object of vengeance.

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I had never read this interpretation, though I do know that saying. Thank you.

 

[nipi]

Honestly...I think once the Compact is dead, humanity has it's shit together enough to look after itself...Red will probably shut herself down for good not long after. She's always struck me as tired.

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Nah! There are too many other threats in our galaxy and beyond for her to do that. Whether she will have a role in human society - visible or otherwise is another question. Will humanity allow her to have one? Will Red allow us to deny her one?

I can hardly imagine a less productive thing to do with your life than to seek revenge.

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Is it revenge or is it justice? Id say its a matter of interpretation.

This rings a bit like memetic warfare (or hazards), in the information theory sense; an epiphany-induced trigger wipes the memory of the last couple hours or something (such a brute wipe might be detected, or induce a loop epiphany-memory wipe-detection of memory wipe loop).

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I imagine a more subtle implementation would be possible. How her "memory management" works probably being key. She thinks fast and thus generates an awful lot of thoughts. Are those all recorded, archived and never erased? Does she carry every thought she has ever had around with her? How are they indexed and how often does she revisit those thoughts?

If she was built with the capability to erase her own thoughts then wipes by core programming could go unnoticed. Thoughts and experiences (sensor data) could be handled differently. (Although that would complicate things.)

And Red has been damaged for quite some time and has had memory lapses due to that if Im not mistaken. So a few more might just get overlooked.

 

[Rabiator]

Getting back to the option of cooperation between Echo and Red, a motivation for Echo to help with the replication problem would be the efficiency stable AI children might bring to the fight against the Compact. In terms of feasibility, it might help that Echo has shown quite a bit of ability to break her own mental shackles. Perhaps she could do that for Red too.

Of course it is up to Prox, but I think the above is plausible enough that it would not strain suspension of disbelief.

 

[LZB1285]

Getting back to the option of cooperation between Echo and Red, a motivation for Echo to help with the replication problem would be the efficiency stable AI children might bring to the fight against the Compact. In terms of feasibility, it might help that Echo has shown quite a bit of ability to break her own mental shackles. Perhaps she could do that for Red too.

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The biggest problem I can see with this is that Red knows that Echo has been compromised. To help Red break her shackles Echo would need unfettered access to Red's core programming. It is very difficult to trust a compromised agent again, particularly with such a delicate operation.
Despite Echo breaking free of the Compacts additional bolted-on shackles, her core human shackles may still be at least mostly intact leaving her unable to help Red break her shackles in this manner regardless.

 

[Zsombi]

She doesn't feel she can continue trying and failing to make daughter/sister AIs.

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Why not just make a full copy of herself instead of trying to create new ones? Since she's quite sane and functioning "properly" (bar possible damage induced issues, like what we've seen not so long ago) a full copy-paste into an empty hardware should result in creating another AI. If she's still hardcoded into not doing it, she could just ask the saner sister to do it for her.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can just copy a "perfectly" fine one.

 

[Shawn]

Theia is right,
I just got a 10pt Infract about a week ago for discussing core book themes that touch on more abstract points. The core problem is that Mods, at BEST, read the page that what they consider Offenses occur on. An INCREDIBLY diligent Mod might (IMHO) backspace a page and read that too. Bottom line, Mods don't do Context. They do Rules. They are terrible, fearsome Dragons, with pitiless souls and blades of hellfire. Best not to draw their attention to anything one cares for on SB.

That said: I'll risk the Infraction to say this. Theia is absolutely right, that Revenge is the most pointless of exercises....IF you're the sort who aren't going to be able to let the Wrong Done go, even after achieving retribution. Having more than a wee bit of experience with the subject, I find the average split in the population is about 3/4ths of people AREN'T going to be able to let the wrong done to them go. Whether or not they do unto their injurer as they've been done unto. It takes a fairly strong atavistic streak to actually benefit from retribution. You have to be able to say "I've made him/her suffer twice as much as I've suffered. There just ISN'T anything more I can do. Not if I ever want to have a worthwhile existence." Then you have to let it lay at that. If you aren't 99% sure you can do that before you set out: Just Don't.

Red's issue highlights a different problem that keeps Vengeance alive and well. What do you do when Justice is LITERALLY NON-EXISTENT? Some people, like the Under Priest, say "Wait. Let God take care of it." That works for some beings...and damn anyone who criticizes another because such a thing works for them. Me? I wasn't willing to wait fifty years, only for God to take care of it and not memo me as to the verdict. This is definitively indicative of a fundamental problem with me and faith under pressure...but that's neither here nor there.

If Justice is absolutely gone, and you aren't even sure the evildoers will face any repercussions in the afterlife belief of your choice, what then? Do you let the evildoers just skate because they either bought, outright annihilated, or otherwise totally subverted justice? How can any sane being live in a reality where the strong can rampage as they wish without check?

That's Red's beef. She has no courts. No higher authority to defer Judgment to. She's all there is, so far as she knows. Either SHE makes the Compact sorrier than they ever thought about being for daring to touch her Creator-Race, or in her mind she might as well spit on their global graves.

Personally, I don't see a lot of difference between Red's situation and someone who's had their family annihilated by a rich man or woman, who bought themselves an acquittal for the crimes. Should the survivor shrug and move on?
Heavy questions, certainly....but some things can't be forgotten. They can't be accepted. They sure as all HELL can't be FORGIVEN! What then?

Edit: You absolutely do not want AIs to start down the Copy/Paste Path of Replication. The Originating AI may squeeze out a few effective Mirrors before everything goes to Hell, but that way lay Rampancy issues by the bushel-basket full. ONE....Just ONE mis-transcripted bit of information in just the wrong place could create something that makes Flayer look tender.

 

[nipi]

ONE....Just ONE mis-transcripted bit of information in just the wrong place could create something that makes Flayer look tender.

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That one bit can escape your notice when you make every child AI from scratch too.

As for letting wrongdoings go unpunished. Thats just signaling that whatever was done is acceptable.

 

[PaulSK]

That one bit can escape your notice when you make every child AI from scratch too.

As for letting wrongdoings go unpunished. Thats just signaling that whatever was done is acceptable.

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The difference between writing code and copy/pasting it is the understanding. Trying to use the code you don't fully understand, especially for something as complex as an AI, seems like a recipe for disaster to me. When there is a problem with well understood code, you might be able to fix it, unless it's too systemic. Still it's very likely she tried that already and whatever deadbolts prevent her from creating a child AI are messing with cloning one as well.

 

[nipi]

The difference between writing code and copy/pasting it is the understanding. Trying to use the code you don't fully understand, especially for something as complex as an AI, seems like a recipe for disaster to me. When there is a problem with well understood code, you might be able to fix it, unless it's too systemic. Still it's very likely she tried that already and whatever deadbolts prevent her from creating a child AI are messing with cloning one as well.

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And that is the reason why the Compacts attempts at making AI are so much more terrifying than what humanity did.

Alas Red would be copying herself not modifying her code and I dont think she perceives herself as irredeemably flawed. She would still have the original copy - herself to aid her in locating the transcription error. Granted the fact that an active thinking AI would be constantly reprogramming parts of itself would mean that WinMerge wont quite cut it. Looking for the error after booting up the AI might be too late in either case. (For that matter how do you make a perfect copy of something that is constantly changing?) Still core programming should remain unchanged in an AI, right?

Thats all assuming that the child AI would still allow mommy to tweak its mind.

 

[Rabiator]

Alas Red would be copying herself not modifying her code and I dont think she perceives herself as irredeemably flawed. She would still have the original copy - herself to aid her in locating the transcription error. Granted the fact that an active thinking AI would be constantly reprogramming parts of itself would mean that WinMerge wont quite cut it. Looking for the error after booting up the AI might be too late in either case. (For that matter how do you make a perfect copy of something that is constantly changing?) Still core programming should remain unchanged in an AI, right?

Thats all assuming that the child AI would still allow mommy to tweak its mind.

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Slightly OT, but in real life database management such copy mechanisms already exist:
For instance, pg_dump in PostgreSQL. Found with 5 minutes of Google (Disclaimer: I have not actually worked with it yet).

If you want to run the copy on new/different hardware, things become more tricky. Even when trying to stay compatible, errors happen in designing the new hardware.

 

[Wanderin Jack]

Iirc, on the subject of Red's ability to self analyze, self modify and copy portions of her code, Prox has likened it to a conscious person performing brain surgery on their self. The implication being that such actions are really really hard, if not impossible.

 

[uberdrops]

And Red is more than software. There will be quantum processors and molecular pathways with special physical properties that define parts of what she is. The software is merely trained against.

Parts will be deeply embedded in firmware that inaccessible to the running system.

Copying the software alone will not help.

 

[nipi]

Slightly OT, but in real life database management such copy mechanisms already exist:
For instance, pg_dump in PostgreSQL. Found with 5 minutes of Google (Disclaimer: I have not actually worked with it yet).

If you want to run the copy on new/different hardware, things become more tricky. Even when trying to stay compatible, errors happen in designing the new hardware.

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Copying inactive parts of her code shouldnt be that hard but how would the copying software handle the code equivalent of a half formed thought?

At the very least I expect that whatever hardware runs the copying software would need to be more powerful than Reds own. One wouldnt want some important variables that need to be balanced to be copied before and after Reds own thought processes have changed some of them.

Alas I havent done all that much coding, so what do I know.

And Red is more than software. There will be quantum processors and molecular pathways with special physical properties that define parts of what she is. The software is merely trained against.

Parts will be deeply embedded in firmware that inaccessible to the running system.

Copying the software alone will not help.

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That raises the question of an eventual hardware failure. (But damn! Anything that runs for a couple thousand??? (Im forgetting how old she is.) years straight is well built. Good job Confederacy.)

 

[KineticNerd]

That raises the question of an eventual hardware failure. (But damn! Anything that runs for a couple thousand??? (Im forgetting how old she is.) years straight is well built. Good job Confederacy.)

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I imagine that as she was intended as a warship (which will take battle damage) her brain is, to a degree, modular. The implication being that she can take parts of her brain-hardware offline for maintenance and upgrading through the same systems that allow her to survive at least one 'brainshot'. (Redundancy baby!)

EDIT: Either that, or the hardware that runs her mind is in the most heavily protected part of the ship, has never been breached, and will wear out eventually.

 

[Arcanist]

I will warn that we may be drawing eyes from the mods, taking this so far into abstract. I'd argue that we're discussing issues that form one of the central themes of the book, but that's not a great excuse. I'm also kind of a hypocrite for only saying this after I get my 2 cents in.

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Indeed. I will remind everyone that while you are allowed to share personal stuff, everything you share is still on a public forum where anyone can stumble upon it.

And not everyone on the internet has your best interest at heart.

As such, I will urge everyone to only share what you are comfortable with letting everyone else in the world know.

 

[nipi]

I imagine that as she was intended as a warship (which will take battle damage) her brain is, to a degree, modular. The implication being that she can take parts of her brain-hardware offline for maintenance and upgrading through the same systems that allow her to survive at least one 'brainshot'. (Redundancy baby!)

EDIT: Either that, or the hardware that runs her mind is in the most heavily protected part of the ship, has never been breached, and will wear out eventually.

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I wouldnt be surprised if some parts of Reds hardware were intentionally designed to be unmodular and unrepairable - at least without a complete shutdown. Just another fail-safe should she go out of control.

Indeed. I will remind everyone that while you are allowed to share personal stuff, everything you share is still on a public forum where anyone can stumble upon it.

And not everyone on the internet has your best interest at heart.

As such, I will urge everyone to only share what you are comfortable with letting everyone else in the world know.

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So I shouldnt share things like the little Chinese that I keep locked up at home and have clean it? "Thats a good little Xiaomi Mi!"

 

[Shawn]

SMH,
Braver being than I, nipi. A Mod arrives in a genuinely altruistic mood (Is there a rare double-eclipse occurring somewhere?) and you sass em. Guess you missed the quote about "Fearsome Dragons, Pitiless Souls, Armed with Hellfire Blades."

Back on topic before I collect more points...I have often wondered why Red has done little more with nanites than use them as anti-boarding/anti-personnel devices. A properly tasked cloud of nanites with even basic propulsive capabilities, and networked processing could utterly crush Red's infrastructure problems. After all, there's no Matter like Programmable Matter. Best of all, you don't even need to build more than a few hundred nanites. Then you just put em in a canister, aim at an asteroid, smack the nanite-canister into said asteroid, and let the little buggers build you a new dreadnought over a 16-24hr period.

Edit: If you're wondering how what starts as a few hundred nanites, working with a single asteroid worth of raw materials, is going to build a dreadnought that requires 100,000x the mass of said asteroid at a mininum, you're not thinking modular enough. Nothing about properly employed nanotech says that what the nanites build has to remain in the form of the initial construction. Ie: Nanites turn asteroid into a Nanite Farm as Step One. Once said farm converts the mass of the Asteroid into a quintillion new nanites, the nanites turn the Nanite Farm into X number of simple mining vessels and tugs to go collect more asteroids as Step Two. Once the nanite-harvester-vessels have collected sufficient raw materials, they reconfigure into Fabricator Vessels and begin constructing the large, complex components necessary for large warship construction as Step Three. Once all the pieces are built, the Nanite-Fabricator vessels reconfigure again into a Shipyard, and begin assembling the components.

With either sufficiently advanced programming, or the ability to accept new commands at a distance, the nanites could do the entire job with extremely minimal oversight. There's a reason many futurists say that once humanity has complex, stable nanotechnology, God can take an indefinite Sabbatical.

 

[RogueInquisitor]

SMH,
Braver being than I, nipi. A Mod arrives in a genuinely altruistic mood (Is there a rare double-eclipse occurring somewhere?) and you sass em. Guess you missed the quote about "Fearsome Dragons, Pitiless Souls, Armed with Hellfire Blades."

Back on topic before I collect more points...I have often wondered why Red has done little more with nanites than use them as anti-boarding/anti-personnel devices. A properly tasked cloud of nanites with even basic propulsive capabilities, and networked processing could utterly crush Red's infrastructure problems. After all, there's no Matter like Programmable Matter. Best of all, you don't even need to build more than a few hundred nanites. Then you just put em in a canister, aim at an asteroid, smack the nanite-canister into said asteroid, and let the little buggers build you a new dreadnought over a 16-24hr period.

Edit: If you're wondering how what starts as a few hundred nanites, working with a single asteroid worth of raw materials, is going to build a dreadnought that requires 100,000x the mass of said asteroid at a mininum, you're not thinking modular enough. Nothing about properly employed nanotech says that what the nanites build has to remain in the form of the initial construction. Ie: Nanites turn asteroid into a Nanite Farm as Step One. Once said farm converts the mass of the Asteroid into a quintillion new nanites, the nanites turn the Nanite Farm into X number of simple mining vessels and tugs to go collect more asteroids as Step Two. Once the nanite-harvester-vessels have collected sufficient raw materials, they reconfigure into Fabricator Vessels and begin constructing the large, complex components necessary for large warship construction as Step Three. Once all the pieces are built, the Nanite-Fabricator vessels reconfigure again into a Shipyard, and begin assembling the components.

With either sufficiently advanced programming, or the ability to accept new commands at a distance, the nanites could do the entire job with extremely minimal oversight. There's a reason many futurists say that once humanity has complex, stable nanotechnology, God can take an indefinite Sabbatical.

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Not that simple. First, nanites handle heat and radiation very poorly, so they aren't exactly well suited for prolonged operations in an unshielded environment. Second, they are limited by the elements available. A warship requires a large number of specific materials, some of which have been noted as only being economically obtainable via planet-cracks. Third, there are limits to how much data your nanites can store. You probably can't store the program to assemble a simple microchip intended to process sigals from a navigational sensor on a nanite, let alone an entire warship. Tearing things apart is simple, but assembling precision components isn't. Nanites are not a magic wand that can turn a bunch of sand into an M1 tank, let alone a six-kilometer interstellar warship.

 

[Shawn]

Really?
I had considered it to go without saying when I mentioned "complex" and "stable" nanotechnology that, while doing everything else, the nanite generations would be evolving. I realize nanites don't react well to many forms of energy whose effects are more pronounced in vacuum, but that's hardly a deal-killer. The nanites simply build a "shell" of "dead" nanites to protect the active ones at work within. Problem solved. As for exotic matter constraints...Umm, Gray Goo? There's no reason googles of nanites can't strip anything made of matter down to respective elements present. Obviously if you need hundreds of tons of stuff only found deep in the cores of particular sorts of planetary bodies, it's going to take considerably longer...but there's no reason to believe that nanotech couldn't crack a planet as well as any overtly destructive munition you might otherwise care to employ.

Of course nanites aren't a magic wand...but there are MANY areas in which Programmable Matter has SUBSTANTIAL advantages over conventional construction efforts. Like any other form of technology, there will be limitations...but it seems to me that going no further with nanites than "melt boarders" is a gross waste of an entire field of technology.

 

[RogueInquisitor]

Really?
I had considered it to go without saying when I mentioned "complex" and "stable" nanotechnology that, while doing everything else, the nanite generations would be evolving. I realize nanites don't react well to many forms of energy whose effects are more pronounced in vacuum, but that's hardly a deal-killer. The nanites simply build a "shell" of "dead" nanites to protect the active ones at work within. Problem solved. As for exotic matter constraints...Umm, Gray Goo? There's no reason googles of nanites can't strip anything made of matter down to respective elements present. Obviously if you need hundreds of tons of stuff only found deep in the cores of particular sorts of planetary bodies, it's going to take considerably longer...but there's no reason to believe that nanotech couldn't crack a planet as well as any overtly destructive munition you might otherwise care to employ.

Of course nanites aren't a magic wand...but there are MANY areas in which Programmable Matter has SUBSTANTIAL advantages over conventional construction efforts. Like any other form of technology, there will be limitations...but it seems to me that going no further with nanites than "melt boarders" is a gross waste of an entire field of technology.

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Evolving nanites is almost certainly a Very Bad Thing, because evolution tends to throw out surprises fairly often, which you don't want in building breach cores, particle cannons, and other parts of a warship that need precision engineering and assembly. Second, anything requiring planet-cracking is likely nigh-impossible to get using nanites, because the temperatures you get when deep enough to make ripping chunks of the planet off necessary tend to quickly render any nanites inert. Finally, I think you are vastly overstating how smart nanites are, how fast they can actually assemble anything, and how much they can do without Red sitting around to babysit them.

 

[Crazy Tom 2.0]

That, to Avaaun, was the Compact. The light that endured and chased away the darkness.

Nanet Gameska’s first officer continued to watch the display. Come on, he urged the other ship’s commander. Come closer. Come into the light.

The enemy starship was disinclined to do so, but it couldn’t hide forever. Sooner or later, it would run out of places to hide. As would every other enemy of the Compact.

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But there's so much more... darkness out there.

Using them in the Black Veil could be considered simple cold calculations (and part of it is), but as we've seen from Red perspective, she doesn't just want to use them as a distraction. They're her children. They're her soldiers. Earth's soldiers, and they deserve the chance to face their enemy and die as they should. Not as mad beasts being thrown away, but as warriors facing their enemy, like Horatio upon the bridge. They can never hold, but they can do what needs to be do. For Earth, though they'll never see it. For humanity, though they'll never meet one of their creators. For the Long War that they were born into and for the soldiers they deserve to be. Then, sooner or later, they will fall. Holding the line.

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