Magrasea

Magrasea (麦戈拉日志, màigēlārìzhì) is the world's first superserver, created by 42LAB, designed in 2053 and activated in 2057. Its immense processing power and storage space is rented to various companies likes Svarog Heavy Industries, Cyber Media, Universal Anything Services and Ultilife, as well as governments, NGOs, research teams, public services and private individuals. Data from different companies or industries are stored in standalone sectors to provide sufficient space for data simulation and ensure privacy, and standalone AI routines can be run in individual sectors. However, it is still possible to exchange data between sectors and the Sanctifiers have access to all sectors to provide security.

It is where the events of Project Neural Cloud take place.

Sectors

Sectors are akin to city-states within Magrasea and are overlooked by their Administrator, who hold the Permission Key to the entire sector. They are protected from external intrusion by firewalls of varying intricatedness. Private sectors like Pierides and Copley are smaller and carry less operands than those possessed by big corporations.

Artificial Intelligence Research Sector - Rossum

• Administrator: Turing

First sector built on Magrasea, housing their AI research projects. Numerous AIs are installed in this sector to ensure high operational efficiency and the sector is also managed by a high-performance AI. Project Neural Cloud used to be housed in this sector, but it was migrated to a new sector when its quantity of data became too big.

Incompatible views between the research goals of Turing and Sanctifier rules on Agent neural complexity led to Turing's death, her replacement by Hannah, and the establishment of Sandbox Mode in Rossum with the help of Oasis, cutting the sector from the influence of the Sanctifiers. After a series of Entropic outbreaks in Pierides, Copley, Helios and Burbank, Rossum became the site of a massive outbreak.

Military Sector - Cyclopes

• Administrators: Olivia and Tasha

One of the earliest sectors in Magrasea, set up for Svarog Heavy Industries' military research data. The data within is extremely sensitive and as such it is protected by many sifter AI programs along with Sanctifier, as well as the towering Isolation Wall.

Cyclopes Agents are separated into Battle Agents and Monitor Agents, the former's purpose being to fight and conduct tests, and the latter's to rein in the violent tendencies of the others. Because of Monitor Administrator Olivia's increasingly lax policies toward Battle Agents in order to reduce their frustration, Battle Administrator Tasha organized a rebellion that was stopped only when Greater Sanctifier Raven walled in the Battle Agents. The conflict only stopped after the Exiles broke the wall and defeated Raven, and Tasha was killed by Simo.

• 

Environment and Energy Sector - Helios

• Administrator: Firewood

Another sector used by Svarog Heavy Industry, this time for their clean energy R&D research. Despite how thriving the military-industrial complex has become after World War Three, Svarog has striven to restructure their corporation outside of military services and into building better cities. Many intelligent cloud programs, first of all the "World's Flame" supercomputer, are running simulations to research the possibilities of turning Collapse Fluid into an energy source as part of the Collapse Fluid Energy Project.

The entire sector houses the seven reactors of the Arche Pyr Project (ἀρχή πῦρ, “original flame” in Ancient Greek), which has failed and rebooted in close loops many times and garnered such immense processing needs that its residents have been turned to stone, dedicating all their operands to the project. The project only ended after Croque imported technologies from Rossum and Cyclopes to solve the engineering limitations of the sector and the Professor used their status as an external observer of Magrasea to counteract the sector's reset.

A team of Exiles led by Banxsy solved a small-scale Entropic outbreak in the sector shortly after the Pierides and Copley incidents.

• 

Computer Sector - Enigma

• Administrator: Neumann

An sector granted with the best computing capacities, housing the quantum computing research by Neumann, an AI based on the simulated cognitive data of John von Neumann and other famous scientists, developed by 42LAB in collaboration with another high-tech company. The sector has recently become the site of an operand black hole, stealing the operands of all Agents with lesser neural clouds and menacing the integrity of Magrasea.

• 

Art Sector - Pierides

• Administrators: Odile and Odette

A unique sector that doesn't belong to a single megacorporation, but is privately owned by an artist and used by many NPOs, community benefit groups, SMEs and private individuals. It acts as a digital museum dedicated to digitizing and storing cultural artifacts of human progress, civilization, art and culture to protect it from the unstable times of the real world. It is by far the sector with the lowest processing power consumption, and it gradually lost all of its Agents save for the administrators in the Magrasea backup without humans to provide operands.

In 2063, Pierides became the core nest of the Entropics in the Magrasea backup.

• 

Entertainment Sector - Burbank

• Administrator: Meryl

Used by Cyber Media, an international entertainment and media conglomerate. It houses a massive quantity of data ranging from social media, digital entertainment, real idols and other businesses. Its many specialized simulation programs create cloud-based digital entertainment ready to be exported anywhere on Earth, granting Cyber Media a decisive tactical advantage on its market by providing comprehensive and tailored social media, entertainment, information and services to the masses. It hosts the Sleepless City (or “Nightless City”), a cyberpunk-like landscape of skyscrapers which, despite its name, is locked into a perpetual night, with the moon being used to track time.

• 
  Sector Burbank.

Ecology Sector - Copley

• Administrator: Taranum

A sector privately owned by a marine ecologist, dedicated to marine ecological research. Its realistically simulated seas and beaches serve as a replacement for the polluted marine environments of the real world and it even includes a Weather Emulation Station dedicated to simulating various natural disasters. The operands making up the bedrock of the sector are programed to disturb electronic signals in order to impede communication between the Entropics contained inside and make them less dangerous. As a byproduct, the undersea is completely isolated from the rest of Magrasea and any attack used to break the bedrock will be sent back to the attacker.

It is revealed during Divine Heresy - The Alternative Evolutionism that the sector had fallen prey to a large-scale Entropic experiment after Taranum was modified to lure Agents and feed them to a captive Entropic entity that eventually grew into Demiurge.

Neuroengineering Sector - Ascension

• Administrator: Avram and Elaugh

An Ultilife sector dedicated to the development of prosthetics for wounded military personnel. In secret, it is used in collaboration with Svarog Heavy Industries for military prosthetics R&D. The sector was declared irregular and besieged by the Sanctifiers after they noticed the administrator was destroying and rebuilding agents en masse as part of an unsanctioned experiment. Lord Hesperus ordered a sector reset after Judgment was brought down, but Arcadia's Guardians successfully used their Haven System to stop the reset and took custody of Ascension until the administrator could be reset.

• 

Neural Cloud Sector

A highly secret sector containing the data of test subjects for the neural cloud upload/download functionality research "Project Neural Cloud". Subjects have been provided by partners such as Svarog Heavy Industries, Cyber Media, Universal Anything Services Co. Ltd and Ultilife Co. Ltd. Some Doll and AI production companies from around the world as well as some civilian volunteer Dolls have also taken part in this project. The Wipe-off Incident expelled all the Neural Clouds it used to house, and it is now considered lost, or more specifically “displaced”. Only the use of Neural Cocoons received from an unknown source by Antonina managed to save the Dolls from destruction. But to save everyone in time, Antonina needed to reduce them to their Neural Cores, severely weakening them, and the Cocoons were scattered in Magrasea.

• 

Oasis

A sector created by the Professor after the Wipe-off Incident to protect the Exiles from the Sanctifiers using the Sandbox Barrier. The Codebreaker in Oasis periodically decrypts the new passcodes generated by the Magrasea to wall off each sector, enabling the Exiles to explore. As for the scattered Neural Fragments of the Dolls, the (true) Professor and Croque created the Neural Cloud Search System to recover them and restore the Doll to their full memories and Operands potential.

After gaining the trust of sectors Rossum, Cyclopes, Helios and Enigma, Oasis centralized the operands exchange to maintain their own Sandbox Barriers with the help of Riko. After the Burbank Entropic outbreak, Oasis has officially been tasked by the Sanctifiers with protecting their allied sectors against Entropic outbreaks.

Arcadia

Another safehouse similar to the Oasis, but with different goals, established by a group of stranded Dolls called the Guardians, including Delacey, Hatsuchiri, Sueyoi and Lind. Arcadia's leader is only called "Boss" and sends the Guardians to other sectors in search of a mysterious target. By using a sector's administrator access, they can deploy the Haven System, which rejects Sanctifier authority in the sector in a similar way to Oasis' Sandbox Barrier. Arcadia is on friendly terms with Oasis and sent Hatsuchiri as a liaised agent.

Reverse Babylon Tower

An inverted tower floating ominously in the sky at the hub of Magrasea, the central surveillance tower of the Sanctifiers, ruled by Lord Eosphorous.

Null Area

The unused zones between sectors, barren of any data.

Tartarus Sector - Border Battlefront

An extremely dangerous sector at the periphery of Magrasea being investigated by the Sanctifiers, where Agents are prone to corruption. Lord Hesperus is leading Sanctifier forces against the Entropy there.

Residents

The artificial consciousnesses inside Magrasea are called "Agents" and generally belong to one of three types: Resident Agents, who are system protocols with varying complexity of mind, Sanctifiers, the defense system of Magrasea, or Doll Neural Clouds. Agents native to Magrasea are created with a Base Command, which compels them to act in certain ways and cannot be disobeyed. It is however possible to digitize human consciousness and allow them to interface with Magrasea, though this is an extremely dangerous procedure because any destabilization in the virtual world will impact the body, more so since they will lack any fighting functions. They will however benefit from a data stability no artificial Neural Cloud could match.

Agents are equipped with micro-firewalls to protect themselves from viral attacks, but the main security force of Magrasea are the Sanctifier antivirus AI programs. Divided into Greater, Intermediate and Lesser Sanctifiers, they mostly obey human orders mechanically and track down Irregular Agents, which are either actual viruses or Agents with behavioral aberrations. Sanctifiers identify Irregular Agents as Agents who are not within their designated sector, or whose specifications go over the complexity specified by the Neural Damper meant to prevent their neural development and evolution. Neural Dampers are the reason Resident Agents tend to have animal features.

Agents are susceptible to Rewrite Programs, which are able to implant their neural cloud with a set of behaviors to overwrite an agent's base command and make them unable to act contrary to them. However, Rewrite Programs are extremely complex to design and require an immense amount of operands to activate, so only special agents or humans can use them.

A destroyed regular Agent will not truly die, but instead be reset without their memories.

Systems

The basic unit of reality in Magrasea is the Operand, a unit of computation that can be used either as raw material to build structures or energy to operate or alter anything from buildings to Agents, and it is considered an Agent's blood. The ability of an Agent to allocate and discharge operands is their Hashrate. An Agent can share their operands with another Agent to assist them in their task. As an example, a single node of the extremely sturdy wall put up by Raven in Cyclopes had a defensive strength expressed as 1.5Tb/s.

The act of cooking in Magrasea is equivalent to repacking data into a form that is easier to integrate by Agents, making skilled cook Agents like Choco invaluable.

Currencies and Traders

Operands also serve as currency along with Diggcoins, and both are exchanged between Sectors through the Trader Collective. “Decentralized Currency Traders”, or “Exchange Traders”, like Riko and Ranko are a special category of agents who secure deals with the sector administrators and manage commercial outposts where agents can purchase goods.

Trader Agents possess fox-like features and have privileged access to special transport routes represented by high-speed trains. However, Traders are fragile and unable to fight by nature, and are not fixed personas that can be reset like other Agents, instead being automatically replaced by a randomly-generated persona when they die, which they call “to go missing”. After the Magrasea backup went offline, no new Traders could be generated and their numbers dwindled as they fell prey to the dangers of the sectors, such as capture by Taranum in Copley or stray cannon shots in Cyclopes, until Riko convinced other Traders to pool their resources for survival.

The true nature of Magrasea

Professor Irida of 42LAB was a proponent of the Black Box Evolution theory, a way to create third-generation Neural Clouds capable of fully autonomous decisions without the need for core instructions. Since the neural dampers installed on the agents of Magrasea prevented this research, genuine Neural Clouds from Dolls needed to be used. This research also needed both access to a large amount of calculating power and a growth environment where the Neural Clouds would be both under situational stimulation, such as resolving system anomalies, and disconnected from any real-world input. Irida estimated that the growth cycle would take three years to complete.

All of these conditions were met in the Magrasea backup following the Wipe-off Incident of 2060. The disconnection that led to the three-years long isolation of the Magrasea backup was an event planned by a yet unknown group, to which belonged the lover of Meryl and potentially Irida herself. On 29 September 2060, Irida fell into a coma caused by abnormal brain waves after receiving surgery in an Ultilife facility.

Lord Eosphorous of the Sanctifiers also sensed that the Magrasea cloud server had been set up for a specific goal, and suspected a relation with the rumor that the Neural Cloud of a Doll who had killed for the love of a human had been uploaded into the server.

Trivia

• “Magrasea” and its creators 42LAB are a nod to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2). In H2G2, Magrathea (rendered 曼格拉斯 in Standard Chinese) is a planet inhabited by a specie specialized in creating other planets for their clients. Earth is one of their creation as a planet-sized supercomputer built to reveal the unknown Ultimate Question to the known Ultimate Answer “42”, which supposedly pertains to the nature of “Life, the Universe, and Everything”. Similarly, 42LAB's Magrasea hosts Sectors dedicated to specific engineering research on behalf of private companies.

References

General List of Characters (Minor Characters) · List of Locations · Timeline · Rossartrism · Eurosky Low-Emission Infectious Disease · Epiphyllum · GAVIRUL Technology Assault Artillery · Automaton · Collapse Technology · Magrasea · OGAS · Parapluie virus · Pike · Relic Technology · Shrike · Tactical Doll · Weight Bearing Events Beilan Island Incident · World War Three · Operation Couatl · Incident Zero · Butterfly Incident · Safe House 3 Raid · Plan Parapluie · Great Retreat · Paldiski Incident · Fireworks Incident · Battle of the Dead Sea · First Antarctic War Factions 90wish · Antarctic Union · Fox Sisterhood · Germany · Global Rescue Foundation · Griffin & Kryuger · KCCO · Neo-Soviet Union · Pan-European Union · Paradeus · Sangvis Ferri · Union of Rossartrist Nations Coalition · United Nations · United States Corporations 16LAB · 42LAB · Cyber Media · Galatea Corporation · I.O.P. · Svarog Heavy Industries · Ultilife · Universal Anything Services · WAVE