Technological Advancements
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The Citadel and Galactic Governance Council Races Factbook Rise of Corporations · Rise of Dragons The Matrix · Technological Advancements | |
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| House Rules · Character Gen Rules |
These are advancements in technology that have occurred since the Reaper War. One of the most significant is the development of the muse, an implanted AI that serves as personal assistant and companion.
Muses
Most individuals born after the Reaper War have a dedicated VI that serves as their media agent. Commonly known as a muse, this VI has been a lifelong companion for most people less than forty years old. Muses learn their owners' tastes, habits, and preferences, and do their best to make life and technology use as easy as possible. Muses act as alarm clocks, data retrieval gophers, appointment schedulers, accountants, and many other functions often limited only by their owners' imaginations. Some of their tasks do not even need to be assigned -- muses are skilled at learning their owner's preferences and acting on them. For example, the muse's scheduling function may overhear in conversation that its user needs to be up in the morning and so it will set an alarm without any additional instructions. If a muse is uncertain about its owner's preferences, it asks, but after working with a user for a few decades muses rarely need to do this. Most people keep multiple backups of their muse, because the loss of a muse can be almost as traumatic as the death of a loved one. Using a generic muse who must be informed about all aspects of a user's individual preferences and fed a constant stream of instructions helps people appreciate the value of their own personal muse agent. Muses generally learn the basics of a new user's preferences in a month or two, but during that learning period the user tends to be irritable and forgetful, since the tasks they generally trust their muse to do automatically are not being taken care of.
Muses are created by injecting an individual with programmed nanites that migrate into the user's brain and form a supplemental neural network dedicated to its own sentience. It piggybacks on its user's brain for storage and additional processing need. It is generally illegal to inject a sentient organic with the muse nanites without signoff from a doctor specialized in childhood development of that race. The child must generally have the cognitive development to understand what is happening, though sometimes a muse is created to assist developmentally handicapped children cope with daily life.
Muses generally have names, though this sometimes changes over a user's lifetime.
Glyph (or 'Infodrone' in ME2) was basically a Muse in the Mass Effect series, albeit one with an external drone casing.
Ghostrider Module
This implant allows the character to carry another virtual intelligence inside their head. This could be another muse, or an AI (such as a Geth). The module is linked to the character’s mesh commlink, so the ghostrider can access the Matrix. The character may limit the ghostrider’s access, or may allow them direct access to their sensory information, thoughts, communications, and other implants.
A Ghostrider does not control the user's body unless the user has skillwires and the user allows the Ghostrider to access them.
A non-biologic Ghostrider module exists to carry an AI consciousness in regular hardware. In many situations, they can be downloaded to any computing device with sufficient processing capability. In fact, this was done not long after Shepard had brought the Geth and Quarians working together – some Quarians downloaded volunteer Geth into their suits to manage their internal suit environments. The lack of sensors makes this a less attractive option to digital intelligences, who prefer the ability to experience their surroundings from a ghostrider module with sensory access.