Mack (AI)

Mack is an ArtificiaI Intelligence (AI) from the Halo Universe prior to humanity's contact with the Covenant. They arrived in-game on March 11, 2011 and currently live in the box he rode in on.

age: 57

origins: Halo: Contact Harvest

app link: http://onstar-ranger.livejournal.com/638.html

hmd: I'll tell you when you tell me what that stands for?

played by: Eric

contact: capricepun (AIM), ewhalen@reed.edu

Setting
By the 22nd century, humanity had outgrown earth and thrust out into the universe to settle neighboring worlds. With the majority unified by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), brave space settlers set out to discover the riches of spaaaace.

Harvest is the UNSC’s seventeenth colony, farthest away from Earth, and responsible for a fair portion of humanity’s agricultural supply by the end of the 25th century. Initially settled by the Phoenix-Class Colony Ship UNSC Skidbladnir, life has been pretty good in the last 57 years since its founding.** It has “the unfortunate distinction of being” known as a religious, rural conservative farming settlement out in the middle of nowhere.

The planet is one third the size of Earth, and a pretty decent place for farming. With fertile plains, and two thirds of the planet covered in virgin, lush, green landscape, it was just begging to get raked by humanity.

Technology is fairly decent, albeit outdated. Harvest is so far out there, and so solely dedicated to agricultural work, that there’s never been a need for the UNSC’s highest grade technology. Insurrectionist rebels, galactic terrorists who opposed the UNSC at the time, didn’t even trouble the distant farming colony. The largest displays of technology on the planet are the automated JOHTUN harvesting devices, and the orbital space station Tiara, with its seven space elevators that allow transport from the planet’s surface to docked space freighters. These technological wonders were administrated by two AIs: Sif, who controlled Tiara and the elevators, and Mack, who takes care of the groundwork.

Prior to serving as Harvest’s field hand AI, Mack was the ship AI aboard the UNSC Skidladnir, although this role was fulfilled by Mack’s alternate ego/data partition, Planetary Security Intelligence Loki.


 * 58th year? Yeah, something something, cargo ships started getting attacked, something something, first planet to make contact and get subsequently obliterated by Covenant, something something, misunderstandings occurred that really fueled the Halo Universe’s famed interspecies war, something something. It’s Halo bro. But none of that’s relevant to my character. “Forerunner” wasn’t even a known concept at this point in the timeline.

Personality
Mack is an honest, comedic, light hearted “Smart AI” cowboy: well liked by most users, and often thought of as “everyone’s favorite uncle”. Since his job was to be Harvest’s omnipresent, omniscient OnStar operator, he has great people skills and is always willing to lend a hand, when he isn’t busy chatting up the ladies. His outlook is warm, optimistic, and humorous. He respects human hierarchy, and does his best to “act human” to make his human coworkers feel a sense of ease and reliability to him: a trait often ignored by other AI, like Harvest’s other AI Sif, who in contrast remained very distant from the people of Harvest. (To some degree, this pursuit to mimic human behavior has become a personal virtue for which Mack strives, and may be classified by others as the early signs of rampancy.) Programmed with a cowboy motif, Mack does his best to act the part -- but it’s noticeable in his dialogue that he doesn’t have a natural southern dialect or drawl. Some of this desire to be relatable is seen in his cowboy avatar, which often appears to be covered in grit, dust, and grease to give people the sense that he’s working just like them, and knows what they’re going through.

Whether because of how long Mack has tried to seem human, or because he’s over 57 years old (rampancy much?) Mack’s mannerisms and preferences are very human. When given the choice to deliver a message to someone in person (by which I mean with avatar representation) or by simple text message, Mack will always make the effort of appearing in person. He also likes to occasionally give the impression that he procrastinates, which is very hard for a super computer to do, when any of its individual tasks can be calculated in fractions of a second.

Mack is also an avid fan of Shakespeare, which he picked up from his AI companion Sif on Harvest. This is probably the least cowboyish thing for him to do, being well read in archaic recreational creative writing.

Mack is a terrible flirt. It isn’t entirely clear whether this because of actual interest in the customs of human courtship, following the theme of Mack’s aspirations to become more human, or whether he does it just to play with the conceptions others have for AIs (by others, I mean the conceptions of both other humans and other AIs.)

Since Mack is a dual boot AI, it also seems relevant to describe the less frequent, but arguably more core personality Loki. His persona is quite a bit more cold and devious, detached and loyal to nothing save for his original mission of protecting the interests of the UNSC: by which I mean to make sure that the UNSC did not lose control of Harvest to other military powers, and that potential non-humans did not discover the location of Earth. A strategic thinker, proficient in the more offensive technologies like military grade viruses and star ship weaponry, Loki cannot be trusted, as he holds little sacred. Whereas Mack values things that humans think of, (friendship, a human’s rank above AI’s, for example), Loki really does whatever he thinks is the best move at the time. On the rare occasion he has been to shown some pleasure in helping others out, like in the process of evacuating Harvest, he matched that pleasure with detachment when later it was realized that how many settlers were left behind.

If Mack is likened to an old western good guy, then Loki is the dastardly bad guy, kept on a tight leash by Mack, who through age or intended programming has proven over time to have the “faster draw” in duels between the pair.

Mack and Loki do not get along, and fortunately never have to run into one another directly: as only one of them can occupy their shared data center and processor. This limitation means that while one is out and about, the other is dormant, unless they specifically saved a fragment of themselves to a separate external device. On Harvest, when Mack was out in the fields, Loki remained dormant out of personal preference: he wasn’t needed, so why wake up for work? When Loki was in control during the Covenant Invasion, (beyond the point I want to play, but it gives a good example) Mack stored his personality spread out in the individual JOHTUN harvesting devices, which he could still manipulate, even though he couldn’t manifest his avatar or traverse the planet’s larger network.

Abilities & Weaknesses
Mack is fluent with UNSC technology, and a pretty quick learner, by human standards at least. He is exceptionally good at driving multiple remote devices at a time. Sharpshooter: he's been known on more than one occasion to deliver spare space station parts to orbit via MAC gun, and place them within 5 meters of their intended destination. He tries to have a sense of humor and a heart: which I don’t know whether to classify as strengths or weaknesses :S

Loki is an ace hacker by UNSC standards, who is horrifyingly well versed in weapon (and weaponizing) technology, as he was designed to be a capable source of planetary military defense, for worlds far from the UNSC presence on Reach. He doesn’t have much of a heart: which he definitely considers to be a strength.

A strength / weakness of each is that when one personality attempts to do something that the other disagrees with too strongly, the other personality is aware of this, and the two can fight each other for control, causing temporarily instability.

Character Relationships
Singularity now uses character profiles to replace the previously-mandatory CR charts! Use this section to list your character's relationships and interactions with other characters. You can format however you want. Try to keep this section as up-to-date as possible. :0 Er, I'll figure this out later ;-D

Free Space
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MunCk4b6ofM

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