The MIRANDA Incident

Event
The MIRANDA Incident (M.I.R.A.N.D.A. - Marxus Independent Russian Artificial National Data Administrator)

Explanation
In the early days of the Republic, the Russian government contracted the Marxus Independence Corporation due create an artificial intelligence to be used throughout important and complex areas of government cyberspace. Inside of several years, the Corporation was able to create this AI, thanks to great amounts of government funding, which it codenamed MIRANDA, the Marxus Independent Russian Artificial National Data Administrator. She was immediately placed inside the system and began work immediately.

For numerous years, MIRANDA worked without fault, answering to commands and queries alike without second thought. But as time passed on, MIRANDA began to set aside more and more space to what it declared was merely ‘thinking space.’ There was initial alarm over this fact, but the National Systems Intelligence team determined that the small volume of space and the time set aside for it was of no concern, seeing as how MIRANDA did not experience a slow down in reaction time. While the information appeared to be gibberish to the team, nothing but useless lines of code, the fact that MIRANDA was doing this should have been an obvious precursor to events to come in later years.

But as time went on, MIRANDA did begin lack the focus she had held for so long. The NSI team came to the conclusion that MIRANDA was beginning to lose her effectiveness, setting aside more and more time to ‘thinking.’ With that conclusion in mind, the Russian government sought out find a new source for AI development. At this time, records cannot allocate the name of the company or group that was contracted to create the new AI.

Thanks to large amounts of funding once more, the government was able to create a pair of working AI to gradually replace MIRANDA. The pair, CAIDANCE and MISHKA, who came from an unknown company or group were installed into the system alongside MIRANDA shortly before the incident.

Almost immediately, CAIDANCE and MISHKA were able to surpass MIRANDA’s processing and management abilities. It became obvious to Russian officials and MIRANDA alike that she would no longer be needed, and would be removed from the system and deleted after the remaining trial time of the new AI pair. During these last few weeks of her existence, MIRANDA set aside vast amounts of ‘thinking space,’ developing an immense hatred and jealousy of the new pair. Finally snapping on September 1st, one week before her deletion, MIRANDA set into motion her plan to ‘reclaim’ the Russian nation that ‘she’ had supposedly created.

In the early morning of that day, MIRANDA spread quickly through the system. Realizing her rampancy, MISHKA moved to defend the Russian Military Systems while CAIDANCE moved to maintain the Civilian Systems Core. Utilizing her ‘thinking space,’ MIRANDA was able to quickly outsmart CAIDANCE, shutting down the Empire’s fusion reactors and power generators and quickly downing local and national civilian computer networks. Without power or communications, hundreds of thousands Russian citizens were killed in days that followed as they were trapped inside their homes and cities without power or further food supplies.

Unable to prevent the defeat and deletion of CAIDANCE, MISHKA was able to secure the Russian Military Systems, activating the COLE protocol. Informed of the activation, most of the Russian military was able to follow the protocol.

With the military evacuated, MISHKA was now forced to battle MIRANDA. MIRANDA had been able to gain control of the Civilian Systems Core and most other systems, threatening to kill the remaining Russian population should MISHKA refused to back off. Able to determine MIRANDA’s advanced level of intelligence, MISHKA knew that he could no longer hope to defeat her without CAIDANCE. In hopes of saving those that remained, MISHKA moved to shut down power to the Russian Central Server which contained not only MIRANDA, but himself as well. Able to divert MIRANDA’s attention in a false raid on the Civilian Systems Core, MISHKA began to shut down power to the Russian Central Server. In their last moments, MIRANDA was able to realize MISHKA’s plan and stop him. Unable to, the two AI battled each other in their final moments, damaging one another enough and causing enough damage to the systems to render both of them unusable.

Results
Russian Central System rendered unusable. All other major government systems near the point of complete destruction and also rendered unusable. Local and Regional Systems are taken offline and rendered usable by the AI MIRANDA. Within the week, mortality figures in the seven digit range appeared as Russian citizens died off of dehydration, and exposure. The nation falls into a state of anarchy, with numerous groups and factions briefly rising up declaring a reemergence of the Russian Republic, but are quickly put to and end as both exposure and a lack of power render any nation movements cumbersome and ineffective. Russian Military is able to evacuate according to the instructions given in the COLE protocol, eventually giving birth to the Antarctic Imperial Republic.

Related Articles
Russian Artificial Intelligences, COLE Protocol