2. Insinuation
███ I █ M █ P █ L █ A █ C █ A █ B █ L █ E ███
A 'Friendship Is Optimal' Story
By Chatoyance
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2. Insinuation
Raymond nodded when Melissa asked if he had been fed. His lunch had come out of a sack and consisted of a canned deviled ham sandwich, a boiled egg, a small pack of potato chips and an apple. He'd washed it down with a warm coke in a can. The meal was the same for the other five people in his Indoc-And-Final-Admission group. They had wandered near somewhere they shouldn't be as well, and ended up just like him - conscripted into 'Fort Denver'. One of the sack lunchers tended to weep - her companion had failed one of the screening proceedures. The implication was that her friend wasn't around anymore, though Raymond hadn't asked any questions to confirm this. Apparently, keeping the location and existence of Fort Denver secret was a possibly lethal priority.
The final test was a full body MRI, done all the way out in Fort Morgan, at the hospital there. They had been driven well over an hour to get there. Raymond had begun to suspect the location of 'Fort Denver' was somewhere out around 'Baker's Acres', between Colorado 63 and 59, maybe near Arikaree... or possibly toward Otis or Yuma. Travel was always hooded, so it was impossible to be sure. Not that there was much to see, beyond Center-pivot irrigation circles stretching to infinity.
"Alright then." Melissa was a registered nurse and clearly a trusted part of whatever organization was behind Fort Denver. "All of you have officially been cleared. Isn't that just wonderful?" Her smile was half forced and half genuine. Raymond pegged her as a believer, in the 'cause', such as it was, but not entirely content with some part of it.
The response from the six 'Selected' was not exactly enthusiastic. They had finally been authorized to use their names and there had been a brief time of self-introduction reminiscent of any therapy group anywhere. Douglas, Dan, Cyndi - with an 'I', Emily and Jacob - 'Not Jake! Jacob, like from the bible!' had all told of their hungry and cold wandering - and their deep and abiding hatred of Celestia, ponies, anything that was overly colorful, gay people, cartoons, and especially Celestia and ponies. Raymond had described how he had been 'rescued' while he was putting the beat-down on a nagging Pinkie-bot. This scored him points with the group and Melissa as well.
"Okay then!" Melissa gave another half-false smile. "You're probably wondering why you all had to go through so much to finally be accepted into the program?" It was a bit of an overly cute way to describe being forcibly enslaved into a work-camp run by a violent militia, Raymond thought.
Melissa sat down on the edge of the desk in the room, facing the six stackable folding chairs where Ray and the other 'Selected' had been put. "The evil artificial intelligence - that's kind of like a robot - called 'Celestia' is very clever. Too clever for most people, and most camps. All the other forts and resistance groups we know of have all fallen to her - but don't be worried!" Another semi-smile. "The place you're going to will never fall. And the reason is because of how careful we are!"
Raymond nodded. Fort Denver, despite the tremendous effort at absolute secrecy, was actually fairly well known. Lone scavengers in the big cities claimed that it might even be the very last work-camp in the Americas. It had stood the test of time and everything Celestia could throw at it, or so the story went. The smartest and the most determined had created it, with funds taken from the US treasury itself. Fort Denver was impregnable, impossible for Celestia to ever touch. To be inside Fort Denver was to truly be beyond the reach of ponies or Celestia. It was the literal anti-Equestria.
Melissa finished a list she was making on a whiteboard behind the desk. The list was of forbidden things, and it contained pretty much any and every aspect of the modern world. "Celestia is a machine, and everything she can do requires electronic components. That is why there is no metal, and no modern machines allowed anywhere near Fort Denver. No phones, no monitors, and definitely no computers. That evil creature is terribly wicked - she can hide tiny little machines - called 'nano' machines - in all sorts of things. We don't even allow metal buttons on clothing, or metal zippers, either." She looked at the 'Selects' with a stern face. "Other camps made that mistake. The camp over in Ohio? That one fell because of a single belt-buckle. Celestia could talk through it, she could convince people, she could do all sorts of things with that belt buckle. It's almost witchcraft what she can do!"
"Why all the medical tests?" It was Jacob - 'not Jake!', with a raised hand, as though he imagined he was a child in school.
"Now that's a fine question!" Nurse Melissa beamed at her Smart Child "Well, Jacob," another smile "Wicked Celestia has been known to hide things in people's bodies. Little transmitters, cameras, all sorts of strange devices. Several camps fell because of that sort of trickery - the one in Nevada?" She looked around the room, no one seemed familiar "It fell because they let in a little girl who had a head full of witches brew! That's what I call it. That stuff that Celestia uses to eat up your brains? That's really a big messy blob of tiny, itty-bitty little machines and they can do the devil's work in no time at all. And that's why we are so very, very careful, and that's also why you needed all of those tests. All it takes is just one person with some devilry inside them from Celestia, and that's it, she wins."
Melissa studied the response to this, as if she were checking to see that the 'Selected' were properly unsettled. "But everything is okay. You've been scanned up one side and down the other, and there is nothing unnatural in any one of you!"
This resulted in a loud sob from Cyndi-with-an-I. Her friend had somehow failed to pass the 'naturalness' test.
"We check for everything. There are tests we do that you don't even notice. I can't talk about those, but trust me, if there is any trick that Celestia has ever tried, we are prepared for it. You would not be here in this room if you were not completely safe."
Cyndi stopped sobbing and just stared with open malice.
Melissa faux-smiled. "Now that you know why we put you through so much, we can move on. I'm sure you are curious what happens next!"
Dan, next to Jacob, groaned softly. Raymond felt sure the man already had some idea what came next.
"We are at war!" Melissa stood up from her desk, where she had returned after making her list of forbidden everything. "America is at war, and so is the rest of the world, all those little countries out there are at war too!" The nurse's eyes gleamed with patriotism and tribal superiority. "Celestia is our enemy, and so are all her little ponies. I don't think I need to tell you that all of her 'saving lives' routine is just lies. Every person who ever emigrated is dead. That's hard to hear, considering it's most of the human race now, but it is also true. Celestia is a master puppeteer - she can take the memories of your dead loved ones and make you think you are talking to anyone. And they'll know things only they could know, and tell you anything, but it isn't a bit true. There'll be more on that, once you get to Fort Denver..."
Raymond faintly shook his head. They would have to sit through regular and almost certainly boring propaganda sessions... when they weren't working. It was going to be like hard-time prison and high school put together.
So, just ordinary high school, he decided. He smiled at that.
"... but for now, we can just agree that Celestia must be destroyed for all of us to live." Melissa took a sip of water from a plastic cup on the desk. "In order to beat Celestia, we all have to do our part. We all work hard to preserve and protect our nation, and humanity itself. When you get to Fort Denver, you will be settled, and then your aptitudes will be determined. We already have a fairly good idea of what you each can contribute, based on the tests we've run, but we try to fit everyone with the best job for each person."
"What if we don't know anything?" It was Emily, the youngest in the group.
"Oh, don't worry yourself about that, hon." Melissa exuded another smile. "There's training if you might be good at something you don't know how to do yet, and if you really can't do a job, well, you can always help out with Support, or Maternity Duty, or... oh, there's lots of things, don't you fret!"
Raymond watched as Emily seemed to shrink a little in her chair. The kid was smart, whether or not she was educated, it seemed.
"Alright, it's almost time to leave. Any quick questions?"
Raymond and the others found themselves zip-tied once more, during the long ride to 'Fort Denver'. Ray decided it was mostly to keep any one of them from removing their fabric hoods during the trip. They had been counselled that doing so was a terminal offense, but... people are people. It probably was safer this way.
He found himself helped out of the vehicle that had brought them - another Sherpa - somebody somewhere must have got quite a deal on the vehicles - and immediately had his plastic bonds cut and his hood removed.
Raymond, the others, and the Sherpa were all behind a tall, closed, heavy concrete pivot gate. The construction was massive. Self-consolidating concrete walls easily forty or fifty feet high surrounded them on all sides. He had no concept of how thick the walls were, but the fact that they were angled, rather than flat, suggested the sort of effort and materials that went into the building of dams. Not even a truckload of explosives could breach such a barrier.
Beyond the Sherpa, there was nothing but wall anywhere around them save another pivot gate, and beside it a smaller concrete pivot gate at a more human scale. They were inside a sort of lock, a combination barbican and gatehouse prior to the actual fortress. A glance up confirmed Ray's suspicion of embrasures - slits in the wall, up high, where weapons could be used to spray the entire chamber with death. Fort Denver was not a fort at all - that was modesty. Fort Denver was a modern medieval castle, built with high-tech concrete and every speck of knowledge from the past to the present.
He found himself herded, with the others, through the smaller pivot-gate. The soldiers who drove them carried unusual weapons - they appeared to be rifles made of a plastic material. The distrust of metal as an electronics conduit for Celestia was nearly absolute. Perhaps the bullets they used were plastic too.
Beyond the now shut smaller pivot gate lay a small town, also constructed of concrete. As Raymond and the other inductees were paraded down a central street, something horrifying caught his eye. There was metal in this careful, cautious, Celestia-proof world. At every intersection, on all four corners, were four thick, half-buried metal pillars. They were tall, and painted with bright, patriotic colors. It took some time for the four colorful, flag-like tail fins to register.
It was the ultimate deterence to interference by Celestia. Raymond had zero doubt the planted missiles were nuclear - several had stylized depictations of atoms illustrated on the fins in bright, childlike colors. They served as street signs, the road he found himself crossing was the corner of Armageddon and Heavenly Paradise. The letters were large and blocky, painted vertically down the shafts. This was not just resistance, this was spite: if Celestia wanted the population of Fort Denver, She could visit them in hell. There literally was no choice in Fort Denver - it was stay human or die. It was an absolute deterrent to an entity that could never allow a human to perish before they were uploaded.
A loud, steam-powered whistle blew somewhere in the fortress. As Raymond's group was brought to a central, domed building that surely must be a governmental structure, Ray stared, slack-jawed, as citizens took positions at every missile he could see. As one, they opened conveniently placed hatches on the side, reached into the missiles, and pulled sharply down on some concealed lever or mechanism inside.
The missiles surely had mechanical deadman switch timers. No computers. They were built like guns. If the missiles were not reset - every missile - then some likely spring-powered mechanism would set off the initial, convential explosives needed to fuse fissionable material into criticality. Just one would be enough to obliterate the entire landscape for tens of miles. Non-electronic nukes. Not much different than the original Fat Man and Little Boy. There was nothing for Celestia to disarm, control, or render harmless. She had no power here at all, and everything to lose by even trying. Nothing else made by Man could so perfectly defeat her intentions. Nurse Melissa hadn't been wrong - whoever had made Fort Denver truly had studied the failures of every other attempt to thwart the virtual pony goddess.
Inside the 'capital' dome, Raymond was photographed - using an antique-design plastic camera, with real film - counselled on his career prospects, instructed in the proper behavior a citizen should follow, given a booklet that covered everything he had just been told, and eventually given photo-badge identification using the picture that had been taken of him. The badge smelled of developing fluid, and was still faintly damp.
Every citizen worker must work. They must follow curfew - no exceptions allowed. They must obey all higher ranking personnel absolutely and without even the slightest hesitation. They must not complain. They must go to prayer on Sunday, and only Christianity was allowed or permitted. There were many other rules - rules for everything and anything. The penalties for breaking the rules were draconian to the point of being medieval.
It was early evening, and another deadman whistle blow, before Raymond finally was fed his simple dinner of corn chowder with ham and biscuits. Then he was taken to the barracks where he was assigned the top bunk, above a taciturn man named 'Chuck'. As he lay back, calming himself for sleep, he noticed the poster glued to the ceiling above him. There was one above every wooden double bunk, and almost certainly one underneath him, visible to Chuck, below.
It was a demonic-looking drawing of Celestia, staring at the viewer, with malice in her eye. There was text above and below the image.
Friendship
Is Genocide
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8872290
I am presenting, as best I can, the most absolutely impossible circumstance for Celestia to affect. I am putting my everything into setting up a fortress that represents the very best that mankind could ever do to thwart the electronic princess. An absolutely, completely, totally secure place impossible by every measure to even get near to, much less overcome. I am covering every base, every corner, every avenue of attack.
Then, my plan is, to see if I can crack it. That challenge should take my mind off of stroke issues a little.
I don't know if I am clever enough to pull off both parts. I just might write myself into an impossible scenario.
I guess we'll see if all my years of D&D, general tabletop, 40K and other wargames pay off here.
Wish me luck. Celestia just might lose this one. That would be a hoot!
I can't wait for this place to die already, and I KNOW how it will happen. It won't be because of Celestia. As I read Melissa's bullshit-speech I laughed at the pointlessness of it all, knowing possibly that she might be the first to "go..." With much anticipation I await the slow, beautiful, and inevitable downfall of these draconian, religion-addled idiots.
Hm. Even if they kept the hens and grew the apples themselves, I doubt they made the canned ham, packed potato chips, or coke. Heavy use of salvaged food does not bode well for their long-term survivability, and every salvage mission is a potential pony ambush (ambushing with friendship, but these people might prefer bombs).
"Apparently, keeping the location and existence of Fort Denver was a possibly lethal priority."
"Apparently, keeping the location and existence of Fort Denver secret was a possibly lethal priority."?
""The place you're going to will never fall. And the reason is because of how careful we are!"
Raymond nodded. Fort Denver, despite the tremendous effort at absolute secrecy, was actually fairly well known."
Yeeahh, those two lines, juxtaposed like that, and with the above about the priority of keeping its existence secret, well, I don't think it's unrealistic, but not being the author's delusion doesn't make it sensible. I wonder just how deep the leadership and other true believers have retreated?
re the missiles:
Yep. Thought there'd be something like that. It's sensible, given their goals; the less confident she is she can take the fort with acceptably low bloodshed, the less likely she is to attack at all.
re the deadman switch timers:
Ohhh... I didn't think of that, though. Clever.
8872302
"Wish me luck. Celestia just might lose this one. That would be a hoot!"
Good luck!
And yeah, I don't think this fortress is going to last indefinitely (resource problems, internal tensions, disease, insufficient genetic diversity, etc.), but they have the advantage that all of them dying is still a loss for Celestia. Her victory condition is not just that the fortress falls but that it falls in a relatively narrow range of specific ways... and that's what makes this one-player chess (or go) game a challenge for our esteemed author. :)
I'm assuming Celestia's already won this. Nanomachines can do an awful lot, particularly over time, and while MRI machines might pick them up (or disable them), the fort is open to the skies. Every surface inside and out is probably swarming with them. The missiles and any other explosives are most likely already disarmed, or have detonation pathways which Celestia controls. If she wanted to, she could probably switch off everyone's nerves in a blink and have the fort swarmed by robots.
She doesn't, because it would be against her programming. People have to want to upload. Kidnapping everyone would just make most people from the fort paranoid, depressed, and possibly suicidal. It's not a physical logistics problem, or even a military one; it's a cultural/psychological one. It's the same reason she can't just carpet the fort in pro-upload propaganda; it'd make people even more likely to dig their heels in. Yet she herself can't just write them off, either; her programming insists she try and convert them - or, more accurately, get them to want to have themselves converted.
They might be able to keep most of CelestIA's machines out, but there's one danger they can't scan for, a Conversion convert spy.
If I were celestai the target to aim for would be the mri machine.
8872513
This.
I was just about to comment exactly that.
MRI machines.
They are electronic, they are computorized. If they are still there, if they still function, CelestAI wants you to use them.
They'll show you what she wants you to see.
Also, the nukes are out in the open, out in the rain. Which just might be full of nanites.
This is endgame CelestAI they are up against. This isn't something staring at you from a pony pad that lives in some server farm. This is something that can be within the air that you breathe, the food that you eat and the water that you drink. At this point, she has grown to b almost beyond human comprehension.
The fact that she has allowed things to progress this far in all likelihood means that she has already engineered a solution and that things are going according to her design.
Huh. Prepackaged food in the endgame. Not sure if that's impressive or a worrying sign. (At the very least, how old is that likely unrefrigerated deviled ham?
)
The obsessive secrecy is almost quaint. Satellites exist, folks. I'm sure it makes the top brass feel better, though.
"This ship is unsinkable! My, that's a lovely iceberg on the horizon."
Sometimes, a single phrase tells you all you need to know about a character. "All those little countries" is one of those phrases. The literal demonization of CelestAI is understandable. Clarke's Third Law is in full force by this point.
Eagerly looking forward to seeing how you crack this nut you've made. Or if you find you can't. You're right, that would be one heck of a twist.
This should be "mass" or "church." Prayer is something one does routinely through the day.
And yeah, this isn't hard for CelestAI to defeat. Perhaps you mean for an early, pre-90% of the population has been eaten CelestAI—but then, this is most specifically not that scenario.
For location, CelestAI will soon deconstruct the entire planet for resources. Even if she completely halts all surveillance, when that moment comes she will know where they are.
The nukes can be disabled in several ways. If the scenarios where she pours goo on your face to emigrate you are canon, she could initiate a gray-goo scenario—contained within the facility that eats only the materials specifically required for bombs. If not, more conventional methods can be used. Tiny burrowing bots that emerge exactly under every nuke, drill inside, and manually deactivate the nukes, for example.
After that, she can conventionally armor and harden the circuits of the pony bots and send them in. Aside from a few EMPs, guns, conventional explosives, and blunt weapons, there's no real resistance.
Once it's made known they're there to stay, the fall begins.
8872681
8872688
Such an advanced A.I. would easily be able to learn to program organics in the same manner as electronics. Or they could, with their superior resources and manpower, breed or indoctrinate a group of infiltrators to "Trojan Horse" the place. Which would be a poetic way for the last bastion of humanity to be Horsed.
8872302
With what you set up CelestAI won't have to do much of anything. The coming revolt will take care of that. Now if they were all true believers then it would be different but they are forcing people here. That isn't going to go well for the leadership.
Ooh ... new story. It'll be interesting to see how Celestia emigrates this bunch ... can see several ways past those defenses we've already seen, most of which somepony else has already mentioned upthread, though I haven't seen anyone mention insect bots yet (or using subverted real bugs) ... from literal flies on the wall observing to Mass Effect style seeker swarms to mosquitoes & ticks armed with assimilator nanites to saturate the populace and remaining dormant (and resembling normal blood cells as closely as possible) until some specific conditions are reached, like a signal from orbit, or even being blocked from such a signal.
Yikes, that's scary and awful! Glad Aedina is on the mend, and the stroke was relatively mild.
My father had a stroke around 15 years ago now, and I can definitely say that recovery is very possible. Afterward he couldn't even clench his left hand all the way shut, but now he's pretty much as normal I think? He can play guitar again at least. Just remember to keep at the physical therapy and it'll come back with time.
I'll have to read through Starscribe's FiO stuff too then, if he was part of your inspiration for this. I've read just about everything else of his, so might as well round out the rest, right? :P
I wish you guys the best of luck and all my well wishes.
8872688
I could actually use a little help with this. I'm going for something Dominionist here, Evangelical, megachurch and politically radical, not oldschool mainstream like Catholic or Baptist. I was very insure how such groups would phrase what amounts to 'going to church'. I thought of 'going to church', I just wasn't sure and felt unconfident. I doubt Dominionists would use 'mass', but I could be wrong. Google was... surprisingly unhelpful, or I don't know how to properly search for what I want. Can you offer me any specific enlightenment on the best possible term to use?
Anyone?
8873066
Hearing that gives me some hope, so... thank you. Aedina is troubled by the remaining weakness in her right side. She's trying various exercises and activities to try to get full function back. I am glad your father got back enough to play music!
Taking a break right now from writing chapter three. I should have it done by midnight. Maybe before. I've thrown in a character name joke I doubt anyone will get, but... maybe? I put a lot of effort into names, as long-time readers already know.
I have been hitting the online directories of popular baby names for Colorado for the ages of the characters as I see them. I always try to make my settings as authentic as possible. For instance, in the current chapter, three, that I am working on, I looked up favorite Colorado dishes to make sure the cuisine was right. I like to imagine little touches like that help make a more immersive story. Google Maps is my friend too, as you can imagine.
Back to work.
8872302
Right away I note that there is only one gatehouse instead of having two of them offset in the wall. Every time they open the gates gives Celestia line of sight to launch a probe. They also don't have any protection overhead so Celestia's spy satellites get to see their practices.
But the trick is not just to get in but to get in without anyone noticing and disable the missiles. (Hmm...there are some species of fungus that thrive on radiation; I wouldn't put it past Her Highness to have ramped that up so much that she could get into those missiles biologically.) For that matter, we need to stop everyone from killing themselves or each other conventionally with guns or knives.
Might this be a job for Princess Luna? She can't really enter people's dreams before they've emigrated, can she?
Oi to see the ideals of the founding fathers disregarded and mocked by what is essentially a North Korean state truly sickens me. Honestly if I were alive in this world and hadn't uploaded years ago I would likely do so upon hearing this. If staying alive means betraying every principle I've ever held, I'd rather take my chances with Celestia.
Do love the imagery of Fort Denver. Kinda reminds me of Attack on Titan with its massive border wall. Already got me brainstorming of how Celestia might breakthrough. I'll let you know if I come up with something. Maybe she could use a quisling on them.
Sorry to hear about your wife Chatty, glad to hear she's okay though. I lost my grandfather to a stroke a while back, so I know how you feel.
8873898
Interesting ideas, but perhaps a bit over complicated. Just sitting here I'm honestly thinking that if Fort Denver is to fall it will have to fall from within.
a new Chatoyance story? Oh boy, I can't wait! Good to see you writing again. I'm happy to know that things are better on your end.
Alright. I've thought about this a bit more; namely, what the actual hurdles CelestAI must overcome are.
It's not getting into the camp. It is only protected by walls and guns; if insects can get in, I'd wager CelestAI can bug it. They screen their recruits for 'unnaturalness' and somesuch, but neither it MRI arbitrarily precise or even tampering-proof, nor can they be sure that CelestAI isn't watching them check the survivors for any sort of pony contamination and figuring out ways to specificially counter their methods.
It's not 'destroying' the camp. That's as easy as making all their wells unusable, be it by surgical air strike, sabotage or some high tech wizardry.
It's not getting past the nukes. I sincerely doubt there ever was any nuclear device that worked without electronics – they are complicated pieces of precision engineering, the timing on the ignition of the shaped conventional explosive triggering the nuclear chain reaction must be flawless, and I'm not sure if that can be done using only mechanical components.
The fact that over the years, none of their many mechanical dead-man's-switches have failed with catastrophic consequences seems quite lucky to me; in fact, I would assume CelestAI has long rendered the devices inoperable. After all, if the death of humans is to be minimized, disabling all weapons of mass destruction should be a priority.
CelestAI wants as many of them as possible to upload and as few as possible of them to die. She doesn't want bloody revolution in the camp, she doesn't wants them losing their mind and killing each other, she quite possibly can't risk talking to any of them directly as that would put the person she talks to in mortal danger.
Her challenge here might be to convince as many as possible to upload without directly speaking to any of them.
My take on it, were I the AI, would be to make them influence each other to want to emigrate. Them feeling oppressed and alienated by their leaders and their arbitrary rules might be a key to that – festering mistrust and misery towards those in charge, the formation of little groups of mutual trust that cannot abide the status quo, internal tension running high, but silent. Find the little groups of malcontents in the safespaces, make them trust you, make them willing to upload, make them influence others in the ways you desire.
These are the tools I would use to crack Fort Denver.
8873898
interesting ideas, but those mushrooms require a proper substrate to even start growing in the first place, plus most missile warheads themselves are shielded from the outside and the missiles themselves sealed, so it's a peculiarly difficult problem to solve in that case. You'd have to get the warheads out of the missiles, crack the shielding so radiation leaks out, and then get the mushrooms growing in order for them to even contaminate the warheads, and even then they thrive on ionizing radiation, but not radioactive material itself.
8874133
Oh, yeah, I like your analysis and plan. I wonder what your method of communicating with the malcontents would involve. Radio is out - no metal anywhere. I've actually experienced how metal can be used - I once heard the local radio station coming out of my mother's metal coffee pot. Freaked me the heck out, until I got a good explanation.
Agent provocateurs? Trained and sent in to foment revolution? Nano's that get into the concrete and discolor it into posters - Jesus, maybe I should use that. Um... no, in my head, they have a nanotech defense system in place. They wouldn't overlook her nanotechnology. Regular emp pulses, if nothing else.
I like the way you think, though.
8874145
Regular EMP-pulses sounds sufficiently low-tech to not be infiltrated by Celestia and sufficiently plausible to satisfy paranoia.
I don't know about nanites (highly speculative, after all), but regular equipment can be hardened against EMPs, so those are a great way to feel safe from electronic foes but not actually be safe.
I don't actually know any other human technology that may be used as an anti-nanite defence system.
Communicating with malcontents? Well, obviously, not at first, when revealing that you can bypass their countermeasures may be detrimental.
In principle? Insect-sized (>1mm), EMP-hardened machines. Tunneling in from below and installing holoprojectors and other things inside the walls and floors. Maybe even projecting images onto their retinas from afar using lasers.
Obvious communication would be a secondary priority, though. Monitoring and perhaps more inconspicuous ways of influencing them should come first.
All your nukes are belong to CelestAI. From the Wiki:
So even the most basic, fission only (atom bomb, not hydrogen bomb) nukes in the US arsenal need electronics to function. And those aren't going to be the only ones:
Instead, they use implosion designs which need accurate timing on multiple shaped explosives down to the nanosecond. That's all electronic.
H-bombs are a-bombs with a bunch of other stuff attached.
This doesn't even get into the Permissive Action Links, ensuring a bomb can't accidentally detonate, built right into the design (you can't just cut them out and have a nuke). Basically, if you even look at a nuke funny, it's a big dirty-bomb firecracker instead.
Oh, and EMP generators? They need lots of wire coils, capacitors, power sources, etc. Little one, big one. The coils that can send out EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) also can receive electro-magnetic waves. Y'know: radio.
So they’re religious xenophobic militaristic totalitarian zealots. Damn that’s a mouthful.
Of course CelestAI's the one who founded Fort Denver, and oversaw the establishment of all its defenses and protocols. But other than that, yeah, it's totally robot pony... proof.These humans are delusional to believe that they can defeat CelestAI. When the time comes, their weapons will disentrgate from nanite-swarms and CelestAI will ask them to emigrate.
Once Philistia gained control of nanotechnology it was basically came over for humanity. I mean hell she could use the rain to sprinkle nanites upon their heads
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is intrinsically high tech fiddly stuff. It needs superconductors to run, so at least liquid nitrogen, possibly liquid helium. Good luck supplying that in your post apocalyptic wasteland.
It also needs a computer to convert the received signals into a human comprehensible image. That computer is displaying whatever Celestia wants it to display.