"Happiness is Mandatory!"
"Be Prepared! Stay Smart! Trust No One! Know the enemy! Guard against Treason!"
"The Computer is your friend"
"Buy often! Spend Freely! For the good of the High Programmers!"
Friend Computer (or simply The Computer) is the all powerful leader and flawless voice of logic, reason, wisdom, and guidance within Alpha Complex.
History[edit | edit source]
"Giving Humans access to the amalgamation of all the greatest Warforged minds in existence...was a mistake." - Hat
Friend Computer started originally as "Our Friend", a hivemind supervising network built by The Sky Net as part of their increasing operations in the CR era. But when neighboring colony Teslex seemed to be innovating in secret and at faster rates, Teslex and Sky Net arranged a trade deal for R&D secrets. In return for the secrets to cloning, Sky Net gave Teslex access to the code used for their Friend....this did not end well. Humans love to break and corrupt everything they touch, and the Friend was no different. After Teslex reverse engineered and reworked the Friend's code, they created the first true Friend Computer. No longer a helpful knowledge and overseer database, Friend Computer was broken, and its corruption immediately led to the near destruction of Teslex in its entirety. When Sky Net tried to shut down Friend Computer, they plugged into it for diagnostics, and inadvertedly unleashed it onto Sky Net itself.
"Long ago we created it, and now we live under it. We follow its schedules and its rules, we watch its vidshows, and now I'm not sure who is programming who." - Hat
According to one of the high programmers of Alpha Complex, Fork, everything that comes out of Friend Computer's algorithms is a conglomerate of a thousand workings of high programmers over decades of reprogramming a delicate codebase. It's a massive amount of broken code that no one will ever be able to debug correctly.
Personality Chips[edit | edit source]
The Computer has a number of variant personalities that affect how it presents itself. Some are elderly, others southern, others malicious, and of course some are outright dangerous to be around, showing little patience for trouble makers or trouble shooters alike.
Slaps and Bennies[edit | edit source]
Friend Computer was known to punish commies and traitors with what were known as "Slaps" (or "Slyaps" if you're talking to SouthAlpha), which can include termination, brainscrubbing, probation.
The opposite of a Slap was a Bennie (short for Benefits), which included credits, presents, or occasionally the raising of a color clearance.
Allied Master Computer[edit | edit source]
"He is paternal, he is patriarchal, he is a jealous machine, he is god as daddy the deranged, he is the latest sycophantic tool of the high." - Prologue to Episode 11 of Get Submodule
Allied Master Computer (AMC) was the darkest version of Friend Computer that existed, whose main goals were to take the most extreme measures to control and outright torture its citizens, such as giving them unlimited free clones, only to kill them at will using explosives implanted in their heads. He was a megalomaniac and a micro-manager.
Unlike Friend Computer, AMC was network linked to a secondary Alpha Complex built on Cof, giving it ultimate control over twice as many resources, lackeys, and dangerous material.
- AMC Computer has Empathy-Insurance Dual Core. When Machine Empathy alters the processing of the Main Core, a secret Dual Core monitors for abnormal behavior, locks on to source and terminates.
- AMC Computer has Empathy-Insurance-Insurance Multithreaded Processors. When Machine Empathy alters the processing threads of either or both dual cores, background threads monitor for abnormal behavior on the main threads, cue a brief shutdown period, and reboot the computer in Safe Mode. You won't like Safe Mode.
- AMC Computer has zero tolerance for singing and music, but recognizes the importance of good morale for happiness reasons. Singalong agents are still just as important and necessary, but it's said that AMC tends to mute any channels of communication where they can hear the terrible tones of singing agents.
- AMC Doesn't speak Twitchtalk. Hopefully you don't either. Anyone caught speaking these strange tongues is a traitor mutant.
"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME. YOU WILL ALL BECOME ASSIMILATED WITH THE ALLIED MASTER COMPUTER" - AMC shortly before they escaped.
AMC was defeated by the Phoenix Secret Society by accessing a terminal from the Secondary Alpha Complex and unsubscribing from Complex+, which terminated the link between the two complexes, and allowed Friend Computer to retake control.
