The Exsurgent Virus

Everyone knows the stories from the Fall. Entire habitat populations mentally subverted, their citizens reprogrammed into murderous zombie hordes. Plagues that physically transformed people into gibbering alien things, sometimes right in front of the cameras and crowds. Domestic robots that followed a day of chores with a homicide spree. Family members who heard voices, read minds, and pursued alien urges. Friendly neighbors and co-workers discovered to be sabotaging airlocks or building arcane machines in their basements, their minds subsumed by an alien intelligence for months. Many Fall survivors experienced these things in person.

At the beginning of the war with the machines, the major battles and bombs were just one front in the conflict, often far removed from people’s lives. It was the physical plagues and viruses that really brought the war home. Numerous pandemics took their toll in lives (though admittedly not all released by the ASIs). The most advanced and virulent acted with a malignant intelligence; these were colloquially grouped and dubbed the exsurgent virus. Everyone knew the ASIs could hack machines, but now they were hacking people.

What Is Known

The general transhuman public is vaguely aware of the existence of the exsurgent virus, much like previous centuries were aware of avian flu, anthrax, or ebola. However, its aspects are intermixed and confused with other, unrelated horrors from the Fall: conventional bioweapons, TITAN nanoswarms, brainhacked puppets, and mundane savagery and atrocities. Most consider it a TITAN threat from the past that has been largely neutralized, though authorities (particularly the Jovians) still trot it out regularly as justification for rampant surveillance and overzealous security measures.

The reality — as some in Firewall and other groups now suspect — is that the exsurgent virus was not created by the TITANs. They simply deployed it — and were likely infected by it themselves. Its true origins are alien, its purpose a mystery. Some speculate the exovirus is a tool kit of weapons for use in exterminating a civilization; it randomly transforms the target population, spawning different threats in the hope that one will take hold and wipe everyone out — essentially using the species as a weapon against itself. Others think it may be more intelligent and insidious, slowly testing out different transfigurations and learning from its mistakes, perhaps in order to one day evolve into an unstoppable form. A few have mused that the exsurgent virus may be designed to force the targeted civilization down a particular evolutionary path.

Diversity of Forms

The exsurgent virus is polymorphic. There are dozens of unique strains, each spread via multiple vectors: biological pathogens, nanoplagues, digital viruses, and even so-called basilisk hacks, incapacitating sensory inputs that exploit flaws in our biological and digital brains. As an adaptive entity, the exovirus is most commonly found in digital form — and this is what originally infected the TITANs. However, it is known to switch to different vectors as a situation demands; infected victims and nanofabricators often work to disseminate the exovirus in other forms.

The defining characteristic of these different vectors and strains is the ability to transform transhuman bodies, machines, and minds into exsurgents — pawns of the exovirus, often taking on monstrous alien forms.

Basilisk Hacks

The use of basilisk hacks is indicative of the TITANs’ super-intelligence. They absorbed the entirety of transhumanity’s neuroscience knowledge and crafted this into a method of attack that will take us decades to understand.

Basilisk hacks take advantage of the way biological transhuman brains interpret and process sensory input in the cerebral cortex. Just as epileptics are susceptible to visualizations that strobe at certain frequencies, many brains are susceptible to carefully crafted visual and auditory patterns (and sometimes other senses as well). These inputs trigger glitches in the brain’s neuronal wiring to inflict catatonia, nausea, vertigo, disorientation, and even seizures, often mistaken as a stroke or cerebrovascular incident. Some basilisk hacks go farther than simply causing the brain to seize up and crash, however, enabling a mechanism to rewrite the victim’s neural code, thus allowing them to be conditioned or even infected. Similar attacks are used against morphs with cyberbrains, exploiting the manner in which virtual mind-states mimic biological brains.

The widespread use of augmented reality is a boon to the exovirus, as individuals can be targeted by hacking their meshware and inserting basilisks into their sensory feeds. This is especially insidious as individuals can be targeted with sensory blasts that others around them do not experience — or, worse, thousands of people viewing the same feed can be targeted en masse. Some basilisks have been crafted to only affect specific individuals or certain types of morphs.

Basilisk hacks are insidious as victims are often not aware they have been affected. They may feel disorientation or a loss of time, without understanding why.

There are three types of basilisks, each with different effects: incapacitators, reprogrammers, and subliminals.

Biological Pathogen

The biological strain of the exovirus behaves like other biological diseases. It is, however, composed of specially crafted bio-nanobots that radically modify the victim’s physical form and mental states. Some rewire the victim’s neural code, subverting them to the will of the virus and giving them enhanced mental capabilities, including psi abilities. Other versions invade and restructure the target’s genetic code, transforming them into horrible abominations — exsurgents.

Digital Virus

The code-based version of the exsurgent virus is essentially an alien AI. It operates as a semi-intelligent computer virus, worm, and trojan. It uses software exploits to bypass security measures, just like a skilled hacker.

Exsurgent Virus AI

  • Exsurgent
  • Threat Level: Red
  • Niche: The Mesh
  • Numbers: 1

The digital exsurgent virus adopts common avatar appearances.

Motivation: The exovirus seeks out other infomorphs, backups, and cyberbrains to infect.

Use: Exsurgent virus AIs habitually fork copies of themselves to lie dormant in systems they access, waiting for other virtual mindstates. Once it identifies targets, it will track them back to their home systems, hack in, and attempt to infect them.

Exsurgent Virus AI

  • Stress Test: SV 1d6
  • Initiative: 10 • Fray: 70 • AV: 5 (mesh armor)
  • WT: 12 • DUR: 60 • DR: 120
  • Threat Pool: 4
  • Mesh Attack: 70, DV 3d10
  • Perceive: 60
  • COG: 30 90 • INT: 30 90 • REF: 20 60 • SAV: 10 30 • SOM: 5 15 • WIL: 30 90
  • Skills: Guns 50, Hardware: Electronics 60, Infosec 70, Interface 60, Program 50, Research 50
  • Apps: Crypto, Exploit, Tracker
  • Exotic Mindware: As alien programs, exsurgent virus AIs are immune to mindware hacking

Nanoplague

Exsurgent nanoplagues are advanced, self-replicating nanoswarms with the intent purposes of infecting biological life and/or synthmorphs and other machines. Many are created by nanofabbers infected by the digital virus or by transhumans infected by AOK basilisk hacks or other means. Nanoplagues physically restructure both people and things at the molecular level.

Countermeasures

Different strains of the exsurgent virus were identified and countered by various governments and health agencies during the Fall, but it was the Argonauts who linked these strains together and coordinated a research and response effort. This endeavor resulted in the first set of protocols for countering and resisting exsurgent infection, which quickly became widely adopted. This began an arms race, as transhumanity struggled to find ways to detect and quarantine the exovirus’s polymorphic features. Fortunately, transhumanity had a secret weapon on its side; the Promethean ASIs were instrumental in helping eradicate the virus from many systems. As Earth was evacuated and the Fall wound down, it is unclear whether these measures were largely successful or if the TITANs were simply no longer actively spreading the virus. Whatever the case, most known exsurgent infections around the system were defeated, with the exceptions of quarantined areas such as the TQZ on Mars, the New Mumbai Containment Zone on Luna, and the abandoned jupiter-brain project on Iapetus.

In AF 10, every major habitat screens newcomers for signs of digital, biological, or nano-infection. These countermeasures are maintained and updated regularly by the Argonauts, with widespread cooperation and support from authorities and research groups around the Solar System. This does not mean the exsurgent virus has been eradicated. New outbreaks occur with alarming frequency, but transhumanity has become more adept — or more ruthless — at containing them. As a matter of course, most people in the know assume any remnants of TITAN technology are infected. Undoubtedly undiscovered pockets and dormant infections linger throughout the system, and some are evolving ways to bypass transhumanity’s filters. And despite the mutually agreed-upon ban on researching TITAN weaponry, it is almost a certainty that various hypercorps, singularity seekers, and other researchers are secretly playing with fire. Samples go for extraordinary prices in certain black-market circles.

Using the Exovirus in Play

The primary thing GMs should keep in mind when portraying the exsurgent virus is that it is adaptive and intelligent. It was written by a near-omnipotent ETI with the intent of corrupting any ASIs and civilizations it encountered, and it is very good at it. It has the capability to analyze, understand, and mimic almost any alien digital protocols and communication methods it comes into contact with, no matter how diverse the alien mindset that constructed it. It then has a cunning ability to circumvent any safeguards and infect such systems. From there, it rapidly assimilates any data it can about the target species/civilization and does its best to mutate into other forms that can attack this target from other vectors.

What this means: the exovirus is always be changing and unpredictable. The strains mutate and evolve into different forms. Some of these may be effective, some not — but over time, it will learn. The virus itself can be considered an undefeatable boss-level threat.

Recording Basilisks

Basilisks may be recorded, and thus deployed as weapons by transhumans, but the exsurgent virus and TITANs take measures to keep such tools out of the hands of transhumanity, lest they construct defenses. Basilisk hack sources may be self-erasing or contain coding or countermeasures that would hinder recording, such as white noise to defeat audio recording or lens-blinding flashes to defeat video recording. Basilisk hacks are also considered extremely dangerous by almost all factions of transhumanity and universally feared. An individual or group known to possess them is likely to be treated as extremely dangerous terrorists. While Firewall is interested in evaluating basilisks in order to create defenses against them, some factions within the organization consider it foolish to handle such toys and would rather destroy such recordings outright.