Unsung
First Post
I like that character a lot, [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION]. So is Blahblah actually the name, or just a placeholder? 
Everything looks to be in order to my admittedly untrained eye. (By the way, everyone: let's all assume characters start at Grade 5 unless you have some particular reason you'd like it to be otherwise.) I've read over the rules at this point, but I'll give the crunch another pass once I've gotten a little more practice with them. But let's face it, you're better at that kind of thing than I am anyway.
If your character is the cutting edge, then that tells us something about the state of technology in this future imperfect we'll be inhabiting. There may be other robots, but workable artificial intelligence is new and controversial, especially on such a miniaturized scale. Perhaps the reason people are so suspicious of inorganic intelligence is because they've been burned before? Maybe one of the colonial infranets woke up one day and things got all Skynet (or so it's said) before it was declared a strict no-fly zone.
Perhaps most other robots in this time are clunky, wheeled, distinctly nonhuman models? Out of date and out of fashion. The technology behind something like your character might have existed, but the programming to run it lagged behind, and the cost was prohibitive-- or so they thought.
Did you see Ex Machina? I haven't yet.
[MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION] Multiple perspectives on the issue of upload rights makes for some intriguing characters. If you're leaning toward 3, I'd say go with that for a start. Just because the character isn't much of a combatant at first doesn't mean that can't change over time. Also, if we wanted to really start getting meta and digging into some of the more confusing issues of identity and the concept of self (and really, why wouldn't we?), then what about this: you uploaded a version of your consciousness at some point. One of the things I liked about your early concept was that you touched upon the idea of having multiple versions of the same person online. Maybe one of those people became a popular-albeit-synthetic media personality (a la Max Headroom), while the other was forced underground, and might have picked up some combat skills along the way?
I don't mind you running more than one character if you don't.
Alternatively, for your second character concept, if Shayuri's character were being sheltered by the Culture (or alternatively, if she/it were offered sanctuary by another Earthly nation), then you might have an excuse to play diplomat without having given up your original character concept. The military still wants her back so they can decommission this project for good, but perhaps you can be the one to persuade them otherwise.
--
With regard to the date and tech-level of the setting, I'm thinking along these lines: some cataclysmic event or war that led to a somewhat sparsely populated, heavily balkanized and thoroughly terraformed solar system. Travel through jump gates cuts the time to travel between the planets down to days and hours instead of months and years. Corporations and governments are viciously proprietary when it comes to any developments in science or technology, leading to strange pockets of development, where they may be amazingly advanced in one area, such as neuroscience, computer hardware, and virtual reality, but then woefully underdeveloped in others even by today's standards. All the myriad dystopias happening at once, as a premise.
Is that too depressing? Like Shadowrun, like Cowboy Bebop or Mad Max, there's a sense of freedom that comes of breaking ties with the present/past.
As for Banks's stance on the Fermi Paradox, I think it was actually touched upon once in an interview, and brought up more directly in some of the later books. If they're out there, why haven't they come to see us? The answer is: who's to say they haven't? Basically, the Culture are sufficiently advanced that if they didn't want us to know they were there, we wouldn't; if they didn't want us to know anyone else was there, they could arrange that too. The same goes for other civs of their level, and the next level above that is society-wide transcendence/might-as-well-be-godhead.
There's no Prime Directive per se, and the Involved generally mess with lower-level civilizations as they see fit, but it's considered bad form to simply go in and co-opt entire peoples, planets, and perspectives wholesale. Influence is one thing. Overt displays of power? Très gauche.
Everything looks to be in order to my admittedly untrained eye. (By the way, everyone: let's all assume characters start at Grade 5 unless you have some particular reason you'd like it to be otherwise.) I've read over the rules at this point, but I'll give the crunch another pass once I've gotten a little more practice with them. But let's face it, you're better at that kind of thing than I am anyway.
If your character is the cutting edge, then that tells us something about the state of technology in this future imperfect we'll be inhabiting. There may be other robots, but workable artificial intelligence is new and controversial, especially on such a miniaturized scale. Perhaps the reason people are so suspicious of inorganic intelligence is because they've been burned before? Maybe one of the colonial infranets woke up one day and things got all Skynet (or so it's said) before it was declared a strict no-fly zone.
Perhaps most other robots in this time are clunky, wheeled, distinctly nonhuman models? Out of date and out of fashion. The technology behind something like your character might have existed, but the programming to run it lagged behind, and the cost was prohibitive-- or so they thought.
Did you see Ex Machina? I haven't yet.
[MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION] Multiple perspectives on the issue of upload rights makes for some intriguing characters. If you're leaning toward 3, I'd say go with that for a start. Just because the character isn't much of a combatant at first doesn't mean that can't change over time. Also, if we wanted to really start getting meta and digging into some of the more confusing issues of identity and the concept of self (and really, why wouldn't we?), then what about this: you uploaded a version of your consciousness at some point. One of the things I liked about your early concept was that you touched upon the idea of having multiple versions of the same person online. Maybe one of those people became a popular-albeit-synthetic media personality (a la Max Headroom), while the other was forced underground, and might have picked up some combat skills along the way?
I don't mind you running more than one character if you don't.
Alternatively, for your second character concept, if Shayuri's character were being sheltered by the Culture (or alternatively, if she/it were offered sanctuary by another Earthly nation), then you might have an excuse to play diplomat without having given up your original character concept. The military still wants her back so they can decommission this project for good, but perhaps you can be the one to persuade them otherwise.
--
With regard to the date and tech-level of the setting, I'm thinking along these lines: some cataclysmic event or war that led to a somewhat sparsely populated, heavily balkanized and thoroughly terraformed solar system. Travel through jump gates cuts the time to travel between the planets down to days and hours instead of months and years. Corporations and governments are viciously proprietary when it comes to any developments in science or technology, leading to strange pockets of development, where they may be amazingly advanced in one area, such as neuroscience, computer hardware, and virtual reality, but then woefully underdeveloped in others even by today's standards. All the myriad dystopias happening at once, as a premise.
Is that too depressing? Like Shadowrun, like Cowboy Bebop or Mad Max, there's a sense of freedom that comes of breaking ties with the present/past.
As for Banks's stance on the Fermi Paradox, I think it was actually touched upon once in an interview, and brought up more directly in some of the later books. If they're out there, why haven't they come to see us? The answer is: who's to say they haven't? Basically, the Culture are sufficiently advanced that if they didn't want us to know they were there, we wouldn't; if they didn't want us to know anyone else was there, they could arrange that too. The same goes for other civs of their level, and the next level above that is society-wide transcendence/might-as-well-be-godhead.
There's no Prime Directive per se, and the Involved generally mess with lower-level civilizations as they see fit, but it's considered bad form to simply go in and co-opt entire peoples, planets, and perspectives wholesale. Influence is one thing. Overt displays of power? Très gauche.
