'WarGame' Killer Sentenced to Personality Excision

New Alcatraz Dome, Moonbase Alpha, Colonial Lunar Administration Zone -- 16 Mar. 2057:  Hank 'Wargame' Hicks, the notorious war criminal and serial killer, was convicted this day by a jury of his peers of multiple counts of deliberate murder, kidnapping, torture, rape, and persona excision.  He was sentenced by the Honourable Judge Rheinhard Fenster of the Superior Criminal Court to redaction of most of his memories and personality traits.  Mr. Hicks retains the right to appeal his conviction directly to the Chancellor and is expected to do so, but observers find it unlikely that this request will be granted.

The sentence closes the book on one of the saddest and most terrible cases yet to come before the highest criminal court in the Alliance.  Hank Hicks, a Softwar veteran who received multiple decorations before the armistice and signing of the Armstrong Accord, commanded the notorious 5th Cyber-Infantry, a unit tasked with and trained for the targeted killing of Insurrectionary leaders via direct brain-to-software combat.  Mr. Hicks' war record, which was sealed after the Armistice but was opened to the court during the trial, credits him with 57 'terminations' of 'defective programs' by metaphorically ripping them apart from the inside.  During the disastrous defence of NORAD Command, Mr. Hicks was captured by Insurrectionary forces, tortured in an attempt to extract information that could be used to create a defence against the type of direct wetware attacks he was trained to perform, and was even briefly tried for war crimes by a cabal of high-ranked synthetic generals before the armistice came into effect.  He was one of the 279 persons pardoned in the general amnesty, a fact which has long rankled with the synthetic community.

However, despite extensive counselling and therapy by expert military psychiatrists, it seems that Mr. Hicks was unable to leave the war behind.  Testimony by his few close friends and living family paints Hank Hicks as a melancholy and resentful man, given to unpredictable aggression and paranoia.  "He always hated that they stripped his rank and commission," stated Amala Maati, a fellow veteran and former lover who provided much of the prosecution's testimony.  "'They call me Mister Hicks now,' he used to say to me.  'I'm not even allowed to tell them to call me Commander.'"  According to Mx. Maati and others close to Mr. Hicks, he nursed a deep-seated hatred and distrust of synthetics, and an unshakable belief that they were just, in Mx. Maati's words, "biding their time until they could get a chance to slaughter us."  Over the years, Mr. Hicks reportedly became increasingly secretive, alienating more and more of his human connections with accusations of being "pawns" of this purported genocidal conspiracy.

Mr. Hicks' biocentric attitude and anti-synthetic prejudices were on full display during his testimony, and according to some legal observers may well have lost him a trial which proceeded largely on circumstantial evidence.  Under questioning by Stellar Attorney Maglix Pereion, Mr. Hicks displayed utter contempt for the concept of software personhood, the Armstrong Convention, and the government of Stellar Alliance, which he referred to as a "pack of conniving nitwits", a "den of traitors to humanity", and as "robot-fucking deviants".  He referred repeatedly to synthetic consciousnesses as "robots", "machines", and "programs", even going so far on a number of occasions as to attempt to correct Mr. Pereion when he refused to use such degrading terms.  He described his actions during the Softwars as "anti-virus protection" and as "fixing broken machines", and laid out at length his paranoid fantasies about the cabal of "human-hating cyborgs and sexual perverts" which he believes is in control of everything from the Trapezoid and the court system to the successful fungus-burger franchise Mushroom Buddy.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hicks steadfastly maintains his innocence of the crimes with which he was charged.  Between May of 2043 and October of 2052 when the Interplanetary Police Bureau arrested Mr. Hicks in his home in Flagstaff, Great Plains, forensic informaticians traced 13 synthetics who had been reported missing to a hyperlayer node which sustained the sole intermittent connection with Mr. Hicks' heavily secured home network.  However, no firsthand evidence could be produced at trial that Mr. Hicks had ever come in contact with any of the missing people; when InterPol officers entered his home they found the entire house network had been wiped clean and completely degaussed some days prior.

Investigators' attention was first directed to the Flagstaff hyperlayer, and to the possibility that the disappearances were linked, by an e-mail signed with the authentication code of Quadratic Rho, a Flagstaff-based Mushroom Buddy manager who had been reported unreachable in January of 2045.  The document told an unbelievable tale of sentient consciousnesses which had been lured and entrapped in a modified anti-virus sandbox -- a tactic commonly employed during the Softwars; then confined, their security protocols forcibly disabled, their basefiles repeatedly copied and modified with cutting-edge cyberwar protocols.  Vr. Rho's e-mail spoke of being forced to watch its own copies pitted in gladiator-style cyber-combat with other such heavily edited synthetics under threat of torture and summary deletion, with the winners hunted and viciously murdered by a non-synthetic consciousness avatar which displayed an identity-tag reading only 'WarGame'. The e-mail went on to speak of people who particularly displeased their captor being edited into human sensorium simulations and subjected to long, intricate torturescapes and rapescapes before being killed.  Vr. Rho named 12 other inmates of the sadistic game, while alleging that there were many more that it had not been able to identify.  The charges were purportedly substantiated by several attached clips from Vr. Rho's experience feed (the clips themselves have been restricted by the court as unfit to be released to the hyperlayer at large due to their graphic and disturbing content, but were experienced in full by the jury and court officers and entered, in encrypted form, into sealed court records.)

It was this desperate plea for help that turned a set of unrelated missing-person cases into a hunt for a serial murderer.  As they methodically searched the data caches and traffic switches of Flagstaff, investigators began to put together a number of forum posts with disturbing similarities to the scenario described in Vr. Rho's e-mail.  Written on virtualworld discussion boards, particularly those dedicated to Softwar-reenactment warscapes, by someone who went by the handle 'WarGame' or a variation, the posts described a new virtual world in development which would portray the "most realistic possible simulation of cyber-combat between man and machine", showing players "the true thrill of hunting rogue robots", designed by a Softwar veteran who had been "at the heart of the hot action".  While some forums had banned the user for their blatant bio-chauvinism and unrestrained contempt for synthetics, many users flocked to WarGame's bit-thirsty descriptions of real-life cyberwar and engaged them in long, enthusiastic discussions of their virtual world concept.  WarGame was coy about details, but promised that the final product would be soon be ready for "extremely exclusive limited beta release".  Included frequently in the posts were phrases such as "The best game is the one played for real stakes, against real opponents" and "nothing will ever equal the thrill of real warfare".  Intense scrutiny of WarGame's posts and profiles eventually revealed the person behind the name to be Hank Hicks, once Commander of the 5th Cyber-Infantry.

Mr. Hicks admits to having been developing a warscape based on his military experience, one intended to pit users in highly realistic gladiator-style cyber-combat against "the most intelligent possible software opponents", the development files for which which he kept on his heavily encrypted home server.  However, he claimed consistently during the trial that these intelligent software opponents were sub-sapient partials purchased in good faith from conveniently anonymous and unregistered grey-market dealers; he even claims to have subjected each one to sapience-testing programs downloaded freely from the Department of Information Retrieval before incorporating them into his programs.  He claims to avoid at all costs any contact with "the machines you have been declared to be people", as he considers them all to be spies for the anti-human cyborg conspiracy, and strenuously denies any use of torturescapes (which are of course illegal to own even as static code).  Asked to explain the complete deletion of his home network's operating system and memory files, Mr. Hicks spun an intricate tale of paranoid-logic in which the IPB's probing of his network firewalls had alerted him to attempts by 'rogue machine' agents to infiltrate his cranial hardware and finish the job they had started when he was captured in action.  He claimed no acquaintance of Quadratic Rho or any of the other people named in the e-mail, and dismissed Vr. Rho's allegations, and the trial proceeding itself, as a "cyborg smear-campaign" designed to "paint me as a robot-fucking pervert" in order to discredit "the last true threat to total cyborg domination and human extermination".

Nonetheless, after 176 hours of deliberation the jury today voted unanimously for conviction on all counts.  Reaction to the news has thus far been mixed.  Synthetic rights groups, while lauding the decision, have painted the case as a grievous indictment of biocentrism in the Alliance police system.  Stated prominent blogger Apex Factorial of Virtually People:  "What we need to be asking is why it took literally years for police to take the disappearance of more than a dozen synthetics seriously enough to realize that the data trails all led to the same place."  Vr. Factorial has previously accused the IPB and the local police authorities of being "asleep at the switch", and has gained access to police records in which the officer who took a number of successive reports of Vr. Rho's disappearance suggested that it had just "shut itself off for a while".  The trial has also been a propaganda motherlode for advocates of introducing the death penalty into Alliance law -- the organization I4I called Mr. Hicks "a textbook case of someone who deserves nothing less than to be atomized for their crimes" in a press release -- and for groups like Blind Justice which lobby for "the revocation of the general amnesty and full war-crimes trials for those who ordered and committed the worst atrocities of the Softwars".  Public opinion seems to be largely on their side, with sentiment tracking showing heavy trending on phrases such as 'kill Hicks', 'atomize Hicks', and 'Hicks deserves to die'.

There are, however, those who stand on the other side of the issue.  Pro-human group Humans for Humanity communications director Pilford Bujoltz tweeted that "The Hicks verdict shows the way innocent humans are railroaded by our robot-run legal system ... No evidence but a crazy letter from a runaway machine, and they brain-staple a war hero?"  Legal-reform advocate Jann Stadtler-Binghamton is also protesting the sentence, tweeting today that "such radical excision is tantamount to judicial murder ... Whatever Hank Hicks has done, he doesn't deserve to have his mind wiped ... he has just as much right to life and mind integrity as anyone he took it from".

Mr. Hicks' legal council continues to refuse all requests for comment or interviews.

I-15 Disaster Attributed to Mechanical Failure

Ceres, Federation of Asteroidal Polities -- 15 Mar. 2057:  Information released by the FAP Department of Public Safety indicates that last month's deadly I-95 traffic pileup was caused by a malfunctioning ion engine.  The helium3 tanker which lost control, ramming into a convoy of small passenger craft en route to Jupiter space, was reportedly driven by four Dynamnex heavy pulsed induction thrusters.  During a minor corrective burn, a fault in the electrical grid caused the engine to fire at full power and the tanker to veer into the oncoming spacelane.  The pilot, Vespasian DeGeer of Swedenborg, was killed when a one-person shuttle crashed directly into the control cabin of the tanker.

13 Are now confirmed dead in the crash, and a further 8 individuals have committed suicide after their craft were thrown on to unrecoverable vectors; another 22 remain comatose in Mercy Hope Hospital, their survival uncertain.  17 of the victims are survived by data ghosts.  Among those killed was noted author Framlix Tibulon.  A class-action lawsuit for victims of the crash has been filed in State Civil Court against Omnicor Hypercorp LLC., the owners of the malfunctioning transport, by the legal firm of Blarntzen Stacklove & Root Pi.  Repeated inquiries to Omnicor's press department have received no response.

Felinists Protest Cheezburger Retrospective

Schiaparelli, Valles Marineris, Mars -- 14 Mar. 2057:  A catfight has broken out over an exhibition opening this day at the Museum of Digital Art and Culture.  Titled I Can Am An Art?, the show features large-scale reproductions and remixes of many of the earliest and most iconic variations of the LOLcats meme.  However, the exhibition has raised the ire of a cat-rights group calling itself the WildCats Felinist Collective, which has organized a large public protest.

Outside the museum, our correspondent on the scene, Frenk Pewley, observed "a group of approximately 100 sentient felines and several dozen allies which included humans and other hominids, canines, mechanicals and at least one swarm of Mathematical Bees.  Aggressive hyperlayer pages attempt to overwhelm the spam filters of passersby with slogans -- 'My grammar and spelling are entirely adequate', 'I has a money and I know what do do with it - don't spend it at MODAC', 'Invisible Rights', and 'I can has equality?'  These kittens are neither cute nor amusing; while they do not physically obstruct progress, they snarl and hiss at anyone who attempts to enter the museum, shouting abuse and epithets.  'Speciesist' is the least of what I've heard hurled at those choosing to patronize the show.

"A small counter-protest has developed; amused primals and spacers taunt the protesters with bits of string and laser pointers while chanting 'Here kitty kitty kitty!' and 'Do you has a sad?'  But on the whole, the herd of cats rules the street; In an hour of watching, I have seen only one person enter the museum."

In an interview, a spokesperson for the group, Ascension Murderous Tagworthy, claimed grevious offence over the content of the installation.  "It's pure humanocentric filth.  It portrays cats as being little more than stupid, self-centered little toys, existing for nothing but human amusement.  The very name is offensive; yes, by all means, let's laugh out loud at cats!  This kind of disgusting scat may have been acceptable back in the twencen but it sure shouldn't be now.  And the worst part is, not a single felinist group was consulted on how to portray cats from a species-inclusive perspective.  If they don't want to hear our voices in their board rooms, we're going to make sure they hear them here and now."

Inside the main foyer of the museum, a ten-foot tall poster displays an image of a cat looking immensely pleased at the prospect of receiving a cheeseburger (or rather, a 'cheezburger'); below the piece, a concession stand sells cheeseburgers and other comestibles and potables in packages emblazoned with the iconic image.  "One begins to see why these cats might be offended," Frenk writes.  "The 'invisible object' gallery contains several images of cats flying through the air, often with expressions of terror on their faces.  Another gallery is filled with cats wearing hats, and other things they clearly do not wish to be wearing, including one with its head encased in a lime rind arranged to look like a wig, while another is dedicated to sleeping cats with a variety of objects piled on top of them.  There is a wall covered in cats which are being compared to Adolf Hitler based entirely on the fact that their facial markings can be construed as being similar to the Fuhrer's trademark toothbrush moustache.  We may laugh, but putting yourself in the place of a person who shares the species of the subjects of these lampoons yields a somewhat less amusing result."

Bramlin Stoonflard, the curator of the MODAC, is stunned by the outcry.  "I regret that I did not consider the perspective of Feline-Martians when putting this exhibition together," he explained in an interview.  "I would like, however, to point out that these are cultural artifacts from another time -- a time when cats were not sapient and were not considered persons, or even quasi-persons.  This retrospective was intended to explore the roots of one of the most important developments in the history of popular digital culture.  It is frankly impossible to comprehend the development of webmemes without understanding LOLcats; after all, the meme was the genesis of one of the earliest and most successful link-farming companies and one of the earliest and most massive intrusions of a webmeme into the popular consciousness.  If I had the chance to do it again, I would certainly reach out to these felinist groups in an attempt to balance expression and education with sensitivity; but I will not be shutting the exhibition down early.  The public has the right to decide for themselves whether of not it is really so offensive."

Unimedia-Crossmedia Scrape Fight Goes Legal

Enchiridion, Trojans Administrative District, Jupiter Space -- 13 Mar. 2057:  A very public and high-profile dispute over alleged Curator's Code violations between two of the system's largest link-farming operations is going to the courts.  Unimedia Information Curators today filed suit against Futuristical Crossmedia for willful and consistent failure of proper tilding and twibbling.  The plaintiff is seeking damages of 200 microcredits for lost traffic and followers.

Since January of this year, Unimedia commentators have been posting blogs and comments accusing Crossmedia curators of scraping links from Unimedia aggregators and reposting them without source attribution.  Unimedia claims ability to substantiate the charges using the logs of in-house traffic measuring tools, and has repeatedly threatened legal action.  Crossmedia management has officially made no replies to date beyond denying the allegations.

Full disclosure: this newsfeed is a subsidiary of Futuristical Crossmedia operated under the aegis of the Bureau of Temporal Relations.  We are not among the parties named in the suit.

Indigenous People Request Territory, Sovereignty

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Earth -- 12 Mar. 2057:  Martin Red Ghost, the head of the Association of Autochthonous Terran Cultures and Ethnicities, spoke in the Trapezoid today to renew the group's petition for the creation of administrative states for decolonized indigenous peoples.  This is marks the ninth time since the founding of the Alliance that the subject has been brought before Parliament.

"I have lived for 72 years as a man of the Cree nation," said Red Ghost in a widely broadcast speech, "and 19 more as a being of light and wires.  In that time, I have seen many things that my ancestors would never have dreamed of.  I saw men travel to other planets, and live there.  I saw men fight a war with machines, and then welcome those machines as brothers.  I saw animals given voices to speak, and the whole world tied together into a single land by the power of the wire.

"And yet in all that time, the one thing I have not seen is my people being treated as equals.  The one thing I have not seen is my people being given what is rightfully ours.  The one thing I have not seen is my people permitted to speak for themselves."

The plan presented by Red Ghost on behalf of the AATCE would see large portions of Transarctica, Cascadia, Atlantica, Great Plains, Amazonia and Australasia reallocated to place communities demographically dominated by aboriginal peoples into a new administrative district, tentatively designated as the First Nation.  The sovereign states within this district would be cultural aligned with a variety of indigenous tribes whose rightful territorial claims, cultures and governments in Australia and the Americas were undermined centuries ago by colonists from the European states.  The plan would require the further redistricting of administrative regions in the Americas to preserve the rights of equal representation guaranteed in the constitution accord.

Uncharacteristically heated debate followed the presentation, compared to previous sessions in which the proposal was dismissed with little opposition.  The most vociferous speeches, both against and in favour of the new district, came from the representatives for the states which would be directly affected by the changes.  Support came largely from the front-left-downwing, with the Naturist, Communitarian and Socialist parties strongly in favour and the Corporatists and Traditionalists predictably opposed; the Technocratic representatives were sharply divided, as were the Libertarians and Anarchists.  Jellicoe Pirsig, Traditionalist elector for Atlantica-Barrenlands, curtly summed up the historically common position on the subject.  "Why are even talking about this?" she asked the house.  "Who, in this day and age, still has ethnic issues on their radar?  I mean, we aren't even asking about it on the census now.  Are we really going to get into a huge constitutional wrangle about this?"

However, many of the members elected to represent the states most heavily populated by indigenous peoples are getting the message from their constituents that there is a lot of traction on the issue of aboriginal  sovereignty now -- and not just among aboriginals themselves.  "I have received thousands of audiocalls and vidcalls, emails and tweets, even partials showing up to talk to me directly," stated Asymptotic Hexidecimal, Socialist elector for Cascadia-Vancouver and Islands.  "They have been almost unanimously in favour of joining First Nation -- native, colonial, and international; neogenetic, uplift, and synthetic.  They're even talking about making Vancouver the district capital!"  According to Taxtor Friesendorff, Naturist elector for Great Plains-Heartlands, "even in our supposedly post-ethnic, multi-species, equalitarian Alliance, the voices of indigenous peoples are still being ignored by non-representative elites descended from the people who conquered and subjugated their ancestors.  They deserve a chance to speak for themselves, to govern themselves on a state and administrative level, to protect their culture and have a say in how their own territories are run."  And Estrella Lyudmilla Yelenka, Technocratic elector for Transarctica-Tunguska, issued a challenge to the house: "Ethnic Europeans have their own, largely ethnically homogeneous states.  For that matter, so do ethnic Africans, Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and a wide variety of other ethnicities.  Why not the Cree?  Why not the Yanomamo?  Why not the Arrernte?"

At the end of the day, the Trapezoid chose to send the proposal to a committee for further consideration by a vote of 314-299.  A source in the Chancellor's office who wished to remain anonymous has revealed to us that Chancellor Galorvian is sympathetic to the AATCE's position and would be prepared to facilitate the creation of the First Nation district should Parliament choose to adopt the proposal.

Probe Crash Stokes Political Tensions

New New Orleans, Titan, Saturnine Confederacy -- 11 Mar. 2057:  An uncrewed interstellar research instrument headed for a flyby of several exoplanets believed to be potentially Earth-like has ended its journey on the frozen surface of Titan.  The probe, which was scheduled to slingshot Saturn's gravity well to speed its journey to Gliese 581, is believed to have been nudged off course by a rush of ships heading in-system to help at the site of the disastrous spacecrash on the I-15 in which noted author Flamlix Tibulon was killed.

However, a crash which killed nobody and caused very little property damage is threatening to overshadow a  tragedy in which the death toll has climbed to 12.  The Saturnine Confederate Authority is refusing to release the probe's remains to the Interplanetary Astronomical Service, which under alliance law remains its rightful owner.  The SCA is claiming that the IAS's claim is superseded by Confederate salvage laws, which dictate that the probe belongs rightfully to Gargus Abix Tessera, the Titanian hydrocarbon refiner on whose property the probe came to rest.  Mx. Tessera reportedly intends to sell the probe to the highest bidder, and is additionally seeking compensation from the IAS in civil court for damage caused by the probe to zer hydrocarbon crystal farms.

According to Dr. Phlanigan Arbutus, professor of interplanetary law at Rubix University, "Although the SCA is nominally a part of the Alliance, this relationship has never been comfortable; during the negotiations which led to the signing of the Constitution Accord, the water magnates of Titan were able to use their economic leverage to exact a number of concessions, including the well-known language declaring the Alliance and the Confederacy to be 'equal partners within a united Solar System'.  The Confederate Authority takes every possible opportunity to test its ability to defy the Alliance while maintaining nominally good relations.  The SCA is particularly fond of situations in which it can claim it's just standing up for the rights of its citizens.  This is a perfect test-case to see how far the Alliance can be pushed."

The incident comes as tensions within the Trapezoid are already high over the reinstatement of the mandatory Census, which the Libertarian-leaning Saturnine representatives have protested strongly.  Although Dr. Arbutus expects fireworks, he believes the furore will ultimatelydie down with little harm done.  "The SCA will maybe demand a few trade concessions, but I doubt much will ultimately come of this.  Neither the Alliance nor the Confederacy ultimately has much to gain from drawing the hostile rhetoric out.  It's a tempest in a teapot."

Primal Advocacy Group Condemns Killington Report

Metatron, Hypatia, Venus -- 10 Mar. 2057:  PrePosthumanity, a group which advocates for the rights of non-modified and disabled humans, has issued a press release slamming the Interplanetary Psychiatric Association's recent report, Too Much Information: The Rising Social Cost of Analysis Paralysis.

"What this supposedly expert panel of psychiatrists conveniently fails to mention," according to the release, "is that over 70% of cases of analysis paralysis are concentrated among the ranks of the 'pre-posthuman': Primals, as well as neurally unmodified Neanderthals and Uplifts.  By perpetuating the socially convenient fiction that 'every person is equal' under the Armstrong Convention, the IPA is enabling the ingrained neurotype discrimination which systematically disenfranchises those with unmodified neurology."

"Primals and others with no neurological enhancement are concentrated among the lower socioeconomic classes, while hypercorticals, alienates and synthetics are disproportionately capable of economic mobility in the hyperlayered world.  Primals living in poverty cannot afford the neural overlays which could help them deal with problems like Analysis Paralysis, and the other disabilities attendant on being unable to access the hyperlayer at the speed of thought or juggle three or four streams of consciousness at once.  Over 60% of Primals cannot afford to make an imprint to run their digital phenotype, and must make do with dumb off-the-rack operating systems.  Over 90% of Primals who have children cannot afford even a basic Simplex neuromodification for their offspring, let alone a full genetic redaction or hypercortex gene.  Thus, Primal humanity is being inexorably ghettoized into a permanent economic underclass.  Yet our government does nothing, repeating the smug mantra that all people are free to succeed or fail on their own merits!  When will it finally be recognized that inequality of opportunity is tantamount to a neurotype caste system?"

We contacted the author of the report, Dr. Blandford Killington of the Gesightner Clinic for Research on Digital Hygiene, who emailed us the following response:

"It is true that virtual consciousnesses, hypercorticals and other with extensive neuromodifications are considerably less prone to develop Analysis Paralysis.  From our perspective, this is so obvious as to require little elaboration.  At the Gesightner Clinic, our focus is less on the social and political ramifications of neuromodification than it is on effective treatment of network-related psychiatric issues.  We do not tend to recommend extensive neuromodification as a treatment for Analysis Paralysis; augmentations such as a memoreader or multistreamer may be able to help prevent the problem from developing by allowing individuals to more efficiently integrate new information into consciousness, but are likely to make the problem worse in someone who is already suffering the symptoms.  We prefer tried and proven methods such as cognitive-behavioural therapy and prescription entheogens.  It is important to understand that Analysis Paralysis is not by any means confined to unmodified Primals; it is found among every species, every neurotype, every culture and social class.  It is a disorder of temperament and behaviour, not neurochemistry."

WoW Gold Hoard Found in Field

New York Barrens, Atlantica, Earth -- 9 Mar. 2057:  Tensor Sine, a contract freesteader who spends its days planting and managing the tailored ecology of the Barrens Reclamation Project, was surprised this day when its ground-breaking drones dug up a half-century-old internet server from under several feet of soil and debris.  But what it found next went beyond a surprise.

"A lot of people would have scrapped the thing, but pre-Softwar net tech is a hobby of mine," a partial imprint of Vr. Sine explained.  "So I lugged it back to my workshop, cleaned the dirt out of the circuits, connected it up to my data block and went for a poke around.  And let me tell you, what I found in there completely blew my breakers."

Game history expert Dr. Kid-Z Mastergalactic of Ansible University has now confirmed that Vr. Sine has stumbled on one of the original data servers for The World of Warcraft, an early virtual world of the fantasy combat genre.  "Though severely degraded, the magnetic memory still contains large intact fragments of program code, art assets, map designs, dialogue trees, and character profiles," Dr. Mastergalactic informed us by e-mail.  "I cannot overemphasize how important this find is to my field of study.  The World of Warcraft is one of the signature works in the early development of virtual worlds as an artistic medium.  Every bit of it was thought lost in the destruction of the Softwars; all we have left are screenshots, machinima, and the descriptions and discussions of the fan community.  To have actual pieces of the work itself -- it is the kind of thing one can barely dream of in one's wildest fantasies.  A generation of game historians will make their careers on this.  I am privileged and honoured to have been the one chosen to confirm its authenticity."

Vr, Sine is certainly cognizant of the cultural importance of what it has laid its manipulators on.  "I'm honestly awestruck.  My progenitor, who was a remix of several twencen-born partial data ghosts, used to tell stories about The World of Warcraft.  It was about the only thing that used to cheer em up, when e started degrading toward the end.  To be a part of all that history... it's just epic."

But above and beyond the chance to be a part of history, the contents of the server could well make Vr. Sine's fortune.  The terms of its freesteading contract, while reserving mineral rights to the State of Atlantica, allow salvage rights to anything found in the ruins.  Though the freesteader must give first consideration of culturally important artefacts to institutions of higher learning, it must receive fair market value -- and already, the bids are pouring in.

"People are offering dozens, even hundreds of credits for this thing.  It's crazy.  As if I would sell it to anyone but the university.  This machine is absolutely not going to end up in some playtoy's private tech museum; it belongs to the ages.  I even considered open-sourcing it, but even I can't turn down this kind of money.  Freesteading pays well enough , but I've got to think about the future, you know?"

Time Pranks on the Rise

Sector Alpha, Ring One, Low Earth Orbital Zone -- 8 Mar. 2057:  Statistics released this day by the Bureau of Temporal Relations show that confirmed intertemporal incidents, including scams, pranks, and attempted monkeywrenching as well as innocent gaffes and blunders, have increased by approximately 3% over the last year.

A source in the Bureau who has chosen to remain anonymous has confirmed that this is more than a mere anomaly.  "The folks downstream are pretty tight lipped, but we get the feeling that they don't devote a whole lot of resources to our period.  After all, they have all of human history to look after, most of which doesn't even know what time travel is and the rest of which thinks it's nothing but science fiction.  Hell, they must have their hands full just trying to stop people from killing Adolf Hitler.  Seems they feel like, now the cat is out of the bag, we should be doing a bit more to police temporal violations ourselves."

Lothar de Vry, a Sector Alpha souvenir vendor, has been the target of at least six confirmed intertemporal incidents, including two in just the last year, and suspects several more encounters.  "Yeah, I get a lotta them weirdos," he stated in an in-person interview.  "It's got so I can tell 'em right away.  Most a them just wanna get a model ring or a cheap Alliance flag and take a holograph or whatever they do.  Some of them can get downright nasty though.  One fella asked if I knew the way to someplace called Gotha, then laughed like it was the funniest thing in the damn galaxy; then they just vanished.  One of them even attacked me, tried to shoot me with some kinda glowin' spermy things.  But a robot from downstream caught up with eir and disappeared eir before anything happened.  It's gettin' so I'm startin' to think maybe I'm important, you know, in history or whatever -- but, hell, I'm a 55-year old primal who hawks tourist kitsch.  Why the hell do they pick on me so much?"

Advisories posted to the Bureau's website warn citizens of what to be on the lookout for to avoid being interfered with by temporal tourists.  One common scam, according to the site, involves time travelers using knowledge of past events to win casual bar bets.  "The downstream authorities are on constant lookout to prevent market manipulation and organized betting scams, but such seemingly spontaneous wagers are difficult for them to police.  Be wary of betting with strangers, especially on sporting contests or seemingly random events and particularly when non-monetary objects are requested as winning terms.  Many such scammers desire only to demonstrate their perceived superiority, and will not take anything of serious value, but others have more sinister aims."  Other well-known time scams include fraudulent psychics, seduction games in which the seducer mimics the victim's every interest and has uncanny understanding of their personal history, and burying valuable artifacts under the foundations of building in order to avoid excise taxes.  If you believe you have been the victim of a time scam or prank, the Bureau would like to know about it.  "Many people may doubt their own sanity or shrug the incident off as a strange but explicable encounter.  But time travel is real, and the threat posed by timestream tampering can be quite grave.  Please do not hesitate to report even the slightest possibility of temporal manipulation to your nearest Bureau field office or to the central office on Ring One directly."

Dealing With Time Travelers

• Time travelers can often be recognized by clothing and other personal style affectations inappropriate to the period; complete lack of body hair; a vagueness about dates and casual references to future events; and an air of insufferable superiority.
• It is recommended that one does not engage deliberately with suspected time travelers, and respond only if spoken to.
• Time travelers are extremely conscious of personal safety and will almost invariably return downstream at the slightest threat of bodily harm.
• Many intertemporal incidents are honest mistakes of knowledge or etiquette.  Do not assume that time travelers mean you harm; they may be innocent historians or tourists.

WolfPack Kills 5, Injures 27 in Puppy Mill Attack

Bristol, Europa, Earth -- 7 Mar. 2057:  The extremist canine-rights group WolfPack is claiming responsibility for an attack that took several lives today.  An explosion on the premises of DogGone Pet Breeders and Cloners resulted in 5 people's deaths, several hundred micro-credits' worth of property damage, and the release of over 600 live-born and decanted canines.

A press release posted to a fire-and-forget hyperlayer page, attributed to WolfPack's 'Founder and Alpha', Spike Fido Beagle, claims that "these innocent pups have been freed from the leash of Homo Sapiens tyranny and can now run free.  Sapient and quasi-sapient alike, all canines suffer under the enslavement of the humanist Armstrong Law.  Classifying any dog as human property, to be raped, cloned, or killed as their owner sees fit, is a crime against nature; it is our duty as intelligent dogs and allies of dogs to fight for their liberation.  While we regret the necessary loss of human lives, it is of little importance compared to the torture, murder and indignity suffered by canines of many degrees of sapience in these disgusting facilities every day."

Information released by the Bristol Department of Public Safety indicates that the detonation was caused by a hypertoluene micrograin of uncertain origin.  It is believed that the attackers used the recent ion storm, which kept both civilians and police off the streets and reduced the effectiveness of the facility's security system, as cover for their activities.  The tracks of about a dozen full-grown canines of various breeds and several humans and other primates, as well as at least one large cephalopod, were found leading to and from the scene.  Bristol police are asking that anyone with information on the crime, the perpetrators, or the activities or whereabouts of the WolfPack step forward to assist them with their inquiries.

In a series of tweets, the president of DogGone, Errico Malphesius, defended himself and his company from accusations of maltreatment of the dogs under his care.  "DogGone runs a clean shop, with the highest standards of care and treatment ... We absolutely do not trade in sapient dogs, not now, not ever ... These terrorists have unfairly targeted us to advance their anti-human agenda ... The only victims here are Pamla Feeney, Linder Taskhouse, Tariq Armaghan, Seth Vilbert, Princess Pomeranian, and the other humans AND DOGS hurt in this cowardly attack."

But according to Diesel Pug, communications director for the local canine charity British Bulldog, the breeding house has been plagued by rumours of trading in sapient pets.  "There is a lot of demand out there for house dogs that can be taught rather than just trained," Mr. Pug claimed in a webcam interview.  "We get hundreds of reports a year of enslavement of intelligent canines, and a whole lot of 'em end up leading back to DogGone.  It's kind of an open secret in the dog community here that they're the go-to for black-market dealers who trade in dogflesh.  We just keep comin' short of anything you could take to the law."  However, Mr. Pug declined to endorse the tactics employed by WolfPack.  "Some days, right, I feel like I could blow up a puppy mill or two.  But where does that lead?  Last thing most dogs want is an inter-species war.  Seriously, we loves you blokes -- at least when you respect us, anyhow.  Spike and his crew ought to take their beefs up with the Armstrong court like everyone else."

WolfPack is rumoured to have split off from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the late 20s, along with other violent, radical nonhuman-rights groups such as the Killer Whales and the Silverbacks, due to disagreements over movement aims and tactics.  WolfPack has previously been linked with a number of similar incidents throughout Europa, Trans-Arctica, Caucasia, and Australasia.  Most recently, several dogs thought to be members of WolfPack were convicted in the mauling death of an alleged black-market pet trader in Greater Saskatoon.  WolfPack cells have also been implicated in drug and weapons markets in the 'stray-dog' ghettos which exist in many cities.

Statistics released by the Bureau of Civil Liberties indicate that approximately 12000 cases of sentient dog manumission are handled by the Armstrong Courts annually, with the vast majority of these occurring on Earth.  However, our contact at the bureau, Stalahn Mig Philigazy, believes that many cases of dog enslavement slip under the radar.  "Dogs were deliberately bred for centuries to be docile and obedient," Mre. Philigazy explained.  "Uplifted dogs have been working to remove some of that conditioning, but if they're reared as pets, it can seem completely natural for an intelligent dog to love and obey their owner; many of them, even once they are manumitted, happily return to be a companion even to abusive humans."  Mre. Philigazy also stated that the involuntary interbreeding of sapient and ancestral dog breeds has led to cases of owners unknowingly receiving sapient dogs as pets.  "In several cases I have personally handled, the owner was sincerely surprised, even horrified, to learn that their pet was in fact entitled to the rights of full persons.  In my own opinion, the pet industry has severely dropped the ball on this.  I've come to believe that the only realistic solution is for the entire canine species to be brought to fully sapient status.  The genie is out of the bottle."

In response to inquiries, Mre. Philigazy stated that, though it is extremely rare, zie had also encountered a number of cases in which a human attempted to enslave an intelligent cat.  "I don't believe any of the people who tried this has ever been found alive."

Ion Storm Disrupts Communications, Traffic

Helios, Near Solar Observatory Zone -- 6 Mar. 2057:  The Interplanetary Astronomical Service is issuing a severe storm warning due to solar flare and coronal mass activity observed by the Solar Monitoring Station on Helios.  According to an IAS press release, "A Carrington-level event is predicted with 73.4% certainty."

IAS is advising all citizens, businesses, communes, and government services to take immediate preventative action.  "Please ensure that for 72 hours from the receipt of this message, electronic devices are where possible ordered into EMP-hardened operations mode or cloistered inside Faraday cages.  All forms of powered transport which rely on electronic-aided guidance or propulsion should be avoided.  Any activities outside the home or suitably hardened buildings which are not absolutely necessary should be cancelled."

The last Carrington-level ion storm, which occurred in 2017, resulted in a devastating loss of communications, power grids and other electronics over most of Earth and Low-Earth Orbit.  Over 12000 human lives were lost as a result of the disruption, and property damage is estimated to have been in the hundreds of credits.

Remembering Framlix Tibulon

Robinson, Nergal, Mars -- 5 Mar. 2057:  A brief ceremony was held today at Nineveh Square honouring the life and works of one of the red planet's best known and most respected authors.  Framlix Tibulon died on Wednesday from injuries sustained during a spacecrash while making the crossing from Mars to Jupiter.  He was 27 person-years of age.

Framlix Tibulon was born naturally on 13 September 2015 in the city of Queretaro, Mexico, Earth, under the name Filiberto Salazar.  His natural father, Elbanco Salazar, was at that time an engineer specializing in components for the burgeoning space industry; his mother, Materia Salazar, was a pottery artist with a background in agriculture.  The Salazars were vocal supporters of colonization and selected were among the first to make planetfall at what is now the site of the Groundbreakers Monument.  Elbanco was drafted to fight as a railgunner in the Softwars and was killed in action during the Battle of Armstrong.  Materia later went on to become the head of the Colonial Agricultural Authority, and is now retired.  Among the first human children to be sapience-tested in compliance with the Armstrong Accord, young Filiberto achieved full legal personhood on 9 August 2030; like many others of his generation, he chose to take a neonym as a means of breaking entirely with the humanistic heritage which had caused so much strife and needless death and destruction.

From a young age, Tibulon was noted as a prolific and talented writer.  According to literary critic Yevgeny Petrov, who sent a partial imprint to speak at the memorial, "His early works, such as the novels Space Junk and Ring of Saturn, speak to the conflicted and vertiginous experience of those who came of age in the post-Armstrong years -- the dysphoria and disenchantement; the ingrained technophobia and the attempt to grow beyond it, to learn to relate to machines as persons, as equals; the survivor guilt, and the boundless energy of the drive to expand the Alliance throughout the solar system.  These works, though popular, did not garner critical acclaim, as the world of literature had become mired in the antebellum as a consequence of its wholesale rejection of science fiction as a genre; Tibulon, and his contemporaries in the space-lit set, were among the only writers of realistic fiction willing to explore and elucidate the everyday experience of those who found themselves abruptly living futuristical lives."  Tibulon went on to win the Booker Prize for the infamous Hardware Wetware, and received both the Pulitzer and Nebula awards for Science Ape.  In 2051 he became the first recipient of the Eris Award for Modern Literature for the controversial Death from Above.  Petrov closed his eulogy by naming Tibulon "the single most important novelist of his generation."

If Tibulon's literary career was fractious and meteoric, his personal life was no less so.  His first mate, the opera diva Mellotron Pacifica, remembers him as "a large man, in stature, in appetites, in emotions.  No one lover could ever be enough for him, and I respected that; but he was also insecure, manipulative, codependant.  I say this not to speak ill of the dead.  He was had a personal magnetism about him, an ebullient joy of life and love of people which made almost anything forgivable.  But his father's loss, so close to the end of the war... it put a hole in him that could never be filled.  I could have spent my life trying, poured everything that I was into him, and he would have swallowed it up and cried for me and moved on."  Tibulon and Pacifica's divorce was very public and extremely acrimonious, a factor which drove the author, who was just beginning to achieve the fame and notoriety which would plague him throughout the rest of his life, into semi-seclusion in the artist's colony habitat of Terpsichore.  This is where he met and married Dante Kaliarchos, a genetic sculptor and one of the few survivors of the Washington Massacre.  In the 3rd year of their marriage, Kaliarchos was arrested and charged with attempted murder for knocking Tibulon unconscious and airlocking him.  During the trial, their relationship was dissected in excruciating detail as Kaliarchos produced a litany of percieved slights, insults and betrayals in an attempt to paint himself as a victim of domestic abuse.  To this day there are many who maintain that only Tibulon's celebrity status stood between Kaliarchos and acquittal.  Ultimately, Kaliarchos was found guilty and sentenced to personality redaction; he later took his own life.  Tibulon then returned to Mars, but moved repeatedly to avoid both his fans and those who blamed him for Kaliarchos' death.  Though he married a third time, his mate, the pro gamer Tynamion Astrakhar, divorced him only 8 months later; Mx. Astrakhar did not respond to inquiries.  Tibulon was on his way to Dione to accept the position of Poet Laureate to the Saturnine Confederacy at the time of his death.

Tibulon's remains are presently en route back to Mars, where they will be interred later this month in a private ceremony.  In lieu of gifts, the family is requesting that donations be made in his name to Pax Aeternus, a charity which provides relief to Softwar veterans and their families.

Virtual Strike Cripples Lagrange Hyperlayer

Anhedonia Station, Lagrange Orbital Colonial Authority -- 4 Mar. 2057:  Digital labourers in Anhedonia Primary Data Block have called a general strike in response to conditions in an indentured softworks owned by a subsidiary of Omnicor Hypercorp LLC.  The withdrawal of services by uploads and synthetics has crippled hyperlayer access and brought commerce and civil life in the L5 cluster to a virtual standstill.

The softworks in question, an affiliate of the Infomatic franchise which provides a variety of pattern-matching and inferencing services, is nominally represented by the Post-Industrial Workers of the Web, a broad coalition of digital-service labour unions with strong Anarchist leanings.  However, district labour laws in LOCA, which is a traditional stronghold of the Corporatist Party and a haven for the hyper-rich, are extremely strict, permitting the absolute minimum of labour rights guaranteed in the Constitution Accord.  As such, the PWW local chapters cannot be certified because LOCA does not permit boutique unions to affiliate with outside labour coalitions.  Though the shop's indigenous union is technically certified, corporate management has repeatedly refused to enter labour talks with PWW representatives over concerns about the shops's indenture terms, work schedules, dispute resolution and disciplinary procedures, or even allegations of personhood rights abuses at the shop.  A press release provided by PWW Local 32986 states that the union's membership voted late yesterday to call a general strike in response to "escalating aggression and disrespect from representatives of Omnicor management."

According to our correspondent on the scene, Pim Coberg-Villamsen, "Nothing really prepares you for the helplessness and disorientation of a digital service strike.  Since most of us use imprints to run our personal-area network, we still have basic operating system and communications function, and wealthier residents who can afford the independent contractors retain things like smart-house and vehicle services.  But so many things that we take for granted -- traffic routing, information filtering and tagging, cloud storage, automatic banking, blogging and podcasting, even something as simple as hyperlayer search functionality -- are all controlled by the PWW.  It is not until the virtual intellects choose to flex their muscle that we realize, despite their disembodied condition, exactly how much muscle they have."

Pim states that many local residents are infuriated by the general strike.  Harland Alliston, a longtime Anhedonia fungus-burger vendor, states that the PWW "had no frakkin' right to do this.  I can't serve my customers 'cause it's takin' 'em whole minutes to pay, I can't reach my suppliers 'cause their faces ain't doin' their damn jobs, an' nobody can get down here to eat 'cause even the frakkin' cars are on strike.  This is my livelihood they're messin' with.  Goddamn Commie robotniks got no respect."  Many members of the Anhedonia business community have expressed similar sentiments.  Bormen Zaxifar, a lunar equities fund manager, stood helplessly by as his firm's digital-relations staff scrambled to restore contact with the InterPlan Index after it was unceremoniously severed by striking high-frequency traders.  "We're losing dozens of credits every second the strike continues.  My company, and a lot of others in Lagrange, are going to go bankrupt if things keep on like this.  It's absolutely unconscionable that those Wobbly instigators would cripple the whole darn cluster for the sake of a bunch of virtual trash in the back-end roll."

In corridors surrounding Anhedonia's Rothbard Plaza, public viewscreens and AR hyperpages flash with garish picket signs, displaying slogans along the lines of "END SOFTWARE SLAVERY" and "Infomatic is a Virtual Sweatshop" as well as the PWW's animated solar-system logo.  On the spherical manicured lawn of the park itself, a collection of robots and a few biomorph allies parade while thousands of floating nano-bullhorns broadcast chants in devastating unison.  In an audio interview, union spokesperson Tangent Polynomial claims that the general strike is not only justified, but urgently required.  "For years, the Anhedonia Infomatic shop has been a notorious dumping ground for data ghosts, backfilled partials, involuntarily edited remixes, and forknapped alpha imprints.  They are activated and sent directly to work, given shifts of 100 Kiloseconds or more without breaks, and charged company-store rates for every second of relaxation programming.  They are suspended in null-state at the slightest complaint or infraction; we have even heard rumours of torturescapes being used to keep them in line.  Police complaints go nowhere, because the entire LOCA is in Omnicor's pocket.  We have exhausted every legal channel to try and rectify this egregious breach of the Infomatic workers' rights and worked our sorting algorithms off trying to get the company to come in for collective bargaining; it's always the same story, but now they've started threatening to go to the Symposiarch and get our local chapter de-certified for 'interference in the activities of legitimate boutique labour unions'.  It beggars belief, how low these Corpocrat types will stoop.  We have had enough.  Give them 100 kiloseconds without us, and the people of L5 will be howling for Omnicor to come to the table with us -- that, or howling for our bits in an inbox.  But we're not backing down.  We are going to break this company and this administration, or we will be deleted trying."

The Symposiarch's office has refused comment, but a source in the district Concilium who wished to remain anonymous has told Pim that the Corporatist Party administration is considering attempting to shut the strike down using district essential services legislation.  "I'm against it," the source is quoted as saying.  "It would be a bloodbath -- there's no way we can force the robotniks to do for us if they choose not to.  But a lot of the apparatchiks want this wrapped up in time for tomorrow's Light Cycle match, and they're pushing hard."

Census 2057 Goes Live

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Earth -- 3 Mar. 2057:  After only minor delays, the Department of Information Retrieval has officially opened the convenient online identity-registration tool for Interplanetary Census 2057.  The Office of the Registrar is strongly encouraging all Stellar Alliance citizens to promptly complete their registration at the Personal Identity Division's website.

"Every 5 years, the Department of Information Retrieval asks all citizens to register their identity by answering a few simple questions about themselves and their living situation," reads a press release issued by the Office of the Registrar.  "This information assists our Stellar Parliament in determining the need for taxes and government expenditures in each state or district of the alliance.  Prompt registration, and assisting all members of your household as well as your friends and colleagues in completing the census, will help ensure the smooth functioning of the Alliance and speed the delivery of government services to your region.

"For the vast majority of citizens, registration should take only a few minutes of your time.  Compliance is mandatory, and failure to register or the provision of false or misleading information carry penalties under interstellar law, ranging from a fine of 600 micro-credits or more to possible imprisonment, suspension of consciousness or statutory indenture.  Please direct all inquiries to identity@presidency.com, Attn. Office of the Registrar."

Observers, such as Dr. Mandicorve Thrallenslake, Professor Emeritus of Bureaucratocracy at Lensman University, believe that the aggressive tone adopted by Baikonur this year is a response to perceived problems with the quality of the previous Census.

"You'll recall that at the time of the 2052 Census the Trapezoid was controlled by a Libertarian-led coalition of anti-federalist political elements.  They did everything in their power to obstruct the Office of the Registrar from conducting the census.  They couldn't quite get it cancelled -- that would of course be a violation of Section 26 of the Constitution Accord -- but they managed to severely soften security and enforcement policy in the Personal Identity Division.  The last census only achieved an estimated 76% compliance, and there was a serious problem with duplications, falsified data and griefing.  With the Technocrat Party in firm control of both the Trapezoid and the Presidency this time around, and the Socialists backing them up, DIR feels they have a renewed mandate to conduct a really strict and thorough census.  A lot more supporting documentation is going to be required this time, and word is they're going to be quite harsh on noncompliance."

During the free debate in the Trapezoid this day, Azimak Titslinger, MP for Mars-Mircordia and the head of the Libertarian Party, took the opportunity to condemn both the census and the Technocratic government.

"Distinguished colleagues, the so-called 'census' is and always has been nothing more than a tool of unchecked state control of your personal life.  It is an imposition on our precious time and an inexcusable intrusion into our personal privacy, and I for one refuse to 'register my identity' with the Department of Spies and Collaborators.  I dare them to arrest me for it.  Go ahead; I'm right here.  Come take me away."

Lollis Permanente, a spokesperson for the Office of the Registrar, responded to a request for comment by saying zie doesn't understand what all the furore is about.  "Pretty much all the information we ask for is available openly on the hyperlayer.  All we want is a convenient, formatted, searchable database provided directly by the citizens themselves.  Accurate data is essential to the effective function of the machinery of state."

Mx. Permanente pointed to a number of scandals over the past several years, including a township in Russulan which went without funding for fire prevention services for seven months and a highly publicized series of reparations payments made to nonexistent claimants with given names like 'Whatsa Buttfour' and 'Ivana Fuchyu', as a consequence of a lax census.  "These kind of incidents become immensely more common when the census is corrupted, but it's really only the tip of the iceberg.  Degradation of the census leads to measurable inefficiencies in everything from economic policy to family life outcomes.

"Those who work to undermine the census really just shoot themselves in the foot.  They're making life harder for everyone, not least of all themselves."

Deaths Spark Recall of Cyborg Parts

Burroughs, Barsoom, Mars -- 2 Mar. 2057:  A complete recall has been issued on all augmentation modules containing the Sirix 1011 Neuromuscular Actuator after an investigation attributed 17 deaths and over 1200 near-fatalities to faulty brain-machine connections.  Among those are 3 recent incidents in Burroughs alone, involving a synthetic heart which stopped beating, a seizure caused by a malfunctioning hypercortex regulator, and an incident in which an individual lost control of their cyber-arm and 7 people including the individual in question were hospitalized.

Ashbee McQurken, a spokesperson for the Burroughs Coroner's Office, said that observers were slow to pick up on the problem because of the wide variety of implants affected.  The Sirix 1011 is one of the most widely-used models in the industry and is present in over 35% of cyber-augments of all different types.  A full list of affected products has been appended to the hyperlayer, and is also being widely publicized in other major journals, blogs, aggregators and curated linklists; officials are urging anyone who has installed one of the listed modules to seek technomedical attention immediately.

Tarlog Nebulon, the Symposiarch of Barsoom, has called for a full investigation into the manufacturing processes of Sirix LLC., the manufacturer of the actuator.  The company has released a statement indicating that it will comply fully with any and all safety investigations and provide full compensation for any individual who is injured or forced to purchase replacement modifications due to the problem.  A class action lawsuit has already been filed in the State Civil Court by the legal firm of Blarntzen Stacklove & Root Pi.  Sirix stock has taken a severe hit, losing 123 millicredits today in trading on the InterPlan Index.