Curious about Cubes?

If you can get your hands on it, I'd check the Outrage manga. Knauf basically digs the cube out of his nemesis and then holds on to it to be sure Jethro (i.e. himself) can't be brought back. That'll answer your questions about where it's kept and what it looks like.

 

I'm not sure you see Knauf digging around in there, but I thought I remembered a panel with a scar or wound prominently displayed which indicated where the Cube was housed.

Hopefully I'm not completely making that up 0.o

 

If I recall it's on the right side of the neck behind the jaw which seems a weird place for it.

 

What is missing from the description here is that the cube is plugged into the network of Silk that everyone has. So it doesn't have to be inserted into the brain directly.

 

Exactly, that's what I remember from Outrage. Good call.

I kind of like that location from design standpoint. We've seen a lot of scifi tropes that basically say "Oh, he was shot in the head/neck and was killed. We'd better back him up. Oh, his backup unit was in his head/neck and was destroyed too. Guess we can't do anything."

Seems like bad positioning for a device that's meant to serve as insurance in case of a fatality, but least that area behind the jaw is a bit less out of the way.

 

Yup. For total redundancy you'd want it center of mass, I'd think. Or have two.

 

The question of differences between Aleph lhosts, or very artificial ones, versus the more clone-type lhosts that seem to be common for most human Resurrections, is a really interesting one. On the surface, standardization is probably to be expected, but Aleph units arent using standard Cubes, they're using Cube 2.0... does that make a difference? Does it require more processing power (and thus a larger unit), dermal or subdermal antenna systems to ensure full real-time connectivity? Are the hex-patterns on the 'flesh' of Aleph lhosts not mere signs of i-am-artificial but serving a practical purpose as transmission matrices?

 

@Shiwen since they supposedly use quantum entanglement to do it, I don't think they need transmission matrices. Infinity just has gratuitous hexagons in their aesthetic. Probably the hex-patterns are some structural reinforcement web that accounts for why almost all of them have NWI.

 

Harsh reality, why must you shatter my mad conjectural dreams?

 

Well, it's covered in the RPG:

These wetware cranial implants combine quantronic microprocessors with sophisticated, Silk-based biotechnology. Implanted at the base
of the skull (for easy access to the encephalon), they spread nanonic fibres to form neuronal links throughout the brain. These links maintain a constantly updated copy of the user’s personality (or sheut). Upon death, the Cube retracts the nanonic fibres, stores a fresh tissue sample (to allow for the creation of a clone Lhost), and enters a standby mode waiting for retrieval. (Some models will also activate a location transponder.)
For obvious security reasons, standard Cubes do not have a quantronic link. They are not even accessible from the user’s personal network. Without the use of VoodooTech they cannot be hacked or compromised without first removing them from the host body.

The second generation of Cube technology represents a revolutionary approach to personality storage. The Cube 2.0 regularly backs up the sheut to trusted servers in the datasphere. Cube 2.0 also allows close integration with ALEPH (using technology which is an immediate precursor to that found in Posthuman Lhosts), and ALEPH has updated all of the Lhosts operated by its Aspects or Recreations to use Cube 2.0. Characters with a Cube 2.0 also have the Quantronic Jump ability.
The Cube 2.0 architecture also includes automated failsafes against sepsitor attacks. If a sepsitor attack inflicts a Metanoia Effect, the Cube automatically shuts down its quantronic connections, erases all access codes to its backup locations, and chemically destroys its storage substrate. For all intents and purposes, it becomes an inert object. A Cube 2.0 which has been disabled as a result of its sepsitor failsafe cannot be repaired and must be completely replaced.

That appears to be non-standard. Probably specially done by an agent trying to make things difficult deliberately.

 

I think it’s fair to say Infinity’s Cube-lore stands pretty squarely on the shoulders of Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Novaks books*, and readily acknowledges the fact.

But it seems to me that what CB has brought to that lore that’s particularly unique, is the idea of Silk as an enabling technology and thus the basis of Haqqislams economic and consequent military significance. And so Bourak finds a position in the Infinity backstory that’s not entirely unlike the significance of the planet Arrakis due to the importance of Spice in Herbert’s (fucking interminable) Dune series.

Can anyone correct or add to those observations?

 

* for those who haven’t read these, they’re highly recommended with the glaring exception of his attempts to write about sex and any female experience. The rest of his writing is so good and so engaging, and these sections are so unspeakably bad that’s it’s genuinely hard to know how the writing ever made it to print.

Should you read the books I heartily recommend simply skipping a couple of pages when you hit these sections. You’ll miss nothing, and save the otherwise excellent stories. There is a publishing company’s editor somewhere who needs to be shown the door!

 

*Takeshi Kovacs*, not "Novaks" (the "cs" is a "ch", not a "ks" ) but yeah, I skipped over his sex scenes when I first read AC back in 2002.

As for the Dune series, They were fine up until Chapter house (Frank's last book). The rest, done by his son, were a trainwreck of epic proportions.

 

So its been a while since I read them, then!

Which gives an idea just how abysmal the female, sex and torture scenes were to have burned themselves into my memory long after the protagonist’s name was forgotten!

I’m sorry, you read ALL of the Dune books? I labored to the end of the first, having to remind myself who the characters were in the glossary in every other page, and was never once - ever, ever, ever tempted to try the 2nd. You’re a hero Chromedog!

It as that period of science fiction where fucking everything had to be a trilogy and have “Evokes a world of Tolkinian proportions” on the cover

 

The protagonist name stuck with me on account of me being half-Hungarian ancestry, like him. And yeah, people mispronouncing surnames was something that did grind my gears somewhat.


As for the Dune books, I stopped with Chapter House (book 5 in the trilogy).
The other 7 I mostly didn't bother with. I got one chapter into "prelude to Dune" and gave up. Trainwreck x car crash. Didn't even bother with the "House" prequels nor the legends stuff (All done by Brian Herbert with execrable assistance from Kevin J Anderson).
Happily add those to the bonfire, though, along with the assorted "twilight" and "50 shades of puke" books.

 

Aplologies for any insensitivity.

... ‘Chromedog’s not a very common Hungarian name though, is it?

 

C-dog has been my on-line nick for over a decade (and prior to this, was my cp2020 fixer character).

Family name was Szanto. "Sz" is "s" in Hungarian. "S" is "sh", "Cs" is "ch" - it's a rather convoluted alphabet. Much like Czech and with fewer z's than Polish. :D

 

I'd suggest that silk fills an enabling role in the biological/biomechanical interfaces within the body. Simply put, any connection you make will erode over time as scar tissue builds up around the foreign body, silk probably impedes or safely neutralises that process, without compromising the body's immune system.