I was playing the ship’s A.I. in a high-point GURPS Space campaign, when were forced to sabotage and destroy a vessel containing over a thousand crew members. As the rest of the PCs watched the explosion on the screens, this conversation ensued.
Note: All A.I.s have a hardwired destabilization program that specifically destroys their central personality matrix if activated. (Thank you very much, Mr. Gibson.)
A.I.: It’s… it’s beautiful.
Doctor: That’s horrible! There where over a thousand men and women aboard that vessel, and you call their deaths beautiful?
Captain: That’s it! Where’s that shotgun code?
A.I.: You can’t see this as I do and I can’t explain it to you. The best I can do is this. Do you know Michaelangelo’s work at the Sistine Chapel, on Holy Terra? Well imagine, if you will, someone shows it to you, but only all the red light. And then only the orange. Then yellow, green, blue, indigo and finally violet. Could you truly comprehend it’s beauty? It’s majesty? No, of course not. Now I see everything around this ship in a multi-layered, 3-dimensional image of electromagnetic wavelengths starting from the low radio to the far gamma, highlighted by neutrinos, shaded by tachyons and accented by gravitic waves. Where I can perceive a wavelength range if 1x10 (to -11) to 1x10 (to -1), you are limited to 4x10 (to -7) to 7x10 (to -7). So trust me when I say, “ooh, pretty!â€
Captain & Doctor in unison: Shotgun.
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