SCMR Chpt 4

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==Chapter 4 - Self Configuring Modular Robot==
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"The new Garrett Entertainment Manager...
...is designed to help the discerning consumer find the programming and information they really want."
How do you sell an electronic surveillance and spying system when the Military isn't interested? There's good money in that top 1-10% of any given population that craves novelty. Planetary datanets are old hat, having one is practically de-riguer even in systems where personal computers are verging on a lost technology.
Garrett Systems Entertainment Division's release of a simple, three kilogram home entertainment library and online search system (we don't call it a 'computer') hit Store shelves from Romulus to Andurien just in time for the Christmas/Ramadan shopping blitz in 3032...and thanks to the Concord of Kapteyn, it was hitting export sales in the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation at roughly the same time.
It's inoffensive beige, a box half a meter wide by half a meter long by just under forty centimeters tall. It has jacks compatible with most existing player formats and telephone lines, and it's absolutely stamped from one end to the other as a civilian product using low-powered components certified to be absolutely not hardened against combat conditions. (We promise).
Hardware experts in the ISF, now, they figured out the machines are cheap, but not cheaply made, and DCMS techs are already figuring out that the only difference between the 'home entertainment boxes' and the computers driving most military hardware, can be corrected with a soldering iron and some patience.
'Bootleg' software patches to turn these inexpensive home entertainment systems into processors suitable for BattleMech, Tank, aerofighter, and even Naval use start popping up in 'low observable' areas of each realm's community of techs and slicers.
The dirty truth being, those 'software patches' are a front for SAFE, flying under the radar of Comstar ROM and most national intelligence agencies using the dual powers of being known to be wholly incompetent, and getting covert help from Garrett's 'analytical and information warfare systems' purchased with black funds sometime in 3031 as overages on the field upgrade and update system.
Frequent balking and openly refusing to sell in the Lyran Commonwealth saw a fair number of these systems being 'procured' by Lyran and Federated Suns intelligence agencies concerned about the apparent technology transfers.
Followed by spates of raiding specifically to grab them....
..which is also, all according to plan. Bootleg copies using inadvertent copying of the base code follow shortly after.
The systems improve performance, and people in the KNOW know this-and who lets someone else's advances outpace them, really?
By 3035, a trade agreement to sell last year's version of the "Garretbox" entertainment suite is signed with the Federated Commonwealth. It's a nice chunk of cash, and the League's initial reluctance to sales makes it both desirable, and leaves the possible negative outcomes ignored.
After all, the Leaguers wouldn't sell it if it weren't harmless...right?
In 3035, kids from one end of the Free Worlds League to the other found a new toy to go gaga over. "Hermy", a remote-controlled electronic pet compatible with the Garrett Entertainment Box, styled after the League's iconic Hermes II BattleMech, and available in the colors of your favored FWLM or Solaris champions. Exports styled after the most iconic 'mech of the other realms pop up right in time for Christmas, at a price that even a moderately successful dirt-farmer's kid can afford.
Hermy is half a meter tall, and it can learn to do tricks using a simple software interface...and it can learn to do other tricks. If you're patient and obsessive enough.
The toys are making more money for the company than their military contracts...
They're completely harmless fun for all ages, don't you know.
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