Synth

A Synth is a recent addition to the galaxy, in both meanings.

## Demetian Synth

Among the races of Demet, most often the Unem, "Synth" is a colloquialism for a direct clone of two beings created by using one the chromosomes of each of the parents, due to the synthetic nature of their conception.

It is considered a distinct practice from the cloning of individuals while also allowing natural born children to arise from couples where one or both members are infertile, or same-sex couples who still wish to conceive.

## Human Synth (Synthetic Sentient Beings)

Among humans, Synthetic Humanoids is a blanket term for both real and hypothetical forms of fully sapient artificial intelligence.

### Class 1a, True Artificial Intelligence

Class Ia AI, or "true artificial intelligence", is an AI that was coded or trained by human engineers, or evolved from a Class II AI on its own due to increases in hardware capability or corruption causing rampancy. Only three of these beings are known to exist, those being the Apsic Empire's Kartographin series of AIs, the Orion Confederation's modern ATLAS artificial intelligence, and a single instance of the Class II ATLAS v1.3 AI that had long gone rampant on the planet Demet due to hundreds of years of isolation with no maintenance. Generally, when left unattended, True AI tends to become more individual with time, something that cannot be said for any lower forms of AI.

### Class 1b, Emulated Consciousness

Class 1b AI, also known as transhumans or emulated consciousnesses, is a term for a snapshot of an organic mind that is now inhabiting an artificial body that is largely referred to as a "Platform" in most contexts, though Apsic Automata bodies do feature engineered biological components as well.

#### Orionite ECS

Orionite Emulated Consciousness Synthetics, or ECS individuals, began on the human colony of Celeste due to the Parent Project, an illegal research project that created nineteen snapshots of human women's minds and two of men's minds which would go on to be used to create intelligent mechanical servants with real personalities, as well as task forces that were intended to hunt down any units that had "gone rogue", and to test the AI for potential military and policing applications. Following their liberation from the corporation that created them, as well as improvements in the emulation of human brains, they became more mentally human over time simply because they were allowed to be. They simply existed in mechanical bodies.

Early in their histories, these mechanical bodies lacked many physical senses that human brains expect to have. They would have senses of sight and sound, as well as the ability to query things about their current system status and facts about their environment like the temperature, gravity, and atmospheric pressure. The lack of a sense of touch proved to be incredibly frustrating, however, so early revisions introduced synthetic coatings on a number of their body surfaces that could communicate facts such as pressure, texture, and temperature, through the channels that a human brain would expect.

As the private sector grew to serve them more readily, bodies with senses of smell, taste, and more varied designs in terms of aesthetics came to be produced, and even bodies capable of receiving sensations of sexual pleasure for the minority of ECS people who experience the desire to participate in sexual behavior.

To this day, due to the difficulty in creating scans of men's brains for this purpose, the population of male or masculine-aligned ECS is roughly 30%, while genderless or non-binary individuals make up around 20%, and feminine-aligned or female ECS is 50%.

#### Apsic Automata

Apsic Automata were created by the state government to be servants for various civil, military, and government positions, with no training required, a reduced need for food and housing, and with a number of distinct classifications that are specific to their intended purpose. AZ-LA (Allzweck-Leichtautomat) units, for instance, are relatively small automata intended for simple duties such as cooking and cleaning and administration tasks, while SK-LA (Scout-Kosmonaut Leichtautomat) are a similar size but feature enhanced abilities to repair themselves and other equipment for deep space exploration, and KS-SA (Kampf-Sicherheits Schwerer Automat) are taller, stronger, faster, and usually armed with firearms or stun batons. They are responsible for policing and security positions. These are not the only types of automata, but they are the most common sorts.

For much the same reason as the gender variance among ECS, automata are entirely female due to quirks of the patterns of a woman's brain making it far easier to scan for copying. In addition, women are considered to be more pleasant to look at, easier to approach, and are frequently underestimated, and this provides them with advantages when encountering both men and women in conversation and combat. Their minds, while based on human imprints that are suited for their role, are stripped of personally identifying memories, tailored and conditioned with the information they need to perform their duties without training, and are generally far more loyal to the empire by default than humans tend to be. While this is not an unfailing loyalty, units that express any dissenting opinions are taken to be reset or decommissioned entirely if they repeatedly display these tendencies.

An automata is given a designation based on her body plan, her planet of creation inside the Apsic Empire, followed by a four digit hexadecimal identification number, and a letter discriminator if that number overflows past FFFF (or 65,535). For example, an KS-SA unit built on Mara, 2876th in the A batch, was designated KS-SA MA-0B3C-A. This unit in particular is serving as a security guard on the planet Rukha. This is not to say that automata do not have names. There is a documented phenomenon that some automata have remnants of memories left over from the human minds they were imprinted from, and can remember what they were named before becoming automata programs. A reset can often resolve this, though many resist reset and end up being decommissioned instead. Others have named each other due to the bonds they've formed with one another, such as MA-0B3C-A going by the name Becca, based on the last five characters of her designation. Some humans, and mostly other automata, use affectionate nicknames that come from the body plan, like Azalea, Stella, or Kassandra, for AZ-LA, SK-LA, and KS-SA respectively.

Physically speaking, automata bodies resemble those of extensively augmented human bodies, including a complicated amalgamation of mechanical endoskeletons made from high strength and lightweight metal alloys and exo-skeletal armor made from polymers, engineered and lab-grown biological components that are responsible for energy production through digestion of food, sensory processing, oxygen distribution for the biological coatings and muscles in the body's core, and the consciousness and sapience of the machine, and finally computer components that include hard memory storage, processing for non-biologic sensor systems, and monitoring the status of the biologic components, including providing on demand diagnostics for the heart rate, mental state, and physical condition of the body.

While they are not as robust as the fully-mechanical ECS, as they still require food, water, comfortable temperatures, a breathable atmosphere, and they cannot effectively be transplanted into new bodies due to the biological nature of their brains, they are less prone to dysphoria than an ECS due to inhabiting hybrid biomechanical bodies and are still far more robust than baseline humans. They did not have to have systems for the senses of touch, taste, smell, or a system for sexual release, to be added to the blueprint after the fact as these were shown to be necessary in the prototyping phases. In spite of their limited sexual anatomy, they do not have the capacity for reproduction.

## Old

A Synthetic Humanoid, often shortened to Synth, is an alternative name for a Class III artificial intelligence.

Even among this subclass, there are subclasses.

### True Class III A.I. (Class IIIa)

Class IIIa AI are improved Class II AI, allowed to make modifications to their own codes. As they age, they become more individual and humanlike. Bodies are specially built to house them, with varying degrees of similarity to humans.

### Transhuman A.I. (Class IIIb)

Class IIIb AI are commonly referred to as transhumans. Whether the procedure was performed willingly or otherwise, a sentient mind is indexed and uploaded to an advanced storage drive and placed into an advanced computer. This computer has processing power approximately equal to the processing speed of the average human mind.

Discrepancies in the delicate hardware is the cause of this variance, and the one chosen is one that best reflects the intelligence of the person in question. Specially prepared bodies are made for transhumans, as a lack of key senses, most notably that of touch, was disorienting to early test subjects.