MIDAS

Monetary Intervention Data Analysis System, abbreviated as **MIDAS**, is a tremendously powerful artificial intelligence mainframe created by the Coalition of Intelligent Organisms during the First Coalition Golden Age with the intention of automating the stabilization of the Coalition's new standardized currency, the Monetary Unification Unit (MUU). Capable of easily making tremendous macroeconomic decisions completely of its own volition, MIDAS has been both praised and cursed for its unpredictable, and sometimes unfair, behavior.

## History and Development

MIDAS was one of the very first major new developments made by the Coalition government during the First Coalition Golden Age, created alongside the introduction of a standardized, energy-backed currency meant to be used across the entirety of the Coalition. Prior to the invention of MUUs, the Coalition's economy was somewhat chaotic, operating with virtually no influence or oversight from the government. Without a central currency, most of the Coalition's inhabitants used Hydrogen or precious metals to make their payments. This was easy enough for the intrepid pioneers of the Coalition's borders, but the less adventurous citizens of the Coalition core zones couldn't acquire these resources of their own accord, and were left at an economic disadvantage. Many colonies circumvented this through the introduction of local currency, but this came with its own share of problems. Exchange rates between colonies tended to fluctuate quickly and randomly, which made cross-colony economic activity very difficult. The creation of a single currency to be used by the entire Coalition would not only alleviate these problems, it would also make it much easier for the government to monitor and control the behavior of Coalition markets. Creating a unified economy for a sprawling interstellar civilization is no easy task, and involves macroeconomic principles of unparalleled complexity and scale, the likes of which had been only theoretical for most Coalition economists. Likewise, just as many other civilizations throughout history have down, the Coalition entrusted its macroeconomic decision making to an artificial intelligence. Owing to its title, MIDAS started out as nothing more than a data analysis system. Economic data, collected through local administrations across the Coalition, was brought back to Earth to be given to MIDAS, which made predictions and recommendations based on said data. This, in turn, gave the Coalition government a better sense of where the Coalition economy stood and how it would react to certain economic stimuli, allowing them to make vastly more educated and effective decisions whenever they needed to make adjustments. While not a perfect system, the usage of MIDAS dramatically improved the responsiveness of the Coalition government when it came to economic easing, allowing them to better protect Coalition markets and the stability of the Coalition as a whole. Later on, when the TIIRNET was developed and put into use across many areas of the Coalition core zones, the usefulness of MIDAS improved exponentially. By using the TIIRNET to collect data instead of physical data transfers, the time it took for MIDAS to make accurate economic predictions went from weeks to mere minutes, allowing Coalition economists to monitor the exact state of the Coalition economy in almost perfect real-time. To further improve efficiency, localized systems that manage MUU values and transfers on many Coalition colonies were interlinked with MIDAS itself, allowing the machine to automatically perform minor adjustments to monetary values, quantities and interest rates based on its own data sets and predictions. Although the economic benefits of this change were clear to see, the increasing autonomy of MIDAS began to make several Coalition economists anxious. They feared the machine would inevitably bring about economic ruin if left unchecked, and could easily be manipulated to serve the interests of other parties if it were hacked or otherwise tampered with. While most of these fears were seen as completely unfounded (due mostly to MIDAS' near-perfect record of good macroeconomic planning), security for the system was amplified considerably after a number of attempts to hack it were thwarted by the Coalition Galactic Police, and the core of MIDAS was eventually moved to a well-defended underground facility beneath the surface of (CLASSIFIED).

Obviously, the usage of MIDAS to monitor and control the Coalition economy has always been a topic of controversy, especially among those who have been negatively affected by its financial meddling. Without warning, MIDAS has occasionally tampered with corporations by unexpectedly deducting funds or bolstering interest rates in regions where that corporation operates, much to the dismay of the corporation itself. While these kinds of unforeseen, dramatic circumstances are rare, they often aren't overturned by the Coalition government when said corporations complain, as it is often assumed that MIDAS knows best and was attempting to prevent an economic crisis through its actions. Regardless of how strange its behavior may seem, the fact remains that MIDAS has prevented the Coalition from being afflicted by most devastating economic turmoil, an advantage that helped them develop into one of the strongest civilizations of the Milky Way Galaxy.

## Mechanics and Usage

During the time period it was constructed in, MIDAS stood as one of the most advanced examples of quantum artificial intelligence in the entire Coalition. It's central matrix, based on advanced Vecuuri technology, contained a tremendous amount of computational power, and could process large amounts of data more quickly than any previous system created for a similar purpose. While the physical composition of MIDAS' central matrix has not changed considerably over the course of Coalition history, its ability to analyze data and make accurate predictions has increased exponentially thanks to its self-improving algorithms. The most remarkable strengths of MIDAS, however, are its copious layers of security, defense mechanisms and redundant systems meant to ensure the machine can never be hacked, destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable. In addition to its central matrix, which is protected with a plethora of high-grade cyberwarfare suites and electronic countermeasures, the vault containing MIDAS on (CLASSIFIED) holds numerous sub-matrices that provide both additional processing power and protection, as they can restart the primary matrix or act as temporary substitutes should it ever go offline. While the exact nature of MIDAS' hiding place is unknown, it is assumed that the location is staffed by a considerable security force, armed with some of the best equipment in the entire Coalition. If all of this should fail, there are a number of emergency MIDAS matrix duplicates scattered about Coalition space that can be brought online within minutes if the primary complex goes down and operate for a considerable length of time afterward.

The amount of security used to protect MIDAS increased alongside the Coalition's reliance on the machine, to the point where, although it was virtually impervious to all kinds of attacks, MIDAS was also one of the only things the Coalition government could rely on in order to keep the economy stable. This, combined with the fact that MIDAS' inner workings eventually reached a point at which Coalition engineers couldn't fully understand how it worked, has always made the Coalition government anxious about MIDAS, as they have no idea how it maintains economic stability or how the economy could possibly operate without it. Later on in its history, government reliance on MIDAS was so significant, no unique protocols had ever been created for the eventuality that MIDAS would go offline. The thought of keeping Coalition markets safe from economic depression or collapse had become unthinkable without the machine's assistance. Thankfully, the need to come up with an alternative never emerged, but the notion that their entire economy was kept alive by the constant effort of a thinking machine hardly anyone understood perpetually kept the Coalition government on edge.