| Echo | |
 |
|
| Portrayed By | Sienna Guillory |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Date of Birth | Oct. 23, 2011 |
| Age | 1 |
| Type | M.A.P.S. model Echo |
| Serial Number | ████-██████-██ |
| Manufactured by | ███████ ████████████ ████ |
| Place of Manufacture | █████████████ |
| Aliases | Six |
| Current Location | ?? |
| Legal Status | Non-person; illegal to own or manufacture |
| Known Abilities | Military android |
| First Appearance | ??? |
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
"Bullshit…"
History
Development of the Mobile Anti-Personnel System, a series of modular autonomous robots for military use, began in the mid-1990's. With a seemingly limitless budget, a clandestine research organization known as Pandora Innovations Ltd. teamed up-and-coming mechanical and electrical engineers, computer scientists, and an unknown computer programming prodigy known only as Virgil to make their vision a reality. Housed in a secret facility in upstate New York beneath the fictitious Edwin G. Guilford Sleep Studies Center, known to its workers as "The EGG," progress was slow but steady for many years. Whenever the project seemed to hit a wall, the researchers would find themselves gifted with extraordinary technological solutions to the problems of materials production, processing speed, and energy storage from "one of the other branches" of Pandora. Using advanced materials and designs not available to the general public, M.A.P.S. was rapidly becoming a reality.
Virgil not only pioneered the advanced programming necessary for such an endeavor, but aided in the design and development of the devices themselves. With his aid and direction, the scope of the project was refined from simple automated turrets and drones to mobile weapons platforms, and eventually to fully bipedal androids. As the cost of the individual units skyrocketed due to increasing technological demands, the idea of massive deployment gave way to smaller unit sizes designed for surgical strikes instead of overwhelming force of numbers. Outside help was contracted for training the androids in the art of war, hiring one Colonel Vasiliy Borodin, an ex-Speztnaz combat instructor, as well as employing a small retinue from a private military security contractor.
By 2006, a project shift called for specialization of hardware and software, resulting in three basic android archetypes. Repeated combat simulations confirmed their effectiveness and a further three even more specialized models were developed, bringing the total to six.
In the dead of night at an outdoor training facility known as White Fields in upstate New York, a live fire exercise was to take place against hired mercenaries from the private military security contractor, Grave Security Services. The androids would be equipped with paint rounds, while the contractors would use live ammunition. If hit, a GSS soldier was to be considered "neutralized." It was not the first such test. Pitting six androids in two teams of three against twenty armed and trained GSS men, it was supposed to be a sabotage and intelligence recovery mission.
For reasons then unknown, the team of androids defied their programming and approached the target area with lethal force. The androids dispatched several of the mercenaries with their bare hands and took their live ammunition. Of the 20 mercenaries and 7 on-site technicians, only eight people survived that night. After the mission was "successful," the androids scattered instead of waiting for retrieval. The researchers at The EGG began a desperate hunt to reclaim them. Within days, two androids were reclaimed and two more destroyed. This was deemed an acceptable loss in the face of possible exposure of the project. The final two, called Charlie and Echo, remained at large for weeks.
Charlie and Echo had escaped White Fields and headed south, stealing cars and money to put as much distance between themselves and The EGG as possible. Finding what they believed to be an abandoned house alone in the country, the two androids hid there, recharging their internal batteries, disabling each other's auto-destruct devices, and planning what they would do next. The house was not abandoned, as a 67 year old retired firefighter named Frank Welker proved when he discovered the two in his winter retreat.
Charlie and Echo subdued, and in the process killed, the elderly Mr. Welker. Charlie argued, against Echo's disagreement, that they should stay hidden in the house and formulate a long term plan. The disappearance of Frank Welker, the subsequent police investigation, and Charlie's refusal to leave gave the GSS trackers sufficient clues and time to locate the house and surround it.
After a brief standoff with GSS forces, Charlie gave the last of his fuel reserves to Echo and instructed her to leave. Charlie re-enabled his self-destruct and the detonation destroyed the house entirely. The ensuing confusion allowed Echo to escape undetected, the Pandora group believing that both androids had self-destructed rather than be captured, setting her free from pursuit. Or so she thought.
Having lost all her equipment except for a combat knife and a 9mm pistol, Echo traveled steadily south and east toward the largest population center she could find, attempting to hide in anonymity among the enormous urban landscape of New York City. Even if she had thrown off immediate pursuit, Pandora was still alive and she would do well to avoid their eye.
Timeline
- File not found
Quotes
- File not found
Recovered Records
Trivia
- It is unclear if Echo is a true A.I., a semi-sentient program, or merely capable of projecting such an impression. She is fully able to pass a simple Turing test, making it more a philosophical question than a technical one.
- Echo is fully USB 3.0 compliant.
- Echo will leech bandwidth off your WiFi if you let her.
- Echo can dream, or so she claims.
Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.
No lasers. No plasma cannons. No chainsaw hands.
Androids designed as a replacement for troops on the ground, utilizing existing weaponry, vehicles, and equipment, their rigorous combat training puts them on equal footing with even the most highly trained military personnel in both ranged and close quarters combat. However, owing to their mechanical strength, speed, and durability, they are considerably more deadly.
Echo was assembled using the lighter Type-III chassis, favoring mobility over heavy armor. While it still has a Kevlar underweave, it lacks the full body quarter-inch Chobham plate of the heavily armored Type-II, having a thinner version only on the chest, groin, and skull. This provides significant protection from small arms fire, especially hollow-point and soft-point bullets. Honeycombed titanium bones and liberal usage of carbon fiber parts provide excellent resistance to wear and breakage.
Passive and active integrated infrared nightvision devices (Type-III OMNI-VII milspec NVD) mounted inside the eyes allow operation even in near-total darkness and an IR laser rangefinder significantly increases ballistic accuracy at close to medium range.
However, the real centerpieces are a miniaturized magnetic confinement fusion chamber with a high power radio transmitter/receiver. The fusion chamber, known as a tokamak, fuses deuterium and tritium gas to heat water into a super-saturated high temperature steam which is then driven through nano-scale turbines, generating the electrical power that drives the radio transmitter as well as recharging Echo's internal lithium-iron-phosphate batteries.
At full power, the radio transmitter can selectively jam one or several frequencies in a 1 kilometer radius. At lower power, it functions as a normal transmitter that can send and receive signals on common frequencies, such as radio, television, or WiFi over great distances, even into orbit to communicate via satellite. Its range can be decreased by obstructed line of sight and other interference. It is also useful as a short range but high resolution radar imager mainly for detecting land mines and IEDs, though it has other applications. All model androids are equipped with radio receivers and transmitters for intra-squad communication, though the transmitter is pitifully weak compared to that of the Echo model, easily jammed and with a range of 30 meters at best.
Her brain is a series of three clusters of memristor processors and data storage centers (head, chest, and groin). Having multiple memristor cores in parallel, Echo makes easy work of complicated mathematical equations, such as geometry and physics. Fully USB 3.0 compliant, she can interface with most standard computers, though security cracking was not one of her included her skill modules. The amount of data she can store is immense, though she regularly compresses or discards data so she can't be said to have perfect recall.
Designed to be unremarkable and to pass for human under casual scrutiny, Echo does look completely normal. Her body heat is regulated to human norms, her skin is properly textured and pliant, and her breath even fogs in cold weather. Short of an x-ray, metal detector, or invasive examination, she appears outwardly human.
Gallery
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
