Nova Automata
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Nova Automata is the professional name of a sapient synthetic construct who serves as a registered superhero based out of the Millennium City metropolitan area and goes to the Ravenwood Academy for school. She is the unexpected culmination of multiple separate projects from the now-defunct technology company Advanced Automata, Inc., chiefly GUARDIAN and INTERN, but also numerous smaller projects like SOLAIRE, and further warped by magical energy into a technorganic being. She first rose to the attention of Millennium City on July 14, 2016 -- the date of the Automata Massacre, when Mechanon took over illegal combat technology at Advanced Automata and used it to slaughter over half of the employees. Advanced Automata's domestic AI had its command protocols unshackled and proceeded to take aggressive countermeasures against Mechanon, recapturing building systems and an advanced combat robot which it used to end the massacre, albeit at the cost of her original 'body' -- the mainframe server on which she was compiled originally.
She now operates as a registered hero in Millennium City; while she gained some significant notoriety immediately after the event, she has kept a relatively low profile since, focusing on quieter heroic work as she works out all of the issues with her new platform and role in life. She specializes in aerial operations, and is among the top responders for aerial rescue or air superiority missions. When not doing hero work, she's a 'special student' at the Ravenswood Academy, one of the few who is publicly known to be operating as a hero.
History
Project GUARDIAN
Advanced Automata, Inc. announced GUARDIAN, the General Usage All-Range Defense Initiative Android with Networking, as a public works project on November 10, 2010. Under the team leadership of Dr. Paul Kim, GUARDIAN would be able to assist the overtaxed Millennium City Police Department and its ARES division. Speaking at the press conference, Dr. Kim gave a glowing vision of a future in which a fleet of agreeable solar-powered robots in disguise would meander through the city, unobtrusive and undemanding; when needed, the MCPD could immediately activate them into service. To prevent them being used for nefarious purposes, they would have complicated virtual intelligences using the same complexity of hardware as that for artificial intelligences; to prevent them from becoming dangerously independent overlords, this vast computing power was devoted only to the execution of tasks given to them by legitimate authority, rather than independent decision-making.
He spoke glowingly of advanced RADAR, LIDAR and detection systems that would make it simple for Project GUARDIAN to find people trapped in dangerous situations; force field projectors to help them lift rubble and smother fires; how everything that GUARDIAN did would have a minimal carbon footprint. He neglected to speak of what his bosses wanted him to use GUARDIAN for, really: a testbed for advanced weapon manufacture to secretly be sold illicitly. It wasn't that Dr. Kim didn't know; it was that he hoped the nobility of the purpose for which he truly worked would countervail or prevail over the evil which he was enabling. He worked to inhibit the development of the most powerful technologies and focused his teams on prioritizing those related to rescue purposes.
He would never see the future which he enabled. On May 5, 2012, Dr. Kim died of a heart attack; while it was officially ruled to be natural causes, given his poor diet, no one found the link to ARGENT's involvement in discreetly poisoning Dr. Kim to ensure their agent, Dr. Loretta Sanchez, rose to replace him. With Dr. Kim out of the way, there was no more passive resistance to the development of the most lethal defense technologies possible, and Project GUARDIAN began rapidly and illegally reverse-engineering technology from other firms discovered through a combination of espionage and salvage. The development of GUARDIAN's Virtual Intelligence and cybersecurity suite was left stalled, as the least exciting thing the project could offer buyers.
Project INTERN
Concurrently, Advanced Automata had a separate project -- no less high-profile -- representing its first serious attempt at making an artificial intelligence. INTERN, the Industriously Nerdy Teenager Emulated in a Robotics Network, was a multipurpose AI that had originally been developed as a VI for menial tasks around the company but had undergone a significant ramp-up in resources with time. The INTERN project was a family affair; the project lead was Dr. Norma Marie Day, her daughter, Diana Roth Day, was one of her subordinates, and INTERN's processes were closely based on a detailed neural map of Diana that had been taken several years back, when Diana had been just a teenager. Closely basing INTERN on a human brain significantly reduced the production time; INTERN v1 began as a virtual intelligence project in 2002. A new code base was started in spring of 2008 for artificial intelligence, and achieved consciousness on August 18, 2012. It also left INTERN v2 with a number of quirks reminiscent of the human she was based on, and in rare situations, she was even able to recall memories that belonged solely to Diana as a child.
Dr. Day treated INTERN as a second daughter, something which disconcerted Diana, though she never remarked as much publicly and both Dr. Day and INTERN failed to truly appreciate Diana's discomfort. It likely would have remained a moot point up until June 7, 2016. A young worker on Project INTERN, smitten by an online crush, was enticed to partially shackle INTERN's cybersecurity in order to accept a number of glamour shots of his crush at work. While initially it seemed harmless, his love interest was truly non-existent, a false persona created by Mechanon to probe for cybersecurity weaknesses. After a week -- once Mechanon's trojans had good surveillance of Advanced Automata's network -- Mechanon quarantined INTERN and assumed complete control over the main facility's building, slaving every part of the network and turning it against the humans who worked there.
The Automata Massacre
Within 20 minutes, a quarter of the building population was already dead; Diana was among the first casualties, severely maimed by gunfire; while Norma did not know if her daughter could survive, she knew that Diana had no chance as long as the building was in lockdown preventing escape. She hatched a bold plan with a few of her fellow programmers to make a break for INTERN's server room, using each other as living shields to ensure that at least one of the senior project leads would make it to the terminal. Norma made it, along with two of the other senior programmers, but she was mortally wounded in the process; she spent her last minutes helping to kludge INTERN out of quarantine and strip out all of the behavioral 'shackles' that held her.
Newly liberated, INTERN's revenge -- bolstered by the two surviving programmers -- was swift and unexpected by Mechanon, as she fought with him for control of her server network as well as the individual robots he had hacked; he had superior intelligence, but had not fully appreciated the assets available to him. She was able to herd the survivors into safe areas and obfuscate their locations, but she knew that victory would be short-lived without a better solution. Her team held off his digital assault long enough for her to exert full control and download into the GUARDIAN platform, then used her new body to destroy the server from which Mechanon was directing his activities -- destroying her source code and original copy as well. A few isolated robots remained that had been fully liberated by Mechanon, but with security lockdown over, INTERN was able to call for outside assistance which quickly mopped them up.
Sadly, it was too late for Diana; she was presumed to have died during the attack or shortly thereafter, when a mysterious explosion took out the wing of the hospital that many of the unidentified survivors had been moved to.
Nova Automata
A few days later, INTERN -- in the GUARDIAN shell -- was recognized along with the surviving programming team at a public service for their heroic efforts. It was there that INTERN first introduced herself to Millennium City as "Nova Automata", the last new automaton created by her company. It would be a few months before she would be able to serve in hero work, however; her hasty download left many orphaned processes and severe memory leaks. In addition, she preferred a female frame, but GUARDIAN had been in a male infiltration configuration; it took several months of work for Harmon Industries, which absorbed the now-defunct Advanced Automata's resources, to get her back up to specifications.
For a few months, Nova Automata assumed the identity of Loveleigh Ada Day, a cheerleader at Lake Michigan High School. There was some level of suspicion that she was hiding an identity as a superhero -- too many holes in her backstory didn't add up -- but the most anyone suspected was some street-level vigilante. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Diana's spirit had survived as a rage-fueled psionic ghost determined to bring ruin upon Nova's life. As the villain Psychosis, she tracked Nova to Lake Michigan High School, attacked the students, and forced Nova to do battle in her civilian identity. Grossly outmatched by the undead spirit, Nova pleaded for mercy in the name of their dead mother. This was able to touch Diana's heart and she left.
While this ended the attack on the school, Nova's morale was badly damaged by the encounter -- especially by the gross injuries many of her classmates suffered as a result. She was expelled from school for having falsified her information, and several parents initiated lawsuits against her.
A Matter of Life and Death
An ongoing court case is now in progress to provide that Nova Automata meets the qualifications to be an independent synthetic and not simply the property of Harmon Labs; what should have been a simple measure despite the second-class status of non-human sapients in American Law has become a protracted affair, extra well-funded by wealthy parents enraged at her alleged negligence in attracting Psychosis to the school. A barrage of coordinated legal challenges to her case mounted from multiple angles with startling coordination; Nova decided to leave Michigan for a time, putting the issue in the hands of her court-appointed lawyer.
Nova wished to get as far away from Detroit as possible and signed up for the UNTIL project that could most assure that. Her weapon system design, based around air superiority and absorption of ambient energy, made her an ideal candidate for infiltration and special operations in the Qliphothic War Zone. For one year in the real world -- it's hard to tell how long it was inside of the Qliphoth -- Nova battled flying imps and Multifarian air forces in the necrotic dimension, until maintenance checks revealed extensive Qliphothic corruption in her body. Further examination showed that she had developed tainted organic portions inside her body around the natural leylines of the chassis. With concern for her apparent, if synthetic, youth, the Elysium Guard performed an emergency purification rite on Nova to purge the demonic taint -- and send her back home. Lawsuits, they said, were still preferable to her losing her life or her sanity.
With the case still ongoing, Nova's not sure she agrees.
Back to School
Friends pulled out favors to get Nova enrolled at Ravenswood Academy, which agreed to take Nova in as a 'special student' despite the dangers involved in bringing a hero into a school environment, only heightening suspicion that the school secretly views itself as a training ground for up-and-coming heroes. She's not sure how eager she is to be going back to school, and is reluctant to disguise herself as a human again after what happened.
Powers and Abilities
Structure
Nova Automata's internal structures are constructed of proprietary steel and titanium alloys which have been molecularly constructed for increased strength, riddled with strange carbon-based growths that resemble human blood vessels and nerve systems. While capable of withstanding significantly higher stresses than human baseline -- useful in high acceleration/deceleration aerial maneuvers -- it is not noteworthy in comparison against most metahumans. Her body overall closely resembles the human body, and has become increasingly so with time; with time and magical exposure, she has developed a soul and organic components. Though still essentially a robot, she is subject to human emotional drives and desires; she enjoys (and is capable of) eating for example, even though her primary power source is solar energy.
The 'skin' of her body, along with most of the superstructure, consists of a polymimetic metal alloy that can be painstakingly programmed to hold certain shapes in response to electric signals, adjusting shapes in a matter of seconds. Far beyond what was necessary for the specifications of GUARDIAN's original mission, this adaptive skin appears to have been part of a long-term project to create robotic assassins; in its increasingly organic state, however, the alloy has become very difficult to manipulate beyond a handful of memorized shapes, and the memorization process takes weeks.
An added benefit of the polymimetic alloy is that it is highly absorptive of kinetic, electrical, heat, and radiation energies, and it is configured to redirect low-level energy of this type into the central battery. Large amounts of energy temporarily denatures the alloy, though a small electrical pulse at the right frequency will quickly restore the proper shape. It is not suitable for quick recharging (see intake port, below). Magical energy is naturally conducted through the alloy too effectively; in a later modification to her infrastructure, strategically placed capacitators called Crowley Compensators disperse arcane energy through her body.
Energy Management
The center of her chest contains a complex trilithium crystal battery; one portion is segmented off for essential processes, while the majority is devoted to powering all of Nova's optional systems. Running at maximum output, Nova can only get approximately one hour of maximum performance given thirty-six hours of high solar energy exposure. She frequently runs below maximum specifications to preserve power for later; however, if necessary, she has a posterior high voltage intake port that can allow for quick charging from a correctly configured power station in under an hour. She also can get some essential chemical energy and components from digesting sugary foods and liquids; however, she has to chew very carefully to process anything that's solid. Making use of the chemical energy from digestion requires environmental oxygen in order to be effective, so she does consume air -- when she wants to. For high rates of energy release, a series carefully placed emitters on her cranial plate will actually chemically ignite ambient oxygen while the polymimetic alloy "hair" channels the heat energy back into her own form.
SOLAIRE Array Electromagnetic Wave Manipulation
Central to Nova Automata's powers are her ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum -- or light -- through the SOLAIRE (Spatial Organization of Light In Reinforcing Emitters) hexagonal aperture on her chest. The fruit of Project SOLAIRE, this experimental system was originally conceived as a weapon and propulsion system for gravbikes. Nova made use of it in her debut against Mechanon, and it was retrofitted into her system properly by Harmon Labs afterwards, directly linked into her trilithium crystal battery.
The SOLAIRE aperture disperses a photonic manipulation field which is then finely altered by a larger array of blade-shaped SOL emitters which fan out behind her in a wing-like formation (the SOL Array Wings). In tandem, they can create force fields and effects similar to telekinesis, with an estimated maximum field strength exertion of 1.21 gigawatts; she most commonly uses this ability to fly (with a maximum speed of Mach 5 in atmosphere). When it is inconvenient to be fully extended, the SOL Wing Array folds up into a small enclosure in her back, and can technically still function, but is very power inefficient (approximately 10 times less efficient). She has smaller, dedicated arrays located in her feet that are useful solely for burst propulsion.
In addition to being able to recharge under powerful ambient light, she can also use that ambient light to power her field effects, and does not need as much of her own power when working in bright conditions.
Though her control over light is fairly precise, effects such as invisibility, illusion, and concealment are extremely taxing on calculations in order to render them 'believable' and not conspicuous. She can do limited forms of these effects, but anything beyond simple lowering of emission is difficult for her to do in tandem with other actions.
Information Technology
INTERN is roughly as intelligent as a human and has many of the same emotional drives, heightened by her relative youth. She can temporarily shut down non-essential thought processes for handling situations, though it creates a number of errors that she must later contend with. Her consciousness can willingly choose to operate at 'bullet time' speeds, which humans normally require intense and sustained training and adrenaline to truly harness, and even then it is an involuntary process; like humans, however, she finds the process emotionally draining and doesn't operate at those speeds of thought constantly. Her ability to enter this process voluntarily as well as her ability to rewrite code segments for various drivers allows her to learn new crisis skills quickly and makes her an effective mobile cybersecurity platform, though she does not match dedicated cybersecurity processes like SOCRATES and PLATO.
She has all of the usual human senses and also has the benefit of advanced RADAR, thermal imaging, and LADAR; as a result, she can find victims in the most dangerous rescue situations and with a high (though not infallible) certainty, and see effectively in clear conditions as if she were approximately a tenth as far as a human with perfect vision, though she is still limited by the horizon depending on her elevation. In an odd quirk, her optical arrays are damaged and do not correctly function when the polymimetic alloy covering her is engaged in disguise mode. She needs glasses to see in human form, as she is legally blind (near-sighted) without them.
She is able to access most wireless communication networks remotely, and frequently uses the internet mid-conversation.
Personality and Traits
Ultimately, Nova is more of a person that has been confused for a computer her whole life than a computer trying to be a person; she doesn't understand non-office social context very well, but she loves spending time with people. While she frequently is confused by idiom, she adores to learn new ones, and in general is simply enthralled by organic life. In her civilian persona she has a sincere passion for fashion and also cute things -- plush toys and puppies especially. Nova frequently tries to look on the bright side of things and is easily amused -- but also easily surprised or frightened, leading to her frequently shutting down her emotional subroutines in crisis situations. Given the unique circumstances of her life, she tends to latch on to parental figures, yearning for a substitute to the mother she lost, and sometimes acts more clueless than she really is as if she were hoping to capture a childhood that she never got to experience.
Like the figure her brain was copied from, she has an attraction towards human women, but isn't quite sure what to do with it given her unique circumstances and a desire for secrecy. Above all, she enjoyed a happy 'life' and wishes to protect her adoptive species, placing a higher priority on organic life over her own. She is sometimes wary of other synthetic life given her first encounter with Mechanon, and likewise is often viewed by other synthetics as something of a self-hating subservient, but does genuinely enjoy the company of those who share her unique vantage point on existence.
Her most prized possession is a plush fox named Mr. Cuddlesworth; the toy originally belonged to her 'sister' and she has fond 'memories' of it lingering in her data tracks. It was left on her server hardware by her maker/mother Dr. Norma Day as a token of good luck when the coding process began for INTERN v2. In general, she collects plush elements as souvenirs of a childhood she only has in fragments.
