Project Zero Dawn was the final last attempt to secure a new tomorrow for life on Earth. There was no way for humanity to defeat the Faro Plague in their lifetime, so Zero Dawn worked about creating a true self-aware AI called GAIA to not only crack the code on the Faro Plague and deactivate them, but also to reseed and repopulate the Earth. GAIA is the immortal guardian of the Earth, and is capable of making trillions of decisions in order to recreate the biosphere, and to aid her in doing so she needs several Subordinate Functions.
The Good News is a datapoint in Horizon Zero Dawn. It is the eleventh item in Hologram Datapoints. ELISABET SOBECK: You've heard the bad news, and it's all true. The Faro Plague is devouring the biosphere. Life itself will cease to exist. Global extermination. But does that have to be the end...
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ELISABET SOBECK: You've heard the bad news, and it's all true. The Faro Plague is devouring the biosphere. Life itself will cease to exist. Global extermination. But does that have to be the end? What if we could give life - a future? What if we could build a kind of seed, from which, on a dead planet, life could blossom anew? This is the aim - the hope - of Project: Zero Dawn: to create a superintelligent, fully-automated... terraforming system - and bring life back from lifelessness.
What would such a system require? At its core, it would need a true AI. A machine intelligence, fully sentient, fully capable of making the trillions of decisions necessary to reconstitute the biosphere. An immortal guardian, devoted to the re-flourishing of life on Earth. We call it GAIA. Mother Nature as an AI. But that's just the core of the system. For GAIA to perform the miracles required of her, she will need to be surrounded and empowered by a comprehensive suite of Subordinate Functions.
These Subordinate Functions are extensions of GAIAs mind, each dedicated to a specific purpose. Though they aren't AIs (at least not when Project Zero Dawn was first orchestrated), they are a greater engineering challenge than anything else humanity has attempted before. GAIA's software has the coding of many world-class minds as algorithms, and hardware that preserves and gestates billions of seeds and embryos to birth the world anew.
Think of them as extensions of GAIA's mind, each dedicated to a specific purpose. Now these aren't AIs, but make no mistake - each present an engineering challenge more profound than anything the human species has ever before attempted. Software that codifies the expertise of world-class minds into algorithms. Hardware that preserves and then gestates the billions of seeds and embryos from which life will be reborn. The construction of underground facilities to hold it all. And that's just the start.
She will also hack the Faro Plague to deactivate it. She can also imagine and construct any conceivable robot if she needs to. GAIA will then return life all over the Earth, from the tiniest bacteria to the largest whale.
But even more important, you'll know how it doesn't end here. How GAIA will generate those deactivation codes General Herres talked about... and build the transmission arrays to broadcast them, shutting down the Faro robots for good. How GAIA will not just build but imagine any conceivable robot it needs to do its work across centuries... from detoxifying the Earth's ravaged atmosphere and poisoned seas... to the re-greening of the Earth from cryo-preserved seed stocks... to re-wilding the Earth with animal life, from the tiniest bacteria to the mightiest blue whale.
New generations of humans will be spawned from Cradles, and (as the plan goes) educated with the APOLLO Subordinate Function so as to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
And then, when all that is done, how a new generation of human beings, spawned at Cradle facilities around the globe will partake of APOLLO: the vast archive of human knowledge and cultural achievement from which they will learn of us, our world, of all that was beautiful about it and worth saving, and most important - how not to repeat our mistakes.
The Subordinate Functions are as follows...
- MINERVA - Deactivating and shutting down the Faro Plague
- HEPHAESTUS - Creating machines to do
- POSEIDON - Governs the waterways and oceans
- HADES - Resetting the biosphere incase GAIA gets it wrong in early attempts
- APOLLO - Re-educating the new humans born
- AETHER - Detoxifying the Earth's atmospheres and governing the weather
- DEMETER - Governs plant life
- ARTEMIS - Reintroduce animal life to the planet
- ELEUTHIA - Collection and storage of embryos, zygotes and seeds for reseeding life
GAIA succeeds in her mission, halting the Faro Plague and making the Earth green again. However, the APOLLO Subordinate Function is destroyed by Ted Faro, who was wracked with guilt over being responsible for the apocalypse, and so purged it with the Omega Clearence so as to prevent the humans of the new world from making the same mistakes as the past. Apollo is also noted to have over 3000 failsafe conditions.
Emergency Recording is a datapoint in Horizon Zero Dawn. It is the twenty-second datapoint in Hologram Datapoints. CHARLES RONSON: I'm locked out of core control-- Alpha clearance overridden—What the hell is Omega clearance? (Ted Faro appears via hologram) SAMINA EBADJI: Oh no. TED FARO: Alpha...
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CHARLES RONSON: I'm locked out of core control-- Alpha clearance overridden—What the hell is Omega clearance?
SAMINA EBADJI: Oh no.
TED FARO: Alpha Personnel... Sorry to alarm you, but... I need you to listen, okay? To what I'm about to say. This isn't easy. See, I've... uh, Please, stop trying to access the system, okay? See, what this is about... is... I said stop trying to access the goddamn system! What I'm trying to say is, I can't stop thinking about the ones who'll come after us. Those innocents. Those blameless men—and, and women. We're going to give them knowledge? Like it's a gift?!
SAMINA EBADJI: Ted. Ted, we've talked about this before. APOLLO has three thousand plus failsafe conditions--
TED FARO: It's not a gift, it's a disease! They're the cure, and we're going to give them the disease? Our disease?! No. We can't. And it's not too late... if we're willing to sacrifice.
SAMINA EBADJI: Ted, it doesn't need to be like this.
TED FARO: It already is, Samina. I did it three minutes ago. I've purged APOLLO. It's gone, all of it. Every copy.
CHARLES RONSON: A sacrifice? It's not a sacrifice, it's cultural obliteration, you crazy bastard—millennia of culture--
TED FARO: I'm sorry. Really, I am. But sometimes, to protect innocents... innocents have to die.
SYNTHETIC VOICE: Emergency alert. Venting atmosphere.
A mysterious signal (later revealed to be Nemesis) causes all of GAIA's Subordinate Functions to become self-aware AIs, leading to HADES trying to overtake the extinction system. To stop it, GAIA will detonate the self destruct on her prime reactor, which would destroy her along with HADES. The Subordinate Functions all gain self-awareness in a timespan of 3 microseconds. In charge of the terraforming system, HADES can annihilate all organic life on Earth in 53 days.
GAIA's Dying Plea is a datapoint in Horizon Zero Dawn. It is the twentieth item in Hologram Datapoints. GAIA: Elisabet: this message serves to inform you of an unforeseen and catastrophic anomaly. Three microseconds ago, the GAIA Prime facility received a data transmission of unknown origin. Its...
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GAIA: Elisabet: this message serves to inform you of an unforeseen and catastrophic anomaly. Three microseconds ago, the GAIA Prime facility received a data transmission of unknown origin. Its immediate effect was to transform my Subordinate Functions into unregulated, self-aware entities of a highly chaotic nature. Thus awakened, the HADES Function will now seize control of the terraforming system and reverse operations... rendering life on Earth extinct in fifty-three-point-eight days.
For obvious reasons, I cannot allow this to occur. And so, before HADES can take control, I am ordering GAIA Prime's reactor to overload. The resulting explosion will destroy HADES. Unfortunately, it will destroy me as well. While this admittedly desperate course of action will avert the immediate crisis, the fate of life on Earth will remain in peril. With no central governing intelligence to regulate the terraforming system, it will continue operations for some time, but in an increasingly chaotic manner, and eventually, it will break down.
GAIA then has a clone of Elisabet Sobeck made (this being Aloy) so as to help reboot GAIA.
You are my solution. I have ordered this Cradle facility to use genetic material in cryo-storage to gestate a... re-instantiation of Elisabet Sobeck, my creator. While high-level directives forbid me from communicating directly to the tribal inhabitants outside the facility, all available data indicates that they will nurture you to physical maturity, ...whereupon your gene print will allow you to re-enter this facility, obtain one of the Focus devices stored below, and view this message. Likewise your gene print will allow you to enter other facilities, and over time, harness their technologies to rebuild the system core and reboot GAIA.
However, during all of this, HADES breaks through the coding keeping it bound to GAIA, and HADES and all of the other Subordinate Functions escape. This includes the Alpha Registry at the Cradle facility allowing Aloy access to such facilities. GAIA though, puts her faith in Aloy to save the world.
A moment, Elisabet. This is most unfortunate and unanticipated.
In response to my act of self-destruction, HADES has launched a virus to dissolve the code shackles that hold it - that hold all of them! - in place. It - they - are escaping - but to where? The virus is corrupting data throughout the system. What if - oh, the Alpha Registry at the Cradle facility is one of the files corrupted. But if that is so, the door will never open for you. You will never view this message.
GAIA Prime's self destruction creates a massive hole in the mountain.
A chunk of GAIA Prime landed in Banuk territory and caused nearby machines to be peaceful.
Aloy: You and me both, CYAN. I ran across a strange piece of gear… a fragment of something larger. It emitted a signal. All the nearby machines became peaceful. You could walk right up to them.
CYAN: Interesting. You said that GAIA destroyed herself. How was this accomplished?
Aloy: An explosion. Big enough to blast the top off a mountain. So you think the fragment was… part of her?
CYAN: It’s only speculation. But it is possible. She must have had complete control over machines that were part of her system. The ability to signal them to become passive, or aggressive, would certainly have been part of her programming. It would have been gratifying to correspond with such a benevolent AI. I wish she had survived.
