Creature Seed: Mecha Virus.

I apologize in advance.

Mecha Virus – Google Docs

Mecha Virus

It’s… sort of nasty? And yet, sort of cool?  It all depends on what is doing the infecting.  The very short version is, “Mecha Virus” is actually a set of hyper-tech nanobots (amusingly, we’re all going to pretend that these buzzwords make the whole concept science fiction, not fantasy) that turn common mechanical devices (but nothing, nothing, NOTHING living and organic. Or DEAD and organic.  Don’t try to vex me, here) into self-aware entities that can then go and transform themselves into humanoid robots. This very much includes, yes, cars, airplanes, guns, eighteen-wheeler trucks, construction equipment, cassette tape players (and the cassettes themselves), and virtually anything else that maddened 1980s Japanese animation producers could and did think of.  It’s more than likely that Mecha Virus did not originate from those shows, but it’s equally likely that whoever came up with the idea was heavily informed by these shows. Certainly the aesthetic is.

 

Fortunately, Mecha Virus doesn’t come with an alignment check; infected vehicles-turned-robots are not likely to be either Good or Evil, depending on which logo they’re sporting.  Problem is, the new robots aren’t particularly socialized on their own. A transformed object that is adopted by an existing ‘clan’ will quickly learn what the clan knows and feels, but if the larger group is working off of bad assumptions and/or knowledge then the new robot will end up reacting to the world in suboptimal ways.  On the bright side: every attempt to create a stable clan of megalomaniacal schemers has promptly fallen apart, for fairly obvious reasons.

 

How much does the government know about this?  Honestly, any answer’s a good one, from “nobody knows about the robots yet” to “governments hunt the robots” to “I’d like to introduce you to Team Eagle-Bot Victrix, Senator.”  There’s adventures to be had all around, is what I’m saying. Although it’s interesting to speculate how a government can effectively go after a group of robots that can convert, say, the tanks chasing them into more robots.  That sort of thing can get very “robot apocalypse,” very quickly.

 

One last note, too: and it’s a delicate one.  How do I put this? …Ah, yes. Mecha Virus can best be described using the analogy of being the mechanical equivalent of a mutagenic, sexually transmitted disease.  Which means, I’m afraid, that the mental picture now in your head about how the condition is spread is an accurate one. Sorry about that!

2 thoughts on “Creature Seed: Mecha Virus.”

  1. So the Autobots are at a numbers disadvantage because Optimus Prime is less inclined to grow a mustache and put on horrible music than Megatron?

  2. “NOTHING living and organic.”

    So mecha girls are out.

    Personally, I’m thinking that a wealthy organization is going to get hold of the virus and create themselves a series of tiny transforming supercomputers that they keep hidden away from the rest of the world. Though, of course, given the elements of the genre, sooner or later they’re going to accidentally infect the wrong item with the virus.

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