Adventure seed: the Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Blame this.

Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Well… strictly speaking, the people behind H.E.R.D. didn’t deliberately genetically-engineer a bunch of sheep into something that could serve as a distributed computer network.  What they simply tried to do was genetically-engineer the sheep so that they would produce natural fiber optic cables. The logic seemed sound enough: while inorganic cables certainly work, you require an industrial infrastructure to make them. There are obvious advantages of being able to grow your own, particularly if it could be done without requiring expensively trained technicians. And it wouldn’t even hurt the sheep; after all, they get sheared every year anyway.

Fortunately, somebody didn’t carry the one when making the critical calculations, or something: the sheep didn’t come out quite as designed.  They got the fiber-optic wool, sure – but what they also got was sheep that are also the equivalent of an organic motherboard.  And do not think too hard on that.  Seriously, don’t: doing so has caused at least one biologist to be led out of the room in restraints while she screamed “STOP IT!!!!! Genetics doesn’t WORK like that!!!!!”

This generation of the H.E.R.D. is not hosting any sort of AI, of course.  Individual sheep in it have barely the processing power of those old Commodore computers (“STOP IT!!!!! Computer Science doesn’t WORK like that!!!!!”). However, thanks to the wonders of quantum entanglement every sheep in the H.E.R.D. is linked to every other sheep, permanently, with distance being no object (“Ah, look, Physics doesn’t really work like that… we think. It’s an interesting question. Hrm.”).  All it took, then, was adapting some old-style Amiga operating languages so that they could support both Bluetooth and being installed on a sheep ([pause]  Oh, right, they already took the Computer Mad Scientist out of the room, gibbering), and voila!  A text-based communications system that can’t be hacked or intercepted unless you have your own member of the H.E.R.D.

This would be the moment where the federal government stepped in, and made it rain. And now that they have, it’s time for field trials for this new biotech. …So that’s why your party of adventurers have just signed for, and been handed the leash to, a sheep that has a replacement cost greater than the net worth of everybody else in the building. Have fun!