Moss (TL13)
It came as a shock to Terran scientists when they discovered moss on every Earth-compatible planet with a viable biosphere. It terrified them when they realized that they were all a recognizable variant of Terran moss. Finding out that all moss, everywhere, are Precursor artifacts ended up sending some of those researchers out for psychological restabilization. But then, how were humans supposed to realize that the Precursors were all around them all along? They grew up around moss, after all.
A patch of moss theoretically operates as a Complexity 10 Genius Tiny Computer, assuming that you can figure out a way to turn the moss on. Nobody’s really sure how to turn the moss on; it’s like someone from the American Civil War trying to operate a MRI scanner that was programmed in the Zapotec language. There are a variety of methods used that sometimes results in a random download to the nearest digital storage, and sometimes that download can give useful (read: ‘fantastically valuable’) hints about current research projects. And sometimes one of the Moss researchers suddenly ups and disappears, after cleaning out his credit accounts and liquidating his assets. It’s about then that people are uncomfortably reminded that you can store quite a few individual braintapes on even a TL10 Tiny Computer.
But that sort of thing doesn’t happen often. Heck, it doesn’t happen often enough to be more than an urban legend. It’s a big universe out there, after all.
The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.