Link to article: 'Osteotronic Cubes' (VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1).
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[[include theme:mcd]] [[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] ||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Status||Selling|| ||~ Demand||Medium|| ||~ Value||40 000 USD/32 000 GBP per unit|| ||~ Availability||Established Supply Chain|| ||~ Identifier||Osteotronic Cubes|| ||~ Description||Items are anomalous, customizable biocomputers measuring approximately 10 centimetres along each dimension and weighing approximately 500 grams. They consist of an outer layer of ossified tissue surrounding a core of soft tissue, comprised primarily of cardiac, nerve and muscle cells. These units use a form of massively parallel DNA computing to provide processing speeds equivalent to roughly 2 terahertz of conventional computing power. Each unit also possesses 400 terabytes of core memory and up to 500 gigabytes of RAM.|| ||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Initial Report|| ||~ Author || Iris Dark ||~ Date || 02/16/2015|| ||~ Interest||Medium||~ Identifier||Osteotronic Cubes|| |||||||| I stumbled upon these last June in an anomalous electronics shop in Islington by the name of FallenZealot's Broken Tech Shack. The proprietor had named them 'Boners', but I refuse to refer to them as such. Upon a subsequent visit to the establishment I inquired whether he made them himself or acquired them elsewhere, and he proudly boasted that they were his own invention. _ _ According to him, he first creates a collagen scaffold around the electronic components and then strategically plants genetically modified seed cells and applies a stem cell coating. The object is then placed within an incubator with a nutrient solution and kept at 37 degrees Celsius for 12 days. Upon reaching maturity, he uploads a proprietary operating system he developed himself. These were all the specifics he was willing to provide, and absolutely refused to divulge where he acquired his biological materials. _ _ I assured him we would not care. _ _ Due to their organic nature, exact specifications vary between units and fluctuate slightly for individual units over time, but I know from personal experience that each possesses roughly a thousand times the processing power of an average PC, while only consuming between 800 and 1800 watts of electricity. I have been using a quartet of them for high-frequency trading for the past several months, to extravagant success. _ _ I believe there could be a considerable demand for such a powerful yet compact and energy efficient computer. FallenZealot, the alias of my business contact, has said that he only has one incubator at the moment. However, if we were to cover his upfront costs for additional equipment, materials, etc. he could easily scale up production to meet demand. _ _ He has requested payment of 2000 pounds per unit, but I'll leave it to the sales people to negotiate such things. I believe my talents would best be utilized developing software for this unique platform. A 'killer app' would no doubt drastically increase sales.|| ||||~ File Opened Under:|||| VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1 || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 01|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Percival Darke ||~ Recipient || Iris Dark|| |||||||| Bring me one so that I might divine what spectral properties it may possess. Living Flesh can seldom be sundered from spirit, and we would not wish to endanger our clientele with the ire of spectres unknown. _ _ Should I deem it sufficiently benign, you may proceed. I will grant you whatever resources you require; monetary, magic, and mortal, to fulfil your designs. In my youth, I too breathed life into many killers to slake my lust for coin. You are truly my progeny. _ _ I will assign some young blood to deal with the finances on your behalf. You were correct that your focus must be on producing the soft wares for this brain of bone. I know all too well that a brain void of thought is of little value. _ _ Do be sure that the cube you bring me is expendable. I've been yearning for something crunchy all day. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 06|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Victor Chan ||~ Recipient || FallenZealot|| |||||||| Hello Mr. Zealot, this is Victor Chan of Marshall, Carter & Dark. Moving forward, I will be your contact for the Osteotronic Project. I'm actually based out of the Hong Kong office, but we shouldn't need to meet in person that often, and I will have no problem travelling to London if necessary. _ _ You'll be happy to hear that Mr. Darke has ruled your products to be 'untainted by the damned', so we're shooting for a July release date. Personally, I think that's a little quick to develop the software but Iris swears she can do it. _ _ I will be preselling these items in the meanwhile. I will keep you up to date on the orders, and it is your responsibility to produce sufficient stock to fill these orders, plus an additional fifty percent for off-the-shelf sales in July. Let me know immediately if there are any problems with production. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 07|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || FallenZealot ||~ Recipient || Victor Chan|| |||||||| No worries mate. Iris has got me set up to churn out a hundred cubes a fortnight if I need to. I honestly still prefer to call them Boners, but I guess your clientele is a bit too sophisticated for such juvenile humour. _ _ Remember, if anyone asks they just need electricity (they go dormant when unplugged), they don't poop or pee, but they do breathe. They seem to be able to get all the water they need from humidity, but if you're in a dry climate maybe spritz them once and a while, right? _ _ Oh, and if someone's dog gets a hold of it and chews it up make sure that's not covered by the warranty. We ain't responsible for that. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 09|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Victor Chan ||~ Recipient || Percival Darke|| |||||||| Good day Sir. I'm writing to inform you that I have negotiated FallenZealot down to 1500 GBP per unit for the Osteotronic Cubes. I currently have pre-orders for 27 units, at a price of £20,500/$25,625, which is a pretty good deal considering they match the processing power of around a million dollars worth of conventional hardware. _ _ After the initial release, I will tweak the price depending on demand. Please keep me apprised of how Ms. Dark is progressing with the software. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 11|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Iris Dark ||~ Recipient || Percival Darke, cc Victor Chan, FallenZealot|| |||||||| Gentlemen, my team and I have just finished the testing phase for Dark Matter, our software suite for the cubes. It takes advantage of the cubes' unparalleled ability for parallel processing to create large scale, high fidelity mathematical models. They can simulate economics, demographics, climate, genetics, bio-molecular chemistry, geophysics, astrophysics, pretty much anything you want. _ _ Most importantly, simulations that would take months on a sequential computer can be done in hours on one of these cubes. The suite also includes programs for data mining, image processing, natural language processing, cryptography, and genome sequencing/editing, among other things. _ _ Probably a bunch of customers will use them for gaming, but so long as they pay I'm happy. _ _ Victor, I think now's a good time for you to take a trip over to London to make sure you're familiar enough with Dark Matter to sell it to our clients. I guarantee your pre-orders will skyrocket.|| ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 12|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Victor Chan ||~ Recipient || Percival Darke, cc Iris Dark|| |||||||| Pre-orders have jumped to 84 units, and will likely be around a hundred by the time we launch. We already have a hundred units on hand and Zealot currently has an additional fifty units 'baking'. _ _ See you at the launch party everyone. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||~ Sale Records|| ||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1 || ||~ Records From:||||July, 2015 to June, 2016|| ||~ Month ||~ Sold ||~ Comments|| || July, 2015 || 200 ||Product Launch. Sold Out. Increased price to £25,000/$31,250. Doubled production capacity|| || August, 2015 || 400 || Sold Out. Increased price to £32,000/$40,000. Doubled production capacity again || || September, 2015 || 800 || Sold Out, marketing counter push for iPhone launch || || October, 2015 || 689 || || || November, 2015 || 674 || Production capacity doubled for Christmas pre-orders || || December, 2015 || 1600 || Christmas spike. Sold Out|| || January, 2016 || 706 || || || February, 2016 || 677 || || || March, 2016 || 652 || || || April, 2016 || 64 || Sales plummet. See Incident Report || || May, 2016|| 00 || Sales suspended for internal inquiry || || June, 2016 ||N/A|| Sales reps instructed to pre-sell next generation model || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 54|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || FallenZealot ||~ Recipient || Victor Chan|| |||||||| Is this a belated April Fool's joke or something? What the hell happened to our sales? I've been making these things at half maximum capacity since Christmas, and now I've got nearly a thousand of them sitting around in my store room. I made a sort of throne with them. A throne of Boners. Worth a chuckle, but not the one and a half million you'd pay me for them. I trust you're looking into this. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||~ Selected Customer Complaints || ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1 || || //~ Do you have some kind of tech support for these bone cubes of yours? Mine crashed on me for no reason and I can't get it working//.|| || //~ These things should come with a care instruction booklet, like sea monkeys. How am I supposed to know how to keep a bone cube alive?//|| || //~ I knew I should have stuck with Anderson.//|| || //~ Ah, are you guys sure these things don't need food, because I'm pretty sure mine's dead. It just completely stopped working. It use to blow air in and out of its little holes, but it's not even doing that. This better be covered by the warranty because this was in no way my fault.//|| || //~ This sucks! I was making this huge project of 3D digital anart. It would have been awesome! The fragility of your hardware has deprived the world of my genius! If you have anything that can bring stuff back to life, I think I'm entitled to use it to get my art back.// || || //~ I named mine Sans, like from Undertale, and now he's gone. You owe me for pain and suffering!// || || //~ Do you assholes have any idea how much data we just lost because of your shitty cubes! If you can't recover this data for us you will be hearing from our attorneys.// || || //~ If you won't put me through to Percy, just give him this message. Tell him his attempt to cultivate the Flesh was admirable, but next time he should leave it to the professionals. Poor thing never had a chance. I might be able to resurrect it though. I'll show him what I'm talking about next time I'm in.//|| ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Incident Report 01|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1 || ||~ Author || Victor Chan ||~ Date || 04/29/2016|| |||||||| For the past few months we have been receiving an increasing number of complaints regarding the Osteotronic Cubes. Specifically, they're dying. Autopsies of the dead cubes have revealed the cause of death to be systemic collapse caused by a compromised immune system. _ _ This problem only appears to affect cubes produced from last December and onwards, but beyond that, I can spot no pattern in which cubes develop these fatal defects. _ _ I can only conclude there is some fault in the manufacturing process. I have reported my findings to FallenZealot and he is investigating the matter now. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 58|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || FallenZealot ||~ Recipient || Victor Chan cc Iris Dark, Percival Darke|| |||||||| Seems I've got a bit of fessing up to do. In order to meet the demand you guys were giving me, I had to be a //little// less selective in where I acquired my biological materials. It appears that at some point in the manufacturing process, I //may// have accidentally introduced some bio-matter that //may// have been contaminated with HIV, and //may// have since contaminated every subsequent batch. Maybe. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 59|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Iris Dark ||~ Recipient || FallenZealot cc Victor Chan, Percival Darke|| |||||||| YOU GAVE THEM FUCKING AIDS?!@@ @@|| ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 60|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Percival Darke ||~ Recipient || FallenZealot cc Victor Chan, Iris Dark|| |||||||| I would normally reprimand such uncouth language from my heir as unbecoming of her station, but...Holy Hell. _ _ This is not the first time plague has decimated my profits, nor will it be the last, but do not for a moment think that excuses your gross negligence in this, Zealot! It seems our business arrangements will need to be revised to prevent such an egregious folly from occurring in the future. _ _ Chan, you must contain this fire. See to it that our affected clients are compensated for their troubles. Iris, let us meet to discuss this matter in person and commiserate over the finest liqueurs and vestal ichors this city has to offer. _ _ I feel that some cordial might be conducive towards devising sufficient contrition for the Fallen Zealot. || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 61|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || FallenZealot ||~ Recipient || Percival Darke|| |||||||| Hold on there one minute mate. Sure, I screwed up, but these are still my Boners! You don't mess with a man's Boners! I'll sterilize the equipment, provide you with clean Boners to replace the sick ones (you should probably use hazmat gear to handle those and then chuck them in an incinerator), but then we're square! _ _ I ain't your underling Darke! We're business partners, and we had a contract (very cliche you had me sign it in blood, btw). You try changing our deal now and I'm out, do you hear me! You ain't the only show in town, you know? I'll find someone else to sell these for me, just you wait and see! || ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 62|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Iris Dark ||~ Recipient || FallenZealot || |||||||| Zealot, would you please be a dear and come into the office at your earliest convenience? Great Grandsire and I would like to discuss this issue in person.|| ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| ||||||||~ Memo 65|| ||||||||~ VXY33/F7RQ3/9XAD1|| ||~ Sender || Victor Chan ||~ Recipient || cc All|| |||||||| The situation is now under control. Fortunately there doesn't seem to have been any instances of people contracting transmissible diseases from the infected cubes. Resource acquisition and quality control for the Osteotronic Cubes is now being handled by MC&D employees directly. The incubation equipment has been completely sterilized of all contaminated materials, allowing us to resume production. _ _ Mr. Darke and Ms. Dark personally negotiated a buyout of FallenZealot's Broken Tech Shack along with all pertinent information on creating the Osteotronic Cubes. I'm not privy to the details, but Zealot's probably retired somewhere tropical right now. _ _ Mr. Darke and Ms. Dark would also like to assure our staff that the recent increase in threats from members of the Church of the Broken God is unrelated to the buyout or FallenZealot's sudden departure. _ _ All affected cubes have been recalled, with their owners being offered the option of either a full refund or a next generation cube as soon as they are available. This next generation of cube was personally designed by Ms. Dark herself, optimized for Dark Matter 2.0. Mr. Darke has also contributed some sort of 'ward' to protect the cubes from ailments, so be sure you push that if anyone brings up the issues with the old models. _ _ I know that the 'outbreak' wasn't great for the cubes' reputation, but they are still a powerful piece of anomalous hardware. Remind people of what they can do and what we've done to protect them from illness, and they'll sell themselves. _ _ Also, any units that have been modified using Sarkic theurgy are to be treated as imminent threats to health and safety. Contact security immediately, and do not offer a return or replacement. Thank you.|| ||||||||~ Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP|| [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]