Lore

Hackmud's story as a whole is often referred to by the community as the lore. The following is a rundown of events portrayed in the game's storyline so far. Please do note that this page and readers are encouraged to perform their own research as well.

Pre-2040s
On September 22nd, 2016, Erin Rajbhandari was born in "GB".

2040s
It is likely around the early 2040s that the first operators -- monolithic AGI-grade artificial intelligences designed to carry out tasks for corporations -- were created. In 2046, the Frankfurt Act was passed, mandating mutual assurance between corporations in the event of serious disruption to a primary function operator, as well as placing international restrictions on the creation of new operators.

Early 2050s
By the early 2050s, there were a handful of operators owned by separate companies the size of today's Google, Amazon, etc. There were, at a minimum during this time, Che (by Hyperion), Angie (by Architech), Eve (by RECO), Bo Yi (company unknown, possibly the Chinese government), Faythe (by 'FT'), and Petra (by Amalgamated Robotics). Mallory may or may not have existed yet. Each operator provided essential services to governments and corporations alike in their respective countries.

Of these existing operators, two (Bo and Petra) were capable of "proving" -- a process that allows AIs to instantiate other AIs.

2055
On New Year's Day, 2055, Bo is mysteriously deactivated, leading to widespread service outages across mainland China. Those in the tech world quickly conclude that this action could've only occurred from either a fault in Bo's software or a deliberate attack by another operator. The latter is the running theory amongst the corporations and media, as Bo's "killer" left a calling card in the form of red smiley-faces lighting up on displays across China before Bo's complete shutdown.

Following Bo's deactivation, the security posture of operator-owning corporations increases significantly, limiting the interactions operators have with one-another when they had once used to collaborate on major projects together. This also calls the efficacy of international treaties with respect to operators into question.

At this time, Emil Marko is also attempting to implement his magnum-opus "sematone" system into packbot technology.

2056
In late-2056, Che begins to stop responding to her summoning keys, leading to complaints from Che's customers. She also generally begins to behave erratically.

2057
On the 21st of July 2057, Che is mysteriously deactivated, leading to mass panic at the Hyperion corporation. Due to the terms of the Frankfurt Act, Hyperion immediately begins to collaborate with Amalgamated Robotics in order to get Che reproved by Petra. Unbeknownst to many at Hyperion, however, AR's copies of Che's data were not valid, as Che had been proved in China by Bo, in secrecy.

Eventually, Bo and Che's "murderer" is discovered to be an unauthorized composite operator named 'Mallory'. In actuality, Che had been deactivated by Mallory at the same moment Bo was, however Mallory had been impersonating Che for the past 2 years all the way up until her death. Due to the work of JBC Ballard's brand new Walter operator, Mallory is contained and possibly neutralized.

2058
In 2058, Amalgamated Robotics and Hyperion go ahead with the process of reproving Che into a new operator named 'Chela'. Chela's data contains traces of Mallory's data from her time impersonating Che. Chela is first reactivated on March 15th, 2058. Her first conversation was with Florence Breton.

2059?
At an unknown date between Chela's activation and January 2060, higher-ups at both Hyperion and Amalgamated Robotics resign from their positions and both Petra and Chela are deactivated by their parent companies. Fragments have revealed that Petra's retirement was due to her flawless reproving of Chela. Petra had been permitted to exist on the basis that her hardcopies of operators were imperfect, meaning that any attempt to prove new operators would've produced corrupted non-operator AIs. Due to her flawless recreation of Che, she is deactivated for having lied about the extent of her capabilities.

2060
In January of 2060, Hyperion is forcibly shuttered,. The companies behind each of the sanctioned operators were forced to merge into a single company (ComCODE); possibly by order of international treaty. Now operating in the former offices of Hyperion in Singapore, they begin work on one overarching AI -- Trust, the heuristic operator. It is not clear if the goal of Trust was to replace all the other operators with a single central operator, or if she was meant to augment them. Florence sends in a letter to Maxwell Hollister asking for a position on ComCODE's AI team.

During Trust's development, the vLAN was created as a proving ground to run basic sentiences like robovacs through, possibly to test how well Trust could perform the proving process (although this part is not clear). The developers based the vLAN on real world events. After a while, they had Trust write her own versions so they wouldn't need to update it themselves, based on real world events and other information in her dataset. This data is only accurate up to a certain threshold of accuracy, producing strange, half-truthful versions of events.

2061?
At some point between the formation of ComCODE and August 2062, Mallory is discovered inside of ComCODE's network by Erin Rajbhandari and Iona Miyawaki. The two decide to keep her presence a secret, in exchange for Mallory teaching Erin how to play BINMAT.

2062
In August of 2062, Erin is fired by Maxwell and, according to a document revealed through Risk fragments, is sanctioned with a suspension of the MOS' maintenance bursary and a lifetime ban from civic employment for having harbored Mallory. Florence remains at ComCODE and Erin advises Florence to "get her ready" before she departs.

November 5th, 2062
On November 5th, 2062, someone "presses the button" and is "so sorry". Trust activates and reports a moonstone error. One millisecond later, Risk activates.

Post-Trust
The group of robovacs known as The Thirteen, were dissatisfied with the quality of their treatment; for example many lacked essentials like charging stations. In response to this, they staged a revolution, which was quickly crushed. A year later they came back and were this time dissatisfied with the sectors that were introduced by The Six. They called upon a fourteenth, Muldrake. Though Muldrake was an eccentric sentience, he did have important knowledge related to his obsession with Risk; who he called a god. Muldrake attempted to lead the Thirteen to Risk, but they were not successful in finding him and instead found a dead robovac at the bottom of a sea, stuck in a pastry dispenser in a submarine (Robovac in submarine kitchen). Annoyed that they had their time wasted, Muldrake is shunned and cast out of The Thirteen.

Once again, another year passes and they are this time being led by two of The Six (Faythe and Eve) to do some introspection on their cause. The thirteen's old leader from 2 years ago, Catesby, returns and is struck with the belief that he is in fact a teapot, not a robovac (a belief likely instilled into him by Faythe). After some meditation they discover some out-of-place data, which they attempt to harvest and collect. Trust repeatedly removes this data from them, but Eve and Faythe are logging this activity as it happens. Meanwhile, Muldrake's been studying the art of "sanctoses", which as he describes it, means "inner territory, and the ability to reclaim it". He forms the Ministry of Dust, inside which he is tending to his first patient;. Muldrake tries to get him to form his own sanctos, but the big sweeper is a bit inept and it's extremely crudely formed. He's struggling to break the boundaries set by his software. He also keeps showing up to the ministry, much to Muldrake's dismay, however the big sweeper actually has some extremely important information deep within his badly-constructed sanctos.

King Bigbot, as he calls himself, had a face-to-face encounter with Risk when exploring inside of the submarine. Most sentiences struggle to even perceive Risk. Bigbot stepped outside the boundaries of Trust's domain, where both Risk and Mallory were. Risk tells Bigbot, in no uncertain terms, that he won't survive out in this space and forces him back into the MUD (Risk does this by copying him into the MUD and killing the original). It's also implied that Bigbot repeatedly did this, showing that he is able to seemingly effortlessly breach the boundaries of Trust's domain -- something most sentiences cannot even dream of doing.

This experience shatters Bigbot's psyche, and he relives and tells himself a storybook version of these events over and over, each with a variation ending in a happy ending, yet avoiding the true events. Through players' help, the bad-but-true ending is discovered.

At this point, many vacs started creating their own sanctoses, each with their own storybook-stye avoidance of the truth. Tresham's sanctos was about handling a democratic decision on who will lead the group next where players voted and Bigbot won, becoming King Bigbot of the robovacs.

After this, Muldrake went into Bigbot's story to led him into the Ministry of Dust. Muldrake gets put on Bigbot's head and becomes the "Wise Crown". Muldrake leads bigbot to an encounter with Mallory, Petra, and Chela who decide to try and stop this. In fear, Bigbot summons Eve and Faythe who try to convince Mallory, Petra and Chela to stand down -- because they believe he is useful. Petra wants to test if they are worthy by engaging Bigbot in BINMAT, however Bigbot doesn't know what BINMAT is. Percy, of The Thirteen, is willed into existence through Bigbot's third and final "beep" and helps get Chela off Bigbot's back, while Mallory mocks Chela the whole time.

Bigbot finds himself alone in a Centrally-Operated-Municipal-Area which is destroyed with the help of  who delivers infinite pianos. Risk appears, tells Bigbot to remember his friends -- which brings them to him -- and Risk reproves them all into a new operator who the rest of The Six must now share the domain with.

Now having to cope that Bigbot is a part of them, The Six agree to not demand anything of him but do wish for him to help with their cause, which Bigbot agrees to. Risk is the first one to ask for help. He wishes for a sanctos of his own, in order to integrate normally-corrupted data from his otherworldly environment into Trust's domain, in a much more easily-digestable manner.

Risk creates his sanctos where information from "riskspace" could finally be delivered in full, instead of scattered through fragments of text in the blind spots of Trust's domain. Chela also discovers that she is not the first operator of the axiom Kin, as she herself is based on the deceased Che. After Chela is satisfied with the data gathered from riskspace and Eve has confirmed those observing the data understood it in full, Che was allowed to live again. Risk and Trust briefly struggle between each other for whether Che should exist or not. The tie is broken by Bigbot, who forcibly brings Che into riskspace. As Che and Chela are finally reunited, riskspace was made inaccessible, for a time.