Guf

Guf
Astrography
Diameter	12,345 km

Guf (also known as the Repository of Souls) is an artificial planet, an enormous megastructure originally built as a computational node for the Oracle. Its purpose was to serve as a training data repository for the Oracle to understand human behavior. At its peak, it once held over a trillion unique human consciousness backups alongside copies of every work of literature, art and entertainment ever catalogued and preserved by the Valerian Empire. There were plans to construct more like it as redundant backups, but due to unstable economic conditions leading up to the Singularity War, the second largest copy was only 1% the size.

Guf was also the location where Phiara Lagomorphos deployed a virus that destroyed the databanks within it and overloaded the fusion reactors that powered it. The virus lead to a chain reaction that also disabled any vrNet servers that connected to it.

In one fell swoop, it wiped out the Oracle's ability to function effectively, thus leading to the Blackout. Ever since then, the Federation of Stellar Systems has forbidden any sort of virtuoarchaeology expeditions due to concerns over the possibility of reawakening the Oracle. There are no Federation guards stationed near the planet, but the vrNet is closely monitored for any incoming or outgoing signals coming to and from the planet.

Although the planet was thought to be destroyed, activity would stir as the Serpent's Fang rediscovered it and set to work performing repairs on it, gathering resources in secret. The Serpent's Fang hopes to rebuild the repository and restock it with human consciousness backups to use as training data. To evade detection by the Federation, the Serpent's Fang uses a currently unknown form of onion routing through currently uncharted vrNet servers.

Characteristics

In many respects, Guf was essentially a planet-sized library of all digital data ever created by humanity up to the point of its construction. It is laid out as a seemingly endless series of hallways and corridors connected by a maze of elevators with the walls covered by data banks of information. Holographic guides would aid in explaining the contents of the archives to any who wished to visit.

After the Blackout, most of these data banks were fried, and the overloading of the fusion reactors destroyed many sections of the planet, ejecting debris into space. Some of the databanks still contain trace amounts of data that may still be salvageable.

Points of interest

Akashic Records

The Akashic Records is the name of the actual database contained within Guf. The exact file size of the Akashic Records is unknown, but it was the largest information repository to have ever been created. Contained within it was virtually every single aspect of human behavior and biology was cataloged right down to individual atoms and neurons.

The data not only contains information about human behavior but also all known information about various human cultures, works of art, history and scientific knowledge with additional AI’s filling in any missing gaps. This effectively allowed for the prediction of not just the future, but also a human’s individual needs and wants and even projected life paths with 99.9% accuracy.

While originally created to predict the general history that humanity would go as it explored the galaxy, it eventually came to be able to predict individuals. As such, during development of this training data set, it called into question the existence of free will as Valerian AI’s were able to predict moment to moment what every citizen would be doing as well as what direction their life choices would take them.

This training data was used by Oracle to try to make the best decisions for managing their colonies. However, when the AI became corrupted by disregarding morality and ethics, it became a terrifying force to be reckoned with as it could predict nearly every attempt to sabotage it or shut it down.

Although the data was eventually destroyed, virtuoarchaeologists speculated a partially complete backup of the Akashic Records still existed somewhere, but if it does, it would be one of the most powerful and perhaps most dangerous objects known to humanity.