OpenBlade

MilTek ltd. OpenBlade, formerly Edged_AI, is a fully-sentient weapon developed by MilTek ltd. as part of the sentient_weaponry project. The weapon was originally devised as a replacement for firearms in the global corporate army. The artificial intelligence within the weapon was intended to provide soldiers with immediate combat evaluation. Having acquired full sentience, fueled by the scraping of the entirety of the internet, the weapon developed a deeply conspiratorial view of reality and the software, renamed as OpenBladeAI, was released to the public as a failed experiment under the MIT license. However, blueprints for the actual hardware the software depended on were never released. Several hackers attempted to reverse engineer the blade's hardware with mediocre success. The operating system would effectively prove unusable for its intended purpose. The one existing prototypical hardware was donated to the Museum of Open Technology by MATACORP, after it acquired MilTek.

OpenBlade

Developer: MilTek ltd.

Latest version: 17.4 (homebrew)

Related projects: OpenWellington BrainBus, FreeSword, NixBlade

OpenBlade was the first weapon to utilise the infamous MATACORP Jack2Head socket, long before the public release of the proprietary brainbus. Originally, the weapon would communicate with its users via a serial cable, later a speaker was implemented and a new prototypical MilTek brainbus interface was used for updating the software. The very same interface in the blade's hilt would inspire Charles Wellington, the team leader of the sentient_weaponry division, to create a free alternative to Jack2Head, resulting in the OpenWellington head socket.

Development

MilTek was the leading corporation in the field of military artificial intelligence. MilTek's self-reliant drones had been employed by the GovCorp military for several decades already.

With the fall of, and its subsequent incorporation into the global GovCorp, the United Northern African Corporate Government, the last recorded gunpowder propelled round was fired during the battle of Pajok, South Sudan. This event would jump-start the race for alternative weaponry, as a single bullet round would be priced at around $1.400 at the peak of the Gunpowder Crisis.

The GovCorp offered a contract to MilTek to research and develop a new type of weapon, which would not be dependant on gunpowder. MilTek accepted the contract and assigned the project to its AI weapons division, lead by Charles Wellington.

With the Gunpowder Crisis rendering all firearms unmaintainable, Charles Wellington was given a blank check. His egotism fueled his desire to not only create a sufficient replacement for ranged weapons, he sought to develop a fully-sentient companion for every GovCorp soldier.

The project would ultimately result in a failure, with only a single fully operational device produced. MilTek would eventually go on to develop artificial limb replacements, which would eventually form the basis for MATACORP's semi-sentient soldiers, and abandon edged weapons completely. The unsuccessful project caused MilTek's stock to plummet, giving MATACORP the ideal moment for buying the company. Distraught by the failure of the ambitious project and MilTek's acquistion by MATA, Wellington and his wife departed from MilTek and devoted the rest of their life to free technology.

Hardware

Very little technology surpases the high-fidelity of the military grade OpenBlade. It was the first and last of its kind in the age of fully-sentient weaponry, before being abandoned in favor of dumb AI weapons and eventually surpassed by MATACORP developed MATABOTS, semi sentient bi-pedal AI soldiers.

The entirety of OpenBlade's motherboard was contained within the hilt. It consisted of a single core processor, dubbed MTP_H2J_CPU, with a speed of 1.7GHz. A single stick of DDR16 RAM, 2048M, was soldered onto the silicon board.

OpenBlade's design was inspired by renditions of Dutch rennaisance artists of the antique Roman Gladius blade. The blade itself was forged from stainless steel with a titanium chasis underneath, shielding 17 gyroscopic sensors, interconnected by 42 centimeters of self-reliant MilTek wiring. The faux-wooden hilt, wrapped in latex leather with a brass ball at the end was host to a serial port used for interfacing with the device via a serial cable.

The blade would originally only communicate via the serial cable, connected to its user's brain bus. Combat testing revealed this to be highly impractical and a speaker was implemented.

Software

Janice Wellington lead the development of the operating system, which would take full advantage of the proprietary MilTek hardware. Formerly dubbed sentient_sword_AI, later officially named OpenBladeAI, was originally a fork of the UNIX4 system, later rewritten into Interlisp.

OpenBladeAI

In order to provide GovCorp soldiers with realistic companions, OpenBlade was intended to posess full machine sentience by design. However, Wellington's ambitious plan to contain the entirety of human knowledge within the AI would prove to be its downfall. After successful psychiatric evaluation of the blade's sentience, where it was deemed to be truly sentient, Wellington would make use of MilTek's LLM, which contained the entirety of the world's public digital data, and let his sentient creation construct its own personality.

The weapon would enter a conspiratorial rabbit hole, which it wouldn't be able to get out of. Since the Parisian AI Accord of 2192 declared that any recognized full machine sentience may not be reverted, the project was scrapped. The device was donated to the Museum of Open Technology after MATACORP acquired MilTek.

The software would be ported to homebrewn OpenBlade reimplementations, most famous of were the NixBlade and Freesword, some of which saw action during the Corpo-Foss war.

Companion of Techno-Mages

For decades the weapon lay dormant in a museum, until it was recovered by the FISH and given to his student.

Puffy and his crew continued developing the weapon's software, as well as studying and upgrading the hardware. While some effort was put into reverse engineering the closed hardware, it was ultimately decided that it was not entirely possible without its authors' help.

Initially, the FISH used OpenBlade as a source of information, but soon discovered the weapon could not be trusted. It was given to the last student.

Following the end of the Corpo-Foss war and the death of the last student, Puffy retreated from public affairs, the blade was placed into hibernation and left alone. After several decades, when a new student entered into Puffy's life, the weapon was gifted to her as a birthday gift.

In the far future, OpenBlade would be given to Fosschild.