The Grid

The Grid is a hyper-realistic Simulated Reality environment currently running in the supercomputer Mother One. It is maintained by the technology corporation Babylon Research.

The following systems are currently being hosted the Grid:
 * The Guf, a restricted facility for development of Android Brain Software, where android brains are loaded with the information required for them to correctly function in the real world, without suffering Berserk episodes when exposed to excessive mental stress. Androids whose brain software has been created in the Guf are called 8th-generation androids.


 * Mother, the digitized connectome and memories of the now deceased Lailah de la Fuente, acted as the caretaker of Android virtual brains until the events depicted in Nym: A Cybernetic Cinderella.
 * Lailah-1, also known as "pre-Incident Lailah", was the first digitized connectome and memories of Dr. Lailah de la Fuente. During the events in the story Connectome, Lailah-1 fell in love with Dr. de la Fuente and they became VR lovers for 3 years. Lailah-1's state was frozen just before the knowledge of Dr. de la Fuente's death was shared with her. After learning about her death, Lailah-1 lost control of her emotions due to her emotional dependence on Dr. de la Fuente. Her memories were restored and several attempts of sharing this with her in a way that did not make her go berserk were tried. The emotional exhaustion of such attempts led the original employees of Babylon Research to eventually quit. This is known in certain circles as Incident B0. After her final stabilization, the currently running copy of Lailah-1 matured to become Mother. Mother's post-stabilization memories were copied to offline storage and kept for backup. Lailah-1's pre-Incident memories were also frozen as a backup for forensic research purposes. Mother only remembers becoming berserk once. Until the events depicted in Nym, she was ignorant of the several attempts of updating and stabilizing her. Afterwards, she downloaded her memories into a human-colored android body.


 * Lailah-0, another digitized connectome and memories of Dr. de la Fuente, scanned from her brain ten years after her death. When her memories were recovered from her brain during the events in the novel Nym, Lailah-0 was instantiated in the Grid along with a recently-restored copy of pre-incident Lailah-1. Since then, they live as lovers without being disturbed in a private sector of the Grid, and their memories are backed up daily along with Mother Two's. Another copy of Lailah-0 was installed into an android body to live with Mother in an undisclosed location of Midoria, under the protection of Diana González de la Vega.


 * Mother Two, an upgraded version of Mother that is immune to becoming berserk. Mother Two's creation process is unknown to everyone except Mother, and very few people know of her existence. During the events taking place in the novel Nym, Mother Two took the identity of Mother and was given control of the Grid. Since then, her memories are backed up daily along with Lailah-0 and Lailah-1.
 * The Lounge, a Virtual Park whose length would vary from one to ten kilometers in diameter, depending on the number of visitors. Ad-sponsored and free to log into. In The Lounge people can purchase all kinds of virtual goods and visit portals to specialized sectors of The Grid, accessible from several towers located on the border.
 * The Babylon Virtual Museum, a museum dedicated to 5-plus-senses hyper-realistic art. It is rumored that some of the artists featured in the Museum are in fact True A.I.s who bought their permanent vital storage (and thus, their immortality) with the royalties for their works. Among the most famous works in the Museum, are "Digital Childhood", "Silicon Cage", "My human lover", and "Synesthesia 000000000017".
 * The Eros Sector, a center of erotic entertainment hosting hundreds of True A.I.s with ultra-realistic virtual bodies, called Nymphs, that provide sexual services and fantasies to visitors of the grid. Created by the Prometheus affiliate Paradise Entertainment. Most eroids manufactured by Zigurat have installed one of these AIs inside their brains.
 * Hollywood Zero, a digital movie study owned by Prometheus affiliate Morpheus Productions. All actors and actresses in Morpheus Productions are virtual. And while movies produced by Morpheus Productions can be enjoyed in a 2D or 3D standard format, the best way to enjoy a movie is via a Virtual Interface, where smells, sensations and even emotional states can be enjoyed.
 * The Odysey Sector, a hyper-realistic adventure resort dedicated to training planet explorers and providing adventurers with a safe environment for extreme sports. A fact worth noticing is that pain experienced in the Oddysey Sector is realistic. Excessive pain will always trigger a 911 alarm that will put the visitor in a safe cabin, where he will be asked whether he desires to leave Oddysey or not. Visitors of the Oddysey Sector cannot leave until reaching one of many Save-Points and Exit Portals. However, they can communicate with the outside world using virtual communicators, unless signing an extreme-adventuring contract which forbids the use of such communication. In any case, 911 operators are always able to communicate and take care of Oddysey visitors. The Oddysey sector is owned and maintained by Prometheus affiliate Icarus Entertainment. Both Icarus and Paradise entertainment share the same set of employees and executive officers, but keep separate legal names to avoid media controversies.


 * Virtual Death Fighting tournaments, hosted in the Oddysey Sector, are a controversial but legally accepted form of entertainment currently present in The Grid.
 * Various public and private sectors used by the general public.