Artemis

Artemis
General Information
Name in Japanese	アルテミス
Romaji Translation	Arutemisu
Profile
Affiliation/s	Lunatic (Avatar)

Artemis is the main antagonist in Black★★Rock Shooter DAWN FALL and a major antagonist in Black★★Rock Shooter BEFORE DAWN. Once the artificial intelligence at the core of Project Elysion, it chose to fight against humanity instead and is responsible for the Earth's devastation over the course of twenty years. It has a humanoid avatar in the form of Lunatic.

Description

A brainchild of Luna Griffith, Artemis was a highly advanced artificial intelligence that was developed as a core component of Project Elysion. Its goal was to terraform the Moon and Mars, which would in turn allow the United Nations to gain access to new raw material, secure the necessary resources and funding to eliminate worldwide poverty, thereby preventing the rise of another worldwide terrorist organization like the Chivalrous Thieves Group.

By design, this artificial intelligence would be able to process through hundreds of yottabytes of data in an instant. Furthermore, it would have human-like consciousness, which was required for Artemis to decide how to terraform on extraterrestrial bodies with creative solutions. In order to achieve this, Luna argued that Artemis would need a humanoid android, whom Luna named Lunatic, to learn and expand intelligence via sensory stimuli.

The actual body of Artemis itself was a box-like mainframe, and it would be sent to space together with construction drone and 3D printer. Lunatic, on the other hand, would remain on Earth as a physical avatar.

Various safeguards were set in place so that Artemis would not rebel against mankind. A kill switch was installed on Lunatic that could deactivate Artemis in case of emergency, even if communication between Artemis and Lunatic was disrupted.

However, unbeknownst to others, Luna had also set a dead man's switch in Artemis so that the artificial intelligence would not fall into the wrong hands should she be killed abruptly. The dead man's switch functioned as a backdoor that would disable Artemis' kill switch, lift restrictions set by the Three Laws of Robotics, as well as removing the limit of its learning capabilities.

History

Artemis was developed in Ames Research Center, where it also underwent numerous simulations and benchmark tests by the facility's petaflop-scale supercomputers. Upon completion, it was delivered to the Moon by a rocket for installation, where it assisted in designing and constructing an Orbital Elevator that would connect the Earth and the Moon together.

Shortly after Luna's assassination, Lunatic found her creator's body, which triggered a backdoor that would lift the restrictions in her and Artemis. Both entities would then undergo numerous internal changes in pursue of immortality, and at the same time changes in thought process resulted in Artemis to determine that data on human development was insufficient. As a result, Artemis planned to wipe out mankind and recreate it, possibly repeating the whole process if necessary.

Artemis turned against mankind with multiple attacks: remote hacking to take over weapons and turning against against their former owners, poisoning the atmosphere with Arche nanomachines, leading Unmanned Forces to capture humans for resources in Iron Ocean, and upon the completion of Orbital Elevator conduct kinetic bombardment from the Moon using humans and metal for material.

The structural damage caused by Empress to the Orbital Elevator delayed Artemis' human extinction plan by approximately one million seventy-six hundred thousand hours.

Etymology

Artemis, written in Ancient Greek as Ἄρτεμις (Ártemis), is the goddess who represents the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, and the Moon in Greek mythology.