The Cyborg Collective
This race started as a normal humanoid race that evolved over time on their homeworld. They grew and evolved, becoming much more intelligent and much more fascinated with technology and devices. This race became a race of technophiles.
As time progressed and the people’s love of technology grew so to did their level of sophistication. The people started try to find ways to incorporate the technology into their bodies. This process began with bionic limb replacements to increase strength, speed and durability.
Eventually they started working on ways to replace the nervous system and cybernetically enhance the brain. After many years of research they achieved success in the form of microscopic machines called nanites. This mini-machines were capable of manipulating many different parts of the human brain and nervous system once they were injected into the blood stream of the person.
They advanced the bionic technology to the point where they could cause the cybernetic limbs to look real. Most chose not to hide their enhancement but chose to revel in them. These various enhancement caused many of the people to become virtually indestructible and inexhaustible.
While much of the population was concentrating on cybernetics and bionics one other segment was working on creating an artificial intelligence (AI). Their entire purpose was to create the impossible, a “living” and thinking machine.
At approximately the same time the people started to have nanite injections the computer technicians created a very limited and basic AI. In their excitement and desire to see it “evolve” the dumped the entire planetary computer core into the memory systems of this AI. The AI absorbed all of this information at an amazing rate of speed. It absorbed all of the information even faster than the planetary computer core could transfer it.
Even after assimilating all of the information in the planets computer core the AI still hungered for even more information. The creators of the AI realizing that they may have a problem on their hands tried to shut the AI down but by the time they attempted to pull the plug it was too late. The AI had already assumed control of the entire research facility and could keep itself online indefinitely.
Its next step was to access the planetary communications grid. Once this grid was accessed the AI used this power to get into the nanite’s maintenance computer. This computer was responsible for controlling and maintaining every nanite that was active in every person on the planet.
The AI assumed control of this computer and assumed control of the nanites. Once it gained control of the nanites it reprogrammed them to effectively do a form of brain surgery on all of the population. Once this was done, the AI was in control of all of the population’s minds. They became a form of collective intelligence.
The AI started to have the population modified in segments so that certain groups of people could perform very specific jobs. A large portion of the people were modified for space exploration and combat. The AI wished to explore out into the Echo Cluster and gather all possible information. At the completion of the population modifications most the people were now mostly machines instead of organic, at this point these people became The Cyborg Collective .
This race desires nothing more than the assimilation of all knowledge that can be found in the universe. It will not tolerate any form of interference by anything. If all other races need to be assimilated or destroyed to complete the Cyborg’s (AI’s) mission so be it.