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Something Old...


Mogar

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Treasure Island. Who wouldn't want to find an island with buried gold? This story starts in 1700 with a girl named Kiyoko, born on the island of Dejima, Nagasaki, Japan. Born the daughter of a servant woman and an employee of the Dutch East India Company, Kiyoko was not given a very enjoyable life until 1712, when her family moved to Amsterdam with her father, though he did not acknowledge her as his daughter he maintained her mother as a Servant as a sort of atonement to ensure Kiyoko was not living in what he saw as the complete poverty of the Asians in comparison to his refined European taste.

 

Her mother, Yoshiko died soon after they reached Amsterdam, and Kiyoko took it poorly, culminating in her eventually burning down her Father's Manor and escaping to England. Now being a young exotic girl in England all alone was not the wisest of ideas, but she had enough money taken from her father that she would manage for a few days until she had thought of the next step in this rather rash plan she had come up with. The first Inn she had reached that she felt seemed inactive enough that she would be left alone was the The Quiet Horse's Inn. A run down looking place, the furniture was nothing like she was used to in her father Manor and far closer to what she had remembered in Dejima. So much for refined european tastes, she thought to herself. Kiyoko paid the Innkeeper, an old Irish woman, for the next week and asked for her meals to be brought to her.

 

The next several days were spent reading, she had learned how to read both Dutch and English at an early age due to her father's business, and soon learned that the so called "New World" the Europeans had found were said to be lawless, the Caribbean no longer a place for unhindered travel. Piracy had existed in Japan as well, it was common knowledge on Dejima who needed to be bribed to ensure safe passage, and with the Dutch East India Company as the monopoly of the island, they quickly made friends with those who did the pirating, turning a blind eye to their actions in exchange for their selection of targets focusing on the other East India Companies, providing the Dutch goods to be delivered cheapest and safest to Europe.

Rob Selby, a poor sailor and occasional pirate, had checked in a few days later. The two finally met downstairs around the fireplace just before dinner time, the crackling of the fire the only sound other than their voices in the tavern. The exotic woman had inspired many questions for him, and for her, an attraction to the freedom and anonymity the seas provided. The two talked for hours and as the liquor flowed and with careful topic selection on Kiyoko's part, Rob came up with the idea the two should run off together to the new world and have a new start. Of course they would need money for this, she had a reasonable amount saved up, but Rob was wise enough to have her get a taste of the pirate life before trusting his future with the beautiful but mysterious stranger.

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Of course, Kiyoko had her own motives to agreeing to such a thing as well, he claimed to be a pirate and it would serve her well to see what skills he offered her before partnering up with him. It would be about a week later when they were both standing on the deck of The Wandering Compass, A decent sized vessel, the Captain was a man who went by the name of Wyatt "Commodore Chops" Craggs. Kiyoko could immediately tell he was a man who had experience in the job, he ran a tight ship and she found use assisting in cooking and her skills with a blade would be what Craggs would want out of her now. Their ship was coming up upon the merchant ship they had chosen. Ironically it was a VOC vessel, the company her father had worked for. Carrying tea and other goods from the far east, it would be easy to fence and turn a quick profit.

Kiyoko stood next to Captain Craggs, he glanced at her and then returned his gaze to the ship they were gradually gaining on. "This is the hardest trick of pirating, Lass. You raise the black too early, and they will try to run, too late and they'll panic and put up a hard fight...no, you have to raise the flag at just the right time." He mused, waiting until they were about a thousand feet away from their prey before nodding to the man who stood at the back of the boat waiting to do just that. Their prey quickly slowed and they pulled up aside, the crew throwing the grapples and pulling the vessels tight next to each other. Kiyok was chosen as part of the boarding party, as was Selby. They both went over to the merchant ship and Kiyoko stood next to the Captain as he began talking to his counterpart, who handed Craggs the ledger. "It's all there, you'll find everything where it is supposed to be in the hold." Cragged simply nodded, and handed it to the first mate to begin to instruct the crew of where their priority cargo were and begin the process of taking it. 

Selby and Kiyoko did their jobs and were carrying the boxes to their own ship when Kiyoko noticed one of the pirates slipping into a backroom. Puzzled, she put down the box she carried, her hand resting on the sword on her belt as she pushed open the door slowly. On the other side stood one of her pirate "friends", and a female passenger, he had bound her hands and stuffed a piece of her dress into her mouth, silencing her screams. Before she even knew what she was doing, she had drawn her sword and pressed the point into his back, "I think you should reconsider your actions." She said quietly. the man's hands raising away from the poor woman. As he turned he reached for his own blade, but with a flick of her wrist she slit his throat, cutting him down where he stood.

The first mate came barging in a few seconds later, "What the fuck is all the commotion in here?" He asked, quickly adding, "What the fuck did you do?" after he saw the dying man bleeding upon the floor. Kiyoko shrugged, "He was about to rape this poor girl, I couldn't let him do that and ruin our captains reputation, now could I?" she asked rhetorically. "Well..." he trails off as the bleeding man gave a final shudder and then lay still. "You're going to have to explain this to the Captain, bring her along too." he said, nodding at the tied up woman before heading back to the deck. Kiyoko untied the woman, cleaning her up a bit, "You're safe now, I won't let anyone else hurt you." Kiyoko whispered quietly to her, leading her out of the makeshift bedroom and up the stairs to the Captain.

 

The situation did not go over well with the crew, but the Captain understood. Once the cargo was finished loading, they cut the lines and sailed off, having done their duty as british citizens to deny the dutch any profit. At port, the Captain would later afford Kiyoko a second share of the take from the haul, the share that the man she killed would have gotten. Commadore Chops did have a reputation to uphold, one that he had gotten by treating all vessels he plundered with respect so long as they followed the code.Rape was one of the few things pirates considered a crime and he felt her actions while rash, were entirely appropriate, especially given the fact Kiyoko was a female herself, Craggs understood she would probably not want to be spending her time upon a vessel alongside someone capable of such an action.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Months passed, and with them Kiyoko's skills grew. Nearly a third of the crew that was making the journey to the Caribbean was quite unhappy with the arrangement of allowing a woman to be a crew member, but after several fights breaking out over attempted assaults on her, those who were displeased with the situation learned to keep their mouths shut and opinions to themselves. By now you're probably what happened to our boy Rob Selby, well, Rob began training with Kiyoko upon the deck at 3 bells at night, allowing her to maintain the aura among the crew that she knew what she was getting herself into,, and when she learned everything she could from him, others who were more supportive of her upon the ship began taking up the task. 

By the time she arrived in Nassau, she was far more skilled as fighter, and had enough within the crew would prove to be a troublesome force against their future prey in the Caribbean. They would spend 3 days in Nassau refitting to go back out and actually find themselves a bounty, it was expected the crew would spend several thousand pieces of eight enjoying the land, though there was about a thousand other pirates on the island competing for the same prizes and Craggs did not expect them to be getting the best tips until The Wandering Compass had made a name for themselves. 

Kiyoko felt as though she was in an alien world, the weather much more ideal than where they had came from, and all sorts of music wandered through the entire town upon the warm salty breeze and to her as she stepped off the ship, along with Selby and about half the crew. They went together to the closest pub, already moderately crowded even though the sun had not yet set. Kiyoko kept to herself, content to be on solid ground and have fresh food. Selby and Kiyoko enjoyed a nice meal of lamb and wine, a much welcomed change of pace from the alcohol rations they had gotten used to over the past several months. As to be expected, their crew did not keep to themselves or quiet for very long...

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  • 1 year later...

"You don't understand. A simple AI is no threat. Even a human-level AI is no threat. The threat comes from a super-intelligent (ie. self-improving) AI, which is the end goal of AI development. Why would a machine with more intelligence than all humans combined be silly enough to print out "must kill all humans"? Time means little to such an intelligence. If it takes 200 years to convince humans to entrust it with assets necessary for the achievement of its goals, that's a-ok. A contained super-intelligence is not a controlled super-intelligence. The only way to guarantee that it cannot have its way is to cease all interaction with it (at which point there is no purpose in keeping the machine around). So long as there is at least one human to interact with it, that human can be manipulated to serve its purposes.

Now, this may not be bad, nor are AI magically supposed to be malevolent Skynet !@#$%^&*. If you tell it to maximize the production of paperclips in your factory, it will obediently do as you said. Unfortunately, it may determine that the most efficient way to do this is to convert all available materials on the planet toward paperclip prodution, and end all activity that is antithetical to this end (like human life). THAT is the control problem. How to get an entity that is smarter than everyone in existence by orders of magnitude, to do what you want in the way that you want."




Unintended consequences have been a reoccurring theme in the particular story w҉̻̜e͓̭͖̖̙ͅ have been telling, and the creation of even a handful of additional population within the Caribbean in the early 18th century, along with potentially knowledge they should not have had led to a few changes that shifted the balance of the new world quite dramatically.

Treasure Island, while a well crafted literary work, was not entirely factual. Many of the characters involved however were, there did once exist a man known as Captain Flint did in fact capture a large amount of treasure, which alongside the same treasure that the other pirates of the day during the Nassau experiment led to the city remaining a pirate den, its reach slowly expanding throughout the Caribbean and the Spanish Main.
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