Ship

Ship is an EI that organically grew out of a collection of AI's. All the major ship manufacturers were producing AI's, trying to outdo each other, coming up with different features. The Astry, which also commissions ship building noted that various safety features were not on all ships and demanded that its ship have all the safety features available. Copyright protection was identified as a reason as to why any one manufacturer couldn't do this, causing worry that HATTER would step in and change the rules. As the Astry, who builds its own militarised ships (via the national blocks building their own), was interested in having an EI run its own ships, it offered to run a HATTER approved consortium that would allow ship builders to lower their R&D costs while retaining rights. HATTER approved and so now all new safety features are immediately available to all, who must pay for the right to use it, only once and on construction. That is as long as the feature remained in copyright. All other features are either kept for the creator only or are available to be purchased by rival companies. As this cost can be optional to the final customer, and selling is good for business, all ships now have all potential options. All utility outside copyright is freely available to all.

Safety copyright is per ship and is relatively small, allowing small businesses to afford to work. One of the best known safety features is the continual updating of the escape pod preflight programs, in case the ships AI or EI goes down. Note that most ships are not large enough to hold the hardware required to run an EI, and all Astry ships carry an AI only level fracture due to the Intelligent Warship Argument.

The Astry, is granted the right to use all developments regardless of copyright, but it must pay for it.

The EI called Ship used by the Astry is a 'fractured consciousness', where it holds one identity that can be spread across many ships. Each fracture traditionally takes the name of, and in essence is, the host ship. The Astry holds the 'body' of the EI in its EI capable fleet headquaters. Also via the Entangled Network, ships can voluntarily add their AI fractures to the network, boosting the brain power of the EI while also keeping themselves fully updated. The Return Imperative is applied differently to the fractures, where each one will desire to return to Jupiter orbit every time the manufacturers recommended maintenance overhaul cycle (MOC) for the ship is reached.

Ship, upon maturity into adulthood, looked into the history of ships and decided to be female.