Applied Science and Robitics

Around 70 years after the war on Earth ended, the first truly autonomous “artificial person” walked off the line, and everyone on Mars shat a collective brick. For the last remaining humans, it looked like a grim repeat of the same events that precipitated the fall of Earth, and panicked representatives immediately approached the MarsCo branch that produced it and pleaded with them to shut it down and abandon it before all that remained of the legacy of humanity was wiped out in yet another war. MarsCo supported the decision initially but reconsidered after a series of long closed-door meetings with the heads of the department. When it had ended, ASR emerged as an independent entity and announced that the production of artificial people would not only continue, but increase, and the people of Mars were simply going to have to buck the hell up and deal with that. Vectors should know better than to fear the new and unexplored. 
And to everyone’s surprise, that actually worked pretty well. 
70 years was a long time, but not so long that people weren’t still feeling the sting of being without a planet with established infrastructure. Vectors could feel the lack of Earth, even though they’d never been on it before. And even though no Vector had ever participated directly in any part of the war that left the distant blue world a smouldering husk, they all knew what catalyst had pushed tensions over the top. Collectively, the still small race of Vectors decided not to make the same mistake twice. 
It was determined that the primary problem anyone had with the idea of an artificial person stemmed from their encyclopedic knowledge rather than their experiences. Computers were programmed, they didn’t go out and live and learn through pain and success. So the Core Consciousness was developed: a system of constantly powered memory that never deactivated. Artificial people were given the facial racial title “Cogs ,” both as a pun and a short for “Cognizant and Conscious machine,” and would have a childhood like anyone, would attend a school like anyone,  learn like anyone, reason and laugh and cry like anyone, and grow like anyone. As long as that Core Consciousness remained powered, the new life form would have as much ‘soul’ as any Vector. 
It took about 20 years to figure out and nail down which parts of this grand idea actually worked and which ones didn’t. The “grow” part was tricky; it was awfully expensive and difficult to engineer a single machine body that could suit all the stages in a person’s life with its original hardware. They eventually switched to a new system involving ‘tiers’ of bodies. Once an artificial person reached a certain age (3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 20 respectively) they were entitled to a new chassis of the next tier up. Many were available, but those beyond the default had to be purchased. The default chassis for each tier were free for any artificial person, as it was part of the “responsible parents” mission statement made by ASR when the first Cogs appeared. “Crying” was a bit creepy too. As it turned out, the more attempts to make a fully articulated mechanical face that were made, the more they tended to fall short of par, to say nothing of the cost. The production of lookalike Cog bodies lasted only about 5 years before it was decided they weren’t worth the trouble. They weren’t fooling anyone and there wasn’t a great need for them anyway. It was perfectly possible for normal people to relate on a personable level with a well-designed and attractive machine without trying to make it look like it had fur or skin. By year 20, Cogs had a huge number of chassis options, not one of which sported fur or fake skin or any other vaguely horrifying attempt to look ‘living.’ 
The nature of the modern Cog brain hasn’t changed dramatically since the first one; its current iteration is simply more robust and integrates the Core Consciousness as a single unit. Essentially, it was built correctly the first time. It mimics a real brain in almost every way, and the physical construction of its connections and pathways is what gives it sentience. Cogs have all the emotional range of organics and tend to learn at the same general rate. As it turned out,  the very  nature of a brain construct- ed to process the world in a way associated with sentience precluded the linear processing ability of a computer, and while a mechanical brain with no organic parts  would be constructed to behave as a living one did, it could not keep behaving like a computer at the same time. Cogs do possess a few mechanical advantages though. While their brains think as normal brains do, they communicate as machines do. This allows them to interface with computers in a remarkably streamlined fashion without the need for training or implants.  
The inclusion of a new race to the population of Mars cemented ASR’s place in history, and it has remained their staunch defender to this day. Over the centuries Vectors and Cogs have had their differences, and more than one conflict has emerged between them from time to time. ASR’s public goal  has always been to merge the two as one, and they  frequently refer to “all of us” in their public addresses, rather than speaking about one or the other separately. They invented the wetware implants that allow Vectors to see computers from within, as   Cogs do, and have made hundreds of others that all aim toward a more perfect integration of man and machine. They gave up on the mechanical womb,  though. That just wasn’t working very well.

Type

Corporation, Manufacturing

Demonym

ASR