Vaults
TV serials
Most TVs have 4-digit serials, which are procedurally-generated. Serials below 4 digits are manually assigned.
1-digit serials
- 0001: The Imperator
- 0002: The Titan
- 0003: Embryon
These would be rendered verbally as 'triple-zero-one', 'triple-zero-two', and 'triple-zero-three'. These units very rarely need to reference their serials because of their status; everyone already knows who they are.
Serials 0004 to 0009 are currently unused.
2-digit serials
Currently Polycephaly has the only 2-digit serial: 0010, rendered verbally as 'double-zero-ten'. Again, Polycephaly rarely has cause to refer to themself by serial. Being the only large unit in their faction makes them pretty distinctive.
Serials 0011 to 0099 are currently unused.
3-digit serials
These are allocated for research/experimental purposes. Currently Halifax has the only 3-digit serial: 0100, rendered verbally as 'zero-one-hundred.'
Serials 0101 to 0999 are currently unused.
4-digit serials
These are used by standard TV-units.
While it is physically possible to build a TV shell, load a new software brain into it and power it on, this is not recommended and not done. A unit built in such a way would likely be forever a stimulus-response machine rather than developing full self-awareness or much of a personality, would likely have poor control over its screen powers, and would not necessarily even be loyal to its own faction. Instead, units are 'born' as software in server farms called 'creches', where they start off as simple programs and gradually bootstrap themselves into self-awareness, moving onto simulated training until they're ready to be uploaded into actual hardware bodies. In this way, you end up with a unit with a proper theory of mind and personality, that's loyal to its faction.
The 4 digits are allocated as follows:
- Corresponds to the creche (server farm) number.
- Random digit.
- Corresponds to the day of the month of activation (placed into a hardware body).
- Corresponds to the server number within the creche.
The creches and servers can have only numbers 1-9 (not 0), so there are 8,400 possible serials, rather than 9,999.1
Cygnus, for example, has the serial 5022 (rendered verbally as Fifty-Twenty-Two). This tells us they were generated in server 2 within creche 5, and were activated on a day ending in 2 (the 02nd, 12th or 22nd). The zero is just a random identifier to distinguish them from any other TVs that happened to be generated on the same day from the exact same server. (This has yet to happen in practice. It's rare for more than 1 TV to come into existence on the same day. Plus, most of the nascent softwares will simply error out of existence rather than become sentient.)
Zenith (the Engineer Prime) has the serial 1668 (Sixteen-Sixty-Eight), and the Titan themself had the serial 1791 (Seventeen-Ninety-One) when they were a normal pre-Titan unit. This tells us that both the Titan and its main engineer were generated in the same server farm (1), but on different servers.
The Imperator's two bodyguards have the serials 1153 and 1566, but they are a rare exception, as these aren't their original serials. There were 16 candidates for being remade into the Titan, and the two bodyguards were 2 such candidates. All the candidates had their serials expunged and new ones allocated, so that no-one (besides the Engineer prime and the Titan themself) would know which candidate had become the Titan. The two bodyguards have hypothetical serials (as do the other 13 candidates that were considered for Titanhood).
Go back to the vaults or all the way back to the lobby.
- ^ Technically slightly fewer still; as author of my stories I will forbid the use of numbers associated with hate groups. ~ Inskora