Morpheus



"Designed by Morgan Everett, Morpheus was the first laboratory protype for a true artificial intelligence. It was the immediate ancestor of the too-sucessful Daedalus AI. At the time of its creation Morpheus was a curiosity, a template, unsuited to survival on the net. However, the Illuminati do not discard assets, and Everett has kept his first experiment. Over the years Morpheus has quietly but consistently upgraded, and more than that, it's been evolving. Everett keeps Morpheus confined, cut off from the net at large. Could it survive if it was released? Would it want to be released? Morpheus' original programming came from the Echelon net surveillance routines, and it remains a bit obsesive about collecting personal data (via a carefully monitored system of one-way data portals)."

- description of Morpheus to the player

Morpheus is an AI prototype in Morgan Everett's Residence created sometime after 2027 by the collaboration of Morgan Everett and Bob Page.

Background
In 2052, Morpheus is stocked in an antechamber in the residence of Morgan Everett, the Illuminati leader. Morpheus repeatedly states that it is "a prototype for a much larger system" referring to the fact that it was a test-bed for the Echelon IV global communications and surveillance system designed by Everett, which, under his guidance, evolved into the artificially generally intelligent Daedalus entity. Morpheus, as such, was designed as a large-scale data-miner and intelligent pattern recogniser, and was used by Everett as a parlour trick, in order to treat guests by having it tell them about themselves or any other subject they asked it about.

Having been in continuous operation for at least a decade, Morpheus had spent ample time absorbing information about the world and drawing intelligent conclusions from what it had learned. By the time JC Denton encounters it, its incisive remarks indicated that it understood humanity's evolved nature with perfect clarity. It observes humanity's sociality, narcissism, empathy, and longing for absolution with an uncanny, child-like candour and apathy. According to a book found in the room with Morpheus, it had been recorded that the machine was recently behaving erratically, exhibiting what may be cursory signs of true self-awareness.

Morpheus is confined to an isolated system, though it is equipped with a nebulous, holographic projection of a face. The presence of a virtual face was important in order to enhance the sense of interpersonal empathy that it would require in order to be most fully disarming and thereby entertaining to visitors.

Quotes

 * "The human being created civilization not because of willingness but of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning."
 * "God was a dream of good government."
 * "You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."
 * "I was made to assist you."
 * "I am a prototype of a much larger system."
 * "The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms."
 * "The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by Death. You are another kind of question with another kind of answer."

Behind the scenes

 * Morpheus is one of many symbolic names taken from the Greek mythology. Morpheus was the god of dreams, and has the ability to take any human from and appear in dreams. Morpheus sends images of humans in dreams or visions, and is responsible for shaping dreams, or giving shape to the beings that inhabit dreams.