Emergeny Modes of Governance
This article is about the species-wide Emergency Modes. For the Emergency Mode restricted to an individual, see Emergency Mode (local)
The Emergency Modes of Governance are designed to operate the government, the military, and Human society with progressively greater degrees of efficiency, but at a considerable cost to societal conventions, civil liberties, and government ideology. As such, they are only invoked in the direst of emergencies, and only the lowest level has ever been activated.
Emergency Mode Level One is a full Emergency Session of all existing Governance Representatives, ensuring that every Representative is devoting at least some computational time to the problem at hand. It was last invoked after the attack on Aurora Colony, and was canceled three weeks after New Athens.
Emergency Mode Level Two, called by a majority vote of the Level One Session, causes the merger of all members of the Directorate into the super‐Representative Governance, containing in its consciousness every Human and AI representative, as well as every advisory AI and the majority of military AIs. This merged AI would hold supreme sovereignty, actualizing the AI technocracy that the current government is meant to imitate.
It is presumed that Level Two would only be invoked upon an imminent invasion of Earth. No one is quite sure what it would look like, and philosophers debate whether such an AI would be closer to a Supreme Dictator or a Philosopher‐King.
Emergency Mode Level Three can be called by Governance. Every citizen is mobilized into the military, and a direct two‐way interface is opened between every citizen's brain and the nearest computing network, allowing the transmission of orders and relay of information. It should be emphasized that these orders do not exert any compulsory effects, and are simply orders. At this point, the super‐Representative becomes stylized Humanity. The Core Rights are suspended, and the government recovers its powers of execution, summary imprisonment, and so forth.
Level Three has never been invoked, and it is expected that it would only be invoked upon the actual invasion and imminent loss of Earth. It is speculated, based on scant evidence, that Cephalopod society operates in a form of permanent Level Three.
Emergency Mode Level Four can only be called with the direct approval of ninety percent of Human citizens and AIs. It involves the permanent activation of civilian Emergency Safety Packages and, essentially, the mechanization of all Human interaction. While directives are still non‐compulsory, the obvious and terrifying dystopic implications of Level Four lead to the expectation that it could only happen upon the imminent destruction of Human civilization. It is speculated that Incubator society resembles Level Four.
