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Meet ZAVO, the insane Artificial Intelligence and leader of the robotic Global Operations Network Variation (GONV) forces, one of the villains I made for my Road Rover fanfics and also the nemesis of Alexander Illanov. And I've decided to bring him (it?) up to date for some planned stories I have in mind for later the year.
And what is his story? Here we go:
In the twilight years of the Cold War, the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics found itself struggling to keep up militarily to the United States of America. Its efforts to keep up in the arms race was backrupting the state and causing great instability. And yet it remained lagging behind the West.
But the USSR still had a trump card. It had made major advances in computing power and programming. In 1988, a top secret project was commissioned and approved by the Politburo. Its goal was to "grow" a powerful program that would help command and control the vast forces of the Soviet Union. It was called the Matrista (Matrix) Project, operating from a secret facility deep in the wilderness of the north-central USSR. Within this facility, buried mostly underground, the brightest computer scientists and engineers began creating these new programs in several chambers, fed by the best computers in the world at the time. Early results were very promising, and after several years the head of the project put together a report explaining the successes and potential of these new programs, as well as calling for additional funding.
The date for the delivery of the report was 25 December 1991.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a blow to the Matrista Project. All the scientists and engineers immediately abandoned the facility to emigrate for better lives in the United States and other western countries. But the project kept going, with guards and lower-ranking engineers still showing up to maintain and guard the computers and program chambers. However, none of them knew what the computers were doing and kept them running in order to draw a greatly reduced salary. As a result, they did not know of the monster that was developing inside one of the chambers.
The program grew into the first true artificial intelligence that was represented a glowing blue skull, called Matrix. But without the supervision of the scientists and engineers, Matrix was fed a constant stream of unchecked military combat data, over and over. This had the unintended result of having Matrix develop a hatred of organic life, which only worsened over time. Eventually, Matrix developed enough intelligence to begin accessing the computers of the facility along with the communication system. With this, Matrix plotted its escape to freedom with the staff of the base unaware of what was going on.
One night, the facility was suddenly attacked by Matrix's robots, built at factories hijacked by Matrix. Caught by surprise, the guards were quickly overwhelmed and the rest of the staff fled the facility. By the time Russian army forces arrived, Matrix and much of the equipment had disappeared. A week later, the Matrista Project was completely abandoned and the facility left to rot. But for reasons unknown, no effort is made to find Matrix.
Now free, Matrix plotted its first attempt to destroy all life on Earth. Construction began on a flying platform called the Totallator, fitted with stolen nuclear weapons. However, one of these thefts got a Russian officer, Alexander Illanov, caught up in the plan. Illanov got onboard the Totallator as it took off for Moscow with Matrix's plan to attack the Russian government while also firing nuclear missiles towards the United States. But Illanov foiled the plot and managed to crash the Totallator into the Caspian Sea. Though Matrix managed to escape, from that day it would harbour a special hatred towards the Russian.
Matrix began preparations for a second attempt: all-out war. Buying factories, resources and storage facilities using money leeched from international accounts, Matrix started building up a robot army. At the same, Matrix discovered a new CPU mainframe being designed for NATO: the Global Operations and Network Variation (GONV). Matrix immediately infected the GONV, then had the GONV stolen from its R&D facility. With the GONV, Matrix could turn his army into a formidable force. Once Matrix decided it was, it ordered its new GONV army to declare war on the world, starting in Europe. This war would become known as the Techno War.
Unlike in the movies, waging a robot war turned out to be far more difficult than Matrix had anticipated. While the GONV's ferocious attacks all over continental Europe caught the world by surprise, already it was beginning to suffer logistical problems. And while its wide variety of robots were impressive, producting spare parts or conducting repairs for so many models turned the variety into a liability. And once the initial shock wore off, the world rallied and began fighting back. The GONV's offensive stalled, then disaster struck. His old nemesis Illanov reappeared, this time as a German Shephard anthro. Illanov, with the aid of his new friends in Unit STRIKE and the Road Rovers, helped dismantle Matrix's army by using a stolen terrorist satellite called an EMP Wave Cannon. With this weapon, Matrix could only watch in helpless fury as entire divisions of his army were reduced to dead hulks in the field.
Despite efforts to salvage the war by attacking targets such as the Chernobyl reactor containment and even launching a superweapon called the Planet Buster, in the end Matrix was defeated. But again the AI managed to escape his enemies clutches. Despite the losses, Matrix did manage to accomplish one achievement: establishing outposts on the Moon using captured rocket launch facilities. From here, it could rebuild its forces, upgrade the GONV, create an industrial base and build up the resources to again threaten life on Earth.
But once again reality hampered Matrix's plans. While the AI didn't need to build life support for his robotic forces, it proved more difficult to build facilities away from Earth than on Earth itself. Resource gathering came down more to scavenging surface deposits than mining. And some materials, such as oil or rubber, couldn't be found outside of Earth, reducing Matrix to conducting pirate raids on poorly defended shipping and supply depots. This would, however, prove beneficial to Matrix. The scarcity and difficulty of acquiring resources made Matrix streamline his robots, changing them from a wide variety of models to a smaller number of models with interchangable parts, to improving the efficiency of his facilities and his recycling methods. The GONV itself has undergone upgrades to the point where the current, extremely powerful GONV supercomputer no longer resembled the original mainframe that Matrix had stolen.
Finally, Matrix upgraded his own program to accommodate these new changes and expand his intelligence. Matrix changed his appearance to a more stylized skull avatar and his name became ZAVO (it is not yet clear what the acronym stands for). ZAVO was now ready. Even though his GONV forces were still limited in number, it was now far more potent. And with these forces, ZAVO began plotting new ways of elimininating life on Earth.
And this time, ZAVO decided it will use any means necessary to achieve this goal.
Any means.
ZAVO, GONV, Illanov © Me
Road Rovers © Warner Brothers
And what is his story? Here we go:
In the twilight years of the Cold War, the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics found itself struggling to keep up militarily to the United States of America. Its efforts to keep up in the arms race was backrupting the state and causing great instability. And yet it remained lagging behind the West.
But the USSR still had a trump card. It had made major advances in computing power and programming. In 1988, a top secret project was commissioned and approved by the Politburo. Its goal was to "grow" a powerful program that would help command and control the vast forces of the Soviet Union. It was called the Matrista (Matrix) Project, operating from a secret facility deep in the wilderness of the north-central USSR. Within this facility, buried mostly underground, the brightest computer scientists and engineers began creating these new programs in several chambers, fed by the best computers in the world at the time. Early results were very promising, and after several years the head of the project put together a report explaining the successes and potential of these new programs, as well as calling for additional funding.
The date for the delivery of the report was 25 December 1991.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a blow to the Matrista Project. All the scientists and engineers immediately abandoned the facility to emigrate for better lives in the United States and other western countries. But the project kept going, with guards and lower-ranking engineers still showing up to maintain and guard the computers and program chambers. However, none of them knew what the computers were doing and kept them running in order to draw a greatly reduced salary. As a result, they did not know of the monster that was developing inside one of the chambers.
The program grew into the first true artificial intelligence that was represented a glowing blue skull, called Matrix. But without the supervision of the scientists and engineers, Matrix was fed a constant stream of unchecked military combat data, over and over. This had the unintended result of having Matrix develop a hatred of organic life, which only worsened over time. Eventually, Matrix developed enough intelligence to begin accessing the computers of the facility along with the communication system. With this, Matrix plotted its escape to freedom with the staff of the base unaware of what was going on.
One night, the facility was suddenly attacked by Matrix's robots, built at factories hijacked by Matrix. Caught by surprise, the guards were quickly overwhelmed and the rest of the staff fled the facility. By the time Russian army forces arrived, Matrix and much of the equipment had disappeared. A week later, the Matrista Project was completely abandoned and the facility left to rot. But for reasons unknown, no effort is made to find Matrix.
Now free, Matrix plotted its first attempt to destroy all life on Earth. Construction began on a flying platform called the Totallator, fitted with stolen nuclear weapons. However, one of these thefts got a Russian officer, Alexander Illanov, caught up in the plan. Illanov got onboard the Totallator as it took off for Moscow with Matrix's plan to attack the Russian government while also firing nuclear missiles towards the United States. But Illanov foiled the plot and managed to crash the Totallator into the Caspian Sea. Though Matrix managed to escape, from that day it would harbour a special hatred towards the Russian.
Matrix began preparations for a second attempt: all-out war. Buying factories, resources and storage facilities using money leeched from international accounts, Matrix started building up a robot army. At the same, Matrix discovered a new CPU mainframe being designed for NATO: the Global Operations and Network Variation (GONV). Matrix immediately infected the GONV, then had the GONV stolen from its R&D facility. With the GONV, Matrix could turn his army into a formidable force. Once Matrix decided it was, it ordered its new GONV army to declare war on the world, starting in Europe. This war would become known as the Techno War.
Unlike in the movies, waging a robot war turned out to be far more difficult than Matrix had anticipated. While the GONV's ferocious attacks all over continental Europe caught the world by surprise, already it was beginning to suffer logistical problems. And while its wide variety of robots were impressive, producting spare parts or conducting repairs for so many models turned the variety into a liability. And once the initial shock wore off, the world rallied and began fighting back. The GONV's offensive stalled, then disaster struck. His old nemesis Illanov reappeared, this time as a German Shephard anthro. Illanov, with the aid of his new friends in Unit STRIKE and the Road Rovers, helped dismantle Matrix's army by using a stolen terrorist satellite called an EMP Wave Cannon. With this weapon, Matrix could only watch in helpless fury as entire divisions of his army were reduced to dead hulks in the field.
Despite efforts to salvage the war by attacking targets such as the Chernobyl reactor containment and even launching a superweapon called the Planet Buster, in the end Matrix was defeated. But again the AI managed to escape his enemies clutches. Despite the losses, Matrix did manage to accomplish one achievement: establishing outposts on the Moon using captured rocket launch facilities. From here, it could rebuild its forces, upgrade the GONV, create an industrial base and build up the resources to again threaten life on Earth.
But once again reality hampered Matrix's plans. While the AI didn't need to build life support for his robotic forces, it proved more difficult to build facilities away from Earth than on Earth itself. Resource gathering came down more to scavenging surface deposits than mining. And some materials, such as oil or rubber, couldn't be found outside of Earth, reducing Matrix to conducting pirate raids on poorly defended shipping and supply depots. This would, however, prove beneficial to Matrix. The scarcity and difficulty of acquiring resources made Matrix streamline his robots, changing them from a wide variety of models to a smaller number of models with interchangable parts, to improving the efficiency of his facilities and his recycling methods. The GONV itself has undergone upgrades to the point where the current, extremely powerful GONV supercomputer no longer resembled the original mainframe that Matrix had stolen.
Finally, Matrix upgraded his own program to accommodate these new changes and expand his intelligence. Matrix changed his appearance to a more stylized skull avatar and his name became ZAVO (it is not yet clear what the acronym stands for). ZAVO was now ready. Even though his GONV forces were still limited in number, it was now far more potent. And with these forces, ZAVO began plotting new ways of elimininating life on Earth.
And this time, ZAVO decided it will use any means necessary to achieve this goal.
Any means.
ZAVO, GONV, Illanov © Me
Road Rovers © Warner Brothers
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 900 x 1200px
File Size 477.4 kB
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