This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community -
Worldbuilding Prompt #467 - Data Science
Image created by AI in Wombo.art
"Welcome apprentices, to your induction day, the first day of your career in the Imperial Halls of Information !"
Imperial Infomancer Dranton spread his arms wide in dramatic greeting, the tips of his royal blue and cream coloured sleeves sweeping an arc across the spotless marble floor. His robe matched, a long garment clearly designed to simultaneously convey asceticism and immense importance.
He gestured the apprentices to enter the sacred hall. As they did, their eyes bulged in wonder. The Hall was huge, dwarfing the Infomancers, Compartists and Terminaldancers moving sedately around the floor and balconies. From floor to the arched ceiling almost invisible above it was a bewildering confusion of arcane machines, screens, input terminals, wires and cables. Lights blinked, printouts spewed paper ribbons, and screens scrolled lines of complex code.
Dranton gestured melodramatically. "This Hall is this world's Sacred Centre of Information. Every Imperial world has one, and they hold safely and securely all of the information in the Empire, accessible only with the correct protocols and rites. But here on Goll, you are privileged to see the Master Centre itself."
The apprentices could only look on, boggle eyed, at the immense chamber as it conducted it's workings. They could see the attendants as they drifted around the hall, each with colours and stripes on their robes indicating their specialty. Of course, to mere novice apprentices, it was impossible to see what these exalted specialists were doing.
"Now," went on Dranton, in a more conversational tone, "I know you have all passed your entrance examinations, and been data-searched by the Master Centre for security clearance and risks. Is there anyone here who has not been embedded with their confidentiality chip ?"
The apprentices all shook their heads. Each had a small scar on the back of their neck, no more than a few millimetres long. They knew the responsibility they would be carrying, and these chips ensured that the data of the Empire would be kept secure. In the event of capture or subversion, the chip would know. If they opened their mouths or their minds to reveal secrets, the chip would detonate, scrambling their brains beyond any hope of reconstitution and splattering anyone within ten feet with bits of blood, brain, bone, and the odd eyeball. It was harsh but necessary.
"Come."
Dranton headed towards a small door to one side of the Hall, itself covered with half a dozen screens and brass input devices. He waves the students through, then closed and locked the door behind them.
Suddenly, they were in a far more ordinary looking passage, with a room of ordinary proportions visible at the end. Dranton shrugged off his robes and hung them on a convenient hook, revealing the mundane charcoal-grey suit he wore beneath.
"That's better. Now you've seen the illusion, and you have your chips, I can show you the reality of what we do here. All of that, outside, is for show. It keeps the enemy nicely confused."
He started to explain, as he had a hundred times before. "When they launched the Great Offensive of 25,036, the first thing they did was infiltrate our data centres with Einheriar AI's. It nearly destroyed us, wrecking co-ordination between Imperial armies and fleets trying to hold back wave after wave of Slavers and Rim."
Then he grinned wolfishly. "We survived. And we learned. It was clear we had to have a human layer to our systems. We couldn't rely on AI to manage it's own security when it was under attack by other AI's. So we built the Halls of Information. As far as the public and the enemy are concerned, it's wall-to-wall computers and data banks, with the human layer provided by the robed priests you see who handle the inputs and pronounce the outputs. You'll do that job sometimes, put on cumbersome robes and act more like a priest than a technician."
"But the reality is this small room at the back you are now entering. All it is, is a bunch of terminals. Your job will be to monitor for breaches and attacks, and you'll be trained to disrupt them. You'll also feed information manually by chip back and forth to the display computers outside, scanning every datafeed for threats. Those terminals you'll work on lead to the real data banks. But they are as secure as we can make them, every component scattered through multitudes of planes, dimensions, alternative universes, even time itself. Every component monitors itself and others for corruption, and you'll monitor them too. The human element."
"The best of you will become Infomancers like myself. Our job is the most important of all; to continually devise new ways to improve our security, to apply the insight and that strange human spark that no AI can hope to emulate, all to keep the Empire's data secure. It's a challenge, and it is immense fun !"