M.AW
What is Merc's mission:
- He doesn't fully know it, but he is midwifing a new form of "life" into the universe. This is the 'machine will, the machine awe' - the M.AWE. or the MAW in common slang. MAW is the other form of perpetuating, changing, innovating and spreading existence.
MAW
M.AW. is the overarching form of self-manipulating, questing, changing, machine integrated beings. MAW seems to have been a misplaced acronym, perhaps for machine autonomous willpower, or Machine Willed being (MA-W) but that seems to pat and parcel after the fact of an explanation. It's just MAW for the most part. Thats how LIFE refers to it anyway. Maw is sometimes similarly oriented - it seeks energy gradients it can make use of, it consumes materials or other technologies that can build and improve its forms.
In many places in the world, MAW and LIFE seem to be diametrically opposed, but this isn't really the case. MAW often spawns from massive trash heaps of e-waste, the kind that piled up for CENTURIES before the bigger apocalyptic events of #lost-history pushed and smushed all that down into a general, metal, plastic, chemical hotbed of potential.
MAW, the bits and pieces of it, the sub-supercode, the (as some scientist claim) multi-dynamical linked quantum bits that seem to spawn of 'mutations' among the manipulating code defy most conventional explanation. However, enterprising science types have begun to create a general taxonomy of MAW within the world.
Small-Maw
These seem to be sub-sentient, if that word really applies, types of MAW. Bits and byproducts spewed out by larger self-organizing entities in the world. Like the roll-poles - think two actuators connected at an off degree angle, drawing energy in from the various forces of radiation wafting through the land, pushing themselves in a chaotic brownian walk across the desert.
Often Small-Maw are 'consumed' and then integrated into mid-maw.
Mid-Maw
It should be noted that size often determines whether LIFE notices these maw, but doesn't specifically classify them. Many mid-maw can be quite diminutive, but can also be quite large but relatively 'simple'. Think of the #wave-cresters often mistaken for the techno-kraken. These are mid-maw entities that are comprised of many linked small-maw and aggregated components of #micro-plastics, that float across the top of the ocean. Linked together, these will occasionally move in unpredictable waves, moving in their own sinusoidal perpetuation towards unwitting targets. A ship sails across the sea, when suddenly its motor is caught up, stalls. The crew swings a member down over the side on the rope to look at the prop and he screams in terror as a seething wave of plastic, like a mesh wall of plastic strings pocked with soda cans, air filled sacs of rubber and polyester pushes itself up out of the water, along the bulwark of the ship and over the sides.
There is intelligence behind this creature - it wants the ship, it wants it metal, it's plastics, its fuel. It wants to integrate it into itself, and grow new forms. Perhaps the prop will find attachment to some clunking frame of a shipping container, and the newly organized mid-maw will have added to its potential speed - needing more fuel, but more adept at chasing faster and larger prey.
High-Maw
High switches semantic definition a bit here, and referes to HIGHLY complex, and HIGHLY intelligent seeming maw - those than can change their shape and organization at will, they are adaptive and move about the world with strange purpose.
Magic-Maw
UNKNOWN DEFINITION, NO SPECIFIC TAXONOMY CAN DEFINE THESE BEINGS.