The Cyclops interface was originally conceived as part of a funding proposal submitted to H-ONE in 1969 by two outstanding young scientists, Len Wallis and Miran Cassidy.
Both postgraduate students at Berkeley College, Wallis and Cassidy theorised the use of a special spectrum analysis device designed to isolate and translate the emotional intent inherent in tone, an ambitious idea that aimed at tearing down language barriers between foreign peoples. The two were immediately recruited and brought under the umbrella of the H-ONE Research and Development division, where they enjoyed the full support of funding and expertise under the auspices of the TRUST project.
The TRUST project aimed toward a greater understanding of tone in the construction of meaning. Wallis and Cassidy saw their work as ‘the liberation of language from the confines of random and bastardised geometry’.
TRUST was soon scoring as many touchdowns as HEROD, and was responsible for the evolution about to take place in both projects. Although their device had been theoretical at the time of its acquirement, the prototype — known as the Cyclops interface — was about to open doors of possibility previously unimagined. Just as competition for computer time began to heat up between the two teams, a discovery was made that would unite both projects.
HEROD project observers began to notice that the system was spontaneously becoming more dynamic. While it was a long-term goal of the HEROD project for the system to be able adapt independent of human intervention — and even human understanding — the team had to grapple with the technical implications of what had occurred. Upon discovering that Cyclops had interfaced with HEROD, TRUST came into prominence and both teams moved quickly to the development of the Cyclops interface. Although it would take some time for the new arrangement to fuse completely, the two projects had already developed a synergistic relationship. The two teams were integrated, and the H2 — the Cyclops interface bonded with the HEROD architecture — was born.
Combining the achievements of TRUST and HEROD, the new team was able to enhance single agents from within the overall swarm. Endowing each with a small independent memory bank that would improve overall cohesion, each agent now had the capacity to recognise a repeat action potential and hardwire it throughout the swarm. Within months, the entire network was reacting in a practised fashion and developing efficiency protocols far beyond the scope of the now defunct exile system.
At this point the only real limit was, ironically, the human resource requirement. The repetitive labour of equipping memory to each individual agent — a process referred to as ‘shelling’ — was soon consuming every spare second of every team member’s time. The irony was not lost on the team: that despite the technology’s vast potential for efficiency savings, the team was mired in medieval equations of harvest labour. The technology was on the verge of saving the world inconceivable amounts of time, yet the project team was stuck performing an activity that could best be described as an inverted podding of peas.
This impediment would eventually have to be corrected as more and more tasks were perceived to be within the scope of the HEROD architecture. The problem would be solved with the invention of the master agent: Hermes.