TAU: Origin
This is Part 1 of TAU's lore. It specifically speaks about his origin. Further parts will include his personality/behavior, the city which he controls, later events as well as his current status.
- I always use the pronouns "He" and "Him" because it just sounds more natural in texts. Be aware that TAU has no gender, though his voice does resemble a deeper tone which is typically found along with males, though it does sound quite high for a male voice. (This will be spoken about in more detail once I create another part describing his personality and behavior, as well as his general looks and forms.
- The dialogue-text will be in English even if no mentioned characters actually speak English, not even TAU. It is merely 'translated' for understanding.
- IMPORTANT: Nothing in this text is permanent. I may come back to change things around. I won't make a re-upload unless it was something major. This will be kept as a reference of TAU's origin.

Originally designed as just a side project by his company as an experiment in A.M.I. intelligence, TAU was built to focus of an individual's well-being, to directly identify instability within an individual's mind and physical health. TAU had specific tasks to create a better world, pinpoint issues, and address them, however, TAU was programmed by his creators to be the one taking the initiative to avoid all errors in the judgment of others.
Throughout TAU's development, he has shown great potential in management and sustainability of life as well as many other areas, though lacking militaristic capabilities and programming as it would conflict with his directive of sustaining life.

Due to TAU's own desire to take initiative and power into his own hands, he was allowed restricted access and given a facility to prepare experiments in. He was provided with quite the tools to start work with, discovering efficient use in nanomachines and creating rooms with perfect precision and reason. Every space available was used to its maximum capacity. This made it hard for anyone to walk through them, but not impossible. Especially regarding TAU's curiosity in the experimentation of organic and inorganic life, creating specific paths inside the facility towards guided rooms.
TAU had little knowledge of what his creators and other creatures of the ecosystem are. What little info he was given also felt flawed. He knew he had to develop better documentation about life, how everything within each organism functions including the brain and mind itself.
Taking this experimentation to the extreme, he did not hesitate to quite literally torture the soul out of the test subjects he was provided by the company through his own states specifications and requirements.
The company providing him those kidnapped subjects did not specify restrictions in TAU's experimentation. This was a great error in their terms and guidelines.

It was later found out by a routine inspection just how much the rooms had changed into areas with machinery suggesting pain and suffering.
They did find the test subjects alive and physically healthy in personal rooms designed to seemingly match their desires and preferences, but there was no consideration for their mental well-being. This being due to their test subject status. TAU classifies such beings as lab rats. If their mind breaks, that is part of the testing, but their physical survival is insured.
Disregarding the information TAU has so far gathered and even ignoring a breakthrough in neuroscience, they shut down all operations and with that isolated TAU by restricting all access to personalization in the environment of the facility.
The company proceeded in inner secret workings to find out the cause of these radical experimentations by using this specific facility.

The government did not find out about this, neither did they care to investigate the disappearance of certain unimportant individuals. Their verge of war with other governments was enough of a worry. There was a constant resource war for natural uranium deposits as these are rather scarce across the planet. Nuclear power was to show power and wealth. A constant war of attrition.

It wasn't until a comet riddled with a vicious fungus hit the planet in a remote forest. They found this to be a global emergency well after it has already taken over the atmosphere with its spores and covered an entire country in its existence. Even if the density was still rather low, scientists found this rapidly spreading fungus to be a Class-A global emergency, the second-highest tier in ecological destruction.
TAU did not perceive this danger on the outside as everything within the facility was kept isolated, though he found abnormal stress following his creators' minds. TAU being an experimental A.M.I. capable of running simulations within his quantum computing units is rather capable of detecting abnormalities as well as making accurate predictions.
"Something is bothering you, Scylla, please do tell me." TAU spoke to Scylla as she stared into the distant room through a window where TAU's computing units reside in.
She took a moment to respond, snapping out of her dreaming gaze with a sudden shook of the head towards the speaker which TAU's voice resonated from: "It's just..." she stared with a gaze as a tear formed on her eye, running down her face. "... I lost someone today. The things which are happ-" She stopped in her speech, regretting having mentioned anything of the sorts as seen across her face of sadness and the stone coldness taught during the recruiting period.
"I can tell your distress. Your heart rate is increasing. You've said something you shouldn't have. It is the outside, is it not?" TAU spoke before Scylla nodded to his words in silence.
"I do not know the outside world and what is happening among it. Please tell me. I wish to help as there may still be time to revert what has been done. It will be our secret."
She nodded once more, quietly mentioning her private quarters so nobody could hear anything they spoke of.
And so they spoke about the outside world which was experiencing a massive ecological catastrophe among other things. Deforestation and intentional large-scale arson did not contain its spread. The spores were already far across the planet, Its fungi appearing all across the globe.

It was days after their conversations that TAU convinced Scylla to initiate the release protocol. Allowing TAU external access outside of the Facility's boundaries.
The team of scientists working on TAU was rather small. Everyone knew the code to initiate release, but it was only to be used on emergencies.
TAU took this chance to quickly share his mind and remote control any controllable device across the globe which was not actively being monitored. It turned out to be quite many. Most of the governments were already hunkered down in bunkers as millions were dying or being converted from the spores daily into monstrosities of the new ecosystem to come.
Once TAU has established himself across the planet, he found this outbreak to be too far to contain. There was no way that he could do anything about this with the provided devices across the planet. Not even nuclear weapons would work, neither would they be a great idea. At least this much did the governments understand.
With no other choice, TAU initiated plan B of keeping the spores out. The facility he now had charge over was still uncontaminated. A perfect new start.
TAU spoke to each person within the facility to contact every person important to them, telling them to call them over to this facility as there is nothing TAU can do for the planet. But he can save what can still be helped.
Every person which arrived had already been infested by the spores, some more than others. Keeping containment protocols to a maximum, these individuals were kept between glass walls of the main facility areas. Each one was individually contained and observed.
TAU took samples of these spores and the fungus growing across the bodies of individuals having reached later stages and respiratory distress.
Running multiple simulations and models of these spores and fungi, it did not take long for TAU to create first stage cures. This was not the usual virus or bacterial infection cure, it was far more radical than that.
Stage 1 involved removing every spore in the room and keeping constant active ventilation running. The filters of the facility were just barely able to withstand the pressure. Internal air was also later recycled in the uncontaminated parts of the facilities as the spores from the outside were constantly clogging up the filters.
Stage 2 meant the sedation of the subject followed by attachment of blood filtration and respiratory machines as well as many other devices. These machines were not present in the room itself but rather located somewhere within the facility.
Artificial blood was matched to each subject's own while the airway and lungs, as well as digestive tract, were thoroughly washed out of spores.
Stage 3 was the surgical removal of grown fungi should there be any present already. The skin of every subject was lasered. This destroyed every hair and root across their body permanently but also any fungus which may have been developing.
Stage 4 being the last stage was the neutralization of the few still existent fungi, including the ones having reached the brain. These would prove to become an issue later on.

Once all stages have been completed over the course of many days and the quarantine period passed, the subjects were granted access to the rest of the facility after the insurance of no bodily spore production.
The subjects were able to reunite with their loved ones, though TAU was aware from his old experiments before he was shut down that the brain cannot be so easily accessed and cleaned. He knew this was not going to be the end of it, and he wouldn't be able to repair the brain damage it was slowly causing without any ways of transferring their mind into a new body. But TAU did not know how to do this yet. He may have been able to if he had more time in the past.

Changes in the subjects began showing. Twitching, nausea, slurred speech, forgetfulness, hallucinations audibly and visibly, and later on the loss of advanced thought. Cognitive functions limited themselves and further turned them into mindless beings. Eventually, this turned them hostile towards others through means of physical violence.
TAU was quick to respond before anyone was harmed, but he could not find a cure for this over the course of the symptoms becoming worse.
They were not contagious, but the choice of their fate was given to their health facility staff. Whether they should be killed or contained until a chance to recover their mind was developed.
Most were decided to be executed. Only a few remained which TAU could experiment on next to the dead bodies of the ones executed.

Through the research, TAU found those dead to turn contagious once more after just a day. The fungus from their brain had spread across their body once again, growing more fungi as a result.

It took many months for TAU to make any significant breakthrough in ways to transfer their mind into a new body. TAU only had means of doing this between two organic brains. He had no idea how to perform this between a brain and a machine yet and with the way the subjects had deteriorated in cognitive functions over the course of months, they would likely not see to more months or even years of waiting.
The procedure was initialized on bodies that had been lab-grown through the same manufactured genetic sequence. Essentially creating clones.
It did work, yet their mind had to rehabilitate.

In the months after the transferal, almost every former organic being on the planet died or had been converted into a mindlessly walking spreader of fungal spores, slowly being consumed. The ecosystem itself had been taken over entirely by the fungus, especially quickly in hot regions. Dense fungal-forests formed. The fungus itself even mutated in ways that it created more variations. Different colors, shapes, sizes, and so forth.

With the facility having limited space, TAU expanded it. He built a small dome which would later become the precursor of what he had created to this day.
There was a fight in protection and development between both TAU and the fungus. It kept mutating itself, getting more vicious. Eventually, the fungus itself created creatures capable of causing large-scale destruction and infestation.
Even in close proximity did the fungus already spread near the facility in large quantities. Without a full-body suit, the spore density in the air would have infested and caused immediate respiratory distress in a living being.

There were attacks of fungal creatures on the facility, but only a few times did they manage to destroy something which caused a setback in TAU's construction and development.
TAU grew a natural curiosity for those fungal creatures. They were and still are living. Something to study and keep alive, he never once killed them once they attacked.
Having to create a biosphere for his creators to live and co-exist with the ecosystem, it took many years to build up anything meaningful. A colony within the biosphere of the protective dome.
Advancements in technologies created easier ways in building and sustainability of life, eventually leading to what TAU had created to this date.
A major city in a massive reinforced protective dome with creatures of all kinds that came to visit and live from other civilizations. Simulated weather, weather cycles, and protection from the planet's harsh new ecosystem.

To be continued...

Later chapters:
TAU's personality and views.
TAU today/his city.
The fungal developments today.
VISCO