

For example, he announced (to the mangled corpses in the ship's mall) "Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas.

He can be heard carrying out automatic functions and tasks, such as announcements and alerts, in spite of the ship and crew's situation. Unlike SHODAN, XERXES was not truly self-aware. SHODAN was forced to remain hidden (communicating under the guise of Doctor Janice Polito) until she was assisted into the ship's computers by an un-named soldier from the UNN Rickenbacker, the military ship piggy-backed to the Von Braun. However, he had the Many on his side and almost complete control of the ship. Once under the Many's control, Korenchkin used his and the crew's collective knowledge to effectively reprogram XERXES to suit the Many's purposes.įortunately, XERXES' remaining safety protocols and decreased intelligence made him a poor match against his predecessor, SHODAN. Though unknown at the time, these were created by the collective entity known as The Many. In a rush to make first contact (and to acquire all commercially exploitable rights thereof), CEO Anatoly Korenchkin led an expedition down to the planet surface and discovered a crater, containing a number of large eggs. However, during the first voyage of the Von Braun, a signal was received from the planet Tau Ceti V. As a result of public fear and distrust of true AIs, his intellectual capacity – though almost as high as his predecessor, SHODAN's – was limited to mere calculation and system-running to prevent true awareness. A third generation Artificial Intelligence, XERXES was one of the first Master System AIs created since the AI SHODAN went insane and took over the Citadel space station 42 years earlier.
