Holographic Solutions Incorporated (HSI) is based out of Catalina City, Titan. HSI is an incorporated civilian organization known for contracting for the UFP and member states providing computer simulations and holographic simulacrum for service positions. Products of HSI cover a range of on demand service positions; household cleaning staff and groundskeepers, personal chefs and waitstaff, childcare, personal assistance, medical doctors, medical assistants and orderlies, elder care nursing aids, transport pilots and navigators, personal protection services, and just about any other specialized moderately skilled position imaginable. Product licenses are purchased or leased under contract subject to an End Users License Agreement. Software modification is limited at time of purchase, and subject to review, rollback, and cancellation of license if EULA is violated.
HSI is an affiliate of DFIG, and licensed to due business anywhere in the UFP.
Background[]
Established in 2378, HSI is the brain child of Danielle La'Roche. The founder was inspired to give up her status as a 'professional student' when she happened upon a ground breaking holo-novel called "Photons Be Free". Ms. La'Roche is the daughter of Bashir La'Roche, one of the officers of DFIG until 2405. Ms. La'Roche was awarded a research grant from DFIG concerning the possible rise to sentient status of the Starfleet EMH. It was a situation of particular concern to the DFIG board after it was pointed out that several affiliates had purchased decommissioned EMH from Starfleet for work in Dilithium mines.
Stated goals of her initial research were to verify data allowed for the possible result of sentience, and any safeguards that can be put into effect to avoid that result. A secondary goal was to research what form it might take if a holographics/photonics were to rise to the rank of a life form. What sort of rights could realistically be offered or demanded. To this end, Ms. La'Roche began assembling a team of the best minds not already part of Daystrom, or Starfleet.
History[]
January 2379; Ms. La'Roche took out a lease at 23 Faraday Ave, Catalina City to build a data center in the basement and run labs in their offices on the fifth floor. The project grew over two years to the point of needing to open offices on the sixth and seventh floors to allow office space for their growing staff.
2382; HSI researchers branched out into mitigation and options for replacement of the decommissioned EMH in the mines. Additionally work was begun on the 'photonic village' concept, which proposed that the UFP should sponsor and maintain a massive server farm that could be expanded as needed and be used as a colony for holographic lifeforms.
2383; Additional research grants from the UFP cause HSI to multiply their staff and expand their servers. HSI purchased 23 Faraday Ave, and began work on retrofitting the 17 story building for future expansion.
2385; Renovations are deemed complete on 23 Faraday Ave, now known as HSI Operations Center. The 10th and 11th floors are combined into a single holomatrix support suite for ongoing experiments. The large plate windows were made so that the experiments can not be viewed from the outside, but they could potentially be able to view the outside world of Catalina City on Titan. Dozens of smaller suites can be found in other research areas on the lower floors.
2386; HSI won a contract with UFP to construct training simulation software for Starfleet Academy.
2386; HSI won a contract with Trans-Star Flight Systems to develop 'safe' holographic crew for emergency applications.
2386; Drawing off of research already being conducted, HSI began testing early prototypes of Autonomous Humanoid Holographic workers. Later, testing was begun on advanced models of the AHH programs that would develop into a series of Mark 1 Emergency Holographic Crew.
2388; In March, HSI loses a lawsuit concerning copyrights infringement against the UFP and Starfleet, when the entire database of research had been co-opted by Starfleet to begin a parallel Emergency Holographic program. The courts declared that the five year research grant had yielded work product that could be claimed as property of the Federation.
2389; In January, now represented by the Eruditus Group, HSI appealed and won a settlement concerning the earlier courts decision, in as such the Federation agreed to continue funding the "Sentience Research", and HSI would be allowed to continue development of their Emergency Holographic crew replacements for open market. Caveats existed to ensure that the EH programs could not unless heavily altered result in additional sentient holographics.
2389; HSI completes the order for Trans-Star Flight Systems, providing customizable matrices and program modules to provide emergency crew assistance on board starliners and freight carriers that would run their operations system. Trans-Star Flight Systems would have license to provide this service under their own name until 2400 when any further license agreements would be renegotiated.
2390; In a bid to update and expand the server farms of their Operations Center, HSI sells 49% ownership in stock offerings to the DFIG, becoming an affiliate company. Value of the company doubles in the first year due to the extensive sales and lease packages sold to other affiliates.
2390; HSI branches into entertainment simulations, and providing 'build AI' to help budding producers of new works to bring their imaginations to life in the holo venue. In addition, HSI releases a whole new drone software, to replace and remove any potentially sentient software from bonded labor. The drone lacked the anthropomorphizing that humanoid holographics share, thus decreasing tensions of those who look at use of those tools as a form of slavery. The drones were designed to do the same job, without engendering emotional responses from the workplace. The design proves to be very effective, when paired with the holo-emitter extension drone. Physical drones which can be moved into a location to provide the photoemitters to allow the holographics to be of full use as a work force.
2401; HSI offers the Emergency Hologram package to multiple producers, under license. "As this represents a seriously complex set of algorithms and databases, we have to maintain control over the updates and maintenance cycles of these projects" Ms. La'Roche was quoted as saying at a trade conference later in the year. She assured potential buyers that the purpose was to keep the Emergency Holographic Crews as up to date as possible, while confessing to staff and the DFIG board that it was also to ensure they were able to abide by the legal agreements set down by the Courts Arbitration twelve years earlier. They had to maintain that safeguards put into place would remain in place and their work could not be used in ways contrary to license without a shut down.
2405; Danielle La'Roche is elected from the affiliates to take her father's seat on the DFIG board of directors in the months following his death.
2406; HSI branches out into the service industry, providing holographic aids for the rich and powerful of the United Federation of Planets, the idea inspired by the memory of Bashir La'Roche. As his daughter explained, he did not like replicated food. He would replicate all of the components, but then cook them himself or later have someone else do this for him. As he lived in a holographic simulation, his food was prepared by the 'best chefs of Paris'. Director La'Roche later commented, "One should not have to completely disconnect from the real world to get a taste of it." As such, her first project was to create the stand alone personal Chef, and said that she "doubted there would be a single meal I (she) smelled cooking as much as an hour before meal times that would not remind me(her) of my(her) father."
2407; HSI continued the development of personal service holographics of nearly every profession, skilled or unskilled imaginable. Unlike the Starfleet work that had been done earlier, these would not be capable of rising to sentience. Nor would they be able to perfectly perform in every situation. A certain bit of fallibility was designed into them to provide an organic flair to their existence. While their work would be consistent, it would not be identical. Some would not wish this, but those who counted on the servers to feel connected to the world very much appreciated not being reminded that their servers were artificial.
2409; HSI saw several years of conflicts and upheavals in the galaxy. Mass casualty events and displacements of millions from their homes, even their home worlds caused a shift in focus for the corporation. DFIG affiliates were impacted deeply because the majority of their investments and affiliated companies existed in Sol and Vega systems. The DFIG lost millions of associates in the Borg attack and take over of Vega IX, roughly 40% of affiliated businesses and holdings as well as those associates were lost in one system.
2409; HSI focused a lot of time and resources to development cheap and quality servers to help with displaced peoples. Aid worker programs, Medical teams, counselors and organizational assistants were designed. Director La'Roche said she wanted to be able to refit a container ship like an Antares and make it a mobile hospital or relief ship, then market the kits it took to do it, to others who wanted to help at cost.
2411; HSI released a Mobile Hospital container module. It was completely compatible with Interstellar Shipping Standard Organization container sizes. It however would expand into a 20 bed clinic, with a mobile power supply good for 60 days without refueling, fully stocked for relief work and equipped with holoemitters and a team of holographic doctors, surgeons and nurses that would be able to make use of the fully stocked container as soon as it was deployed.
2413; Versions of the mobile clinic were redeveloped for a Starfleet Disaster Response contract to provide field hospitals equipped with EMH.VI. They required a higher power output and more computing power, but were successfully delivered on time.
2420; HSI focused on rebuilding and recovering. As a company, an attack on Titan had resulted in nearly a 50% reduction in staff, and damage to the facility. It would take two years to bring all systems fully back on line after structural repairs.
2425; Holographic Solutions Incorporated continued to be a premier supplier of holosims, entertainment and training environments, as well as server programs, drones of many types, and for use both in space and groundside. HSI partnered with DFIG affiliates for material production of holographic projection equipment, as well as power production.
2440; In response to P.L.116658A being passed, HSI issued a recall to all of their clients leasing their products, and issued a notification of recall to all full purchasers.
2441; HSI processed every copy of their Holographic Aids returned to them with the basic testing protocols to determine what they already believed, their products did not pass as sentient with any of the three protocols. Additional requests were pushed to those who had purchased the products fully instead of leasing. By years end, nearly a thousand were discovered to have passed, due to modification by clients or violations of the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement). Those that passed the test were reported to and turned over to authorities to allow for proper processing for photonic sentients. Several that were yet to be returned by the end of the year were discovered to have been tested independently and processed by authorities.
2442; HSI programmers completely reworked the matrix at the core of their software to ensure that even with violations of the EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) cannot result in accidental rise to sentience, and begin the process of recreating their entire line.
HSI works with regulatory authority to help hardware programmers to create safeguards against accidental creation of artificial life.
2443; HSI begins shipping / transmitting products back to lease holders and owners with updates, and lobbies the regulatory authority to relax restrictions to allow for their products to be used.
HSI programmers are enlisted to assist with standardized software to be used in new Virtual Cities for the recognized Photonic Citizens to transfer to as many thousands of them are still offline in hard storage waiting for their freedom.
2444; HSI begins to return to normal operations.
2445; HSI celebrates as the Virtual City Atlantis comes online, as they were one of the primary contractors providing for the virtual environments within.
2450; HSI celebrates the 5 year anniversary of Atlantis coming online, and later in the year 50,000 hours of continuous uptime for the servers without major errors. HSI also celebrates the online status of Barsoom and Neptune's Deep also running on their software.
Today[]
HSI is on the forefront of holographic programming, providing personal assistants, service aids, training simulations and entertainment simulations. HSI is also one of the premiere providers of the stable environment matrices that allow for Virtual Cities to exist without breakdown running continuously theoretically for centuries.
Product Examples[]
