Machine Research Report is an archive in NieR:Automata. Contained is an analysis on the machine lifeform network and their intelligence, which resulted in a never-ending stalemate between the androids and machines as described by the android Jackass.
Location[]
- This archive can be obtained by playing the main story and reaching the ending of route C.
Report[]
Overview
While the machine lifeform network was destroyed following the collapse of the Tower, a great deal of previously unknown information regarding machine lifeforms and aliens was recovered from the wreckage.
As part of this analysis, we compiled research and conjecture regarding both the machine lifeform network and the lifeform Codename N2—commonly known as the Red Girls—that was thought to have been commanding them.
- Machine lifeforms are weapons created by the aliens. The only command given for their behavior was to "defeat the enemy." However, it appears that their capacity for growth and evolution went too far, and they eventually turned on and killed their creators.
- At this point, machine lifeforms recognized that the goal of "defeating the enemy" actually REQUIRED an enemy. In order to maintain this singular objective, they reached the contradictory conclusion that their current enemies—the androids—could not be annihilated completely, lest they no longer have an enemy to defeat.
- In order to resolve this inherent contradiction, the machine lifeforms began to intentionally cause deficiencies in their network, diversifying the vectors of evolution for all machines. This is the cause behind some of the more "special" machine lifeforms, such as Pascal and the Forest King.
- Meanwhile, the deficient network began repeating the process of self-repair while incorporating surrounding information, until it finally reached a fixed state as a new form of network. Traces of information regarding human memories from the quantum server of the old model were discovered, indicating that it had integrated them during the final stages of its growth process. Said server contained a record of the discarded "Project Gestalt," as well as information on the human who was the first successful example of the Gestalt process.
- Having acquired information regarding humanity, the network's structure changed once more, becoming what might better be called a meta network (or a "concept", to borrow the words of the machines). This led directly to the formation of the ego we identify as N2.
...So then! To sum up: For hundreds of years, we've been fighting a network of machines with the ghost of humanity at its core. We've been living in a stupid fucking world where we fight an endless war that WE COULDN'T POSSIBLY LOSE, all for the sake of some Council of Humanity on the moon that doesn't even exist.
I don't know what the point is to all this, but I swear I will kill every evolutionary dead-end machine lifeform, as well as every single asshole behind Project YoRHa.
I'm coming for all your heads. Fuck you.
Information Analysis Officer,
Jackass