Challenge #00519 - A144: Unreasoning Profits

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-George Bernard Shaw

If he doesn’t blow himself up in the process.

-Anonymous — c/- RecklessPrudence

Ax’and’l often struggled to find something nice to say about the human race. His usual compromise, that they were profitable mammals, did not always make it seem like enough of a boon.

Especially when Hwell had managed to wander off and get into one of his… escapades.

When he was done swearing, Ax’and’l often swore that he could feel his life shortening. He wanted to rail and cry at the statistics stating that species who had involved relationships with humans lived longer and healthier lives. He wanted to leave Hwell on the statisticians’ laps as Exhibit A as to why their statistics counted worse than damn lies.

But humans had a knack for seeing past the self-evident, which was both blessing and a curse. Sex aids on one planet became repackaged cooking supplies on another. Despicable toys for adults became a plaything for little children. Instruments of death became tools for civilisation.

And predators… became harmless pets.

Humans were also the only known species with a Luck gene. It came with the caveat of spectacular accident and Ax’and’l repeatedly checked Hwell for it following one of his usual unmitigated ur-disasters. Hwell was not a Lucker, despite all evidence to the contrary.

He just had a phenomenally scary impersonation of one.

And he was consistently profitable. Even when they had to pay for the damages.

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Challenge #00518 - A143: Salvation From the Lessers

(since you’re a DS9 fan like I am) It was ironic that after the war, the Cardassian/Bajoran hybrids that Cardassia had neglected and cast out were instrumental in its rebuilding, and its rebirth.

Cardassia was in ruins.

It had never been in ruins. Not in all of its glorious history. Certainly, there had been wars in the pre-spaceflight days, but only individual areas ever became ruined.

An entire planet - and entire planetary empire in ruins… Just sucked the very soul out of the Cardassian people. They wandered through the rubble like ghosts. One would stop and pick up a piece of rubble, and half-heartedly add it to a pile.

This had never happened before. Nobody knew what to do.

Or at least, nobody who lived in the Cardassian empire knew what to do.

They came in bright colours and loose clothing. They came with water purifiers and soil reclamation units. They came with Pulaku and Tokta seedlings.

They came with Cardassian faces… or faces that were Cardassian enough. Despite the Bajoran earrings and the Bajoran clothing and the Bajoran accents, they were Cardassian enough for the lost souls to flock to them.

They were Cardassian enough for other Cardassians to listen to them. To follow orders. To forge a new world based on need and skill, not heritage and social standing. To give to those who needed, to make that which worked out of whatever they had to hand.

They came with Bajorans, who said things like, “We’ve been doing this for fifty years, it’s about time you learned how.”

And some remembered. Before it was done unto them… they had done it first.

The Bajorans, the Bajoran-Cardassian hybrids, and the orphans they left behind had no reason at all to help Cardassia. They had every reason to leave the Cardassian Empire - or the ruins thereof - to stew and pickle in its own feculence and slide back to a more primitive standing for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Which was why the most important thing was that, though they came with some old grudges, they also came of their own free will. That they came without hate.

They came to show Cardassia what could be done without being conquerers.

And for the first time in thousands of years, Cardassia learned something new.

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Challenge #00517 - A142: Conclusion-Jumping

One of the many early miscommunications when the humans first started to contact the galactic alliance: Alien expresses interest that human is still alive having broken one or more bones, slightly dense human gets the wrong end of the stick entirely and now half the camp thinks people with injuries like that are killed, because why else would something like a trifling broken arm mean you die?

Susan was learning what many in the new proto-city of Wiwazheer were calling Chickenese. Grey Chicken -aka Trekker- was learning English. Many things, she was sure, were getting lost in the translation.

She was hauling Jaime back to Central - literally the centre of town - to get his arm properly set when Trekker invited itself along and lit on the back of Calico.

“You is preparing dead?”

She answered in Chickenese. “No. Friend no dead. Friend hurt, me taking for help.”

“…’m s'posed'a see little birds,” Jaime mumbled. “‘ey izzat Grey Chicken?”

“Yup. That’s Grey Chicken. Says zir name is Trekker. Trekker, this friend naming Jaime.”

“He is living? Me am seeing fall. Me am hearing bone crack.”

“Friend breaking bone in arm. We is fixing.”

“Us folk breaking bone, us folk dead,” said Trekker in confusion.

Susan did not have the words to ask, Do they kill you or do you just die? That was a question for the doctors in Central, who had Trekker’s DNA on file. All the same, an APB concerning being careful with projectiles around the alien bird would be wise.

And a solid plan to save the bird’s life should the unthinkable happen.

Susan got the impression that Trekker was trying to protect Wiwazheer and all the humans therein from some menace outside of their current experience. Though it was hard to imagine a species of warlike birds if they died from a broken bone.

Now was not the time to judge. Now was the time to take notes and, at the earliest opportunity, run like hell for the xenobiology labs to ask interesting questions.

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Challenge #00516 - A141: Dem Dry Bones

Zoology revision prompt! This is an excerpt about what you can tell from just a skull.

“A defining trait of mammals is specialised teeth. Mammals are the only class on Earth to evolve specialised teeth, with specific shapes for vegetation, meat, insects and combination diets. Reptile teeth are all very similar, single-point and peglike, often not as firmly rooted. They vary in size, for instance snake fangs, but in general are all very similar.”

There were skeletons all over this layer. Not down the ritual pits, but scattered about following some global disaster.

But this one…

This was an intact specimen.

The bones were, as always, bright red. Indicating that significant heat had been part of the disaster. These odd creatures were roasted alive.

Tarta carefully removed the skull from its matrix of ash and earth. brushing it clean enough to determine the details. The brain case indicated intelligent life. Large eye sockets. And a significant hole for the optic nerve. “These beings specialised in visual acuity. Judging by the muscle attachments, they had mobile eyes…”

Tarta scoped the nasal passages. “Smell was evidently a secondary sense. There’s no large structures for auditory input…” A race of deaf cogniscents? It was a theory. Alas, they had no live specimen to test.

But the teeth… the teeth said much.

“This is an omnivorous mammal. Look at these specialised teeth… Chopping teeth in the front and grinding teeth at the back. Ah!” Tarta gathered her students around to show them. “Look. Evidence of dentistry. This specimen had cavities, but they were drilled and filled with a ceramic accretion. These were intelligent creatures.”

“Then why did they blow themselves up?” Jori still felt compelled to raise her hand. “If they were intelligent, why did they bother with war?”

“You’ve seen the other creatures,” said Tarta. “The mammalian predators and the venomous reptiles. You’ve seen the creatures that survived the planetary apocalypse.”

Jori shuddered at the thought of the things outside their dig fortifications. “Yes. They’re all lethal.”

“And that’s the reason why. These beings originally came from a death world. War was how they lived. War was how they ended.”

As far as first impressions are concerned, humans could have done infinitely better than the remains of the colony world Numurica.

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Challenge #00515 - A140: Problematic Material

Video Prompt!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WgXN0kO1JEA

The music, such as it was, was a collection of intersecting beats. The man in the white suit danced in interesting ways.

He wore a white suit with black tie and gloves.

And the interesting thing about the otherwise ordinary room was the grass floor.

Shayde sat pondering the video as it played out. And Rael stood pondering Shayde.

“So what is it?” Rael said.

“It’s art. Near as I can figure, it’s a complete piece… But I cannae figure out where it’s meant tae fit.”

Rael watched some more. “It’s art. Does it have to fit?”

“Kinda me job tae put th’ pieces together, ye ken.”

“And the visual cues aren’t helping.”

“Na. It’s no as if they got the original tape or nothin’.”

Rael coughed. “It’s… digital. I don’t think there was such a thing as original media storage.”

Shayde pondered this revelation. “Eee, tha’ just makes it trickier…”

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Challenge #00514 - A139: One Dank Morning in the Dire Halls of MegaGlobocorp, West Esterly

“Should you choose to accept it, your mission - which you are required to accept or you’re fired - is…”

Working as a faceless minion in MegaGlobocorp was never fun. It was a dangerous lottery before one even made it to the labyrinthine spread of the offices. As unskilled labor, Dar had the marvellous advantage of having twenty bosses to tell her when she messed up. And a random number generator assigned her at random, to one of the fifty Higher Executives.

None of which communicated with her immediate superiors.

Dar joined the endless line of fellow minions trudging towards the open maw into a day’s worth of misery and working through lunch break. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually had free time at lunch. Nobody did.

The bosses didn’t like their minions to have free time on the company dime.

As she drew closer to the scanner, Dar began the same prayer shared by hundreds in her position. Not Withers. Not Withers. Anyone but Withers. Please, merciful powers above, not Withers.

Dar inserted her arm into the machine and heard the gatekeeper intone, “Dar Mackelvoy. Withers.”

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit…

Dar resolutely donned her cardboard safety gear and reported to the dispenser of doom.

Withers. God, no.

She ran her company tattoo under the scanner and received an ordinary-looking box. She had to open it. No time for delays. She got docked treble time for delays.

Fucking Withers. Ugh.

“Good morning. EMPLOYEE. THREE. SEVEN. TWO. NINE. ZERO. ZERO. FOUR. ALPHA. PHI. Your mission, should you choose to accept it - and by ‘choose’, we mean 'you have no choice’,” Dar rolled her eyes at the pre-recorded chuckle, “is to proceed to the. RED. SECTOR. and DELIVER. NUTRIENT. PACKETS. to the. LABORATORY. EXPERIMENTS. ZERO. THROUGH. TWO. THOUSAND. If you fail in this mission,  you fail at life. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Maybe! Hahahahahahahaa!”

Of all the executives in all the byzantine halls of this benighted company, she had to draw the one who thought he had a sense of humour.

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Challenge #00513 - A138: Poor Unfortunate Souls

In your universe, how do the - as far as I can tell - legal AIs feel about Uplifts being illegal? Considering you could make an argument that they are equally people, and might even have some of the same theory applied to them, in creating/augmenting a consciousness, just applied to silicon or grey jelly.

Especially considering that at least some of the arguments I can imagine being levied against Uplifts could equally be levied against AIs. – RecklessPrudence

Creating life is a heck of a lot easier the traditional way. But various hungers: the desire to nurture, the need of family, or just being Nae'hyn… result in new life and new life forms coming to the fore. These are the legal ELFs. Engineered Life Forms.

When baser appetites are involved: the desire for profit, the need to control, or just plain not thinking things through… you get illegal ELFs. Uplifts. The Enlisted Man. Sexbots.

The conflict, as always, is not in What Was Done, but rather, Why They Did It. And in such conflicts, the Cogniscent Rights Commission comes to the fore.

Every cogniscent being has certain inalienable rights. The basic rights: atmosphere, food, shelter, medical care, companionship. The corollary rights: education, safety, security, meaningful employ. The biological rights: love, family, the ability to reproduce, the ability to choose to reproduce.

When any of these rights are taken away, as they frequently are in the cases of illegal ELFs, there are intense legal battles. Companies greedy for their missing profits frequently hold un-birthed ‘products’ in stasis or storage, in legal limbo and definitely for ransom. They hold back on reproductive information, lest successive generations continue suing their successive generations unto perpetuity.

The CRC has very firm views on that. As do their sponsor members: every last recognised species of Artificial, Cogniscent Life ever made. All of them. Both legal and illegal.

And should you still go ahead and create for yourself a cogniscent plaything, just remember this:

You really know you’re in trouble when you’ve pissed off the Consortium of Steam.

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Challenge 00512 - A137: Gengineer of Note

Uplifting, as opposed to Augmenting, is illegal in your universe, right? Presumably for how easily both the process and the products of said process can be abused, along with the sad examples of such.

But I refuse to believe that such a transformative technology with so many pitfalls along the way was developed solely for money. Sure, there had to be at least the potential for profit, otherwise the people capable of doing it would never have had the resources to do so. But there had to be passion, someone or someones doing it because they believed that it was the right thing, that it was a good thing, that they believed in it. Not because it would give them slaves, but because it would give them people.

And then it was abused. Repeatedly. How did they feel about their life’s work, their dream, turning into this? How did they feel, through all the no-doubt-innumerable hearings, the interminable legal proceedings, the castigation?

Were they simply idealistic, to not see the ways their dream could be exploited? Were they themselves, their genius or collective genius exploited by less scrupulous people?

Were they lonely? Were they Nypical, or were they ‘off’? Were they looking, at the most basic level, to “make a friend”? Were they attempting to better understand other people by quantifying what goes into a person, or even in building a person, better themselves?

And how are they seen now, centuries hence? Evil? Greedy? Amoral? – RecklessPrudence

It wasn’t always this way.

It wasn’t a life of solitude with his Cats for company and people like PETA and EVILR[1] constantly at his gates. It wasn’t dodging internet rumours about what he did with his Cats every time he was online.

It wasn’t always feeling sick because of what They were doing with technology.

Once… just once… it had been good.

*

“My name is Anton De'Vrieyez. And this is Jemima.”

“Hello,” said Jemima.

“Oh my god, it talks.”

“That’s ‘she’ talks, please? I’m a girl, not a thing.”

“And -uh- can you show the audience at home that you’re not a puppet or something, Jemima?”

She sighed and stood, turning a graceful pirouette. “I’m really getting tired of showing people how real I am,” she grumbled.

“It’s still your turn,” said Anton. “We agreed to this. You, Julie, Jake and James all decided together that this is how you were going to handle it.”

“There’s four of you?”

“There’s eighty of us,” said Julie. “We’re what you might call the 'display sample’.”

Gasps from the audience. Anton winced. “Jemima, that’s not a good way of putting it.” He sighed. “We all decided together that the J-run should be the prettier cats, and that some would go on the road to show everyone that I’m not doing evil things with you all.”

“I’m sorry, Poppy.”

More gasps.

Anton forced a smile. “All of the Cats call me some variant of 'dad’ or 'pop’. I -uh- did create them. Um. Trying to be a good father to eighty Kittens isn’t that… um… easy…”

“You do okay, Poppy,” Jemima smudged her cheek on his arm as she hugged it. “We all love you.”

“And you made these… sentient cats?”

“Cogniscent cats,” corrected Anton. “I always got on better with cats than I did with people and I looked at our current level of gentech and -uh- realised… I could make a whole population of Cats. Like, give them everything they need to communicate and function on a human level.” A shy smile. “I was so glad when it worked.”

“So… you literally made your friends.”

“If you want to boil it down to that level… yes. I have eight gestational replicators so the Cats come out in batches of eight. After Eve, of course.”

“She’s our Meow-ma,” added Jemima.

“I make sure they’re up to date with their inoculations, of course. Uplifted cats can catch all the human diseases and all of the felid ones, too.”

“So Eve is your girlfriend?”

“What? No! She’s my daughter. Just because she’s the eldest and takes care of some of the Kits with me… It’s complicated, okay? None of the Cats are designed as sexual objects. They’re friends. Companions. Family. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around screwing my family.”

*

He was the first and last known person who thought about the inalienable rights of Cogniscent life. The right to freedom. The right to an education. The right to shelter. The right to nutrition. The right to reproduce and the right to choose to do so.

All others after him… chose to ignore that. Demanded control. Abused the power over living, thinking beings that were also, legally, property.

Anton and his Cats fled earth and founded the planet Felida. But not before the abusers dragged his good name through the mud.

Only on Felida is he respected as an inventor and a creator. Only on Felida, is all the truth about him told.

When he was dying, the Cats offered to clone him, so that someone like him would always be with them. They had the technology. They could have easily done it without his permission.

“No,” he breathed, extending a gnarled and shaking hand to soothe the asker’s tears and whiskers. “Don’t ever make somebody just so they can be alone.”

If only the other Uplifters had paid him any heed at all.

[1] Egalitarian Vegans Insisting on Life-Rights

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Challenge #00511 - A136: Biochemical Imbalance

That wonderful feeling when you’re on just insufficient meds, or high on fatigue toxins, or had two hour’s sleep per night, max for the last week. After you’ve gone through the feeling-horrible portion, when you’re in the feeling great, can do anything, everything is so clear and sharp and makes so much sense…

And then, when you’ve had sufficient sleep, rest, or meds…

How the world actually is, and how you’ve been behaving. – RecklessPrudence

Charlie awoke in a med booth feeling amazing. It had actually been a good day, even if it did have an abrupt end. And a puzzling reset here.

She gripped the exit handle and pulled her booth out enough so that she could look out into the hallway. “Uh, hi there,” she chirped to the approaching nurse. “Can you tell me what I’m in for?”

He wasn’t wearing an iso-suit, so it wasn’t anything infectious. There was that bonus. Charlie waited patiently while the nurse checked his files.

“There you are. You suffered a near-catastrophic chemical imbalance and had to be sedated. You’ve been asleep for three shifts.”

Eighteen hours. Jeesh. “I didn’t feel imbalanced,” she argued, trying to recall the previous evening.

“You were arguing with a Racist citizen of Greater Deregulation North.” A redundancy of terms if there ever was one. Like, insane human or pointless art. “And apparently attempting to convince him that, by his own logic, all humans were fish.”

“…i was under the impression that i was doing well…” Charlie squeaked.

“Sorry to say so, but you were so bad that the citizen of GDN actually called in the medical emergency.”

“Is there anywhere I can hide until the Galactic Alliance forgets who I am?”

“Don’t worry,” soothed the nurse. “Your place of employment has been reprimanded and your quarters adjusted to suit your needs. Everyone goes through something similar sooner or later. All will be forgiven and forgotten soon enough.”

Charlie shut herself back into her booth. She certainly didn’t feel forgiven or forgotten at the moment.

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Challenge #00510 - A135: The Wolf’s Just a Puppy

Also about domesticated animals.

Almost every domesticated species, whether predator or prey, has been a social animal, with an internal hierarchy. Humans domesticated them by inserting ourselves at the top of the various hierarchies, and doing so consistently for generations, until the species is considered domesticated.
This can lead to absurd scenarios such as a human chastising a predator-species that was behaving inappropriately, one that masses more than they do, with a jaw that could shatter their bones easily, can outrun them - or, indeed, run them down - with ease, and is stronger than they are, by wrestling them to the ground and making noises at them. Said predator-animal is closely related to pack-hunting apex predators that were some of early civilisation’s most feared foes.

And then the mad human lets the animal up, and rather than rip their throat out for their temerity, it behaves contritely, as if the human had any capability to enforce their wishes upon it. Not only that, but within minutes the human and the predator will be playing games together! Games in which the predator has to be so very careful not to injure the human, even games in which the human deliberately provokes the predator! [Ed: tug-of-war with the rope, etc. NOT abuse] – RecklessPrudence

“Yeah, she’s still a predator,” said the human scratching the tiger’s ear. “She’s known me since she was a baby. I’m family. She won’t eat family.”

As if to punctuate the point, the tiger wrapped her mouth around an arm and pretended to bite and maul. All the human did was boop its nose and the animal let go and started licking apologetically.

“It’s all about socialisation. Now tigers need a large enclosure and lots of their own space, but in ten generations? We’ll have a species of tiger who can be house pets.” The human resumed scratching the tiger. “It sounds ludicrous, but it’s almost guaranteed to save the species.”

And that was how the aliens learned that humans wanted every possible animal as pets. Some were easier than others, of course. But the rising suspicion was already growing.

Show a human something dangerous and deadly, and they will figure out a way to domesticate it and turn it to their own purposes.

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