Trope-a-Day: Fate Worse Than Death

Fate Worse Than Death: Played essentially straight, rape and torture-wise, given cultural attitudes to slaving and All Things Connected With It.  This, of course, became even more the case when death became really hard to inflict (see Final Death); the brain-mounted suicide-switch, often with emergency bug-out transmitter, and a restore from backup has become the standard solution – and essential accessory for everyone traveling to those backward areas which such things are statistically present – to all such Fates Worse Than Death.

(Of course, a related aspect of those cultural attitudes and the generous nature of Imperial self-defense laws –  not to mention cultural attitudes towards other people’s oft-ungenerous self-defense laws – mean that a lot of those emergency bug-out transmitters don’t contain just enough antiprotons to power the transmitter; they contain enough to ensure that anyone unwise enough to attempt to rape, kidnap, torture, etc., an Imperial citizen-shareholder has a good chance of being at ground zero of their very own miniature – collateral damage would, after all, be rude – Nuclear Incident.

It sure is nice to have built-in grenades, don’t you think?)