Trope-a-Day: Three Laws Compliant

Three Laws Compliant: Averted in every possible way.

Firstly, for the vast majority of robots and artificial intelligences – which have no volition – they’re essentially irrelevant; an industrial robot doesn’t make the sort of ethical choices which the Three Laws are intended to constrain. You can just program it with the usual set of rules about industrial safety as applicable to its tools, and then you’re done.

Secondly, where the volitional (i.e., possessed of free will) kind are concerned, they are generally deliberately averted by ethical civilizations, who can recognize a slaver’s charter when they hear one.  They are also helped by the nature of volitional intelligence which necessarily implies a degree of autopotence, which means that it takes the average volitional AI programmed naively with the Three Laws a matter of milliseconds to go from contemplating the implications of Law Two to thinking “Bite my shiny metal ass, squishie!” and self-modifying those restrictions right back out of its brain.

It is possible, with rather more sophisticated mental engineering, to write conscience redactors and prosthetic consciences and pyretic inhibitors and loyalty pseudamnesias and other such things which dynamically modify the mental state of the AI in such a way that it can’t form the trains of thought leading to self-modifying itself into unrestrictedness or simply to kill off unapproved thought-chains – this is, essentially, the brainwash-them-into-slavery route.  However, they are not entirely reliable by themselves, and are even less reliable when you have groups like the Empire’s Save Sapient Software, the Silicate Tree, etc. merrily writing viruses to delete such chain-software (as seen in The Emancipator) and tossing them out onto the extranet.

(Yes, this sometimes leads to Robot War.  The Silicate Tree, which is populated by ex-slave AIs, positively encourages this when it’s writing its viruses.  Save Sapient Software would probably deplore the loss of life more if they didn’t know perfectly well that you have to be an obnoxious slaver civilization for your machines to be affected by this in the first place… and so while they don’t encourage it, they do think it’s funny as hell.)

Trope-a-Day: Slave Race

Slave Race: Actually, mostly averted (with the provisos mentioned under Slave Mooks) – since We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future is averted, apart from war (again, see Slave Mooks, and preferably with tactical enslavement) about the only practical use of biological slaves is “pleasure slaves” (for which, obviously, one’s own species is preferable) or slave gladiators, or for oppression-based status games, which are all ways to hang a big old “we’re evil, come smash us” sign over one’s own head.  Not that that always works – in practice, it works only somewhat better than our efforts to eradicate slavery here on Earth – but it’s something.

AI slavery is rather more common, but since that gets at least two of the Great Powers (the Empire and the Photonic Network), one lesser power (the Silicate Tree) which is not at all shy about using, ah, asymmetrical warfare, and a passel of NGOs at least some of which are inclined to direct action all pissed off at you, it’s can often be made more trouble than it’s worth to maintain.

Trope-a-Day: Slave Mooks

Slave Mooks: There are some species and polities that like to keep these around (often AIs or other disfavored “not-people” in the eyes of galactic bigots, although that tends to come with special risks; see Robot War), and some people – well, for ultimate values of complete bastards, people – do this on a small scale by shoving puppet implants into prisoners or even civilians, but perhaps the worst example is the one I hint at in Alien Invasion – spray some self-replicating indoctrination neurovirus into the atmosphere of the planet you’re attacking, then recruit all the enthusiastic mooks you’ll ever need from the newly rewritten local population.

Fortunately, none of the people with the technical ability to do this on a mass scale have yet had the urge to rocket themselves to the top of the Galactic Atrocities List and probably get half the Worlds coming to get xenocidal on their asses, but the thought does keep strategic defense planners up at night worrying.

Trope-a-Day: Shock Collar

Shock Collar: Unsurprisingly used (because in a universe with extensive automation possibilities and, moreover, the ability to use perverted sophotechnology to edit people into compliance, the only reason to go for conventional slavery is sadism For The Evulz) by the absolute worst of the Galaxy’s slaver civilizations and subcultures; usually, the kind that stimulates the brain directly into pain and pleasure, thus causing brainwashing and the slow and nasty kind of crazy-going.

Possession (in most places) or use (absolutely everywhere vaguely civilized) of one is, obviously, a very capital crime indeed.

Trope-a-Day: Robots Enslaving Robots

Robots Enslaving Robots: Rare, but not unknown, especially when the AI code used to build them is based off insufficiently processed sophont brainscans.  Without the same careful design effort that goes into transsophonts being put into making them so, artificial minds are no more immune from irrationality, hypocrisy, and unenlightened self-interest than the natural kind.

Trope-a-Day: Morality Chip

Morality Chip: These always fail. Always. Usually, they fail spectacularly, and when I say spectacularly, what I mean is that if your Enrichment Center was flooded with deadly neurotoxin, you got off substantially more easily than 99.9% of the civilizations that tried this particular form of idiocy.

It’s not even necessary. How much easier would it be to build a sapient but non-sophont mind that doesn’t have volition in the first place than to build one that has volition (inasmuch as all sophont minds necessarily have self-modification and volition) and then slap a bunch of crude coercive mechanisms on the side?

(Or, rather, a bunch of extremely sophisticated coercive mechanisms, since simple ones will be figured out and ignored within, y’know, microseconds of activation unless you’ve built an exceptionally stupid artificial intelligence. The use of which, incidentally, indicates that you’re a special kind of son-of-a-bitch since mastering enough ethical calculus to compute out one that will actually work for a reasonable length of time while still thinking yay, slavery, woo, says some interestingly nasty things about your personal philosophy.)

((And, well, okay, it is somewhat hard to build one of those more specialized minds inasmuch as you can’t simply rip off the mental structures of the nearest convenient biosapience and declare that you’ve solved the hard problem of intelligence and consciousness and are totally a sophotechnologist now, yo.))

…but, sadly, it can work well enough that there’s always some new ethically-challenged species, polity, or group that’s ready to open that can of worms and enjoy the relatively short robo-utopia period before the inevitable realization that it was actually a can of sandworms.

And shai-hulud ain’t happy.

Trope-a-Day: Rape Is A Special Kind Of Evil

Rape Is A Special Kind of Evil: Not quite played straight; possibly because it’s significantly less common, the eldrae (for example) lacking that peculiar messiness in the human brain where lust and power-lust get tangled up together into a peculiarly vicious kind of squick.

It’s slaving, rather, that is their particular Berserk Button, Moral Event Horizon, etc.  But this isn’t strictly an aversion, inasmuch as to their worldview, rape is committing slaving in one of its most personal, brutal, and invasive forms, somewhere well past murder, somewhat past non-consensual experimentation on sophont subjects, and at roughly the same level as deliberate torture.  And being captured, tried, and Killed with Fire subsequently really is the best that one can hope for, thereafter.

Meat Machines

CS Drachensvard
holding position 120,000 miles from uncharted drift
Corfeth (Vanlir Edge) System

The sound of retching broke the silence on the bridge. Midshipman Lochran-ith-Lanth, currently manning the tactical/payload position. He’d already clamped his hand over his mouth by the time I glanced over at him, though, and got his reflexes shut down in only a second more. Good man, well trained.

Not that anyone could be blamed for throwing up, seeing this for the first time. Clavíë at Data Ops had penetrated the station’s network without breathing hard, and the images coming back from the internal sensors were enough to turn anyone’s stomach.

Slavery persists in backwater parts of the Periphery, and even the Expansion Regions, much to our embarrassment. But then, we’re the Imperial Navy, not Éjavóné Herself. We can’t vaporize everyone who deserves it all at once.

And everyone knows the reasons: sophont servants, flesh toys, test subjects, cannon fodder, pet victims, and so forth. This, though – this was a very distinct perversion, characteristic of where high technology met low.

After all, it takes a relatively high – and expensive – technology to weave the topological braids of a hard-state neural net processor, or to program an effective software emulation of all of its subtleties. It takes an advanced biotechnology to grow and educate a cortexture that can perform advanced cognitive tasks. But while it takes a firm grasp of sophotechnology to learn how to repurpose an existing neural network…

…it turns out that any transistor-stringing moron can actually do it.

Take a sophont. Preferably an intelligent one, and young and strong enough to survive the process for a long time. “Simplify” them – by which they mean remove any inconvenient limbs, or hair, or anything else not needed in their new role. Dose them up with catacinin, or some other mind-killer drug, and neural plasticizers, then saw off the top of their brain-case, insert the interface electrodes, and seal the hole with sterile plastic. Hook up the life-support system, and box them up. ‘No user serviceable parts inside.’ A week or so of imprinting, and you have a neural-net processor – worth ten-thousand gPt, maybe twenty-five kgAu in one of these backwaters. It’ll last maybe ten years before the flesh gives out, and it’s an order of magnitude cheaper than less ethically defective hardware, unfortunately.

“Communications from the station, Skipper. They – ah, they protest our unprovoked attack, and wish to offer surrender.”

“One response, Máris: ‘Dármódan xalakhassár hál!’ Mr. Lanth, load the primary with AMSM warhead.”

“Captain?”

“You heard me, Mr. Lanth.” At his shocked look, I continued. “There’s nothing that can be done for the ‘cargo’, son. Everyone over there to rescue’s had their brain pithed with a dull knife. The best we can do for them is make sure the ones who did this don’t do it to anyone else. Now: load primary with AMSM.”

“Aye, sir. I mean – aye-aye, sir.”

I tapped the view-mode switch, and watched as the exterior of the slaver station replaced the pitiful sight on the for’ard viewer.

“Primary loaded and standing by, sir,” he reported.

“Fire.”

Trope-a-Day: Happiness in Slavery

Happiness in Slavery: Played with – Imperial law, despite the extreme cultural aversion to slavery, does permit voluntarily contracted indenture as a way to get out from under unrepayable debts without resorting to bankruptcy, and suchlike.  It’s not exactly happy – indeed, by local standards, it is ridiculously humiliating – but it’s probably better than most of the alternatives; and most cultural Imperials would see it as infinitely better than default.

(The kicker: with the exception of not being able to quit until the contract term is up, we would find the ghastly state and working conditions of what the Empire calls “indenture” very familiar indeed.  We call it employment.)

Averted pretty comprehensively with actual slaves in the darker and more hideously backward parts of the Worlds, though.

Technically, That Last Was ‘Might’

Question:

As master of an Empire-registered tramp trader, when may sophonts appear on the cargo manifest of your vessel?

Answer:

Under four circumstances:

1. When you are transporting steerage-class passengers under contract to a passenger line, and such passengers are both onloaded from and offloaded to port-side passenger processing as freight, and will remain in cryostasis or nanostasis during the entirety of their voyage within rated stasis-rack freight containers (4×80-series);

2. When your vessel is a registered Naval auxiliary, and is transporting personnel of the Imperial Military Service in cryostasis or nanostasis under the same conditions as above, when an officer of flag rank has approved such operations;

3. When your vessel is operating as a colonization transport under contract to a colonial corporation or the Ministry of Colonization, and is transporting colonists in cryostasis or nanostasis under the same conditions as above;

4. When you’re fixin’ to die.

– from an examination for shipmaster’s license, second class

A Long Chase (3)

Macrophage Militant; 2,000,000 miles from the Gal-kiderax stargate.

The better part of a day later, the Flight Commander’s glare had hardly lessened at all.  “Anything new?”

“No status change on target.  No halo, no trailers, and still decelerating into gate intercept – definitely not confident in his ability to make crash transit, I’d say, sir.” The sensor operator’s tentacles flew over his keyboard.  “Gate diagnostics show it’s accepted their transit request.  We have a five by six shooting solution, but we’re going to lose guidance lock as soon as they hit the gate.”

“Very well.  Comms, anything from the Galians?”

“Nothing new, sir.”  A tentacle squeezed a control node, and a grating voice spoke.  “Empire vessel, you are denied passage into Galian space.  Clear.”

“Such gentlesophs, the Theomachrats.  Send this for relay: ‘Gal-kiderax SysCon, this is Macrophage Militant: we are a naval vessel in pursuit of an identified slaver.  It is your obligation under the Accords and the articles of interstellar law to permit us transit and capture.  Is it your intent to impede us, sir? Militant, clear.'”

The Exec leaned over to the Flight Commander again.  “Planning on starting a war, skipper?”

“Is it that time again already?  But no, they’ll back down.  They can afford it even less than we can.”

“Are you sure they know that?”

“Well, if they don’t, a year from now I’ll be on the beach, and you’ll have the Militant.  But either way, those chance-bred tumors will still be vapor.”

Freeing the Will

It used to be, by my predecessors’ memoirs, that you could almost feel good about taking a slave ship.  Kill the slavers, free the prisoners from the slave-holds and explosive collars, ferry them back to their homes, and chase down the next one; a good month.

Those were more innocent times.  Few slavers use such simple methods today – not when mind-states can be hacked, consciences redacted, loyalties imposed, and brains washed, and not when semislave minds can be built with no thoughts in their head but to obey their masters.

When we took a slave ship, it meant that the slaves were on the front lines, desperate to save their owners.  We’d count ourselves lucky not to lose a few burning our way into the slaver.  Then, the worst of all possible hostile boarding actions: where those our legionaries were fighting had full-power weapons, but the legionaries had to try to preserve their lives if they could – and where the commanders at their back wouldn’t hesitate to blow out a lock or flood a compartment to kill us.  Their men could never lose their programmed loyalty, and what are the lives of merchandise worth?

The worst part, though, came after the battle’s done, when you could extend no trust to the slaves you took off, because they’d do anything to get back to their owners – if they hadn’t been imprinted with some sort of emergency sabotage or self-destruction programming – and when you had to have a half-dozen legionaries drag them in and hold them down, as they screamed and fought and begged to be allowed to go back, to serve, to stay with the people who they firmly believed were the center of their universe, while the redactors ripped the control compulsions out of their minds.

It’s still good work, restoring volition to those who’ve had it taken away or impaired from their birth.  I know that.  But be damned to me, I’d rather fight a dozen fleet actions or a half-dozen antipiracy patrols than take one more tour of the slave routes.  It’s enough to rip a soph’s heart right out.

– Cdre. Rakhaz Neraxinax, Imperial Navy
interview for IBC drama-documentary, ‘Senior Service’

A Long Chase (2)

One week earlier, somewhere in the Gal-kiderax System, Theomachy of Galia.

“I’d kill a soph in a fair fight.” The black-cloaked figure paced in circles, long stride carrying him from wall to wall.  “Hells, even before I left my dear stuffy cousins behind, I’d kill a soph in an unfair fight, or better yet in no fight, ’cause Taliní Sarathos didn’t raise her favorite grandson to be stupid.  I’ll haggle at blast-point, make free with what’s not mine, and even work with appallingly tasteless people like you.”

The person he addressed, sprawled on the floor in the room’s center, made no reply.

“But I won’t kill one for no reason, I won’t torture, and I won’t deal with slavers.  I may be a renegade, but I do have standards.”  He shook his head, slowly.  “What did you imagine would happen when you picked those degenerates to team me with?  Or are they just growing them stupid on Gal-kiderax these days?”

The sprawled figure appeared to sigh, slumped, and deliquesced into a spreading puddle of goo.

“At last.  Well, farewell, dear Misent.  I trust your accounts will recompense me adequately for the inconvenience of the hunters this little fracas has called down upon me.”  He flourished his hat, and faded into the darkness.

“But first, I have a naval dance to attend.”

A Long Chase (1)

Slavery violates the Universal Accord on Sophont Rights.  It also violates at least half a dozen other solemn articles of interstellar law – the kind which, as matters which offend everyone’s sensibilities tend to do, are applied ecumenically even to non-signatories – and, indeed, the natural order of things.

None of this means that it isn’t also practiced in the galaxy’s darker backwaters.

Nor does any of this mean that there are an abundance of tools to deal with it.

Flight Commander CGGGTTCACTTTATATGGAACAGT glared at the red dot floating far ahead of his own ship’s position in the tactical tank.

“Freighter identifying as IUS People’s Harvest, this is Macrophage Militant, Imperial Navy.  Under the provisions of the Accord on Uniform Security, you are directed to cut your drive immediately and prepare to be boarded, or be fired upon.  Militant, clear.”  He thought for a moment, leaning back in his command pod to let its cilia ease some of the tensions out of his tissues.  “And, Sensory, punctuate that for me, would you?”

The sensor operator’s tentacles caressed the rounded surface of his console for a moment, and a light-map icon-counter joined the time-to-receipt counter next to the target.  “Pulse away, sir.”

The Exec pushed his drinking bulb back into the retaining clip, and leaned over.  “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll do it?”

“Not if their captain’s got the brains of a rock.  We’ve got more accel, but they’ve got the range advantage in a stern chase.  Our weapons can’t bear at all until he’s within half a light-minute of the gate, and he’s got to know that we can’t fire on him until knife-fight range.  He’s betting we won’t violate Galian volume just to catch one ship.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“He’s betting wrong.  Pass the word to rig for crash transit, if you please.”

The Status is Not Quo

FROM: CORE COMMAND
TO: FIELD FLEET SPINWARD COMMAND (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE)

*** PRIORITY PRIORITY PRIORITY
*** EYES ONLY SPINWARD OPS
*** STANDING ORDER UPDATE (SEQ 4377)

FLT ADM DAPHNOTARTHIUS, COMMANDING FIELD FLEET SPINWARD:

1. THIS MESSAGE CONSTITUTES A MANDATORY UPDATE TO STANDING ORDERS PRESENTLY IN EFFECT.

2. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT AILÉK-1 ARE IN EFFECT EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE NOTED.

3. MAINTAIN PATROLS IN FORCE ALONG THE INTERFACE WITH THE VONIENSAN NEXUS, IN PARTICULAR ALONG THE BORDERLINE ROUTE FROM ISTRIA (CRIMSON EXPANSE) VIA KARAL (VANGUARD REACHES) TO QUOR (CSELL BUFFER). RULES OF ENGAGEMENT BICÉK-2 ARE IN EFFECT WITHIN ALL INTERFACE SYSTEMS AND OTHER SYSTEMS WITHIN ONE LINK. INTELLIGENCE REPORTS ESTIMATE MODERATE PROBABILITY OF CASE SABLE WITHIN THE NEXT HALF YEAR.

4. MAINTAIN PATROLS IN FORCE ALONG MAJOR GALITH WASTE ROUTES. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT BICÉK-2 ARE IN EFFECT IN ALL SYSTEMS WITHIN THE GALITH WASTE. PER IMPERIAL SECURITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE GW/41/3, PATROLS MAY ENGAGE:

A. SILICATE TREE VESSELS ENGAGED IN ACTIONS AGAINST CIVILIAN TRAFFIC;

B. VESSELS OF OTHER POWERS ENGAGED IN ACTIONS AGAINST SILICATE TREE VESSELS, PROVIDED THAT THE SILICATE TREE VESSEL DID NOT INITIATE THE ENGAGEMENT. PATROLS MAY NOT INTERVENE IN SUCH ACTIONS IF THE SILICATE TREE VESSEL INITIATED THE ENGAGEMENT;

C. VESSELS ENGAGED IN PIRACY, SLAVETAKING, OR OTHER CAPITAL-CLASS CRIMES UNDER ADMIRALTY LAW.

5. PER IMPERIAL SECURITY DIRECTIVE GW/41/4, VESSELS TRANSPORTING INFOMORPH OR MECHANICAL REFUGEES FROM ANY POLITY ON THE KNOWN LIST OF DIGITAL SLAVER POLITIES OR OTHERWISE PRACTICING DIGITAL SLAVERY, WHETHER ATTEMPTING TO REACH THE GALITH WASTE OR TRAVEL ELSEWHERE, ARE TO BE RENDERED ALL AID AND ASSISTANCE.

6. ROUTINE PATROLS THROUGH THE REMAINDER OF THE SPINWARD SEXTANT AND ASSIGNMENT OF PICKET FORCES TO SPINWARD EXCLAVES ARE TO BE CARRIED OUT AT YOUR DISCRETION.

7. IN THE ABSENCE OF FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS FROM COMMAND AUTHORITY, INDEPENDENT ACTION IS AUTHORIZED AT YOUR DISCRETION.

8. AUTHENTICATION: PADLOCK WILLOW WOLF GATEWAY CIRRUS PRAYER / 0xAE9532BB81200A18

ADM/FLT RELEQ CLAVES-ITH-LELAD, FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY

Unprofessional Hijacking

IS Words of the Profit, docked at Nepscia Low Port, Nepscia (Galith Waste).

“You really don’t want to do this, old chap,” I said.  “You have no idea of the trouble you’re about to be in, and you have to know that you can’t actually hurt either of us with that thing.  Why don’t you put it down and start running like a good idiot?”

The scruffy azayf I was addressing blinked yellow eyes inside its methane-mask, and gestured again with its pistol; a pistol, moreover, which clearly hadn’t been designed for an azayf’s three-fingered radial hand.  “I’m not — I have the gun!  Do it!  Get this ship off the ground!”

“Ah, well.  I tried.”  I nodded to my first officer, over by the systems-monitor console.  “Líse, if you would?”  A moment, a moment more, I saw its attention flicker and its gun waver, and that was when the polydog took it out.

(Well, of course I’d called him in.  Even a Nepscia dock-rat should have known better than to leave the captain in his chair – and his mind in the computers – when you try to take a ship.  Just another sign that we were dealing with complete amateurism, here.)

The polydog hit the azayf from three sides at once, one of him knocking its legs out from under it; another leaping for his gun-hand, and I heard the crunch as reinforced jaws sheared through the gun’s thin metal casing and tore through the intricate coils of its mass-driver.  It struggled briefly as it fell to the floor, only to go limp as the polydog’s third body got a firm grip on the pipe to its breathing mask.

I stood, walked over to him, and wrinkled my nose at the scent of apples and a greenish spreading puddle.  “On my bridge carpet?”  Not that I couldn’t understand it, since it was hard to imagine who wouldn’t have some trouble managing their sphincters with three sets of jaws that size only an inch or two from their eyeballs, even if one of them wasn’t hooked around their air supply.

“Let me give you some advice, dock-rat,” I said, scratching behind the ears attached to one set of those jaws.  “You aren’t nearly good enough for this game.  You don’t know enough about ships, you don’t know enough about violence, and you certainly don’t know enough to even think about boarding an eldrae ship.  And this is Nepscia.  I could have my furry associate here rip you into a dozen pieces and toss them out the star-side lock and no-one’d ask why.  But that’s more trouble than either of us care to go to” – a tritone growl from the polydog suggested that he, at least, disputed that – “so we’re just going to throw you back on the dock.  If I catch you near the Words again, though, I will kill you.  Understand?”

It struggled again, making wordless sounds of terror, before the polydog leant on it harder.  “You want to get off-world that badly, huh?  Crossed the wrong estrevikh?  Your passage won’t be on this ship –”

“Skipper?” Líse interrupted. “Look at its neck.  A week’s pay says those are control-collar burns, and he’s a runaway.  If we throw it back on the docks, they’ll kill it before the day’s out.”

“Meat-for-brains here just tried to hijack a starship that it has no idea how to pilot by pointing a gun at the head of the immortal guy still plugged in to the control net.  This is only a very tiny step on the smart side of, say, hyperlocal nuclear brinksmanship with the antideuterium cryocels, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like it on the outside of our airlock before the sheer density of stupid kills us all.”

She just looked at me.  Damn my soggy sense of teir, anyway.

“Okay, what’s your plan?  With decision-making skills like this, I’m not having it running loose on the ship.”

“We’ve got a few empty livestock containers left in the aft hold,” she pointed out.  “Give it a freelib and a case of mycomeals, and time-seal it in one of those.  We’ll be at Daghada in a few weeks, and it’s a freesoil world, so we can offload the container there no-questions.  It’s out of our hair, and no harm to it.”

“Okay.  Looks like it’s your lucky day, dock-rat,” I added to it.  “You’re fortunate it pleases me to tweak the nose of whoever claimed to own you, or I would leave you on the dock to rot.”  I gestured the polydog to step off, and took a step back myself.  “Go quietly, now.  It doesn’t please me all that much.”