TShara

Magical Protection

*Smack*

Ethan finally looked up as his old device was swatted out of his hand, unhooking the headphones as it fell to the ground. A sneakered foot hovered over it, threatening to smash the antiquated, but still quite useful, cell phone. The in-valid quickly moved his headphones off of his ears and looked up, his single working eye catching the unpleasant sight of his greatest tormentor, Matthew Corlani, through the frames of his glasses. Though at first glance his eyes appeared whole, his optic nerve had not fully developed as a child, and his left eye was very myopic.

“Hey, freak. You think you can ignore me?” Matthew's voice echoed in Ethan's slightly disoriented ears. He noted carefully the two other males and one female who stood behind Matthew. Best odds ever, four valids against an in-valid. I swear, if Augs are so much stronger and more advanced than in-valids, then why the fuck do they need four people to subdue me? he thought sarcastically. But he did not speak his mind. With a bit of luck, and a bit of diplomacy, there was still a chance he could get out of this without adding anymore bruises or cuts to his repertoire.

“Well, I seem to have been doing a good job of it before you knocked that phone out of my hand,” he pointed out, looking his enemy in the eyes and vainly attempting to inject a note of humor into his tone, which threatened to turn more hostile by the second. He never had been very good at keeping his temper in check. That's usually why authority figures almost solely blamed him when he got into fights with bullies like this, even though he never started them. Because it simply had to be his fault, since in-valids had such violent tendencies and all.

“I didn't say you could use that tone of voice with me, idiot degenerate,” Matthew retorted quickly. For the moment, Ethan just sighed, realizing he should have been paying more attention when he crossed this area of town.

“Look, I have a meeting to go to, and I'm really too busy for this shit. You are probably too busy for this as well, really. If you'll just let me go, I'll be out of this area in a few minutes,” he reasoned, trying to reason with the other teen. Much to his dismay, Matt's foot still hovered dangerously close to his precious phone.

“Oh, you're in a hurry? What a shame. I've got all day... But you know what, you're right. Let's just let this one slide for now, shall we?” the valid replied congenially, picking up Ethan's phone and taking a step towards him. Am I really going to get out of this so easily? the near-victim thought incredulously, stretching his hand out to take the device, his face accidentally portraying a glimmer of hope.

But then Matthew threw the device on the ground and stomped on it, clearly shattering the screen. Taking a careful look at Ethan's dejected face, he looked at him with mock sympathy. “Ah well, it was a piece of shit anyway. Just like you.” He took another step towards his target.

“Look, what do you want? You've smashed my phone. Good job. But I have to get to work. So are you done now?” Ethan demanded defiantly, looking up at the ringleader who had to be a good six centimeters taller than him.

“Grab him for me, would you?” Matt said carelessly to his friends, not even stooping to reply to Ethan's protests this time. With that, the in-valid finally came to his senses and tried to run, but he was too late and too slow, and was quickly tackled to the ground, one of the males straddling him, and Matthew hovering a sneakered foot over his face. Ethan was forced to be painfully aware that at any minute he could easily suffer the same fate as his phone just had.

Magical Protection

So, I tend to get a bit graphic with abuse scenes. Are you ok with that? Also, expect a bit of cursing in this one, since it's alternate future Earth.

The Rebel Vampire

Ahh, that was great. I especially liked the look of GLaDOS.

The Rebel Vampire

Joseph strode purposefully into the room, keeping his steps light and swift, as he gracefully carried a silver tray with a soothing cup of green tea. As he walked towards his master, his excellent eyes checked over the work of the other slaves, eying a few of them carefully and silently appraising their work. Bowing respectfully as he approached the human, he placed the tray on the table and began pouring a cup of green tea for Alexi.

The task was boring, so there was plenty of time for him to get lost in thought, as he so often did. He eyed the grand piano in the corner of the room with a smile, remembering when he had performed for the guests just the night before. He'd started learning the piano and the cello about four hundred years ago, but that was a great advantage of such longevity, the ability to learn and hone many new skills. It was a shame that it had come with such a horrible bloodlust, the desire to murder others, and ultimately this servitude. But Joseph Moreau had little to complain about, compared to most creature slaves. He was the head slave of Alexi's household, and was treated with great dignity. His Vandros masters over the years had given allowed him a fair amount of freedom, and for that he was grateful. Captured at the age of 14, he had served the Vandros family faithfully for over six centuries now. He had helped to raise many children, including Alexi, and seen those children grow up, become his superiors, and then pass away, just as the generations before them. Given the atrocities he had once committed, he was fortunate that fate had been so kind to him.

“Is there anything else you require, Master Alexi?” the vampire asked, bowing again and pointing his eyes at his master's chest, never daring to meet the other man's eyes. His early years had taught him proper slave etiquette, and even though he had raised this man, he had not broken from treating his master as a superior since the boy had turned sixteen.

= = =

Erik Schumann prepared twenty of the men and women in his resistance cell, giving out last minute instructions before they headed out to the warehouse where a reliable source had assured him that slaves were being kept for the Auction tomorrow. Looking around at his group, in their mismatched gear and assorted weapons, he felt strangely proud. They were going to liberate a hundred slaves, just with their twenty units. It would be a glorious battle, and a glorious victory over the damned oppression of the humans.

“We've got one chance at this, guys. I want radio silence from the moment we are within a kilometer of the warehouse. Any screw ups and these civvies could be lost real fast. I've got twenty pairs of boots going in there, and I expect all twenty of your boots to to be headed back out. We don't give in, and we don't leave anyone behind. Capiche?” he encouraged. I've never been good at these pep talks, he thought to himself ruefully.

The rebels arrived long before the lawful officers, or else they would have called the mission off as soon as they had seen the other humans. But they had reached the abandoned warehouse first, and proceeded to surround the building, awaiting the gorram slavers' arrival.

Little did he know, that the trusted Xani cell member had been a slave, forced to infiltrate their group and gain their trust. Little did he know, that he was walking twenty-one people into a trap.

Magical Protection

It's fine. Also, Yay, a post!

Believe it or not, I have been working on the vampire one. I'm half done. Finished Joseph's part, just starting Erik's part now.

Magical Protection

I used the same terms because I've been working with the Gattaca idea off and on for years, but I've never been able to think of better ones. And yes, it's extremely close to Gattaca, but I expect it to diverge as the story progresses. I'm actually thinking of making the discrimination worse, the technology more modern looking, and focusing on the high school / college age group instead of late twenties.

Most importantly, I am trying to show a more balanced view of the prospects of human genetic engineering, and to make it clear that the problem was when the technology became overridden by greed and discrimination, to point out that the idea behind it is really amazing and that if society could avoid those issues, then genetic manipulation could be really incredible. I want this to be less one-sided than Gattaca.

Is any of this a problem?

Post whenever you have time. It's clear this is going to be a more "slow-paced" rp, so whenever you can reply is fine.

Magical Protection

YAY! Finally finished that intro post. It was longer than I anticipated (possibly the longest post I've ever done). But that's because I spent so much time describing the history / projected future of genetic engineering, and trying to make it clear that it was not the technology that was good or evil, but the caste-based uses of it. I don't want the view to be as one-sided as Gattaca is.

Anyway, this took me a long time, so please don't feel compelled to match, because I dont plan on matching that myself.

The year is 2111 now. I shoehorned his birthdate in, but was too lazy find a way to put in the actual year.

Magical Protection

For thousands of years, mankind had been influencing the circumstances we had been given by nature. Some of the results, such as pollution and climate change, had been detrimental. But many had been beneficial as well. Thanks to selective breeding, we domesticated animals to serve as pets and working animals. In crops. selective breeding, and later, genetic modification, had led to crops that could sustain the ever-increasing human population, with higher nutritional values, agricultural yields, and better quality in the produce. Humans had been tampering with nature since the beginnings of civilization; it was only a matter of time before we started tampering with our own nature as well.

The development and perfect of genetic engineering technologies had been one of the major miracles of the 21st century. The vast majority of the human genome had been mapped since 2003. And for many years, genetic engineering had been used in dozens of medical applications that saved and improved the quality of millions of lives. Thanks to the roots of this technology, insulin and human growth hormone could be produced on a massive scale, vaccines could be produced and perfected, and dozens of diseases could be treated. Before long, gene therapy, which involved directly replacing human genes with functional copies, was helping humanity cure cancer, Parkinson's disease, and a whole other host of genetic-based illnesses.

When we started screening children for genetic disorders, and ultimately altering the child's DNA to prevent such conditions as Cystic Fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, only the “crazy, anti-progress” people, the same types of people who had once opposed vaccinations, were really up in arms about it. Surely modification of the human genome would cut down on medical costs, improve lifespan, and help more people live happy, productive lives.

But who could establish the line between what was preventing a disease, and what was altering the traits of humanity? The line between what was a “flaw” and what was a simply a unique personality trait became blurred. We gradually increased the definition of what would be “screened” out, and we began to select for more “desirable” traits. In 2047, the first “Pizza Baby” clinic opened up, catering to the very rich and allowing parents to select the exact appearance, best traits, and even the blueprints for the personality of their children. As the technology became more commercially available, even the lower middle class could afford to “start their children off right,” not only without diseases or disabilities of any kind, but with increased musical and artistic ability, better athletic ability, and higher natural intelligence. It was understood that environmental factors played a role in many of these, but as long as the genetic predisposition was there, parents could know that they were starting their children off on the best possible foot.

This was all well and good, and slowly but surely, the physical standards for certain professions went up. To train as a pilot, you had to have far better than 20/20 vision in both eyes. To train as an astronaut, you had to be in top physical condition that no one could have achieved without being born with the Genetic Procedure. Soon enough, health insurance companies would screen DNA sequences and could deny people coverage based on their predisposition towards disease or certain behaviors. Essentially, health care was universal, so long as you were not genetically altered. Soon enough, laws were in place, allowing DNA screenings to become an integral part of a job or college interview. DNA information was supposedly private, unless an individual had any desire to function in society. Airports and other high-security buildings, verified your identity by simply taking a painless blood sample. You could pay for groceries at the store in much the same way.

It was not long before those unlucky enough to be born in what was once “the natural way,” and was now considered “the backward method,” were stigmatized, discriminated against, and relegated to the jobs no one else wanted to do. Such individuals were called derogatory names such as “in-valids,” “degenerates,” “god-children,” and “accidents.” What had once been a miraculous technology, was now just as easily used towards greed, intolerance, and the subjugation of those based on what their parents had or had not provided them as embryos.

Ethan Morrow was unfortunate enough to be one of those children. In the year 2093, his parents had birthed him “the old way,” and he had suffered most of his life because of it. He was was shorter than the average male now, and was bullied through most of his school life because of his eyesight, appearance, and the general knowledge that he was an in-valid. Bullying was nothing new in the world, but children like Ethan were just the newest trend.

But the eighteen-year-old male thought little of that right now, his backpack slung over his shoulder as he walked leisurely to his Robotics meeting, one of the few places in his life where no one cared that he was weird or different. He crossed the suburban center carefully, heading from his in-valid dominated suburb to a more middle-class one where his robotics team met. Like many teenagers for many generations, he occupied the time engrossed in his (a few generations old) cell phone, listening to music and reading random articles on the Internet while his feet took the familiar path to his destination. As a result, he did not notice that he was approaching one of the frequent hangouts of one of one of his greatest tormentors and his friends, and that they had noticed him from a fair distance.

A Diplomatic Overture - An Android's Fight for Sentient Status

I'm thinking about it in terms of what's already possible in computing and robotics now. Cloud storage, centralized computing of connected machines, extremely fast calculation times, all of that. It seems like androids would have all of that built in, to me. Hell, we even have computer programs that can create art now.

The immortality aspect of it would still be a natural result. If their memories can already be stored in computers, then just as you can do with computer files, you could transfer them back into a new body later. Hell, the only thing stopping us from doing that now is that we don't understand enough about the brain to encode the data from our organic computers into binary ones. But keep in mind, immortality has its issues too. What do you do to avoid overpopulation, for instance? There would have to be laws in place that prevent more than a few thousand new androids from being created each year. But then you have a society without much in the way of "new" generations and the new ideas those could bring. Why not explore those kinds of issues instead of just ignoring the natural logical conclusions of their origins?

The main setbacks that come through in my androids are often social and conversational issues, making them more human, which are proving to be the major difficulties in robotics. If these androids were built for labor, especially with the ability to just share knowledge and memories, there would be little need for social skills and conversation, and they also would not have developed it much since the Reawakening because they don't need it. Additionally, the "muted" emotions would also hinder this. So what if we made them have more difficulty with that and those types of things? Our characters could have improved subroutines for social skills for diplomatic purposes, but they would still be less skilled than organics.

Magical Protection

Okay, I'm finally doing some work on this one.

Since it's near-future, I'm doing a little wiki-research on where we are in genetic engineering technologies. From there I'm going to make an estimate of how long it will be until this becomes common technology, and then add another seventy or so years before we get into the whole Gattaca-like caste system.

I'm trying to make it clear from the beginning that I dont think human genetic engineering is a bad thing, but that it's the way people chose to use it that has turned it into a fucked up system. I'm hoping to write this as more of a criticism of any kind of caste system that denies anyone upward mobility, and a criticism of bullying and abuse in general.