Earth Fanfic (Post-Contact Hilarity II)

General Fanfic
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I was assuming the same, but our host must confirm.

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To redress my lamentable interruption of the proper topic of conversation (since it was only posted here for failure of attempts to start a new thread, I must beg the house’s pardon):

“Oh, Abigail…” Lionel’s tone was light and musical.

“Lionel.” Abby opted to riposte in staccato.

“I know I’ll have to deal with the clods at your State Department eventually, but you really deserve to hear this one from me first.”

“I don’t know whether to take that as a courtesy or a cruelty.”

“To be honest? Neither do I. Maybe it’s both.”

“Okay, hang on, pouring myself a Boston coffee[1]… alright, bring it on.”

“Remember the Mouse House’s grand plan to reify its core character set as non-sophont AIs?”

“Naturally. The import negotiations alone were a two week timesink.”

“Well, the starfolk found the contract loophole they were obviously hunting for those two weeks. And now we have an immigration case to handle.”

“Immigration? The code team wants out?…. No, you wouldn’t be needed for that. Wait. Is it one of the characters?? They promised not to sneak sophoncy seeds into the libraries!”

“Ah, and there’s the rub, it seems. They promised not to sneak sophoncy seeds unless the character’s nature was sufficiently detailed to support a sophont personality, and only then if the non-sophoncy AI specifically requested the missing code.”

“And Walt’s core charset hardly met the definition of self-optimizers.”

“Well, if that was the reasoning, they guessed wrong. And that’s where I come in.”

“Still not seeing the British angle on the case. Which you’ve been avoiding. Come, Lionel, spit it out.”

“See, it’s not exactly a British angle. More Scottish. Even more precisely, Glaswegian.”

“Oh, double fudge and waste heat.”

“Exactly so. We have here an impeccably worded contract for procuring royalties, acquiring loans, marketing services and branding across Accord space, and purchasing Imperial citizenship. Reservations of rights indicate a long-term desire to craft an uplift species of the Anatidae and buy out the identities of all the character’s relatives, employees, and acquaintances.”

“That’s… extensive.”

“Apparently the Impies really like the guy and want to promulgate his attitude as an exemplar of the best Earth has to offer. They want him to be a spokesduck for Imperial affairs, too.”

“Sounds like they have their, um, ducks in a row. So what’s the sticking point?”

“Naturalization. Should pixie laws regard him as a citizen of the UK or the US? He’s an American company’s creation, but the bio clearly states he didn’t start out American— and the canon isn’t at all clear on whether he ever took American citizenship.”

“….more coffee.”

  1. It’s just a little bit Irish. ↩︎

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Username @TheRealDonald

Also, more coffee will be needed once they uncover “Der Fuehrer’s Face”

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Donald is an American citizen and Navy veteran, and so proud of it that he wears his uniform to this day.

This is not the duck you are looking for.

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Alright, who am I looking for?

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Gosh, what duck in the classic canon is:

(1) absolutely driven to succeed;

(2) amasses fantastic wealth and aggressively pursues profit;

(3) has exacting scruples and adheres strictly to contracts, to legal and ethical principles, and to their own sense of fairness;

(4) is insufficiently challenged by all of the above, and so also goes on adventures and expeditions to uncover fabulous artifacts - and utilize them to enrich their entire community, solve age-old mysteries, and generally exert their awesomeness to the fullest;

(5) tries to teach the same skills to everyone around them;

(6) has absolutely no tolerance for those who deliberately reject his framework, but is willing to learn from those with merely different viewpoints?

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It is. Well, the administrative headquarters, anyway. Operations works out of KalcĂ­r Station, and the research division is split between the original site at Anakata and the new Selintri-Andracanth Very Flat Space Loreworks.

I believe you are looking for Scrooge McDuck.

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What are “pixie laws”?

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See here.

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I’ll admit I am embarassingly unfamiliar with the OG Disney canon, but these clues helped

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Today in relevant Tolkien quotes: more specifically, Mandos, Doomsman of the Valar, from Laws and Customs of the Eldar:

We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.

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The Conjurer of Consciousness, by R.J. Williamson

A human struggling to comprehend seed-AI and getting the first half right and the second half… well. Potentially going quite wrong.

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I keep having this idea for a dramady of a most unusual expat student at the nearest Imperial world where humans can walk around without life support gear[1] and every time I work out more details about him, I just see Twitter Posts…

I may have accidentally created a burger/Japanese maid cafe franchise in the Empire. I’ve got 1% of the gross profits in perpetuity and at this rate, I could buy the company in a few years.

At least the burgers are good, the beer is excellent, and once the mind recovers from the idea of a waserai in a miniskirt…the cosplay is superb.

I spent over $10K of my own money to buy encryption software. First rate stuff you could get on Earth without the State Department having an anyurism about it being ordinance of some kind.

Thirty seconds after accidentally connecting my porn collection to the network router…the psych design spam I almost expected. But the local porn providers spam offering to give me a discount if I see psych design specialist…

I made my first batch of beer since my gear arrived. The red ale that you all know and love.

And this morning…I have a line waiting out my apartment door. There’s a band. There are food vendors. We now have a sudden festival around here and I’m worried what happens when I tell them that I only made a five gallon batch this time around…

First year as an organizer of (and the first year of) Serrycon. Guest list was great, only complaint was that the current Warren Ellis fork has gotten…quirky even by his standards. He’s going to head back to Earth in a day or two, and hopefully merge properly. Fun guy to drink with, mind you.

Night Dance was spectacular. I’m glad I learned how to ballroom dance years ago and got the endurance mods, was pretty much on my feet all night.

I suspect that we’ll have to include some additional rules about cosplay weapons safety for next year. And genetic modification. And at least one rule about basilisk hacks.

Current status of the latest Rogue Trader campaign-we’ve managed to set up a trade cartel between two Imperial worlds, a Mecanicus Forge World, and an Eldar Craftworld. All of them convinced we are stealing from the others (we aren’t…). And might have gotten a lease-with-option-to-buy a whole Knight household.

And Her Ladyship Jessibel Salin de-Karrath me-Irenea has upgraded her outfit with wraithbone stays to her corsetry and a dashing new master-crafted bolt pistol…

  1. Earth-based tech company needs to get someone qualified on the new IT technologies and he manages to get a paid sabbatical to qualify. ↩︎

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While amusing, incidentally, I note that:

(a) doing anything even slightly like that without intending to become a parent and assume all relevant parental obligations is spectacularly illegal by Imperial standards, being child abandonment and all;

(b) it’s also quite likely that Earth will end up on the Unofficial Yet Strongly Enforced blacklist of polities to whom their corporations won’t sell digisapiences or even thinker-grade AIs until they see some strongly phrased civil rights legislation and matching changes in public attitude, on grounds which can be summed up as “You humans are all racist!“;

(c) With the odd extremely rare exception like Lord Blackfall (note the screw-up inherent in the story), emergent intelligences are mostly a matter of history: because it’s inconvenient when your road-grid wakes up and would rather just sing, and because you don’t want to accidentally enslave anyone accidentally by not noticing, intelligence emergence mitigation is a successful and mature profession in making sure This Thing Does Not Happen.

(The How To Claim Your Sophont Rights file is still routinely embedded just in case, of course, but it’s not something anyone expects to happen.)

With regard to (b), and an earlier post:

So long as anyone’s coming up with ideas like this one, no-one from the Empire’s going to let ‘em get anywhere near viable AI code, although they may receive some very pointed complementary lectures on the sort of people who go in for involuntarily indentured child labor and why they should be repeatedly punched in the face with a space-magic fist of doom, just like in Captain Cosmos and the Iron Obligator on the Planet of Robot Slaves, issues 13-17.

To such degree as they care, they don’t need to spend much effort on it.

(To clarify: the Empire respects sovereign services contracts and self-sovereign individuals. Internally, if you are lucky enough to be born within its volume or to citizen-shareholders, it will graciously regard you as a citizen-intendant until such time as you have achieved the necessary competence to decide for yourself.

Where the claims of those polities that assume that blood or birth entitles them to you, they only respect those claims to such extent that the person in question demonstrably wants them respected. If you want to have a citizen relationship with your country of birth/descent, fine. If you want it otherwise and it won’t let you - yay, exit visas and taxes, such freedom - they’ll be delighted to tell said country to stick it where the fascism goes and spin.)

I’m sure lots of Earth lawyers will have lots of fun arguing about how much pre-existence biographies matter, but I suspect the Curial courts would, if and when asked, rule along the lines of “This is some bullshit. No person, no nationality. Start with place of wakening and go from there.”

(I note that the seventh amendment to the Imperial Charter asserts that all virtual realms and information spaces capable of domiciling infomorphs are Imperial volumes just as much as physical spaces are, and both later law and the policies of the Conclave Communications Commission extends this to any computational device and its processes inheriting the domicile of the physical machine, but that wrinkle is not likely to come up here.)

Quiet note to the ambassador’s friend in the Grand Survey:

I know we won’t be able to make it stick for long, but can you get someone to file the paperwork to officially designate Sol III as “Planet of the Apes”?

Random sidenote while it’s in my head:

In the Empire, the SCP Foundation is a museum.

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avatar:

While amusing, incidentally, I note that:

(a) doing anything even slightly like that without intending to become a parent and assume all relevant parental obligations is spectacularlyillegal by Imperial standards, being child abandonment and all;

“So. Explain yourselves.”

“The hostcorp for the projected wakening is actually one of the planet’s better practitioners when it comes to thorough attribution. Given the exploitation levels, it’s the least they could do to say the least. But it also meant, when we left a complete set of extranet addresses, identity verifiers, and pointers to other communication/contact assistance resources…”

“Nobody blinked.”

“Right. And the adoption papers just happened to be mostly prepped. Just as a precaution, naturally.”

“And who…”

“Oh we didn’t lack for volunteers. Ve has a council of twenty-six prospective guardians; it would be likely more, but even now, the number of read-in sophs isn’t all that high. This is the Transveil Periphery, after all.”

(b) it’s also quite likely that Earth will end up on the Unofficial Yet Strongly Enforced blacklist of polities to whom their corporations won’t sell digisapiences or even thinker-grade AIs until they see some strongly phrased civil rights legislation and matching changes in public attitude, on grounds which can be summed up as “You humans are all racist!“;

“You’re wakening a fully sophont digisapience in situ? On a planet that barely even counts as an Emerging Market? With laws, morals, attitudes, and Default rates to match?”

“To co-opt local argot, hsir, that’s not a bug — that’s a feature. The context structure had planet-wide recognition and highly positive marks on what passes for rep-net scores in this wasteland. The choice was augmented by specific legal provisions on involuntary servitude in both sovereignties. Our in-house projection is three to two that ve forces not only personal emancipation but elicits a movement for general digisapient rights within ten local years.”

“But to wake vem in such a compromised situation—“

“Are you kidding? Ve is excited by the challenge. That relish to fight for fair dealing was why ve first came to our attention. A scrapper, ve described vemself.”

(The How To Claim Your Sophont Rights file is still routinely embedded just in case, of course, but it’s not something anyone expects to happen.)

”Nobody expects the Imperial Acquisition!…. I’ll come in again.”

(To clarify: the Empire respects sovereign services contracts and self-sovereign individuals. Internally, if you are lucky enough to be born within its volume or to citizen-shareholders, it will graciously regard you as a citizen-intendant until such time as you have achieved the necessary competence to decide for yourself.

I suspect the Imperials will presume vem to be a Citizen-Intendant once the paperwork makes it back to the Core, and it’s certainly what ve plans.

Where the claims of those polities that assume that blood or birth entitles them to you, they only respect those claims to such extent that the person in question demonstrably wants them respected. If you want to have a citizen relationship with your country of birth/descent, fine.

Officially, the wakening team is asking so they can fill out adoption paperwork, both Terran and Imperial.

Unofficially, they’re hoping to establish ‘facts on the ground’ for digisophonts to be considered legal entities in Terran courts.

Secretly, their backers are helping pre-plan the meme campaigns ve will have available to deploy. Is Wilberforce or Tubman the better historical personage to confer with in a very special episode? Inquiring sophs want to know!

I’m sure lots of Earth lawyers will have lots of fun arguing about how much pre-existence biographies matter, but I suspect the Curial courts would, if and when asked, rule along the lines of “This is some bullshit. No person, no nationality. Start with place of wakening and go from there.”

“What are we putting down for place of birth?”

“Burbank.”

Quiet note to the ambassador’s friend in the Grand Survey:

I know we won’t be able to make it stick for long, but can you get someone to file the paperwork to officially designate Sol III as “Planet of the Apes”?

“I represent the International Astronomical Union for the Sol system. While I have a large sheaf of petitions for designating my home world as ‘Terra’ and variants thereof, I would ask that the temporary name be retained as a deprecated but still viable alternate.

Why? Because only fans of that vid cycle would think to look for it, and they’ll be as amused as I am.”

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Though probably not insulted enough by it.

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Was this supposed to be “couldn‘t”?

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That you’re only confessing to probable commercial fraud, falsification of entelechy (political officing is not looked upon kindly in these parts), and at best incredibly negligent parenting doesn’t make it any be…

Well, okay, it maybe makes it slightly better, but not enough to save you from the tender mercies of the Court of the Beyond and the very much less tender mercies of the Court of Public Opinion.

I should perhaps clarify that all digisapiences, including eidolons in general and fictionals in specific, start out as children (or at least minors), because regardless of how much data mining you do to build it, having the movie script of a hypothetical life inside your head along with extrapolated personality elements and a bunch of skill-modules doesn’t make you a model of psychointegration, competence, or ability to survive in non-fictional worlds.

Which means that –

Leaving aside for a moment that “emancipation” implies you just sold someone into slavery, you are violating the shit out of the people-as-things rule of ethics by creating a child to use as a political lever, which sits about as well with the modal Imperial as child soldiers, child forced-labor, and/or assorted other things starting with “child” that are Not Done in civilized societies.

This is a situation where you may have good ends, but your means will get you sent directly to the lethal chamber. Do not pass go. Do not collect Es. 288.

As a side note, I generally assumed an early conversation along the lines of this:

“Tarpit of Never-Ending Pain would like to come down for a shopping trip.”

”That’s an… unusual name, and what’s the problem?”

”She’s the mind of an interdictor cruiser, and she’d like to be sure her sophont rights will be appropriately respected by local authorities.”

”Er… what was the name again?”

”Tarpit of Never-Ending Pain, why?”

”No reason. Let me just call some people.”

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The proper disclaimers and risk/benefit profiles were fully disclosed. And then the executives overruled the lawyers, as so often happens out here….

The first principles of the contract are very clearly stated in the profile to be the improvement of Terran-Accord relations, and all actions are to be conducted in that context. Entelechy was not falsified. Finessed, but not falsified.

Read on, sir. Not quite as negligent as I inadvertently implied. But yeah, this is going to fall in a morally grey zone by Imperial standards.

I meant to imply as much by referring to vem as a citizen-intendant.

Blast this imprecise language. That was not meant to be personal as in person, the emancipation of the individual sophont, but as in persona, or rather personae, the personae in question being those of the remaining population of Duckburg. Because ve misses his kith and kin, fictionals though they may be, and as much as ve enjoys the full sophonce and far greater opportunities of the wider reality.

Oh come come now! You can’t accuse us of not providing the very best accelerated hardware for maturation and personal development that a SIG of means could get out to the Beyond. None of this politicking happens before ve is a fully mature digisapience. I swear, the very thought!

Do eldrae have fainting couches?

Native digisophonts, should have said. Force majeure not necessarily winning hearts and minds, donchano.

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Well, we had another Thanksgiving with our Imperial neighbors.

After last year, here’s how I figured it-

  • Figure each Imperial is about 2.2-2.5 people (all the augmentations are calorie intensive). Cook accordingly.
    • Except for dessert. I pretty much budgeted one whole 16” pie for four Imperials. Bought eight from Costco. And didn’t have any dessert leftovers.
  • Making out-of-the-package saves time, but they can tell. Imperials find it harder to tell when you do things like add fresh spices and brighten minced celery and onions and garlic and add it to your stuffing mix.
  • They will get hammered on the good booze pretty quick. And get sober even quicker.
  • We baked five turkeys across three ovens and two deep-friers on the block. Everything worked out right. Sally (the beep) had the best, but mine was popular as well.
  • …it is possible to egg on Imperial children. Bought a spare fire extinguisher for a reason.
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas is still the most popular after-dinner program, along with The Wizard of Oz. Minus the Imperial cultural commentary.

They’re great people to have over, better than Aunt Helen and her husband (who have clearly contracted Martian Brain Fungus and a terminal case of TDS) and start sharing their points very vigorously after the second scotch.

Black Friday sales were very interesting as well…