Earth Fanfic (Post-Contact Hilarity II)

General Fanfic
41

So let’s talk about nerve stapling.

For those who don’t know about nerve stapling, it’s a procedure that started out by placing a little metal clip (hence the name), and in the modern era a neuroprosthetic chip, into the amygdala via a sinus tap.

(Thus lending an entirely new terror to the phrase “got your nose”.)

Once inserted, it selectively disrupts the functioning of the amygdala to limit to low intensity emotional and motivational responses. It immediately suppresses emotional outbursts, lability, and reactive behavior, kills off behavioral addictions by suppressing their chemical reward, and in the longer term turns people into introverted, complacent, stoic, and compliant people without much in the way of drive (including sex drive), ambition, or fire.

Why am I talking about this in the post-contact thread?

One could easily imagine someone offering this technology free and clear to us, on the grounds that it would greatly improve our wretched prison system. You would no longer need a brute squad to run the place, since nerve-stapled prisoners could be easily managed by anyone capable of speaking firmly, and they wouldn’t be doing anything to each other, either.

The ensuing refusal (“We can’t do that to people! We’ll just continue to run private hells!”) would be a wonderful example of complete cultural understanding confusion on each side.

(In the Being Mercilessly Liberated shardverse, we get to examine the sociodynamic effect of mass nerve stapling, as the satrapial regime uses the time-honored solution for gangs, riots, and rebels – mass nerve-staple and release programs. Nothing quite as demoralizing as having your firebrand leaders not martyred, but still around wanting nothing more than a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

And it is so terribly humane.

Terribly.)

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42

Err, how is this not a violation of free will? Or is the point that it is?

43

That sounds like it could end up spreading a lot because any next firebrand leader would find any persons so transformed to be very convenient soldiers for their cult. And obviously there’s a good chance they’d be the next one converted in turn but it would probably take a lot of stages of that before Earth runs out of charismatic leaders.
[EDIT: even more stages if it turns out - which it well might - that they end up gravitating towards anyone sufficiently charismatic by themselves without anyone having to start it deliberately. “Yes! We’re all individuals!”]

(Unless I’m underestimating the level of introversion and stoicism involved… but then I’m not sure they wouldn’t just starve because they couldn’t find the volition to search for food.)

44

Charismatic won’t help you. It just lets you get people fired up about things, and you can’t get the nerve-stapled fired up about things; that’s what it does.

The general compliancy is only about as useful as your ability to follow them around and tell them what to do (or, god help you, issue canned orders over loudspeaker for), with the additional note that people who really can’t care about anything strongly are extra-specially useless if you want them to do anything that seems dangerous or upsetting.

About as much so as using haldol or other strong neuroleptic as a chemical restraint, yes. (It was originally designed as a treatment for people who were uncontrollably angry, violent, etc., even when they regretted it and didn’t want to be, back when neuroscience was still in the “poke-it-with-a-surgical-probe-and-see-what-happens” era.)

But, well, no-one’s exactly an enthusiast for nerve stapling in the default situation, y’know?

Only when compared to boolet, and it’s also a lot more reversible (or configurable for gradual time-release, as an extended period of forcible chill-and-rethink-your-life-choices).

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45

I guess that sort of works, but it feels kind of like stripping away the tools of volition, which strikes me as some kind of choice-theft. I take it the position there is that the crime you committed is sufficient grounds for the removal of your capacity for volition at least for some time?

46

Another way of looking at this is, well, to an extent, everything law enforcement¹ does is choice-theft, if taken outside its context.

The only thing that justifies it is that it’s done to defend people’s fundamental sophont rights, and thus definitionally balance or compensate for worse choice-theft. (Insofar as everyone has more choices if they can trust their fellow soph and not have to defend themselves from ample ambient assholes.) On net, it makes the universe a better place, but that still doesn’t mean anyone likes having to do it.

It’s just sad and unfortunate that until the Transcend becomes coextensive with the universe and overwrites perfect liberty with perfect coordination onto the laws of nature, there will still be Defaulters, and therefore a need for some mechanism² to stop them from shitting all over everything good and right in the world.

  1. I note, as you might expect, heh, that there is a big notwithstanding for people living under circumstances in which law and its enforcement is part of the ample ambient asshole background.

  2. And I should reiterate that nerve stapling is a relatively gentle mechanism for doing this. Sure, it impairs your volition due to a serious case of the mehs³, but it does let you rethink the life which you still have and make some better choices for the future, and it certainly impairs your volition less than equivalent time in the government-sponsored rape cage or simply being shot in the head⁴.

  3. Yes, I weaponized depression. This is my very own nightmare fuel.

  4. Like so many devices too terrible to ever use, it turns out that the man-made horror beyond comprehension is actually the arm of restraint.

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47

dare I ask if this is in-verse or in real life?

48

I am being very sarcastic and yet also very accurate about the current US prison system, which is infamous for the amount of this that goes on, both prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner. (Mostly because I think all the people who try very hard to remain unaware of what’s being done on their behalf don’t deserve that state of blissful ignorance.)

((There are also the people who think that repeated rape and the ensuring HIV infection are an appropriate part of the punishment meted out to our criminals, but scum with opinions like that don’t need reminding, they need executing.))

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49

Izar’s like the Conclave Drift, so most of it is under their jurisdiction rather than Imperial volume. That said, in most cases, this is the sort of thing it’s convenient to let people solve without ever leaving the starport extrality zone.

On another note and considering today’s events, the Orangeverse too may be too implausible to write, insofar as “we picked up a good dozen client-states for the price of one destroyer picket, a couple of laser killsats, and a history textbook detailing our long-standing habit of doing exactly what we say we’re going to do” is about the easiest and silliest alien invasion scenario ever.

If you could convince people to believe that any plausible planetary hegemon would create the preconditions by such unbelievable devotion to stepping on their own dick.

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50

Reporter:

“Why don’t you wear a suit?”

Imperial Ambassador: (sartorially resplendent in the Empire’s diplomatic uniform, the dove-grey field dress of the Imperial Service, complete with ornamental hammer at the waist, but with a white rank sash over the waistcoat and a midnight-blue tailcoat embroidered intricately in gold at the cuffs and shoulders with the Celestial Garden’s moons-and-stars pattern replacing the usual jacket, topped off with a half-cape in diplomatic scarlet, an ivory-and-blackthorn swagger stick tucked under one arm; and, if a plenipotentiary, a coronet of strawberry leaves):

raises immaculate eyebrow

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51

The real question is why aren’t you adapting your style of dress to fit our cultural preconceptions

To which I suspect the only answer the ambassador would be willing to give (if they were willing to dignify the question with a verbal answer at all) would be something along the lines of “why aren’t you” likely with a raised eyebrow and a sedonic glare

52

It might be along the lines of “You are cognizant of the function of an ambassador, are you not?”

(To wit, representing their polity, for which they dress accordingly. In fairness, this is a reciprocal matter - ambassadors accredited to the Celestial Garden¹ who attempt to dress in Imperial court fashion are generally considered to be hindering their cause by displaying an unfortunate degree of sycophancy.

As mentioned before at some point, those Terran nations which go to the trouble of resurrecting their former diplomatic uniforms will be a step ahead in the Game, and the first Japanese ambassador to attend social events in full Heian-period-style court kimono is very likely to be made an undenotre directly.)

  1. Ambassadors to the Empire are generally accredited as “So-and-So’s Ambassador to the Celestial Garden”. One might wonder why they’re accredited to the gardens of the Imperial Palace, and the answer is that, well, not every ambassador receives an entreé that permits access to the Court of Courts on occasions other than legally required business, and the Imperial Couple can always deliver an diplomatic slight by refusing to accept your credence in the Hall of the Throne / Hall of Illumination, instead choosing to use one of the Palace’s lesser reception halls. The “…to the Celestial Garden” style quietly smooths over such distinctions³.

  2. lit. “one of us”, meaning someone who possess an unlimited entreé and thereby attends court regularly, as opposed to an entrenotre (lit. “among us”), who is merely permitted to be present. For an ambassador, a tremendous coup in the Game likely to be of great value to their nation.

  3. The Court knows its own, however.

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53

I do like the idea that my preferred hat would not only be acceptable, but encouraged. I love my hat, I pretty much wear it any time I’m outside during daylight hours, to the point I have been recognised at venues a year or three later by it.

Today I also discovered that wearing a leather stock hat with a medieval style green dress (I needed to quickly check the mail and didn’t want to wrestle with changing out of a corset yet) looked surprisingly good. I’d probably have to add a feather or something to it to count as sufficiently dashing in the Empire, though.

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54

I think you’re missing the forward reference to footnote 2. I assume it’s supposed to go here:

55

Either that, or it ends up with someone in power doing something terminally stupid that ends up causing a whole lot of trouble for every human on Earth (except them, because they’re far too dead to care) when the Imperial commander responds with something along the lines of “Tyrannis Delenda Est” and proceeds to (in strict to the letter accordance with their Permissive Action Links) drop the hammer.

56

Well, there’s always the possibility of someone taking a pot-shot, but IN captains are well-trained in the gentle art of only escalating on their own terms. I mean, barbarians gonna barbar and all that, but there’s no need to overreact¹.

If you can just ignore the weapon, you might well do just that and take a moment to sneer “I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility.” when you call up the incautious firer’s government to ask them if they’d like to apologize and deliver an IOU for whatever diplomatic concessions State & Outlands feels like asking for.

Or, depending on the weapon in question –

“Sir! We’ve lost control of the missile!”

“Damn it. Are they jamming?”

“No… it… it seems to be skywriting, sir.”

“Skywriting?”

“When I plot its new course, it spells out ‘IN THE LOCAL VERNACULAR, LOLZ PWNED’, sir.”

“What!?”

“Also, um, ‘GIT GUD, SCRUB’. Sir.”

(This only gets funnier if they can do it by taking over the fly-by-wire of a manned aircraft.)

That said, here’s an amusing scenario likely to lead to Unfortunate Ends, based on:

  • a what-if in which they decide to get a starport for cheap by cutting a deal with Ukraine for some easily-by-them cleaned-up radioactive land (and very large financial benefits to both parties);
  • the ceasefire terms Russia announced today; and
  • the many, many reasons why the greater galaxy greatly prefers it when the Empire doesn’t try to do peacekeeping.

Because occasionally someone new has to be the educational film on Imperials Don’t Bluff.

"Delightful. Here are our terms:

"Ukraine will keep all its territories, including the Donbas and Crimea. Russia will pay fivefold for all damage done during the war, return all prisoners and abductees, and turn over everyone within sniffing distance of a war crime to face our justice. President Putin will make a public, broadcast apology to the entire universe for being such a terrible example of a sophont being.

"In exchange, the Imperial fleet will generously refrain from bombarding every military and governmental structure in your territory into smoldering rubble.

“Either way, we shall have peace².”

As a side note, given the direction of foreign policy in the Orangeverse, I forsee a boom in that particular subset of the mercenary business known as “nuclear deterrent for hire”.

It’s a weird subset, for sure, being both the most deadly and the least likely to ever actually fight, but they’re perfectly willing to sit in orbit, drink beer, and provide all the deterrent cachet of a nuclear power to every small nation that can also snicker behind their hands and say “no, actually, we are in perfect compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty; we don’t have any nuclear weapons”.

  1. Unless there’s something in it for you. Aren’t technical pretexts for war fun?

  2. Or, as Tacitus said, a desert. On the other hand, as Traest Sargas said, “but a godsdamn peaceful one”.

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57

On a lighter note, I’ve been reading Bret Devereaux’s excellent deconstruction of the tactics from Amazon’s The Rings of Power, and should like to take a moment to remind everyone that on the basis of numbers alone, the Empire has some very old film critics.

Now this writer has personally served on a trebuchet crew, gentle reader, and should like to take a moment to explain all the ways in which the writers of this scene appear to have been sipping the coca-wine…

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58

For those into their fae comparisons, I have today been amused by the existence of the collectable data in Elite: Dangerous labeled as “Cat Media” -

A collection of amusing, sharable digital media often spanning several centuries.
— In-Game Description

And the apparent existence of an engineer that won’t talk to you until you bring him sufficient cat videos.

You may now picture peasants seeking help from the pointy-eared stranger beneath the mysterious hill in the woods:

THE CLOCKWORK KING DEMANDS PUPPIES.

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59

You keep using the term Orangeverse what does that term mean (I’ve tried googling and it didn’t help it just comes up with a random wiki about a universe where everything is orange)

60

It’s IRL Earth as of today with all the shenanigans going on in the US being contacted by the Empire

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