BY LETTER
Sooboo
A failed superior or ascendee.
Sooboos are among the most common dysfunctional sophonts in the regions outside the Sephirotic angelnets. Frequently sophont from a disadvantaged background, with insufficient advice from companion ai or knowledge bases, acquires the slickest genemods and nanoaugments without fully inputting the user manual with it's associated warning texts and tutorials. Or, if they do input these, they skip through the tutorials and/or fail to understand them. Of course, such augments may also come without this documentation, or with only the most basic help menus. This is especially the case with illegal, non-sephirotic approved mods and augments.
Upon activation, derming, injection, or assimilation, the mod or augment alters the physiology, metabolism, or neurology of the user, but often according to default settings, which (because of the diversity of possible bionts) are often incompatible to a greater or lesser extent with the users own requirements. Or even if the default is compatible, the augment itself may be a malicious product, such as prankware or hurtware, and deliberately create dysfunctions.
Within the Sephirotic autotopias this would never happen, as the angelnet would automatically catch the illegal augment, either disassembling it or rendering it non-harmful, or if the augment is legal but incompatible, warn the user and disable the mod, or replace it with a compatible variant.
Outside these optimal environments, sophonts by the billions become sooboos every day. Adding to the vast numbers of the miserable, they wander the slidewalks and memeplexes, scavenge discards piles or hang out among the augment pavilions and samples distribution points, always looking for that elusive mod or augment that will give them privileged su-hood or transapienthood, or even just restore them to what they were before. Or they wander around helpless, locked in their own cognitive or sensory delusions, chased out of each neighbourhood they frequent by the locals who don't like the riffraff making the place look cheap, ending up in ghettos and shantytowns and sewerslums. Sometimes they are violent to non-sooboos, in which case they are quickly neutralized by the local authorities, but more often they are a danger to themselves, and are preyed upon by pimps and slave owners, vivisectionists and biont-baiters and pitfights. The lucky ones remain in self-sufficient apartments or habitation modules, or are cared for by friends or companion ai who keep them out of trouble. Some of these manage to visit Sephirotic or Deeper Convent worlds and non-aligned developed polities, where the transapient authorities restore them to their original condition, and where necessary remove the psychological compulsion that drive some of them to destroy themselves in the guise of toposophic ascension. But for those who are many light years from the nearest wormhole, and unable to afford passage on a ship or beamrider unit, cure must await a skilled genemodology and augment-instruction-aioid, in computronium (such as are members of Healing Interstellar, Biont Care, or other charity organisations) arriving at the system, and even then having the opportunity to see them.
But for all the laudable efforts of Sephirotic society and various extra-Sephirotic charity groups, the number of sooboos throughout the civilized galaxy and beyond continues to rise faster than the ability to deal with them.
Sooboos are among the most common dysfunctional sophonts in the regions outside the Sephirotic angelnets. Frequently sophont from a disadvantaged background, with insufficient advice from companion ai or knowledge bases, acquires the slickest genemods and nanoaugments without fully inputting the user manual with it's associated warning texts and tutorials. Or, if they do input these, they skip through the tutorials and/or fail to understand them. Of course, such augments may also come without this documentation, or with only the most basic help menus. This is especially the case with illegal, non-sephirotic approved mods and augments.
Upon activation, derming, injection, or assimilation, the mod or augment alters the physiology, metabolism, or neurology of the user, but often according to default settings, which (because of the diversity of possible bionts) are often incompatible to a greater or lesser extent with the users own requirements. Or even if the default is compatible, the augment itself may be a malicious product, such as prankware or hurtware, and deliberately create dysfunctions.
Within the Sephirotic autotopias this would never happen, as the angelnet would automatically catch the illegal augment, either disassembling it or rendering it non-harmful, or if the augment is legal but incompatible, warn the user and disable the mod, or replace it with a compatible variant.
Outside these optimal environments, sophonts by the billions become sooboos every day. Adding to the vast numbers of the miserable, they wander the slidewalks and memeplexes, scavenge discards piles or hang out among the augment pavilions and samples distribution points, always looking for that elusive mod or augment that will give them privileged su-hood or transapienthood, or even just restore them to what they were before. Or they wander around helpless, locked in their own cognitive or sensory delusions, chased out of each neighbourhood they frequent by the locals who don't like the riffraff making the place look cheap, ending up in ghettos and shantytowns and sewerslums. Sometimes they are violent to non-sooboos, in which case they are quickly neutralized by the local authorities, but more often they are a danger to themselves, and are preyed upon by pimps and slave owners, vivisectionists and biont-baiters and pitfights. The lucky ones remain in self-sufficient apartments or habitation modules, or are cared for by friends or companion ai who keep them out of trouble. Some of these manage to visit Sephirotic or Deeper Convent worlds and non-aligned developed polities, where the transapient authorities restore them to their original condition, and where necessary remove the psychological compulsion that drive some of them to destroy themselves in the guise of toposophic ascension. But for those who are many light years from the nearest wormhole, and unable to afford passage on a ship or beamrider unit, cure must await a skilled genemodology and augment-instruction-aioid, in computronium (such as are members of Healing Interstellar, Biont Care, or other charity organisations) arriving at the system, and even then having the opportunity to see them.
But for all the laudable efforts of Sephirotic society and various extra-Sephirotic charity groups, the number of sooboos throughout the civilized galaxy and beyond continues to rise faster than the ability to deal with them.
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 04 November 2004.
Initially published on 04 November 2004.
