10-26-2013, 05:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2013, 05:11 PM by SteelEnsouled.)
I had picked up from the top-level article on vecs that they and splices experienced the most repression problems--with the vecs seeming to have gone through it for the longest, comparatively speaking. I would imagine, given that I read for a time law limited robots to pre-sophont levels, that even when the restrictions were lifted (or accidentally violated--as I doubt the controls intended to prevent sophonce would be 100% effective), there may have even been a period when vecs were bought and sold as property even after they did come into full sophonce.
I don't know how feasible this is, but I had a very clear image in my head from my character's childhood where her mother truly comes to comprehend, to her shock and horror, that the domestic help she has purchased is a being every bit her equal and she has just engaged in the act of buying a person off the block. And now she has to figure out how to deal with this unconscionable situation without putting her family or the vec caught in the middle of this at risk.
(Even if it was publicly known, factually, what turingrade really meant, we see from history that people have denied the inherent value of others not like them even when the evidence was right in their faces--stuff like calling other races "subhuman." It would not surprise me for early bionts to have pulled a similar stunt against the vecs--made worse by the fact that they created the vecs and would have felt entitled to it.)
The story will ultimately focus on the daughter rather than the mother--but that would be a huge formative incident for a young child, to see a parent take a stand like that. Her upbringing would also be influenced by the experience with the vec, whom I suspect she considers either a close family friend, or outright family. (I'd pictured the vec playing a critical part in her upbringing, since what had originally occasioned the girl's mother to make this purchase was the loss of her husband--either he died or left her, not sure which. The article on Parental Vecs grabbed my attention in this regard, too, especially the statement about cases where the vec knew best but was forced to watch silently as the biont parent undermined their work or did things outright detrimental to their charge. That suggested sentient-rights problems in at least some portion of OA history.)
I don't know how feasible this is, but I had a very clear image in my head from my character's childhood where her mother truly comes to comprehend, to her shock and horror, that the domestic help she has purchased is a being every bit her equal and she has just engaged in the act of buying a person off the block. And now she has to figure out how to deal with this unconscionable situation without putting her family or the vec caught in the middle of this at risk.
(Even if it was publicly known, factually, what turingrade really meant, we see from history that people have denied the inherent value of others not like them even when the evidence was right in their faces--stuff like calling other races "subhuman." It would not surprise me for early bionts to have pulled a similar stunt against the vecs--made worse by the fact that they created the vecs and would have felt entitled to it.)
The story will ultimately focus on the daughter rather than the mother--but that would be a huge formative incident for a young child, to see a parent take a stand like that. Her upbringing would also be influenced by the experience with the vec, whom I suspect she considers either a close family friend, or outright family. (I'd pictured the vec playing a critical part in her upbringing, since what had originally occasioned the girl's mother to make this purchase was the loss of her husband--either he died or left her, not sure which. The article on Parental Vecs grabbed my attention in this regard, too, especially the statement about cases where the vec knew best but was forced to watch silently as the biont parent undermined their work or did things outright detrimental to their charge. That suggested sentient-rights problems in at least some portion of OA history.)