Jonathan_S wrote:My understanding is that the kids are unaware their family is a MAlign sleeper. But at some point their parents, or other family members who are in on the onion, make a final determination of whether to bring the kid into the onion or cut them loose.
If they're cut loose at this point they're no longer a sleeeper - nobody will every try to "wake" them. But if brought into the conspiracy they are now aware of at least their family's immediate goal and can self-direct into the necessary positions of power or influence. (And of course it there's indications that the trust was misplaced then unfortunate things might have to happen to them to preserve the secrecy)
cthia wrote:But she isn't sleeping anymore, so she knows the gist of things. Whether she was placed as an adult while sleeping - with prior knowledge - as Silverwall implies as a possibility in the next post isn't clear to me. Which begs the question of how she decided to become a reporter - an optimal and useful profession to MA plans? If like most, she was a completely ignorant sleeper.
Silverwall wrote:This approach is not consistant with the total secrecy of this conspiricy. In some ways I am sad Weber went with the multigenerational approach to conspiricy as this just can't be kept secret. The details maybe but not the specifics. Just look at the Masons as a real life example.
I would not mind sleeper agents dispatched as young indoctrinated adults al-la Black Widow or the real life russian woman but I find that any conspiricy needs to be handled very very carefully to avoid suspension of disbelief problems. It probably doesn't help the "the big conspiricy" has become the dominant story form in so much fiction and TV in the last few years.
cthia wrote:I'm wholehog in agreement Silverwall. This facet of AD's plan seems so counterintuitive and unlikely. Difficult pill to swallow anyways. And it tends to discount certain things such as 'blood being thicker than water.' The plan seems to arrogantly assume that the adults would be so willing to throw their nieces and nephews etc., to the wolves like so much discarded trash. Seems to me that the only family members that would tend to be approached to join would be those that are hated, or simply tolerated, or the troublemakers - the expendables. The MA version of "Off to military school or die!" Rubs me the wrong way.
It's certainly the weakest link in his plans. Probably conceived on Anisimovna's professor's day off. (Pre-Niecy that is.) LOL
And it certainly invites the KISS principle to his rear end.
I think you're overthinking it. Here's what RFC said on the matter:
on 2011-06-17 3:86 RFC wrote:The other thing I’ll say is that the Alignment has lost a LOT of its “sleeper” lines over the centuries. It always assumed that it would lose quite a few of them and based its plans on letting a line go (and having redundant backups in place) rather than risking exposure by trying to “salvage” or hang onto one when there was no suitable generational candidate or there was a communications failure.They have also resorted to assassination in more than one instance to tie off potential loose ends. In the case of the Renaissance Factor’s leadership cadres, the “sleepers” are not individual family lines but of groups of allied families, and “the onion” is replicated within those families. These planets have been settled for far shorter periods than most League systems, their elites were infiltrated by the Alignment early on, and clandestine Mesan support (economic, political, and lethal [where serious obstacles can be removed by a discreet assassination or two]) to help them along has been a major factor in how they have become and remained as locally powerful as they are. But it wasn’t until the current generation that any members of those families were let into the full strategy, and even then that knowledge was limited to very carefully selected, screened, and groomed individuals. The same thing holds true within the ranks of the militaries of the RF’s member star nations, and, in fact, MA influence within the military is largely restricted to a single one of the RF’s navies (which one is left to the reader, based on textev already presented <G>), which is the main reason Darius was necessary in the first place.
RFC said that they duplicated the onion on the worlds they seeded, which means that there are several levels from "outsider" to "core." He also said somewhere (probably in a dump on the site, not in one of the books) that they were working with a cluster of families, that is, essentially a clan.
So the kids are basically tested as to whether they can keep their mouths shut. Then they're let in on the "great secret": their families think that the genetic improvement of the entire human race is a great idea, but you mustn't tell anyone else because of the awful Beowulf Code and the prejudice against genies. We'll work on it in secret.
If ce can handle that, then ce's invited to the next level down. And so forth. Kids that can't handle it aren't "cut loose," they're simply left at the outer level doing whatever their family business is.
