Genetic superhumans as sleeper agents

Silverwall wrote:Absolutely True but not actually what is being argued here. The issue argued here is the 100% (until Jack McBride) avoidance of ANYONE having second thoughts about thier task. Even the KGB had defectors and so do the North Korean elites. 0% defectors is the issue we find unrealistic.

The Alignment is remarkably efficient, isn't it?

I'd still say it is very surprising that someone, somewhere didn't start smelling a rat. Today there is a fairly substantial library of gene markers associated with speed, strength, and endurance. If a bunch of Olympic athletes from a given country started having several of those markers, or all of those markers, many people would figure out that something is going on.

I'd suspect the same thing if someone found a population of Japanese people with the lactose tolerant genes that most Europeans have.

And didn't Alison Harrington detect the fact that the Grayson's had been modified to better tolerate the heavy metal toxins of their planet?

Silverwall wrote:

kzt" quote="SharkHunter wrote:Trouble with humans -- even those who start to approach what we would now call "superhuman" status, AKA Honor, Palane, etc. is that intelligence may raise conscientousness and conscience instead of putting it to work for the Fearless Leader's master plan.

You need to look more deeply at Totalitarian movements. Smart people join them eagerly, then defend their choices to the bitter end. There were no shortages of really bright people supporting Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Hitler. Look at who in the US was a leftist or communist during the 30-50s, they were often considered leading intellectuals. It was no secret that there was mass murder going on in Russia, the intellectuals lying about it in the NY Times etc were committed communists.

And if you want to know who the reporter is, look at Walter Duranty. Who got a Pulitzer prize for his explaining away the millions of murders by Lenin and Stalin and how the Russian people just loved tyranny.

Absolutely True but not actually what is being argued here. The issue argued here is the 100% (until Jack McBride) avoidance of ANYONE having second thoughts about thier task. Even the KGB had defectors and so do the North Korean elites. 0% defectors is the issue we find unrealistic.[/quote]


The reason why someone defects from a totalitarian government boils down to four basic reasons, they even have a acronym for it MICE.

Money self explanatory
Ideology no longer believe in the system anymore
Conscience something happened and I no longer believe in the system
Ego I got passed over and I know I am better than that

According to to western intelligence agencies the best defectors are money and conscience followed closely by ideology, they dislike ego one's because they take so many risks proving that they're better than anyone else.

One thing they will look for is someone whose genetics do not match their cover story background.


I think any genetic engineering leaves distinctive markers that can not be explained as natural. Add to that both individuals and groups of genetic engineers will probably have distinct techniques that will leave their own set of markers.

SharkHunter wrote:Trouble with humans -- even those who start to approach what we would now call "superhuman" status, AKA Honor, Palane, etc. is that intelligence may raise conscientousness and conscience instead of putting it to work for the Fearless Leader's master plan.

kzt wrote: You need to look more deeply at Totalitarian movements. Smart people join them eagerly, then defend their choices to the bitter end. There were no shortages of really bright people supporting Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Hitler. Look at who in the US was a leftist or communist during the 30-50s, they were often considered leading intellectuals. It was no secret that there was mass murder going on in Russia, the intellectuals lying about it in the NY Times etc were committed communists.

And if you want to know who the reporter is, look at Walter Duranty. Who got a Pulitzer prize for his explaining away the millions of murders by Lenin and Stalin and how the Russian people just loved tyranny.

Silverwall wrote:Absolutely True but not actually what is being argued here. The issue argued here is the 100% (until Jack McBride) avoidance of ANYONE having second thoughts about thier task. Even the KGB had defectors and so do the North Korean elites. 0% defectors is the issue we find unrealistic.

saber964 wrote:The reason why someone defects from a totalitarian government boils down to four basic reasons, they even have an acronym for it MICE.

Money self explanatory
Ideology no longer believe in the system anymore
Conscience something happened and I no longer believe in the system
Ego I got passed over and I know I am better than that

According to to western intelligence agencies the best defectors are money and conscience followed closely by ideology, they dislike ego one's because they take so many risks proving that they're better than anyone else.

OK. Let's look at these in the context of the MAlign's Onion.

1. Money. Nobody knows there's anything going on, so there's no money on offer for defectors. Besides, Mesa is a pretty decent place to live if you're one of the 30% of first-class citizens. And if you're one of the Greeks (Alpha, Beta or Gamma) you're enough better than the average herd that being toward the top of the heap is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

2. Ideology. Same thing. There's no place to go, and nobody will believe you once you get there.

3. Same as 2, actually. We have Herlander Simoes, Jack McBryde and possibly Zack McBryde. Herlander and Jack defected because there was someplace credible to defect, and a credible offer for their defection. Herlander feels he got shafted by the system, Jack very likely kept believing in the eventual goal of uplift, but decided he didn't like the cost once he saw that the bill would be presented in the near future. We don't know about either Zack's or Gail's motivations to defect, assuming they will defect.

4. The Onion is set up so that people don't know there's another level until the offer is made. I'm not sure where Lajos fits, but it might be here.

The bottom line here is that there haven't been a lot of defectors because there wasn't any place to defect to, at least that could protect them from certain retribution.

There may very well have been defectors. They, and anyone they'd talked to, would mostly have been silenced before they could do too much damage.

The big break didn't come from a defector - it came from a couple of well-regarded intelligence agents who brought a defector out with them.

Wasn't the settlers of Ndebele and Zulu heavily genetically modified, and the planets was chosen,
by those in charge, because they had such heavy gravity?

Thereby making Thandi Palane into something the labs on Mesa have tried to create for nearly 600 years.
A near perfect soldier.

Lack of defectors.... just a thought, which sort of coincides with other wiser folks postings on inside the onion vs. out, etc. Given the nature of the beast -- and the fact that many of the folks "almost in the know" have drug capsules that terminate them if they're so much as asked the wrong question.

My other question is "defecting from what?" any prior defectors are likely from "Manpower" and not in the Onion. Meanwhile those 25,000 or so are subscribing to a master plan that somewhat maes sense to them, and they're the folks in charge of a whole planet. Even some of the tip top folks don't seem to have ALL of the master plan; Jack McBryde didn't know about Darius, for example. Bardasano et. al are way up the food chain, and didn't know until after Monica that there was even a second agenda in play whose sole purpose was to smash the Solarian League with the Manticoran hammer.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Lack of defectors.... just a thought, which sort of coincides with other wiser folks postings on inside the onion vs. out, etc. Given the nature of the beast -- and the fact that many of the folks "almost in the know" have drug capsules that terminate them if they're so much as asked the wrong question.

My other question is "defecting from what?" any prior defectors are likely from "Manpower" and not in the Onion. Meanwhile those 25,000 or so are subscribing to a master plan that somewhat maes sense to them, and they're the folks in charge of a whole planet. Even some of the tip top folks don't seem to have ALL of the master plan; Jack McBryde didn't know about Darius, for example. Bardasano et. al are way up the food chain, and didn't know until after Monica that there was even a second agenda in play whose sole purpose was to smash the Solarian League with the Manticoran hammer.

Thoughts?

While Jack McBryde wasn't briefed in on Darius, Isabel Bardasano knew the full agenda for Monica. It was Aldona Anisimovna that was kept in the dark.

Rob the Fiend wrote:Wasn't the settlers of Ndebele and Zulu heavily genetically modified, and the planets was chosen,
by those in charge, because they had such heavy gravity?

Thereby making Thandi Palane into something the labs on Mesa have tried to create for nearly 600 years.
A near perfect soldier.

IIRC, no. It was supposed to be a case of ruthless natural selection. That is, of course, impossible - selection has to have variation in the gene pool to operate, and a severe bottleneck reduces that variation, which only gets replaced very slowly. The likelihood of natural selection creating the Nebdele type is indistinguishable from zero.

SharkHunter wrote:Lack of defectors.... just a thought, which sort of coincides with other wiser folks postings on inside the onion vs. out, etc. Given the nature of the beast -- and the fact that many of the folks "almost in the know" have drug capsules that terminate them if they're so much as asked the wrong question.

My other question is "defecting from what?" any prior defectors are likely from "Manpower" and not in the Onion. Meanwhile those 25,000 or so are subscribing to a master plan that somewhat maes sense to them, and they're the folks in charge of a whole planet. Even some of the tip top folks don't seem to have ALL of the master plan; Jack McBryde didn't know about Darius, for example. Bardasano et. al are way up the food chain, and didn't know until after Monica that there was even a second agenda in play whose sole purpose was to smash the Solarian League with the Manticoran hammer.

Thoughts?

I suspect that most of the people who know the whole plan are named Detweiller and Stabolis. Isabel Bardesano probably knows that there is an arsenal planet somewhere, but she has no need to know about the Sharks, Lenny Det SDs or the spider drive.

Also, the 25,000 are simply the inner Onion that was on Mesa at the time when Houdini kicked off. There is a comment somewhere that most of the Onion had already been relocated elsewhere.

JohnRoth wrote:

Rob the Fiend wrote:Wasn't the settlers of Ndebele and Zulu heavily genetically modified, and the planets was chosen,
by those in charge, because they had such heavy gravity?

Thereby making Thandi Palane into something the labs on Mesa have tried to create for nearly 600 years.
A near perfect soldier.

IIRC, no. It was supposed to be a case of ruthless natural selection. That is, of course, impossible - selection has to have variation in the gene pool to operate, and a severe bottleneck reduces that variation, which only gets replaced very slowly. The likelihood of natural selection creating the Nebdele type is indistinguishable from zero.

The settlers of the Mfecane worlds were genetically modified. Cachat, Thandi, Cachat, Thandi, Cachat:

Crown of Slaves, Chapter 22 wrote:"Still, there was a method to their madness. At least, once you get past the initial premise that the African genotype is the purest human stock. It's actually the most variegated, since it's the oldest. However, in an odd sort of way, that initial racialist obsession worked to their advantage. Because it meant that they had the widest genetic variation to start applying natural selection to, not to mention—"
"Their own grotesque genetic manipulations." Harshly: "Tell me something I don't know."
He shrugged. "What I suspect you don't know—fully realize, anyway—is that the combined effect of the whole process made the Mfecane worlds an even greater experiment in human development than the Ukrainian laboratories which produced the so-called 'supersoldiers' of the Final War, whose modern descendants we call 'Scrags.' About the only thing comparable is the slave breeding laboratories run by Manpower Unlimited. Except that Manpower is deliberately trying to contain development within narrow limits, whereas your ancestors were trying to exceed all limits. Which they certainly did, as far as most physical characteristics are concerned."
"Yeah, great," she said sourly. "That explains why we're all serfs today."
"Well, I did say they were a bunch of lunatics. I know this will sound cold-blooded, but I actually find the fact that neither the Ukrainians nor the Mfecane founders succeeded in their aims to be profoundly satisfying. Philosophically, if you will." A bit stiffly: "I've detested elitism my entire life. That much hasn't changed, whatever else I've changed my mind about."

Italics are the authors', boldface is my emphasis.