Slaves and prolong

kzt wrote:They were shipping families. As the Confederacy showed, families can be an effective way to increase your number of slaves.

Ah, I get it. You're saying that the "product" here was the family unit itself. Makes sense.

With the side benefit that the mother was from the pleasure slave lines (Paulo doesn't say his father was). I don't think it matters then what line Paulo was: Manpower would have shipped whichever family units with babies could meet the customer's demands. So it's a coincidence that he was himself of a pleasure slave line.

Good question of how Paulo got the tongue number. It doesn't make any sense that he would have been born with it, but then how do the rest of the slaves get theirs if not something that would be grafted into them either at some point in the embryo development or this is something that is a significant technical procedure after birth/decanting which uses the person's own DNA with a special effect that grows the number there.

Yes, we have been told that if the tongue is removed it will grow back with that same coding. On the other hand, that "agent" that was discovered on Torch with a tongue number that was recorded as being already in use raises the question of how they did that. Creating a 2nd individual with the same number at birth is one thing, picking an individual out of the a group of agents being trained and giving them a duplicate number would seem to indicate that it can be and has been done. If that agent was a Star Line member and they gave him a "modification" to his own tongue (otherwise not marked) then it's a technical issue. Since you could presume that since they probably would notice when one of their female slaves would be going to give birth they could add an appropriate number at the birth or shortly thereafter. This is getting way too deep into the technical side but................were the Seccies on Mesa required to have a tattoo? I don't recall it being mentioned but we can already guess that a selfie's child's DNA would have to get registered as part of the life long Identification they would be presumed to have. Everybody gets registered.

Brigade XO wrote:Good question of how Paulo got the tongue number. It doesn't make any sense that he would have been born with it, but then how do the rest of the slaves get theirs if not something that would be grafted into them either at some point in the embryo development or this is something that is a significant technical procedure after birth/decanting which uses the person's own DNA with a special effect that grows the number there.

Yes, we have been told that if the tongue is removed it will grow back with that same coding. On the other hand, that "agent" that was discovered on Torch with a tongue number that was recorded as being already in use raises the question of how they did that. Creating a 2nd individual with the same number at birth is one thing, picking an individual out of the a group of agents being trained and giving them a duplicate number would seem to indicate that it can be and has been done. If that agent was a Star Line member and they gave him a "modification" to his own tongue (otherwise not marked) then it's a technical issue. Since you could presume that since they probably would notice when one of their female slaves would be going to give birth they could add an appropriate number at the birth or shortly thereafter. This is getting way too deep into the technical side but................were the Seccies on Mesa required to have a tattoo? I don't recall it being mentioned but we can already guess that a selfie's child's DNA would have to get registered as part of the life long Identification they would be presumed to have. Everybody gets registered.

Georgia Young's slave barcode got removed, remember - and she paid a bucketload for that. So it can be done and , the medical community at large knows how to do it - I would assume recoding one would be a similar technology or procedure, not that anyone would but someone planting a spy in the guise of a slave.

Brigade XO wrote:Good question of how Paulo got the tongue number. It doesn't make any sense that he would have been born with it, but then how do the rest of the slaves get theirs if not something that would be grafted into them either at some point in the embryo development or this is something that is a significant technical procedure after birth/decanting which uses the person's own DNA with a special effect that grows the number there.

Yes, we have been told that if the tongue is removed it will grow back with that same coding. On the other hand, that "agent" that was discovered on Torch with a tongue number that was recorded as being already in use raises the question of how they did that. Creating a 2nd individual with the same number at birth is one thing, picking an individual out of the a group of agents being trained and giving them a duplicate number would seem to indicate that it can be and has been done. If that agent was a Star Line member and they gave him a "modification" to his own tongue (otherwise not marked) then it's a technical issue. Since you could presume that since they probably would notice when one of their female slaves would be going to give birth they could add an appropriate number at the birth or shortly thereafter. This is getting way too deep into the technical side but................were the Seccies on Mesa required to have a tattoo? I don't recall it being mentioned but we can already guess that a selfie's child's DNA would have to get registered as part of the life long Identification they would be presumed to have. Everybody gets registered.

These are just my opinions and and subject to change as more text is found.

Yes, seccies might have to register in the sense of a census and that might even include a DNA sample; but no, they do not have a slave marker on their tongue, that is only for marketing.

If the slave markers really include a sequence number to indicate the order exiting from the vats, then it is possible that either it was there in the single cell stage or it was added as the child left the vat. My belief is that it was there at the single cell stage.

It is much too late to give a slave code to an agent in training; I expect as a number suddenly become available, that a special baby is created with it as a prospective agent (note that the slave code includes a descriptor of exactly what the physical characteristics must be, so the baby must be created to match).

Again the slave code includes a batch number and a sequence number, so the slaves are not being born to female slaves; they are coming out of the vats. That is the only way marketing could guarantee the genetic makeup of the slave. In horticulture there is something similar: no one grows commercial apples from seeds, they all come from grafting onto a host tree. The sexual reproductive process mixes things up too much to be able to be confident of the result.

Brigade XO wrote:Good question of how Paulo got the tongue number. It doesn't make any sense that he would have been born with it, but then how do the rest of the slaves get theirs if not something that would be grafted into them either at some point in the embryo development or this is something that is a significant technical procedure after birth/decanting which uses the person's own DNA with a special effect that grows the number there.

Yes, we have been told that if the tongue is removed it will grow back with that same coding. On the other hand, that "agent" that was discovered on Torch with a tongue number that was recorded as being already in use raises the question of how they did that. Creating a 2nd individual with the same number at birth is one thing, picking an individual out of the a group of agents being trained and giving them a duplicate number would seem to indicate that it can be and has been done. If that agent was a Star Line member and they gave him a "modification" to his own tongue (otherwise not marked) then it's a technical issue. Since you could presume that since they probably would notice when one of their female slaves would be going to give birth they could add an appropriate number at the birth or shortly thereafter. This is getting way too deep into the technical side but................were the Seccies on Mesa required to have a tattoo? I don't recall it being mentioned but we can already guess that a selfie's child's DNA would have to get registered as part of the life long Identification they would be presumed to have. Everybody gets registered.

Well we also know a skilled geneticist can go in and remove the "code" that causes the tongue number to form (Lady Georgia Young/Elaine Komandorski) .

So, while it'll grow back if damaged or the tongue cut out and regenerated, it seems like something that isn't too hard (for people with the right skills and equipment) to add, remove, or permanently alter. (Though, for all we know, simply altering the code may not be enough -- you might need to first alter the code and then remove and regenerate the existing tongue before that altered code can express itself)

So I see a couple possibilities for Paulo.
1) He's was naturally conceived by the mother and father that he knew (of), and so the code was added later.
1a) Though it just as easily could have been during the pregnancy, meaning his tongue would naturally express the code as it grew.

2) He was a 'test tube baby' in which case the source of his genes might or might not be primarily from the parents he knew (of), but this would have allowed the Manpower geneticists to slip in the tongue code along with any other desired tweaks; right at the beginning.

Jonathan_S wrote:1) He's was naturally conceived by the mother and father that he knew (of), and so the code was added later.
1a) Though it just as easily could have been during the pregnancy, meaning his tongue would naturally express the code as it grew.

Why would Manpower have allowed the mother and the father to conceive in the first place, let alone carry the pregnancy out? This makes little sense for a number of reasons: one probably expects that as a pleasure slave, his mother was sterile, because that's probably expected of such a "product" (it's probably true of the majority of slaves); given her harsh training, she probably wouldn't have sought sexual comfort with another slave either. Further, even if she did and she were somehow fertile, Manpower would likely not allow her to carry the baby to term.

The only other possibility is that the pairing of his mother and his father was by Manpower themselves, trying to get a proper genetic mixing. But that also fails, because we know they have breeding vats and ex-utero gestation, so there's no need for her to have carried in him. Plus, if he were a new iteration of a genetic pairing, he wouldn't have been shipped as a family unit to be sold at less than 1 year old.

2) He was a 'test tube baby' in which case the source of his genes might or might not be primarily from the parents he knew (of), but this would have allowed the Manpower geneticists to slip in the tongue code along with any other desired tweaks; right at the beginning.

This is the most likely scenario. He was a run-of-the-mill male pleasure slave that happened to be in the care of two other slaves, one of whom we know to be a pleasure slave herself. Therefore, he'd have all the markings of a slave.

Lots of interesting discussion here, but there's a point I haven't seen. I believe that a lot of the way slaves were treated is a systemic denial of their humanity. They get numbers, not names. They're referred to as "cattle" or "cargo". They're denied any benefit or treatment that goes beyond keeping them useful. They're seen as objects, not people, because those who use slaves cannot afford any empathy for them.

They're treated like the Black veterans who were denied GI Bill benefits after WW II. They're treated like Jews under the Third Reich. They're treated like same-sex couples not allowed to marry. They're treated like Native Americans stripped of their cultural identity. They're treated like Dalits in Hindu society.

One essential element in oppressing a group of people is to "otherize" them, to see only the differences and avoid any trace of common identity. Humans have a natural tendency to affiliation, and that has to be suppressed by those who isolate and discriminate against those "others".

dscott8 wrote:Lots of interesting discussion here, but there's a point I haven't seen. I believe that a lot of the way slaves were treated is a systemic denial of their humanity. They get numbers, not names. They're referred to as "cattle" or "cargo". They're denied any benefit or treatment that goes beyond keeping them useful. They're seen as objects, not people, because those who use slaves cannot afford any empathy for them.

They're treated like the Black veterans who were denied GI Bill benefits after WW II. They're treated like Jews under the Third Reich. They're treated like same-sex couples not allowed to marry. They're treated like Native Americans stripped of their cultural identity. They're treated like Dalits in Hindu society.

One essential element in oppressing a group of people is to "otherize" them, to see only the differences and avoid any trace of common identity. Humans have a natural tendency to affiliation, and that has to be suppressed by those who isolate and discriminate against those "others".

All true and an extreme extension of the way that the Mesan Alignment members view all of humanity: the members are "superior" and the masses are "inferior". Some of the tension in the books occurs when individuals within the Onion lose that separation and suddenly empathize.