252: Bioconservative Ethics

ENTRY 252: Bioconservative Ethics

“Finally we have the technologies to build a utopia, but almost a third of the human population is at or below the Sustainable Energy Consumption Index. Millions of egos reside in digital limbo, cut off from the human experience, because of the selfish desires of others, who want nothing more than to force more junk into their bodies, or to change morphs at their whim, rather than devote the time and resources to alleviating the suffering of infomorphs. They cast aside their humanity in favor of becoming Other, and so they should be treated—and when at last their systems break down, and they are too far gone to look back, we who preserved our forms will still be here.”
- August Jo Vern, Jovian Republic pundit

“There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect just the way you are. There is no one like you. You are unique and special. Are your friends really your friends if they ask you to change that? Don’t give in to peer pressure. Stand up for yourself. Say no to augmentation.”

- Kyle Mantra, Vo Nguyen spokesperson

“Some believe we are created; I choose to believe we evolved. There is nothing sacred in our forms—only millions of years of practical refinement. Why throw that away for a process or piece of technology that has only been tested for a few years? The governments on Mars won’t let hypercorps sell landspeeders without years of testing; but genetic enhancements are approved in as little as six months. Do you really think they have worked out the bugs in six months?”

- Amana Milos, Anarchist bioconservative

“Treat others as you want to be treated. We all live in different systems, but that does not mean they have the right to tell us how to live our lives, any more than we have the right to tell them to live theirs. We do not try to rip the implants out of their flesh, or force them back from their robotic shells; do not let them tell you what to do with your own body and mind.”
- Ja Ja Jones, mother of six plus one

Using Bioconservative Ethics

People can justify any set of beliefs, and they do. In Eclipse Phase, it’s very easy to paint the bioconservatives as the strawmen of the setting, in no small part because their positions and beliefs are presented through the lens of the people that fundamentally disagree with them. That doesn’t mean that all of their beliefs are stupid or that none of them can muster up arguments (rational and otherwise) to support them; it is entirely possible for there to be disagreements where both sides have valid points, and when those arguments hit the table they can lead to some very rich roleplaying possibilities. That does not mean that players or gamemasters should write lengthy tracts about various bioconservative vs. augmentation arguments and read them aloud at the table. Instead, sit down and really think about the subject, make your best arguments, and try to work them in when things make sense to do so. Intelligent NPCs that can justify their beliefs are generally more interesting than caricatures spouting about the divine purity of the human form.

115: Zelda Amenatsu

ENTRY 115: Zelda Amenatsu

In an age of transcendental personal apathy and self-centeredness, where each ego seems situated on their own personal transformation and entire habitats are given over to the exploration of radical morphs, upgrades, and concepts of being, there remain certain constants to the human tribe—and individuals who have dedicated themselves to ensuring that transhumanity, or at least their version of transhumanity, continues to exist in some form. The mildest of these adherents are so-called bioconservatives, who have formed communities, habitats, protests and discussion groups resolving around the need to preserve and propagate the human genome and form, to retain whatever quixotic, quintessential elements that they believe defines humanity, and without which they believe that transhumanity will not survive, not as it has, even if individual human-derived consciousness continues in some form.

Then there are the Bloody Wrenches, the Clank-Haters, the Meat Brigades, PureGenSect, and all the others. Extreme action groups, gangs, domestic terrorists in all but name, they take the bioconservative ideals and twist and exploit them, or maybe they just get their adrenaline rush by destroying synthmorphs, pods, and exotic biomorphs. When the clanking masses won’t be bullied and cowed, when they start to fight back, these groups call in aces like Zelda Amenatsu—more than an assassin for hire, but a quiet fanatic, the four horsemen rolled into one. Where she walks, death follows, a wake of broken shells and blasted minds, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Ironically, Zelda is more of a robot than the synthmorphs she hunts. The original Zelda ego has been psychosurgically broken and rebuilt so many times that little of the original personality remains, leaving only a fanatic hunter at the peak of human physical development. Behavioral controls prevent her from turning on whatever puppetmasters run the bioconservative extreme action groups, while selective neural damage assures she can never identify those who issue her orders and her social skills were pruned out to avoid excess socialization that might jeopardize her missions. Zelda receives commands through certain coded phrases, blending into the biomorph humanity she thinks she fights for but never really a part of them, drifting from habitat to habitat—and when she dies on one of her missions, she knows all she has to look forward to is opening her eyes in a new morph and doing it all over again.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	27	15	22	13	16	13	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	26	5	52	30	7	45

Morph: Splicer

Skills: Academics: Computer Science 44, Academics: Cryptography 55, Beam Weapons (Lasers) 67, Blades (Swords) 45, Clubs (Hammers) 56, Deception (Bluffing) 67, Demolitions (Improvised Explosives) 45, Fray (Full Defense) 56, Free Fall (Microgravity) 45, Gunnery 65, Hardware: Electronics 55, Hardware: Robotics 55, Impersonation 55, Infiltration (Sneaking) 45, Infosec 66, Interests: Synthmorphs (Weak Points) 56, Interfacing 55, Kinetic Weapons (Rifles) 67, Language: Native Belarusian 85, Language: English 55, Language: French 55, Language: Russian 66, Networking: Autonomists 45, Networking: Criminals 55, Perception (VIsual) 66, Programming 5, Spray Weapons 33, Unarmed Combat 45

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack

Traits: Allies (Bioconservative Terrorist Cells), Danger Sense, Edited Memories, Exceptional Aptitude (COO), Modified Behavior (Ability to harm morphs that resemble baseline humans, Expunged), Neural Damage (Loss of face recognition, Loss of voice recognition), On the Run, Right at Home (Remade), Situational Awareness, Uncanny Valley

071: Garden-of-Me

ENTRY 071: Garden-of-Me

On Vo Nguyen, the bioconservative stronghold orbiting Earth, the nursery-spaces for children were designed to be integrated with low-level hydroponics bays, so that the young transhumans could see green growing things, and learn their properties and how to care for them, and look back up at the planet of their ancestors which they might one day return to and reclaim. Most of these spaces have since been abandoned, or converted, as the demand for them failed to materialize. Various individuals and organizations have purchased or leased the use of these spaces for their own ends: commercial light hydroponics, living quarters…and a single garden.

Wiry, wood-like vines yield freckled pink flowers, and which slowly ripen into lightly furred, peach-skinned fruits. Tiny pseudo-arthropods with clear, tough exoskeletons tend the soil, farm aphids, and are consumed by little chameleons. Cup-like flytraps sweetly reek of decomposing meat to attract scavenger flies, and burrowing earthworms up to three feet in length are visible shimmying through the transparent earth-boxes, wending their ways around roots. All told, it is a testament to ecoscaping—but for the majority of inhabitants of Vo Nguyen, this garden is reviled and rarely visited. Because every living thing in that garden—every plant, insect, and lizard—is a genetically engineered chimera containing some human element. Digestive enzymes from human saliva fill the flytraps, the scuttling insects are armored in shells of keratin based on human nails, fruits are pigmented with human-derived melanin…and so forth.

The Garden-of-Me was crafted following the death of noted bioconservative Vim Spcyowski, as per his request and his instructions, from his own genetic material, and is maintained by the members of the Spcyowski Trust. Vim’s purpose was for the garden to serve as a living, up-close example of the seductive nature of what bioconservatism resists—an ecosystem where one genome has subtly infiltrated and infected everything, twisting what might have been a beautiful encapsulated nature into a cruel parody of itself. Visitors touch the fruit and see little difference between the plant and their own skin; despite the lack of visitors the garden air is always heavy and fragrant with the smell of a large group of unwashed humans in close contact; diseases tend to spread rapidly and jump species easily leading to sudden massive die-offs that require the caretakers to replace them. To the bioconservatives, this is a slice of hell kept close to their heart, as a reminder of what they would not be.

Seed

• Sensation surrounds the expansion of the Garden-of-Me, which introduces its first mammal—a tiny transgenic chimera that resembles a cross between a field mouse and a tiny simian, with long paws and a nearly-human face. Competing groups are looking to capture or destroy the four specimens (two male and two female) before they are introduced: a religious sect which objects to their existence, an anti-bioconservative group that wants the creatures crucified in the garden to troll the bioconservatives, and nano-ecologists that believe the specimens aren’t transgenics at all, but actually a supposedly-extinct species. Any or all of them could approach the PCs for their assistance—as strangers to Vo Nguyen, they are most likely isolated from its warring sociopolitics and can operate with less scrutiny. In exchange, the PCs could get valuable introductions and make contacts on the habitat that would take months or years to develop otherwise.