286. The Society for the Prevention of Childhood

The Society for the Prevention of Childhood is exactly what it says it is. A loose network of people who have come to the conclusion that reproduction via children (as opposed to forking, AGIs, or other transhuman options) is unethical, immoral, impractical, or otherwise inadvisable. Although they have a cause in common, their reasoning is not always the same.

The Lost generation sits in the backs of everyone's minds, and some learn a more extreme lesson from that failure than others. One view is that reproduction is irresponsible and unethical during the infugee crisis. There are still tens of millions without bodies, so choosing to have physical children is taking biomass and exowomb time from them, and the only other options is to follow in the footsteps of the Lost. However much one might want a child, the needs of the existing outweigh the needs of the potential.

Another view is that the combination of children with transhuman tech is too dangerous. Some, especially older, established individuals, worry about the precociousness problem. Children engineered, raised, educated and well accustomed to post-singularity technology will likely surpass their parents, forming a generational singularity.

For a few members, childhood is itself bad. To them, childhood is inevitably a traumatizing experience and most people will spend decades getting past it. This view is usually held by people who have themselves had traumatic childhoods, often related to the Fall.

Neoprimitive members argue that humans are not adapted to the future, and children doubly so. Similar to the view that childhood is traumatic, and opposite from the view that our children will surpass and supplant us, some neoprimitives believe that childbirth is the cruel thrusting of a being into a hopelessly alien world. Neoprimitives are rare, and this view is rare among them, so only a few are members.

274. Tom

Tom was born in Ohio, destined for an average middle-class life on Earth. His parents were traditional enough to forgo genefixing and backups. Although they were worried about what the effect of an AI companion could be on a young mind, the usefulness of a muse could not be denied and so they purchased one for their son.

When he was four, Tom and his family successfully evacuated Earth via the Kilimanjaro beanstalk, and after several months quarantine in orbit, used their remaining savings to buy passage on a ship cycling between Earth and Mars. During the second week of the trip, the cortical stacks of all onboard were devoured by a virulent nutcracker swarm and the engines were damaged. Without full acceleration the ship took 9 years to reach Mars, by which time Tom was 13 and had been alone for 8 years.

Tom survived first through luck, then through the advice of his muse, and finally through skill. The ship had been supplied for several hundred people, and there was more than enough feedstock for fabbers and makers for one boy. His muse taught him basic repairs, as well as history, psychology and Cantonese. As he approaches Mars the ship's damaged communications equipment has come in range of strong mesh signals. Tom currently spends most of his time studying the rest of transhumanity, and is fascinated by celebrity gossip. He is debating whether to make contact or to hide.

Mechanics

Morph: Flat

Motivations: +Survival, +Education

COG 10 COO 15 INT 15 REF 15 SAV 10 SOM 10 WIL 20
MOX - INIT 6 SPD 2 LUC 40 TT 8 IR 80 DUR 30 WT 6 DR 45

Active Skills: Clubs 55, Fray 45, Hardware: Electronics 50, Infiltration 40, Palming 35, Perception 50, Research 40, Scrounging 63, Unarmed Combat 50

Knowledge Skills: Academics: History 40, Academics: Psychology 50, Art: Sculpture 55, Interest: Celebrity Gossip 40, Interest: History 50, Language: Cantonese 55, Language: English (native) 85, Profession: Scavenging 80

273. Babysitter

There have probably been feral children throughout human history. Increasingly heavy surveillance and data-gathering has made them virtually impossible, but in the chaos of the Fall, many children were lost, abandoned, or became the sole survivors of their families. They were still not entirely alone: they had their muses.

Socially, children raised by their muses are not entirely dysfunctional, but do struggle in many ways. They speak well, although almost always formally, with no slang or common verbal shortcuts. They do not use greetings, usually do not address people by name, and tend to expect others to respond at a moment's notice, just as their muse does. Overall, they give the impression that they do not view other people as real people.

A muse will provide its ward with the best education it can, but the results are inevitably spotty. Many feral children must scavenge to survive, and develop hands-on technology skills, which may be improved if they are lucky enough to possess a muse with technology skills of its own. While they lack social skills, most muses are experts or better in psychology, and pass on as much of that knowledge as they can. Many also become multilingual. Any subjects the muse does not know about will be a hole in the child's education.

Plot Hook: The PCs are part of a crew salvaging a ship that is supposed to abandoned.

Notes

Inspired by the short story The Island by Peter Watts.

92. The Precociousness Problem

Transhumanity has many offspring. Engineered smart animals, AIs and AGIs, loose beta and delta forks, yet, fewer and fewer children. Fertility rates among transhumans are low. It is expensive to bear and raise a child, requiring space, time, and bodies that not everyone has access to. It is only natural to want the best for your child, and the plasticity of children's  brains and bodies take very rapidly and naturally to augmentation. The lost generation were only the beginning.

The agōgē promises to raise Ultimates with an ideological purity and an adoption of transhuman technology and capability that overshadows their old-fashioned seniors. To the members of an ideology prizing self-improvement above all, to become obsolete and irrelevant is worse than death.

This is the precociousness problem: any children raised to the fullest transhuman potential will very thoroughly surpass their parents. Those children will create and raise their children better than their parents could. Then their children will overcome them, and so on. It is a long term singularity, carried out over generations. Bio-conservatives fear an inevitable specialization leading to exhumanism, hyperelites fear the loss of their position, most others fear irrelevance.