Flourishing

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow"

Prior to commencement, growth rates were well below replacement. We estimate deployment of 1,000,000 units would be necessary to bring birth rates back up to 2.5. Re-investment of suitable units from each batch can negate need for acquiring "wild" units, but will take 10 years at minimum. Enough variety is present that a genetic bottleneck is not expected to become a problem.

The savings on support costs from the removal of extraneous material, combined with the value of trace elements recovered from said material has reduced upkeep and maintenance costs by 17%. Transplantation of extraneous material also offsets costs. Life support equipment remains our most significant cost.

The most successful hormone treatment sped development by an average of 4 weeks, but increased failure rates by 32%, representing an overall reduction in per-year production and is therefore not recommended. Improvements in nutrition and preventative treatments have reduced overall failure rates to 14%.

At this point, our primary problem is the assimilation of batches into the population. Adoption rates are not sufficient to handle more than 1% of each batch. State-run communal care and education is cost-prohibitive. A massive influx of youth will cause demographic instability and the exposure of our project will become inevitable.

Icthyons

Chemistry and materials science are difficult below the waves, breeding is slow but reliable. Breeding has taken the Icthyons from territorial catfish bullying smaller species for food to gracefully whiskered inheritors of a thousand useful creatures, well-bred and good breeders.

Symbiotes for health, parasites for control. Squid for hunting and barracuda for fighting. A good home is made by waste-eating snails. Octopuses as living tools. Everything is alive or was part of something alive.

The Icthyons have not spared themselves from their great breeding projects. Modern Icthyons are healthier, smarter, more ruthless, and have shorter lifespans than their ancestors, changes introduced through generation after generation of careful matchmaking.

It takes eons to breed stock into a new form. Innovation is virtually impossible, iterative improvement virtually inevitable. Icthyon culture prizes links to the past, and incorporates anything new slowly and thoroughly. Over the course 10,000 years, crab-silk was slowly bred from a disposable and temporary string, to sturdy fabric, to a woven sheets rivaling steel, and so over the course of 10,000 years, knotwork became increasingly sophisticated and fell out of favor, silk fashion became increasingly sophisticated and fell out of favor, and now silk armor is becoming increasingly sophisticated.