On the bright side, once you've given her that expendable lab she's a lot more able to survive the inevitable results in a repairable fashion that pretty much anyone made out of meat.
Also, to drag this back on topic, there should probably be at least one set of shady characters involved in Loan Sharking/indentured servitude.
- Poor Naive Thing comes up to Fenspace, without a bit of business sense, and lacking certain Fundamental Useful Things.
- Friendly Neighborhood Loan Shark happens to run into them, points out all fo the Neat Stuff that they don't have yet, that could make their lives so much nicer/their work so much more efficient/etc. Offers to set them up. Waves off the concept of payment. "We'll deal with that later. Once you're on your feet."
- Poor Naive Thing starts successfuly Mining Asteroids, Farming or whatnot, and then discovers that Friendly Neighborhood Loan Shark has Friendly Neighborhood Legbreakers to go with, and they want a remarkably large cut of the action. Somehow never manages to get back out of that initial debt, no matter how hard he works.
Essentially different from extortion only in that the Friendly neighborhood Loan Shark actually has some moral suasion to back him up at first, to sort of ease people into it - then, once they get into the habit of obeying, they tend to stay there. Varies across the spectrom from slavery-in-all-but-name to a situation where the Capo really is providing some useful services and taking care of "his people" pretty well (at a somewhat inflated price with a painful opt-out clause)
Also, to drag this back on topic, there should probably be at least one set of shady characters involved in Loan Sharking/indentured servitude.
- Poor Naive Thing comes up to Fenspace, without a bit of business sense, and lacking certain Fundamental Useful Things.
- Friendly Neighborhood Loan Shark happens to run into them, points out all fo the Neat Stuff that they don't have yet, that could make their lives so much nicer/their work so much more efficient/etc. Offers to set them up. Waves off the concept of payment. "We'll deal with that later. Once you're on your feet."
- Poor Naive Thing starts successfuly Mining Asteroids, Farming or whatnot, and then discovers that Friendly Neighborhood Loan Shark has Friendly Neighborhood Legbreakers to go with, and they want a remarkably large cut of the action. Somehow never manages to get back out of that initial debt, no matter how hard he works.
Essentially different from extortion only in that the Friendly neighborhood Loan Shark actually has some moral suasion to back him up at first, to sort of ease people into it - then, once they get into the habit of obeying, they tend to stay there. Varies across the spectrom from slavery-in-all-but-name to a situation where the Capo really is providing some useful services and taking care of "his people" pretty well (at a somewhat inflated price with a painful opt-out clause)