Discussion on the Catboy Machine and Biomolding

[robkelk]

Hmmmmm...

Hmmmmmmmmmm...

The way I read the description of the Catgirling Machine on the FenWiki, I get the distinct impression that the catgirl's basic personality (before being broken to become meek and submissive) is the personality of the subject... or, for Boskonians, "victim." I suspect using anything other than a living, self-aware human would produce a ... shall we say "sub-optimal" ... catgirl.

Are we heading into dystopian areas here?

Mmmmmmmmmm...maybe. But the Catgirling Machine was never completely "sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows" to begin with.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[HRogge]

The way I read the description of the Catgirling Machine on the FenWiki, I get the distinct impression that the catgirl's basic personality (before being broken to become meek and submissive) is the personality of the subject... or, for Boskonians, "victim." I suspect using anything other than a living, self-aware human would produce a ... shall we say "sub-optimal" ... catgirl.

Yes, I agree.

But what if you are just researching variants in the settings of the CGM? Or some mad catgirl scientists tries to produce an "empty body" to copy a mind into?

[Ace Dreamer]

Carrots the Catgirl isn't typical. Yes, she has all the usual catgirl abilities, but, she has a few non-standard quirks. First her required drink isn't carbonated, it's carrot juice, as fresh as possible, though recently defrosted frozen carrot juice does. Second, she has an irrational fear of rabbit people, which, with some therapy, she could probably be desensitised from.

Her story is a little strange. Her father, James Buggs, joined Boskone, just to get access to unethical technology that he could use to save his daughter, who'd been made permanently comatose by a car accident. All the advice he'd found suggested conventional biomodding wouldn't help her. As a brilliant medical researcher he was welcome, though they were (rightly) suspicious about his motives. He did join the CGM research effort, and was partly responsible for one of their early successes. Which he then stole.

James fled to Kandor City, where he knew several doctors who'd been students trained by him. He also kidnapped his daughter in a daring daytime raid on the British hospital where she was being cared for, using a flying waved-up JCB 'borrowed' from a construction site near Kandor, and doing considerable damage to at least one hospital ward wall.

Back near, but not actually in, Kandor City, he and his two best students put Jane Buggs, in a carefully pain-blocked state, through the CGM. It failed, and the generated catgirl quickly died, from brain damage. About then, Boskone raiders broke in, and in the battle (James had a few Supers friends there, for 'insurance') the CGM was smashed-up. The raiders left, taking their injured with them.

James committed suicide via a massive overdose of anaesthetics (or was he murdered? evidence points to suicide). About a year later one of his students did their best, after OD-ing on Klatchian Coffee to repair the CGM. Just for research purposes, of course. In the process they discovered a one-use "brain tape" in the wreckage, and wanted to study how this worked. Fifty kilograms of carrots (and a plastic skeleton) and 'Carrots the Catgirl' was born, remembering everything that had happened to Jane Buggs up to the accident, age 18.

The brain-tape burned-out, as it appeared to be designed to do, and took critical parts of the lashed-together CGM with it. While they knew a bit more about the CGM (even though some of the paper notes caught fire), it wasn't repairable. Jane decided she wasn't Jane any more, and took the ironic name "Carrots". She then went to find some other catgirls with a hope of figuring-out what to do with her life.

META: So, credible? [grin]
Edit: I'm assuming a 'brain tape', one-use or otherwise, isn't a part of the 'standard' Boskonian CGM.  But, that the design, from a certain point of view, makes having one quite feasible.  Think "pattern buffer" in Star Trek transporters, but just for the mind.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[robkelk]

Very credible. I like the one-shot use of the braintape; that gives the Boskoinians something to **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE**, as The Girls almost discovered.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Foxboy]

Besides, the CGM copies tend to focus on the end result, not the specifics of consoles.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Ace Dreamer]

"Carrots", of course, has appropriately red hair. [grin]

So, I should avoid (bad) jokes about her having been in a vegetative state? [grin]
Edit: Honest!  That only occurred to me afterwards! [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Ace Dreamer]

Besides, the CGM copies tend to focus on the end result, not the specifics of consoles.

Could you please explain that a bit more?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

Very credible. I like the one-shot use of the braintape; that gives the Boskoinians something to **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE** **WHITENOISE**, as The Girls almost discovered.

Heard on Jenga: "It is frightening what the Boskones manages to develop within less than a year, just by ignoring moral boundaries and having lots of helpless victims."

[Foxboy]

Besides, the CGM copies tend to focus on the end result, not the specifics of consoles.

Could you please explain that a bit more?

Okay this is early Fenspace. Few folks grok enough of what the wave does to have strongly reproducable results.
Effectively, the boskones are working harder to make the "tube" and run the program that makes a catgirl than to make all of the consoles that run the program identical.
At least one CGM console captured by GJ was the printed circuit boards from a hundred pocket calculators wired to a Mundane Soviet-era portable B&W TV and a Chinese manual typewriter. Another was a Commodore 64 and a clearance rack CRT monitor. Etc etc.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Ace Dreamer]

Besides, the CGM copies tend to focus on the end result, not the specifics of consoles.

Could you please explain that a bit more?

Okay this is early Fenspace. Few folks grok enough of what the wave does to have strongly reproducable results.
Effectively, the boskones are working harder to make the "tube" and run the program that makes a catgirl than to make all of the consoles that run the program identical.
At least one CGM console captured by GJ was the printed circuit boards from a hundred pocket calculators wired to a Mundane Soviet-era portable B&W TV and a Chinese manual typewriter. Another was a Commodore 64 and a clearance rack CRT monitor. Etc etc.

Thanks for posting this, I think it throws useful light on the CGM.  So, it is the process that the handwavium is interested in, arguably taking someone who is dying and giving them a new life as a catgirl.  The actual hardware used to carry out the process isn't irrelevant, but is a secondary thing.
META: I'm talking here from the perspective that the CGM has the original JFM 'chop and slice' capability, and it uses this on the subject, then makes a catgirl version of 'Julian Friez' out of the 'raw materials', but with the mind of the subject, rather than Julian Friez.  Of course, I may have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on. [grin]
Just to upset people more, this means, assuming I'm correct, that the CGM is a 'resurrection machine'! [grin]
META META: I apologise to anyone who's allergic to 'spoilers'.  That is, of course, if I've actually provided any! [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[robkelk]

Just to upset people more, this means, assuming I'm correct, that the CGM is a 'resurrection machine'! [grin]
META META: I apologise to anyone who's allergic to 'spoilers'.  That is, of course, if I've actually provided any! [grin]

Yes, you've figured out what I've been hiding... but not all the particulars of it.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Ace Dreamer]

Just to upset people more, this means, assuming I'm correct, that the CGM is a 'resurrection machine'! [grin]
META META: I apologise to anyone who's allergic to 'spoilers'.  That is, of course, if I've actually provided any! [grin]

Yes, you've figured out what I've been hiding... but not all the particulars of it.

Sorry, I resisted that for longer than I thought I could...
The problem was it seemed to be becoming a bit too central to a number of in progress discussions.  It becomes a bit too obvious when you carefully read the JFM and CGM descriptions, and the critical fact that one was developed from the other.  I guess I've done a bit too much with weird tech at different times...
My humble apologies.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Rakhasa]

Obvious? I read the same descriptions and it never even crossed my mind. Damm, and in hindsight it is prefectly reasonable... resurrection of "dead" protagonists has a loooong tradition in comics....

[Ace Dreamer]

Obvious? I read the same descriptions and it never even crossed my mind. Damm, and in hindsight it is prefectly reasonable... resurrection of "dead" protagonists has a loooong tradition in comics....

I've had exactly the same experience.  It's only relatively recently that I realised the "Fantastic 4" Marvel comics characters had powers corresponding to the four alchemical elements, and I'd been reading the comics for a long time.  Human brains work in strange ways...
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Rakhasa]

While I was writing about the morian dwarves I had a silly idea about the true origin of the Biomolding machine: What about simple incompetence and stupidity? Boskonian mad scientists are evil. That is a given. What is not a given is that they are competent scientists...
So, an unnamed boskonian doctor built a catgirl machine, and messed it somehow. It did nothing to the prisioners. Until some prisioner with a cyborg biomod got pushed inside, and she was turned into a cyborg catgirl! Herr Doctor arranged to get some biomoded prisioners, and experimented on then.
The end result were seven cat-dwarves and eleven cat-Klingon. The machine errors were showing: They kept their gender, and they kept their memories. The process was stll very painful, of course, so the doctor's stupidity continued showing, because 18 pain-angered dwarves and klingons in the same ship aren't the safest combination. After they rescued themselves, someone eventually noticed that the machine had done what was considered impossible, a second biomod, so they took it with then to Great Justice.
Unfortunately the doctor and his goons could not be interrogated, because they were dead of natural causes (it is very natural to die when you meet up and close with one ba'leth, seven D'k tahg, and three dwarven battleaxes)

[HRogge]

Hmm...

I have to admit I like the old idea more that it got developed during Season 2 after the war...

[robkelk]

Likewise. Something that produces a second biomod is a game-changer, and needs the approval of the entire Collective... which hasn't been forthcoming in Season 0 or Season 1.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012