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[Discussion] Biomods, pregnancy and other side effects
05-03-2015, 06:19 PM
Moved here from http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... -Barbara-f]THIS thread.
OK, so this is starting to be a bit of a discussion for a probable page or rather an extension of the http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... dification]existing wiki page on biomods.
I’ll start by splitting the benefits from the downsides of biomods as I see them:
Benefits:
* Being biomoded boosts the person’s healing. They recover quicker than unmodded people (baring medical help).
* As a side effect, the affects of aging are reduced. You can expect at least a decade extra of life.
* The person normally gains abilities from the biomod.
Downsides:
* Biomods make extensive (if not visible) changes to a person’s body. At the very least this means genetics are changed.
* Again as a side effect the above, it becomes harder to procreate.
* Depending on the actual changes incurred, it can become harder to live. Specific foods will have differing affects on the person, the need for customised gear and/or living quarters, medical help gets harder due to altered biology, etc…
Mechanics:
This can probably be broken down into two parts, regeneration and homeostasis. They are NOT the same; related yes, not the same.
Homeostasis in our discussion is the affect of the biomod maintaining itself. It is the primary reason it is so difficult to get rid of a biomod once gained. There is likely a bit of ‘maintenance’ handwavium in the biomod’s system helping with that.
Regeneration is the related mechanism by which the biomod maintains itself. This is what has the knock-on health benefits.
Pregnancy causes quite a few changes to the biochemistry of the mother. This will be fought by the homeostasis effect (trying to keep to the biomod template). It can be overridden, the wave being a memetic substance after all. It’s just ‘maintenance’ wave is not as reconfigurable as regular handwavium, which makes ordinary pregnancies hard. The regeneration effect is also not instantly applicable, so it is possible for a fait accompli to be enacted. IVF is a way of doing this.
Cross-mod compatibility is ALSO a question. Before the birth of Helen Scott, there were no mod/non-mod children, and no children of modded parents. The Swansen-Scott/Peters papers detailing the pregnancy of the former may help alleviate that. The pregnancy of Loviatar shows what a lot of work and stubbornness can do as well.
The homeostasis effect also causes the issues with aging. In most cases where it’s strong enough to remove the visible affects of aging, there is an issue of how the insides of a body cope. It is fully possible for a biomod to just…stop.
Higher levels of regeneration also cause the problem of ‘immortals’. We don’t know how to cope with people living centuries, let alone more. It’s bad enough with all the A.I.’s we have.
More comments are needed to get a feel for the collective's position on this.
Damned, I need to finish the next chapter of my story, its relevant to this topic... *sigh*
Quick (spoiler) update for CGI.
There are s number of catgirl childrens on Jenga (and later on the LBBL), first ones were born in 2020. But there is some technology involved to help with the pregnancy, which also explains how it could happen with the low number of catboys at CGI... oh, and the machine had a few unintended side-effects.
(edit)
About the possibility of long lived/immortal Fen... I don't see a problem for the Fenspace stories, because it will take centuries until we have Fen with an age of multiple centuries... 
which is a bit out of scope for most of our stories.
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The thing with Immortals.... accidents and enemies happen. Nobody is truly immortal. Once the head comes off, as they say.... Some Fen with the propensity for, shall we say, high intensity, lifestyles may have the potential to live forever, but will be lucky to see 2030.
Space is fairly large with plenty of ahem....space to spread out in. On the other hand, the reduction in reproduction potential, in proportion to a projected increase lifespan, would seem like a fairly natural safety interlock to prevent a Methuselah catastrophe. Since we know that there were handwavium using races... and obviously the galaxy isn't overrun with them, there has to be something acting as a limiter.
It's an intriguing idea. Handwavium simultaneously uplifts, but can also lead to a sort of cultural homeostasis in it's own right. After a burst of rapid change an development, a sort of stagflation may set in. It's an enabler, but it's also ultimately a brake because it's so easy to use, society never really evolves past using it - there's no real need.
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It could be argued that the life-preserving idiosyncrasies of handwavium - as seen by how hard it is to mess up a life-support system, the Nerf Effect of potential weapons, and the utter failure of those loonies out there trying to create killer robots - would recognize the attempt at creating new life and make adjustments to itself.
Also, my characters Lana Izavia and Biwa Mishima are biomods, but human biomods. One had a change of appearance and the other a change of gender. They are still human, just not the same human as before. While I haven't gone into any detail about them (yet), Lana is aging normally but Biwa doesn't seem to be aging at all. In fact, Biwa is experiencing a minor version of the symptoms A.C. Peters is. That is, just as the Senshi idolization of her as a Rei Hino figure is causing her to desire to learn kyudo, Biwa's well known love of all things classically Japanese has others to expecting her to be a kendoka, causing her to have an odd urge to learn swordsmanship.
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It's worse for A.C. She's deliberately using memetic pressure (given she 98.2% handwavium) to pull herself BACK from the edge. This leaves her with a LOT of conflicting desires (mostly good, in a 'thank she's on our side, the poor sods' way).
The main thing is the difficulties in procreation weren't seen initially. A.C.'s own scans of her body showed she was perfectly fertile. And she is. It'll just take a bitlot of effort, and a significant change in point-of-view.
I'd like to point out the homeostasis effect is ALSO one of the prime reasons a second biomod is not possible. The remodding process restarts the original biomod process (bypassing the block), remolding machines (based on the CGM) overrides the block by changing from the outside with a LOT of wave involved.
As to cultural homeostasis, that's where things like the Whole Fenspace Catalogue come in. All the big players in handwavium tech are trying to understand and reverse engineer it. It's more than likely there'll be a point where hard tech hits the same level as wave tech. At which point we don't NEED the wave.
At which point the wave will facilitate another jump and the cycle continues.
All this seems to be leading to the point that biomods become a rarer thing post 2020's. Home grown medical tech will replace the need for it in most cases. Leaving accidents, emergency transformations, and those who want specific things.
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You know, maybe some of the stuff from the shapeshift biomod thread should merged with this. Seems like it also stems from the same issues with the wave as this stuff.
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IIRC, the last time we tried having a big discussion about what handwavium could and couldn't do, we ended up with High Drama. I'm a bit gun-shy about making a 'wavium discussion too broad-based...
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I think I remember that topic. The answer should always be that it ends up doing whatever it needs to to make the plot work. And if the collective finds that the plot doesn't work, then handwavium can't do that.
I still like the idea of there being drawbacks to being modded, beyond the risk of rolling up a Joker. You gain certain powers, but you loose important things. Whether that's the ability to have children, or to fundamentally decide to change yourself in some way, to break out of the mould of your life. The modded might find that just a bit harder. People like Ford who's steadily found herself becoming more and more like Rally Vincent, solely because that's what people expect when they look at her - even if she never knew what a Rally Vincent was when the wave got her. In ten years, she's gotten to the point where it's basically bang-on hotrodder gunbunny - and it does irk her no end. She even has a Minnie-May now.
Daryl Haur's just starting down the path, to what end time will tell. Crack Space Pilot/Warrior?
It's something of a Faustian pact.
Nobody's actively discussed it in-universe, but I think the idea would make a lot of people uncomfortable to the point where it's swept under the carpet and just ignored. Nobody really wants to think about it, but it seems like something some people might think about a lot.
On a related note, I've started to wonder if the wave itself isn't alive in some way. Not like Worm alive - more like something mindless and unmalicious, without any intent. But, as written, it spreads like bacteria. It breaks out. It always finds a way around. It spreads like a lifeform. And everything it does can be explained simply as a survival strategy..... wavium that leads to civilisational annihilation does not spread far, so dies out. Wavium that's useful and gets used by a civilisation, spreads through the galaxy. Like all life, that's all it wants to do. And it works by fucking with the mind and memetics somehow. It doesn't have to be intelligent at all, or guided by an invisible hand beyond simple natural selection. It's a symbiote - a useful one that somehow finagles the guidelines of physics, but still alive and with consequences for the infected. Not something I ever think there should be a ruling on, just a thought I've been having - was planning to introduce is as an opinion of a biologist in a story I've been doing.
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Dartz Wrote:...
On a related note, I've started to wonder if the wave itself isn't alive in some way. Not like Worm alive - more like something mindless and unmalicious, without any intent. But, as written, it spreads like bacteria. It breaks out. It always finds a way around. It spreads like a lifeform. And everything it does can be explained simply as a survival strategy..... wavium that leads to civilisational annihilation does not spread far, so dies out. Wavium that's useful and gets used by a civilisation, spreads through the galaxy. Like all life, that's all it wants to do. And it works by fucking with the mind and memetics somehow. It doesn't have to be intelligent at all, or guided by an invisible hand beyond simple natural selection. It's a symbiote - a useful one that somehow finagles the guidelines of physics, but still alive and with consequences for the infected. Not something I ever think there should be a ruling on, just a thought I've been having - was planning to introduce is as an opinion of a biologist in a story I've been doing. I'm trying to avoid making too many statements on what can and cannot be done in Fenspace, because I seem to be an unofficial second-in-command of the place and I don't want to squelch creativity by sounding like a mod... so I'll just say that this would explain why Doug Sangnoir couldn't discover who made handwavium. If this is true, then nobody "made" handwavium. (It isn't the only possible explanation why Doug's attempt backfired, of course, so don't take this as canon.)
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Who Made Who?
05-26-2015, 07:08 PM
If I recall correctly, "Who Made Who" can also discern the parentage of living things, but (a), the best answer Doug could've gotten in that case is "a slightly different blob of Handwavium", and (b), since Handwavium acts like a pure substance or homogeneous solution, it isn't possible to isolate a "discrete" bit of it to query that bit's parentage.
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