Family and Children

Source: What Are Babies? An AGI Guide to Human Spawning

The concept of “family” has grown more fluid among transhumans. A multitude of familial arrangements now proliferate through society. On scum ships and brinker outposts, the crew is understood to be one’s family — the village that raises one, so to speak. In rimward anarchist and socialist spaces in particular, an isolated family unit is seen as an unacceptable hierarchical form of oppression that must be done away with. It is viewed as selfish, even monstrous, to seek primary or exclusive influence over the development of a child.

Even in families where some people are accorded primacy as parental units, there are many available forms. Single-parent families, poly-families where a household raises its children in co-parenting arrangements, queer houses that adopt children from crèches, families where every member contributed genetic material to grow a child in an exowomb (in this way, dozens of people claim genetic parenthood of a single child), and more. Some hyperelites are known to make an aesthetic out of the classic nuclear family.

Marriages do still occur, of course, but they are primarily considered a personal ritual, a promise of intent between two or more partners. In rare cases, they are celebrated with private ceremonies with close friends and family. In other areas, they are performance art. Lavish displays are reserved for hyperelites, bioconservatives, and some celebrities.

Marriage is only sometimes a matter of law. What was once known as a “prenuptial agreement” is now the primary legal mode of marriage, ironically bringing the institution full circle back to its original role as a chiefly economic arrangement. Marriage contracts are set for specified periods and terms, backed by the legal weight of the local polity or enjoined court. These specifics are necessary for hypercorp elites and political figures who wish to be careful about co-mingling assets while delineating the expected benefits of a union.

Celebrities and socialites may engage in a public marriage to further an AR storyline they’re a part of or simply to make their newfound spouse a kind of accessory for social events — literal arm candy. In those circumstances, a legal agreement stipulates what the goals are, shelters whatever assets both parties choose, and even stipulates the behaviour and appearance of one or more of the spouses in question, such as what morphs and/or clothing they must model during public events.

Marriage for the sake of pure romance, however, is no longer necessary, nor written into the law for the sake of tertiary benefits. Indeed, tax codes are malleable enough that one can apply for various degrees of dispensation for different kinds of households. Most Consortium habitats restrict tax bonuses to poly households of fewer than eight people, which has caused consternation among artist colonies and queer houses that regard their families as being far larger.

There are some who push social boundaries to their limit by initiating sexual or romantic relationships with forks of themselves. In sunward social circles, this is considered especially gauche and akin to public masturbation. But many academics, particularly those who advocate for the individual rights of forks, say that it’s less self-pleasure than it might seem on the surface. Philosophically, they claim, a fork is its own person, eternally evolving away from the template of the originating ego. But this remains cutting-edge social theory. Even fairly permissive societies don’t legally recognize fork-based relationships.

Eternal Children

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“There are very few people in the Consortium who could claim to have a family like ours,” said Mitchell Song-Sim, beaming with pride as he put an arm around his sons Adyn and Bladyn.

Both were born to his life-partner, Marianne Song-Sim, in a rare natural birth of twins. But the parents quickly ensured their sons were upgraded from their flats to the latest custom morphs once they came of age. The morphs are customized to have the appearance of fifteen-year-old adolescents with boyish features.

Beholding the scene of her life partner towering over her sons, Marianne Song-Sim sighed and smiled, “We’re celebrating their forty-fifth birthday next week, but they’ll always be our little boys.

Children and Reproduction

Reproduction is a process that now truly lives up to the mechanical name it has long had. Most biological life now begins in exowombs. Many morphs lack the ability to biologically reproduce as a form of copyright protection for the genetic designer. If you wish to use the morph’s reproductive capabilities, you must purchase a license for the IP and undergo gene therapy first. Depending on the parents in question, this may also require a reconfiguration of their morph’s reproductive anatomy, which is a minor affair.

Traditional birthing is rare, but still exists for those who desire to experience the nine-month gestation period of a child in one’s biological womb. Even among bioconservatives, this has been reduced to the role of novelty rather than a default way of life.

Creating a child in an exowomb is a complex and highly customisable process. However many parents are involved, many like to use some aspect of their own original genetic profile to shape the exowomb child. For this reason, people tend to keep their own birth genetics on file, though many of these were lost during the Fall. A popular alternative is to license the genetics of a favorite morph, celebrity, or even a historical figure. Parents are offered a menu of custom modifications to graft onto the gestating child, including transgenic and neogenetic traits, or they can simply buy a whole profile of their own.

The technology of exowombs allows families to carefully edit the epigenetics of the gestating child and guide particular gene expressions. This provides an even finer control over the child’s appearance and traits. This is especially common with hypercorp morph designers, who endlessly tweak their models for desired combinations. Almost everything about your child is customizable, from hair color and height to personality traits and intelligence augmentations, assuming you have the credits. Open-source genetics are also available, particularly in autonomist habitats.

An essential role for families — regardless of their size, configuration, or political alignment — is finding or modifying morphs and mods for their children as they grow. Given that it is technically possible, though not recommended, to sleeve a newborn child’s consciousness into an adult-looking morph, most factions have strict laws about resleeving children below the age of majority, with tons of digital ink spilled explaining in legalistic detail what a “child morph” or an “adolescent morph” should look like and what age range of egos are permitted to occupy them. Child minds are poorly developed for handling adult bodies, and the process can irrevocably damage the child’s development. The societally permissable option is to let the child grow naturally, with the addition of select mods as needed, and then celebrating their adulthood with a choice of their first new morph, if and when they desire.

Education

Education of a child is handled in a variety of ways that suit the politics of various factions. Public AR schooling is the norm on Titan, with a patchwork of public and private AR and VR school options on Venus. Most Consortium and LLA habitats operate on a system of vouchers and private schooling, with no formal education requirements written into law. Autonomist habs rely on education cooperatives or family homeschooling using various freeware tools.

One way or another, children are plugged into the mesh early and often. A teacher can be a muse, a transhuman tutor, a teacher speaking to a VR lecture hall of thousands, or collaborative montessori AR environments in designated structures that become wonderlands of imaginative play. VR is specifically used to acclimate children to life in different habitats, worlds, and gravities.

A number of prestigious colleges and universities survived the Fall, primarily on Mars and Titan, with newly established ones joining their ranks. These academic institutions still retain physical campuses, though the bulk of their students attend courses online. A college degree is no longer considered a necessity for most employment, given the availability of online self-education tools, but most employers rely on vigorous ALI testing for applicants.

The Lost

[BEGIN CODED TRANSMISSON]

To: Philippa Markos, 2nd Magister (Pharos)
From: Dr. Sumi Jha
BCC: Jarvis Tryscuz, Firewall Sentinel

Magister Markos:

After extensive digging and reconstruction of “deleted” Cognite data, we finally have a fairly accurate picture of the research behind Project Futura (whose surviving subjects are known colloquially as “the Lost” thanks to sensationalist media) and its potential application to Ultimate military endeavors.

Futura began as a joint venture between Cognite and several smaller contributors, spearheaded by Hanto Genomics. It was greenlit following an internal proposal at Hanto by Dr. Antonio Pascal, whose research in the areas of rapid ego development culminated in the Accelerated Life Experience Training (ALET) pilot projects. The ALET research spanned the years prior to and immediately after the Fall, and according to several internal Cognite memos, a major impetus for Project Futura was a perceived need to repopulate the system in the early years AF.

Where things get interesting are the encrypted memos between Cognite and Hanto outlining the aggressive creation and exploitation of a rapidgrowth ego market — a technological advantage designed to both fill and profit from a need. Practical Futura research began scant months after the Fall, with a still-unknown quantity of embryos used as a seed population. These initial subjects, culled from extant genetic material and gestated to between 1 week and 6 months after birth, were largely (90%) brought to term in Hanto exowombs on Luna and Mars and then transferred to multiple locations around the system for further development.

It appears that Hanto’s imagination was limited primarily to rapid growth and ego development, with enhancement or improvement secondary. However, there is evidence that at least one of the partners may have engaged in secret modifications of their subjects outside of the study’s parameters.

Following the exposure of Project Futura in 3 AF and the subsequent media firestorm across the mesh, the organizations were forced to disavow and destroy their research on what can only be termed pathetic moral grounds. It is the opinion of this researcher that both Hanto and Cognite would have been happy to continue their research had they not been exposed, although they did more than the minimum of due diligence when destroying their notes. It is my conclusion that those connected with the research did not want to be discovered, for reasons that will become obvious.

The subjects were sleeved into fast-growing futura-model biomorph bodies and exposed to a simulspace environment designed to accelerate learning and cognitive development. Little hard information can be found about these training regimens, but extensive references are made to nimble (and oftentimes haphazard) simulspace updates as the program continued. Originally designed to cram 18 years of cognitive development into 3 years of time, Futura barely made it past the 2nd year mark before some of the scientists on the project (Drs. Bharani and Shepphard specifically) advocated for its termination.

By this point, a full 43.87% of Futura subjects had engaged in at least one act of premeditated murder, and the number exhibiting full sociopathic tendencies had exceeded that percentage. The parenting and training protocols, developed and implemented quickly to deal with these challenges, proved only to teach the subjects to lie and suppress overt displays of cruelty and violence. Cognite data, never made public even at the height of the scandal, links hundreds of events classified as accidents to actions taken by Futura subjects.

The incident at the Legacy station that ultimately resulted in the exposure of Futura caused thousands of deaths due to environmental systems failure. What followed is a matter of public record: the remaining subjects were released into the general population, their infection with the Watts-MacLeod strain of the exurgent virus was revealed, and the cleanup began. This is where the trail grows cold. Cognite and Hanto washed their hands of the entire thing. The remaining subjects were either recaptured and placed in cold storage, euthanized, given sanctuary with sympathetic authorities, or publicly submitted themselves to therapy and psychosurgery. However, a fair portion of subjects — at least two hundred by some rough detective work, if not more — managed to evade tracking and simply disappeared into the system’s backwaters.

The conditioning regimen that created the Lost is impossible to replicate completely due to its iterative nature, but with the attached notes and recovered Futura simulspace programs, I have full confidence our scientists will not simply recreate Futura, but improve upon it. The combination of Futura training, Ultimate educational programs, and ALET has the potential to create a military force that can tip the balance of power in our favor. We’ve already lined up several thousand embryos as our initial test subjects.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the subjects' exposure to the exurgent virus is not explained once in any of the data we recovered. Take from that what you will.

[END CODED TRANSMISSION]