Challenge #00464 - A089: The Trouble With ELFs
It sounds like Uplifts have a bit of a stigma attached to them- their origins were illegal, so they themselves are considered sort of dodgy. Some further exploration of that, please? After this long, they can’t be the only people to have experienced origins/modification for the use of others and had to fight their way up to ‘people’ status afterwards (super-soldier attempts, etc). Perhaps there’s a ‘Lab-breds of the Galaxy Unite!’ sort of club for mutual support.
From the Wikipedia Galactica: ELF/E.L.F.: Engineered Life Form. A creature or being engineered to specifications and produced as merchandise. Examples include Skitties™, Cleaners, and antiseptic phage virii. Some cogniscent entities are also ELFs, such as the Faiize, Uplifts, and numerous attempts at the Enlisted Man.
Uplift: A domesticated animal uplifted to the level of cognisance, usually by means of genetic engineering. Uplifting, the practice of making an Uplift, is illegal in the Galactic Alliance. Uplifted beings, the products of uplifting, are not.
Shayde watched Rael land on his seat at the bar of Unsuitable Food and order a deep-fried platter -beignet style- with a side of chocolate sauce.
“Bad day at the office?” she guessed.
“Literally,” he grumped. “I made the mistake of offering my services to the Cogniscent Rights Committee.”
She winced. “Eeee. Ge’ him a hot chocolate on me. All th’ trimmins.”
“Four Hours. Four hours in a booth, sorting paperwork. There’s an entire planet where five sixths of the population are Uplifts. An entire world of Uplifted slaves. Do you know how many of them are called Spot?”
“At an uneducated guess?” Shayde propped herself up on the counter in the manner of all cogniscents prepared to be there a long time. “A full metric fookton.”
“HA! Twice that and then some.”
“Extra marshmallows,” said Shayde to the Gyiik serving at the bar.
“Thanks.” He sighed. “And there was a two-hour conference about what to do in the case of duplicate names. Not a lot of those poor animals can handle change…” a soft sound into his hands that was almost a sob. “…we had to use numbers. Numbers! They’ll never escape being things and I had a hand in it…”
“D'ye need a hug?”
“…‘nkoo…”
She wrapped her arms around him and soothed his simulated hair. “There na… I dinnae think any of 'em would blame ye. Desperate times and all…”
“Some of them were designed… to have just enough intelligence to read directions and take orders…” A definite sob. “I don’t think I could look any of them in the eye…”
The Galactic Alliance doesn’t hate Uplifts. It hates what it has to do because Uplifts exist.
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