What are the symptoms of a degrading cyborg?

I know this has been covered in canon re Angelica, but I thought get some discussion going here on the fine details, which would be useful if writing a story that takes place in the twilight of a cyborg's life, when a handler might have to make a choice between continuing to take his cyborg for repair or killing her to spare her (and himself) pain and degradation.

The memory suppression seems to start to fail: Angelica, Henrietta and Petrushka all experienced past memories that had been repressed by the Medical Branch.

I would add some degree of clumsiness as Angelica was never the most sure footed and at least it seems to be infired to be because of the downhill trend.

Kiskaloo wrote:The memory suppression seems to start to fail: Angelica, Henrietta and Petrushka all experienced past memories that had been repressed by the Medical Branch.

Not only that, but their memories of their cyborg life seem to wane as well... short and long term.

Early symptoms for Henrietta seemed to include loss of taste (I'm assuming an un-augmented sense)... though that could well have been a side effect of the early conditioning process as well.

Alfisti wrote:

Kiskaloo wrote:The memory suppression seems to start to fail: Angelica, Henrietta and Petrushka all experienced past memories that had been repressed by the Medical Branch.

Not only that, but their memories of their cyborg life seem to wane as well... short and long term.

Indeed. Triela and Henrietta both started forgetting events post-conversion.

Higher addiction to the conditioning medication, needing it more.

There's must be several spin-offs writing about a cyborg's gradual mental break down.
Here's one: Picture a handler caught by another fratello instructing his mechanical child how to simulate the forgetfulness that's expected of the girl after a certain period of time, including setting aside the placebo pills she is to take in full view of the adults in order to buy them time for an eventual escape attempt.

It is said that part of the reason why there is a conditioning medication is because it makes their cybernetics run better. So... this would mean failure in the Brain/cybernetics connections...

Ewww... what a way to go!

We don't have much more than Angelica's end to go on, but I think that the conditioning process's chokehold on the girls' emotions breaks down as well. Before the truck-bomb blast, the other girls noticed she was happier; Marco noticed that she was 'chattier than usual', enough so that he considered consulting the doctors. And that panel in the manga that shows sweet little Angelica throwing off her sickbed covers in a rage and shouting, "I'll kill them!" still makes the hair on my forearms rise.

tremec6speed wrote:There's must be several spin-offs writing about a cyborg's gradual mental break down. Here's one: Picture a handler caught by another fratello instructing his mechanical child how to simulate the forgetfulness that's expected of the girl after a certain period of time, including setting aside the placebo pills she is to take in full view of the adults in order to buy them time for an eventual escape attempt.

Something for your next chapter of 'Great Escape", eh?

ElfenMagix wrote:It is said that part of the reason why there is a conditioning medication is because it makes their cybernetics run better. So... this would mean failure in the Brain/cybernetics connections...

Ewww... what a way to go!

Too expand upon this for other readers, there IS a real problem relating to drugs standing in the way of cybernetic augmentations in real life.

Advanced cybernetics, especially prostheses that behave like the real things, would likely need a brain-computer interface to work like you would imagine, control by thought. Implanted BCI in the brain should work well, but here comes the problem. A tissue known as "glial tissue" will build up around the implant, reducing efficiency and eventually causing rejection. Anti-rejection medicine can be made for this, but they would have a rather addicting effect.

So, what I see here is this scenario - the girls are taking a medicine that is not just "conditioning", but actually an anti-rejection drug, with conditioning rolled in. So, they have to keep taking the combined anti-rejection/conditioning drug, and consequently become more and more addicted, and perhaps eventually leading to some sort of degradation.

In the case that they DON'T take the drug, their BCI and cybernetics will rejected by their bodies, and can cause enough damage to kill them anyway.

Not pleasant, indeed.

ElfenMagix wrote:It is said that part of the reason why there is a conditioning medication is because it makes their cybernetics run better. So... this would mean failure in the Brain/cybernetics connections...

Oddly enough my next chapter has J+M getting a talking to from Bianchi for letting Monty's conditioning lapse in South America... with the reasoning essentially down these lines.

Laser, that's the way I always thought of the conditioning drugs' effects as well: interface and anti-rejection drugs with an addictive component and other side effects, including crushing their emotional affect and making them more suggestible - very useful to people who want to turn them into conscienceless little killers.

But crushing the emotional response would be conter-active to the SWA's stated overall goal, which is to produce Products for the Consumer. Losing my arm is bad enough, I don't want to be an emotionless robot as well.

El Conservatore wrote:But crushing the emotional response would be conter-active to the SWA's stated overall goal, which is to produce Products for the Consumer. Losing my arm is bad enough, I don't want to be an emotionless robot as well.

Different applications.

Angelica had advanced prosthetics, but since her purpose was to be a kid combat operative, she had emotional and behavioral controls in place to make her more effective in that role.

Angelica's second cousin has an advanced prosthetic, but also clearly has no emotional or behavioral control because he's just a kid.

I guess? I assumed from the discussion that the control-meds and the cybernetics-meds were woven together, where one couldn't work without the other.

El Conservatore wrote:I guess? I assumed from the discussion that the control-meds and the cybernetics-meds were woven together, where one couldn't work without the other.

Good point. If, as I believe, the drugs make a person more suggestible, perhaps their 'conditioning' is limited to an emotional acceptance of their prosthetics and gratitude to the Agency rather than the cyborgs' sociopatic emotional disconnect coupled with blind loyalty to their makers.

However, that would imply that Henrietta is Naturally Disposed to Crushing On Older Men.


Is this a line we should be crossing?

El Conservatore wrote:However, that would imply that Henrietta is Naturally Disposed to Crushing On Older Men.

Not at all, EC. The cyborgs are conditioned to imprint on whatever person is presented to them as an authority figure - a 'handler'. Henrietta simply doesn't know any other way to deal with her compulsion to make Jose the center of her universe.

Slightly off-subject: it's never been explained why (in canon, that is) the Agency exclusively chooses young girls to convert. I offer one: perhaps the SWA, experimenting with untested brainwashing techniques, did so to to maximize its chances of success. There are studies that show that young girls in a gender-exclusive environment learn better and are more obedient to authority than are boys. Later, as the conditioning techniques were refined, the doctors would feel confident enough to use older females (and perhaps boys), and to reduce the dosages of life-shortening chemicals in their bloodstreams - the 2nd generation.

El Conservatore wrote:I guess? I assumed from the discussion that the control-meds and the cybernetics-meds were woven together, where one couldn't work without the other.

The problem is that 'conditioning' is used in canon as a catch-all for the drugs, the hypnotic suggestion, and even for the everyday training the cyborgs receive ("Jean scolded me during conditioning today"). All three are supposed to work in conjunction, but that's why the girls are so different in personality. The handlers accept different levels of drug dosage for their cyborgs - light for Henrietta and Triela (as Jose and Hilshire hate the whole idea), strong for Elsa and Rico (as Lauro and Jean want unquestioning killers). The hypnotic repression appears to be successful with Triela but unsuccessful with Henrietta (who is influenced subconsciously by her earlier trauma) and Elsa (whose strong conditioning was overwhelmed by her obsession). Last of all is the amount of bonding each handler has with his cyborg...

Thescarredman wrote:

El Conservatore wrote:However, that would imply that Henrietta is Naturally Disposed to Crushing On Older Men.

Not at all, EC. The cyborgs are conditioned to imprint on whatever person is presented to them as an authority figure - a 'handler'. Henrietta simply doesn't know any other way to deal with her compulsion to make Jose the center of her universe.

...which works in conjunction with the first two factors.

Henrietta has minimal conditioning, but is showered with affection by Jose. Result: potentially unstable due to traumatic memories which are only lightly suppressed, and heavily dependent on constant displays of affection from her handler.

Elsa has heavy conditioning, and is treated with indifference by Lauro. Result: Potentially unstable due to obsession with her handler. Like Henrietta, Elsa interprets the urge to obey as 'love'. Unlike Jose, Lauro doesn't even bother with a pretense of affection.

Triela has minimal conditioning coupled with a handler who keeps his distance emotionally and training-wise. This makes her independent, yet resentful, as she feels the same urge to obey him, yet has no clear idea what she's supposed to do to satisfy that urge (does Hilshire want her to be a kid sister like Henrietta, an emotionless killer like Elsa, or a daughter/soldier like Claes is with Raballo?)

Petra's conditioning (and presumably this is the case with all 2nd Generation cyborgs) appears to work on a simple Pavlovian response level. She has the urge to obey, while disobedience causes her to become physically ill.

Anyway, getting back on topic, any one of the above-mentioned areas could fail over time.

1. Breakdown in cyborg/handler bonding, eg. due to violation of trust, or conflict with implanted loyalties (e.g. to the Agency), or just the handler showing himself to be flawed as opposed to a previous image the cyborg has built up of him.

2. Failure of cyborg implants. The implants are designed to be easily replaced, so this is unlikely unless the Agency experienced a funding cutback, forcing them to reuse prosthetics past their recommended replacement date.

3. Failure (or lowered effectiveness) of immune suppression drugs, causing the cyborg to reject current or replacement implants.

4. Failure of memory blocks causing the cyborg to remember incidents from her past life. As seen with Angelica and Henrietta, this is confusing and even dangerous if the memories are traumatic.

5. Failure of conditioned loyalties.

6. Failure of programmed cognitive dissonance - fear suppression, moral detachment, pain inhibition.

7. Failure of organic parts of the body due to repeated physical trauma and long-term use of conditioning drugs. The brain is a particular case, but any organic part which interacts with a cybernetic part could apply.

Very nice analysis, Odon. You've been thinking about this awhile.

Alfisti wrote:

ElfenMagix wrote:It is said that part of the reason why there is a conditioning medication is because it makes their cybernetics run better. So... this would mean failure in the Brain/cybernetics connections...

Oddly enough my next chapter has J+M getting a talking to from Bianchi for letting Monty's conditioning lapse in South America... with the reasoning essentially down these lines.

POST IT! POST IT ALREADY!!!

ElfenMagix wrote:

Alfisti wrote:Oddly enough my next chapter has J+M getting a talking to from Bianchi for letting Monty's conditioning lapse in South America... with the reasoning essentially down these lines.

POST IT! POST IT ALREADY!!!

I'd love to, but at the moment I'm only about 10k words in and I've a nasty feeling this is going to be another one of those cases where I write two chapters at once then go back to figure out where the neat place to split them is.

Alfisti wrote:

ElfenMagix wrote:

Alfisti wrote:Oddly enough my next chapter has J+M getting a talking to from Bianchi for letting Monty's conditioning lapse in South America... with the reasoning essentially down these lines.

POST IT! POST IT ALREADY!!!

I'd love to, but at the moment I'm only about 10k words in and I've a nasty feeling this is going to be another one of those cases where I write two chapters at once then go back to figure out where the neat place to split them is.

Been There!