sexycontainmentprocedures:

sexycontainmentprocedures:

In my Broken Masquerade tales, I wrote that some Foundation agents permanently wear a tiny cylindrical comms device which is attached to the ear via a tragus piercing. The response (both from other authors IRL and other characters in the tales) was that that’s creepy as fuck because it means the Foundation is always able to listen in on you and be aware of your location. The reason some personnel are okay with it is that, to them, it’s comforting rather than creepy to know they’re always there.

So all that got me thinking. The Foundation’s not gonna stop with a radio. Why stop at knowing only audio and location once medical tech advances? I had Personnel Identification Implants in the tale “You’re a Toy, Mr. Sanderson”, which are capable of storing memories and objective facts of identity (age, gender, etc.) but are not implied to transmit anything. But WHAT IF. What if a few years after that tech’s been out, the new thing is – and this is expensive, so you’re only going to do it on personnel who are super comfortable with it and have enough of an offsite schedule to warrant it being necessary – a nanoscopic web of brain implants, from the tip of the spinal cord to the frontal lobe, all wired to the comms device and transmitting information live. Feeling depressed? The Foundation noticed; your implants are showing dopamine levels at 45% of your brain’s usual. You claim you don’t care which of two missions you get assigned to? The statistics of your brain chemistry are on a live feed on your dispatcher’s monitor as you get briefed and they can tell which one you’d prefer.

How long until the Foundation is unhappy with your capacity for emotional regulation and decides you’d perform better after behavioral reconditioning? How long until the tech develops past passive observation and starts to allow for your superiors to flip a switch and electrically stimulate whatever part of your brain they fancy? How long until they just replace your job position with robots, or make you so thoroughly compliant that there’s no noticeable difference? How long until all of that? 2030? 2035? I don’t know but this is making me want to write it

Keep in mind that they can’t read your thoughts in a language as if you’re speaking. That’s the kind of sci-fi that’s a little too fringe for my preferred level of scientific reasonability in fiction. They see biochemical balances and electrical impulses only. But those communicate plenty. It’s probably Worse™ to gather a picture of someone’s raw emotion than it is to interpret a coherent thought

I’m back to give some definitive answers on this for an Undisclosed Writing Project. 

• first one developed in 2035
  
• wide-scale use in employees by 2040
• engineered with the inclusion of components from Foundation-modified Schulman-NY devices, and capable of running ED-K+ scripts (a coding language for thought and intention; basically, with these devices, you can install a behavior pattern in a person; for more details read Team Fuhgeddaboutit’s stuff, particularly Paperpushing)