Never Let Me Go + 13 Sentinels
Jan. 27th, 2023 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling13 Sentinels: Nanomachines sure can fuck a bitch up. Discuss.
Me: Don’t mind if I do.
I tend to prefer magic over technology; but, if you think about it, nanomachines are basically magic. If you wanted to write a fantasy story in a contemporary urban setting without resorting to the “secret underground society in which magic exists” cliché, nanomachines can be convenient.
So let’s say, as in 13 Sentinels, you use nanomachines as a means for humans to interface with futuristic technology.
(I know this is not what’s actually happening in 13 Sentinels, but let’s pretend. And actually, this is where I’m going to take several giant steps away from 13 Sentinels while getting a few steps closer to Never Let Me Go.)
Most people are not going to want nanomachines inside their bodies, so let’s say that society decrees that implanting nanomachines in humans is illegal. Like, super illegal, to the extent that anyone found to be “infected” with nanomachines is imprisoned and presumably killed. What you would therefore need to do is create a category of people who are not technically “human” in the traditional sense.
Now that Pandora’s Box has been opened, the government allows an Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ to create clones. These clones are all derived from the same person, a convicted criminal who is lobotomized and then harvested for genetic material. It takes years of experimentation to figure out how to get the nanomachines to “take” in the clones, and the mindless bodies of the failed experiments are preserved (let’s say in big sci-fi neon-green liquid floaty tubes, because why not) so that the researchers can observe and even manipulate the long-term effects of the nanomachines on the bodies as they mature.
Essentially, you have a situation in which scientists are creating test-tube monsters. Just like, absolute chimeras of genetic manipulation body horror.
The problem is that these clones still start out as basically human children. Once it’s leaked to the press that the Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ is not only creating clones but also doing horrible nanomachine crimes to children, they’re forced to shut down the operation. But the facility is still maintained, as are the bodies of the clones, because Science… and also paperwork, bureaucracy, human error, human greed, etc etc etc.
Since I only have one brain cell, you can probably guess where this story is going. Here it goes:
Cloning technology is not perfect, so there are slight variations between the clones. One of the clones is defective and doesn’t seem to respond to the nanomachines at all. For this reason, he’s not “mindless” like the others, nor is his body overtly monstrous.
Before the research facility was shut down, the daughter of one of the scientists managed to sneak in. Because she was way too young to understand what was going on – maybe five or six years old? – she becomes friends with the defect clone, who is around her age.
This girl’s mother was one of the head scientists on the project. She knew her daughter was sneaking in, but she was curious about how the clone would respond to human socialization. The friendship she sees form between her daughter and the clone compels her to become the whistleblower on the project. Knowing that she would be killed for leaking the corporation’s secrets, the mother’s last act was to engineer a set of circumstances that would allow her daughter to help the clone escape before the facility was shut down.
The mother is in fact killed. The girl’s father, who had divorced her mother years ago, is a politician who needs to maintain a clean image in order to maintain his power. He accepts custody of his daughter, but he gaslights her into forgetting everything about her mother and the nanotechnology research facility.
This is all backdrop to the actual story, which begins twenty years later.
After the cloning scandal faded from public consciousness, society gradually began to accept the beneficial potential of nanotechnology, especially in terms of its medical viability for treating chronic illnesses like cancer and immune system disorders. Cloning is still taboo, but stem cell organ growth is more or less taken for granted, which allows ethical experimentation with nanomachines.
Not knowing that she’s following in the footsteps of her mother, the girl is now working at a medical research firm specializing in nanotechnology. In fact, it’s the same Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ operating under a different name, and obviously they have some ghosts in the cellar. The girl – now a young woman, of course – doesn’t know this, but she’s smart enough to suspect that something weird is going on.
Meanwhile, the escaped clone spent some time on the street before being picked up by the police and sent to a shelter. He was assigned to several foster families; but, being severely traumatized and having zero socialization, he kept freaking out and running away. Once he’s old enough to pass as college-age, he manages to forge documents and get himself into a top university, an opportunity he uses to gain enough credibility to con his way into several prestigious internships before getting a legit business degree and being hired into an investment firm.
He doesn’t know who he is or where he came from, but he remembers living on the street as a young child. He’s therefore obsessed with making money. Being something of a sociopath, he is very good at it. Whatever evil Wall Street shenanigans you can imagine, he’s done it and enjoyed the ride.
The clone’s investment firm supplies research funds to Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ 2.0, and he crosses paths with the scientist’s daughter during an annual project evaluation tour. Both of them are absolute virgins by virtue of the combination of trauma and obsession, but they feel a connection to one another from the moment they meet.
Their initial relationship is deeply unhealthy, as he is very scary and she is very intense, but I am writing this story and I do what I want, so of course they fall in love. And lo and behold, their kindness and affection for one another makes them better people.
This is all well and good, but they discover the research firm’s hidden underground clone lab just as they’re beginning to recover their early childhood memories. It turns out that the reject clone still has all of his nanomachines, and that they were perfectly functional this entire time. When he discovers who he is, he absolutely flips his shit. As he loses his mind, his body transforms as well, and now he commands a small army of monstrous clones that are linked to various military technology through their nanomachines.
He goes after everyone involved in the original research project, terrorizing the city in the process. We’re talking lots of destruction and mayhem, the more catastrophic the better. Any attempt to stop the monster clones only results in more explosions, as they can all interface with current military technology. The reject clone’s final target is the young researcher’s politician father, who was behind everything all along – and killed his daughter’s whistleblower mother with his own hands.
The researcher figures out that her monster boyfriend’s ultimate target is going to be her father, so she manages to make her way through the burning city to find him just in time. She convinces him to calm down and stop murdering people, and then she kills her father herself.
Once again, she helps the reject clone escape, and then she meets the military forces tracking and killing the other clones. She convinces them that this mess was her father’s doing, and she’s able to furnish enough proof to be convincing.
After the long interrogation is finally over, she returns home to find her monster boyfriend waiting for her. He’s still out of his mind, but they cry and talk about their feelings, which makes everything better. He manages to return his body to human form… but only after they have kinky monster sex, of course.
The story ends with a “five years later” epilogue that will be my excuse to stand on a soapbox and preach about how we as a society really need to get past our nonsensical pseudo-Christian bioethics and expand our understanding of what “human” rights are, as well as what categories of people are “allowed” to enjoy the privilege of being “fully” human. It turns out that I have some thoughts about disability, neurodiversity, and chronic illness, and stories like this are how I express them, apparently.
That’s not the plot of my Zelgan Breath of the Wild Modern AU story Malice – not by a long shot – but I think this is roughly how I would take the themes of Malice and apply them to an original novel.
It’s a fun story, right? It’s not like I already have two half-finished original novels demanding my attention or anything lmao.
Me: Don’t mind if I do.
I tend to prefer magic over technology; but, if you think about it, nanomachines are basically magic. If you wanted to write a fantasy story in a contemporary urban setting without resorting to the “secret underground society in which magic exists” cliché, nanomachines can be convenient.
So let’s say, as in 13 Sentinels, you use nanomachines as a means for humans to interface with futuristic technology.
(I know this is not what’s actually happening in 13 Sentinels, but let’s pretend. And actually, this is where I’m going to take several giant steps away from 13 Sentinels while getting a few steps closer to Never Let Me Go.)
Most people are not going to want nanomachines inside their bodies, so let’s say that society decrees that implanting nanomachines in humans is illegal. Like, super illegal, to the extent that anyone found to be “infected” with nanomachines is imprisoned and presumably killed. What you would therefore need to do is create a category of people who are not technically “human” in the traditional sense.
Now that Pandora’s Box has been opened, the government allows an Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ to create clones. These clones are all derived from the same person, a convicted criminal who is lobotomized and then harvested for genetic material. It takes years of experimentation to figure out how to get the nanomachines to “take” in the clones, and the mindless bodies of the failed experiments are preserved (let’s say in big sci-fi neon-green liquid floaty tubes, because why not) so that the researchers can observe and even manipulate the long-term effects of the nanomachines on the bodies as they mature.
Essentially, you have a situation in which scientists are creating test-tube monsters. Just like, absolute chimeras of genetic manipulation body horror.
The problem is that these clones still start out as basically human children. Once it’s leaked to the press that the Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ is not only creating clones but also doing horrible nanomachine crimes to children, they’re forced to shut down the operation. But the facility is still maintained, as are the bodies of the clones, because Science… and also paperwork, bureaucracy, human error, human greed, etc etc etc.
Since I only have one brain cell, you can probably guess where this story is going. Here it goes:
Cloning technology is not perfect, so there are slight variations between the clones. One of the clones is defective and doesn’t seem to respond to the nanomachines at all. For this reason, he’s not “mindless” like the others, nor is his body overtly monstrous.
Before the research facility was shut down, the daughter of one of the scientists managed to sneak in. Because she was way too young to understand what was going on – maybe five or six years old? – she becomes friends with the defect clone, who is around her age.
This girl’s mother was one of the head scientists on the project. She knew her daughter was sneaking in, but she was curious about how the clone would respond to human socialization. The friendship she sees form between her daughter and the clone compels her to become the whistleblower on the project. Knowing that she would be killed for leaking the corporation’s secrets, the mother’s last act was to engineer a set of circumstances that would allow her daughter to help the clone escape before the facility was shut down.
The mother is in fact killed. The girl’s father, who had divorced her mother years ago, is a politician who needs to maintain a clean image in order to maintain his power. He accepts custody of his daughter, but he gaslights her into forgetting everything about her mother and the nanotechnology research facility.
This is all backdrop to the actual story, which begins twenty years later.
After the cloning scandal faded from public consciousness, society gradually began to accept the beneficial potential of nanotechnology, especially in terms of its medical viability for treating chronic illnesses like cancer and immune system disorders. Cloning is still taboo, but stem cell organ growth is more or less taken for granted, which allows ethical experimentation with nanomachines.
Not knowing that she’s following in the footsteps of her mother, the girl is now working at a medical research firm specializing in nanotechnology. In fact, it’s the same Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ operating under a different name, and obviously they have some ghosts in the cellar. The girl – now a young woman, of course – doesn’t know this, but she’s smart enough to suspect that something weird is going on.
Meanwhile, the escaped clone spent some time on the street before being picked up by the police and sent to a shelter. He was assigned to several foster families; but, being severely traumatized and having zero socialization, he kept freaking out and running away. Once he’s old enough to pass as college-age, he manages to forge documents and get himself into a top university, an opportunity he uses to gain enough credibility to con his way into several prestigious internships before getting a legit business degree and being hired into an investment firm.
He doesn’t know who he is or where he came from, but he remembers living on the street as a young child. He’s therefore obsessed with making money. Being something of a sociopath, he is very good at it. Whatever evil Wall Street shenanigans you can imagine, he’s done it and enjoyed the ride.
The clone’s investment firm supplies research funds to Evil Military Contractor Corporation™ 2.0, and he crosses paths with the scientist’s daughter during an annual project evaluation tour. Both of them are absolute virgins by virtue of the combination of trauma and obsession, but they feel a connection to one another from the moment they meet.
Their initial relationship is deeply unhealthy, as he is very scary and she is very intense, but I am writing this story and I do what I want, so of course they fall in love. And lo and behold, their kindness and affection for one another makes them better people.
This is all well and good, but they discover the research firm’s hidden underground clone lab just as they’re beginning to recover their early childhood memories. It turns out that the reject clone still has all of his nanomachines, and that they were perfectly functional this entire time. When he discovers who he is, he absolutely flips his shit. As he loses his mind, his body transforms as well, and now he commands a small army of monstrous clones that are linked to various military technology through their nanomachines.
He goes after everyone involved in the original research project, terrorizing the city in the process. We’re talking lots of destruction and mayhem, the more catastrophic the better. Any attempt to stop the monster clones only results in more explosions, as they can all interface with current military technology. The reject clone’s final target is the young researcher’s politician father, who was behind everything all along – and killed his daughter’s whistleblower mother with his own hands.
The researcher figures out that her monster boyfriend’s ultimate target is going to be her father, so she manages to make her way through the burning city to find him just in time. She convinces him to calm down and stop murdering people, and then she kills her father herself.
Once again, she helps the reject clone escape, and then she meets the military forces tracking and killing the other clones. She convinces them that this mess was her father’s doing, and she’s able to furnish enough proof to be convincing.
After the long interrogation is finally over, she returns home to find her monster boyfriend waiting for her. He’s still out of his mind, but they cry and talk about their feelings, which makes everything better. He manages to return his body to human form… but only after they have kinky monster sex, of course.
The story ends with a “five years later” epilogue that will be my excuse to stand on a soapbox and preach about how we as a society really need to get past our nonsensical pseudo-Christian bioethics and expand our understanding of what “human” rights are, as well as what categories of people are “allowed” to enjoy the privilege of being “fully” human. It turns out that I have some thoughts about disability, neurodiversity, and chronic illness, and stories like this are how I express them, apparently.
That’s not the plot of my Zelgan Breath of the Wild Modern AU story Malice – not by a long shot – but I think this is roughly how I would take the themes of Malice and apply them to an original novel.
It’s a fun story, right? It’s not like I already have two half-finished original novels demanding my attention or anything lmao.
