Lieutenant Fusilier takes The King's Shilling (DRAFT 3)

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I love the donation section, because it would be so different if it had happened earlier. However because Dora has grown and gained confidence she's able to ask the questions that before she wouldn't have.
She learns more about humanity and how she isn't as different from her fellow officers. That yes they also struggle with money.

And then in a very real way this growth is mirrored and applied back to Thea, who even as a longer serving officer doesn't know as much about humanity and so still see them as totally alien.

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Regarding the missing troops, i expect that the flyer and factory runaways plots will join up, and Dora will get the awful experience of fighting humans for real.
 
A great update, I love the interplay of…a genuinely better world and it still having believable cracks that are real issues without it all falling apart.

Poor Fusie when she learned about how shit some parents can be, though :(
 
Yeah, though I'm not sure if the "children in the factories" bit is supposed to be a detail about flaws in the Concert or if its foreshadowing for the evil mirrorverse.
 
I can definitely see someone becoming a runaway street urchin in this setting. While the robot servants have a lot of soft power - they're indispensable for running a household and their masters are usually smart enough to listen to their advice - they don't really have any legal power if the parent decides they want to abuse their child anyway. And a human selling their labor is competing with machines who are stronger and cheaper to feed, so it's plausible that a job which provides a modestly comfortable lifestyle for a machine leaves a human barely scraping by.

But factories in particular is curious - IIRC the Concert doesn't have assembly line factories like we do, it has buildings with lots of Adams and Eves working in parallel. Who in this setting is looking at an orphan child on their doorstep and saying "yes, you look like you can do the work of a big strong Adam"?
 
beleester said:
But factories in particular is curious - IIRC the Concert doesn't have assembly line factories like we do, it has buildings with lots of Adams and Eves working in parallel. Who in this setting is looking at an orphan child on their doorstep and saying "yes, you look like you can do the work of a big strong Adam"?
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I think they don't actually try and make them do the same work - most machines love to help humans and feel generally kindly towards them. I bet most Adams and Eves would try and square the circle and give them the easiest jobs in the factories while hemming and hawing and being like "oh dear what should we do" and getting all frazzled
 
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