| From: | shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Project Manchu |
| Date: | Wed, 27 Mar 1996 04:01:27 GMT |
now.
Okay, since this idea keeps growing in my head every time I look at it, and
I've already described the beginnings of the notion to Brian and Mark, I
> decided to invite comments from anyone interested.
I started out by just having Lynch take some individual action against Gutsys'
suppliers of his tortureware chips, for no other reason than that he found
them extremely offensive (and Gutsys even more so). However, I started to
wonder about those chips: after all, torture is an extremely inefficient way
of extracting information (you get lots and lots of it, most of it false,
confused, or what the victim thinks his interrogators want to hear) and
mechanising the process with those chips just takes away the sadistic
delight of doing it yourself. Useful at street level for punishment and
interrogation, but not something a corporation would gain by funding.
So, why do they exist? Their overt purpose doesn't justify the cost of
developing and funding them. Therefore, I wondered whether to make up a
covert reason. An extremely obvious one is as a behavioural modification tool:
a way to condition people. After all, direct neural input of extremely high-
level sensation, using imagery calculated to distress and disturb... A very
useful way to program the subject.
The tortureware is a quick and dirty way to test the theory: although the
typical recipients may be hard to monitor, many people who have had such
a chip used on them will get a compulsion to make a telephone call to a
certain number on a certain day. Whether anyone gets that far should indicate
how well the technology works in the field (lab tests say it should do fine
with a success rate of over 80%). Their responses to the person on the other
end will also indicate how effective the conditioning was.
This is Phase 3 of "Project Manchu". Phase 1 was basic development,
Phase 2 was laboratory testing. Phase 4 will be converting the technology to
work within "entertainment" BTLs, which has been shown to be feasable but
diffficult, and field-testing those.
If Phase 4 succeeds, then these chips represent an extremely potent means to
coerce and persuade key individuals, and to influence large numbers of more
ordinary people. The effect, for instance, of many of North America's BTL-
users (perhaps even just simsense users if Phase 4 is successful enough,
enthuse the scientists working on the project) being near-subliminally
conditioned to believe "Aztechnology makes the best products. I only want to
buy from my Aztlan friends."
Quite apart from the effect of being able to (non-magically) implant
suggestions into civil servants, police officers, politicians, anyone who
can be reached with the appropriate BTL: this is an intelligence matter far
more than a technical one (finding the targets who may be approachable is
the very hard part).
Naturally, this won't come to fruition :) It's early enough at the moment that
if the response here is mostly negative, then technical flaws can kill the
plan off before it goes much further. Or, if there's interest, it can grow,
succeed, and have to be hunted out and destroyed by the heroic shadowrunners
here on the list.
Offhand, two people who might notice something are Niner (who IIRC got zapped
hard with one of these), whose friends may be puzzled by his insistence on
making a phone call to a location in Denver, talking nonsense to a stranger,
then having no clear idea why he did all that: and Goku, who may examine the
oblivion chip he booby-trapped his deck with and pick up some odd
subroutines.
The floor is open.
--
Paul J. Adam
