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| This really tells you all you need to know about Bughunters. |
Humanity rushed towards the singularity with open arms. As humans grew increasingly cybernetically close and connected to each other, the medium of that closeness became ever-invasive. Gadgets became increasingly portable, and finally made the leap into ultimate portability by merging with the human body itself. The human species skirted the edge of becoming a true hivemind.
For the first time, some of humanity's worst traits, greed and self-centeredness, served it well. The pushback began slowly, as an increasing number began to realize that sacrificing their individuality to become a mote in a vast intelligence was too high a price to pay for convenience. By that time, though, hacking of implanted technology had reached epidemic proportions, though it had gone largely undetected. Governments, corporations, and a disheartening number of malicious individuals had exploited security breaches in the software and hardware implanted in a large portion of the world population. They subtly maneuvered via these breaches, nudging their victims further into a pliable mass of thralls willingly ceding their freedom and possessions to the "greater whole." The revolution started in one of the boltholes of the great electronic net that engulfed the world, in an online community that was a remnant or echo of the message boards of the old internet. Security breaches can work many ways, and suddenly, on a Thursday afternoon, irrefutable proof of a multi-pronged and often infighting conspiracy to enslave the human race was revealed to all, dumped in a stunning cybernetic flash into every implant and device on Earth. By the end of that Thursday, millions were dead, and even more millions left crippled. Governments fell, corporations dissolved, and rebel movements began. The damage was massive, but humanity as a whole was given a chance to take back its individuality.
Armies had been among the early adopters of implanted technology. The chaos of what would eventually be called the Great Log-Off saw militaries thrown into disarray, going rogue, or being seized by hackers. When the dust settled, most of the armies of the world were left as shadows of themselves, with only the most powerful left with any ability to fulfill their one-time mandate to defend their home countries.
An obscure biotech company suddenly shot to prominence. Teetering on bankruptcy when that fateful Thursday began, it found its stock hitting the stratosphere by Friday afternoon. For the better part of a decade it had lobbied defense departments the world over to fund a project that was often derided as unnecessary, and even backwards, in the age of cybernetically-augmented soldiers: fully biological enhanced clones. A project that had been on the verge of shutdown one day was being rushed into field testing the next.
The project was for the development of what was termed Synthetically Derived Proprietary Personnel. Volunteers would be paid to have themselves cloned, and their memories given to the clones. The original person, or Non-Proprietary Personnel, would be able to go on about their lives, with a sizable payment for a few days of discomfort during an admittedly risky procedure. The clones would be automatically enlisted in the military. Everyone rationalized that it wasn't slavery; after all, the original donor willingly and without coercion had donated not just their genetic material, but also their memories and personality to the clone. In essence, the clone was simply an appendage of the original person, an appendage being donated to the military. The clone would know this, of course, and remember the agreement. Most of the individual donors were also military personnel. They were chosen for their loyalty and sense of duty. Regardless, lawyers had already begun choosing sides and biding their time.
From a practical standpoint, the memories and personalities were needed to fill a void. The clones were force-grown to peak physical maturity and enhanced by a battery of chemical and material injections. Bones were reinforced by flexible ceramic, muscles strengthened by enhanced fibrous therapies, skin thickened with genetically-modified dermal coatings, and organs surrounded and cushioned by ballistic bio-gel. But the minds of new-grown clones were empty, not even with the cognitive abilities of a newborn. Legal systems around the world and beyond it would wrangle over the implications in the time to come, but for now these empty brains would be etched with the personalities of the genetic donors.
Initially, the project was a ringing success. The clones were easily, and often eagerly, organized into armies. Unfettered by vulnerable implants and trained extensively in classic military tactics, the clones were tough to corrupt and even tougher to defeat on the field of battle. The renegade cybernetic armies and rogue cyberpunks were met in battle after battle, and rooted out, destroyed, or imprisoned. The new clone armies were hailed as heroes as they returned order and security. They became the darlings of a new, less-invasive media, which had quickly discarded the awkward and vaguely ominous-sounding Synthetically Derived Proprietary Personnel label.
They were now the Synners.
As the world rebuilt and technology receded back to early-21st-century paradigms - with a bit more awareness of how a little separateness was a good thing - the Synners became the backbone of security forces around the world. Years passed, and the world, returning to a peaceful norm, began to look more closely at the Synners. Or, rather, their plight.
A relatively small percentage of Synners had developed psychological problems from the beginning. Depression was the most common malady, as questions about their individuality became a looming existential internal debate. Add to this the growing awareness of the fact that mankind had grown a large number of people who were denied individual rights and treated as property. Eventually, it all came to a head, and massive civil protests eventually overwhelmed any legal maneuvering to cause governments worldwide to declare the Synners as full-status human beings.
It should be noted that peacetime militaries normally need to draw down the numbers of their ranks. So, too, did these armies of the future began to muster out personnel they could no longer afford to keep on payroll, including the Synners. The Synners were offered pensions and the option of homesteading land on the terraformed colonies and artificial living environments now being placed all through the Solar System. These off-world options were unusually generous in their scope: tax-free, and copious in the amount of property granted. It could be forgiven if more than a few Synners began to feel that if they weren't exactly being forced to leave Earth, they weren't being given much incentive to stay.
As the Synners moved off-world in increasing numbers, there was also a certain amount of restlessness among them. Freed from their servitude and with no families and friends of their own - but with families and friends they vividly recalled but were not really connected to - as well as subtly pushed off the home planet, many felt aimless and adrift. Deep down, many, if not the vast majority, found themselves longing for the stability and camaraderie of the military life.
Quiet messages began to find their way into the inboxes of most of the Synners. A new unit was being formed. Top Secret in nature, with even those agreeing to participate not knowing the exact mission, the recruitment targeted the best of an already elite group.
Around this time, the attention of the Solar System was drawn to the interstellar colonial project being readied. The vast generation ships needed security teams, both for shipboard life and for the prospective colonies. Armies weren't going to be needed in these new worlds, but police forces for the odd few miscreants that always crop up were necessary. Many Synners applied for inclusion in these police forces, as well as the ranks of simple colonists. The fact that any and all Synners applying for the interstellar voyage were accepted escaped the notice of everyone. After all, they were just people, like anyone else, according to law. But the slow, subtle diaspora of Synners from the Earth to the hinterlands of the Solar System now clearly was headed even farther out, quietly shoved away by the powers-that-be who were quite aware of the danger of elite super-soldiers given little to do in a world where war was receding into the history books.
But even most of the powers-that-be were unaware of the battalion-sized number of Synners in cryogenic storage that had been loaded into an interdeck space once intended for a maintenance storage area, as well as the oddly military-style equipment storage bins crammed in with them. The idealistic notion of humans dispensing with the need for a military was a good one; many, however, felt that there needed to be some military presence sent along on the voyage, if only to provide training and organization just in case something untoward happened. Those dissenters were shouted down, of course, by a civilian government weary of any hint of war. But the military had participated in the construction of the massive colony vessels, and requested design changes in the great ships usually entailing maximizing storage facilities and extra life support systems. Unlike their counterparts in the crews of the colony ships, the Synners in storage volunteered for a military mission beyond any they'd ever known before, a mission kept in strictest secrecy. When they awaken, not even their brother and sister Synners among the colonists will be permitted to stand in the way of that mission.
Next: Part 4: The Decks of the Warden
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