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(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

(This article includes ideas, technology, or events which have been declared "Heresy", or not true in the Swarm Cycle's universe.  These concepts cannot be used in a story claiming to be 'canon'.)

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Here are some thoughts about how the Swarm world might develop.

For brevity I present this as a single, clear proposal, for people to use or ignore. I have left out the 'In my opinion' to save space as this text is way too long as it is. My main point is with long-term development. As I see it, this war might take generations.

That means a stable social pattern that uses the whole population. It also means much more focus on industry and the economy. And it means a more organized effort, compared to the desperation of the early days.

This might lose some of the excitement that comes with the current crop of stories which would be a good reason to ignore my ideas. But for what it is worth, here they are.

The Combatants

A summing up of the known facts with some conclusions attached

The Swarm:

Strengths:
A large, cohesive galactic civilization with an established industrial base. Already organized for expansion and mobilizable for war. Individuals are strong, with instantaneous medium-range communication. Ideas should spread rapidly once established.

Weaknesses:
No experience of serious war. Not innovative, though capable of adapting and learning from experience. Consider their potential enemies as vermin of no account. This will change as the vermin strike back, but the Swarm will always be behind the curve.

The confederacy:

Strengths:
Large, slightly heterogenous civilization with superior science and technology. Large industrial base.

Weaknesses:
Totally unable to consider defense, or to work alongside aggressive creatures like humans. Industry and economy in practice unavailable for war. Unable to provide relevant instructions, advice or designs. Distrust humans. Can contribute little beyond non-military imports, knowledge, and administrative help

Humanity:

Strengths:
Ingenious, aggressive and used to major wars.

Weaknesses:
Badly outnumbered. Located on a defenseless planet due to be invaded in nine years. Several centuries behind in science and technology. No familiarity with modern science and technology, industry, weapons design. Not organized in a cohesive society.

Conclusion:

Humanity needs to spread and settle on new and empty planets, catch up with science and technology, grow its population at a giddying rate, build an entire modern industry from scratch, produce arms and armed forces in huge quantities, and fight a total war, all at the same time. The confederacy can provide knowledge, but no instructors.
With the Swarm so far ahead, and getting better over time, humanity could be growing in relative strength for generations so the best time for a decisive effort might be after 60-100 years.

Parallels:

• Meiji Japan took a generation to catch up technologically with open access to science and foreign instructors available.
• Britain in 1939 took several years to build war industries and they knew the technology and had a stable well-provided society that they could live off while they did it. Winston Churchill's memoirs give some idea of the considerations, as it happens.
• The US took how long to fill their continent, a century? And they had continuous immigration, a low-education farming economy, and the old world as a source of imports.
• US wars in the past century are not a good model. The US was always the dominant industrial power, the home country was safe, and even in the world wars the US did not have the losses or the pressure on the population that Germany, the UK, or Russia had.

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General considerations

Shipping:

If the Darjee cannot evacuate a planet, shipping is a bottleneck and likely to remain so. That means it will be exploited to the max. Once things have settled down ships will go at full speed all the way, and have the medical treatment of passengers done at destination (possibly in orbit). Turn-around time must be minimized, so passengers will be gathered via a collection point to save time. Naval warfare will be pushed hard it is a lot better to blow up ships than to fight the Swarm after landing. Ships will need forward supply bases, ideally with planets close by. Soldiers and sailors may be away for years there will be no shipping to send people home just for leave. Planets
must be close to self-sufficient in order to minimize imports.

Weapons:

The most effective strategy might be to develop a planet-buster, deploy it widely, and systematically exterminate the swarm. That would ruin the plot a bit, though. Perhaps a combination of fear that the Swarm might reciprocate, and absolute veto from the AIs would keep planet-busting weapons off the agenda.

Economy:

War means a planned economy, with rationing of goods and shipping space. Industrialization, keeping up morale, increasing the population, and training new generations will all be major strategic considerations.
There will be a desperate shortage of manpower, especially skilled manpower.

Government:

There has to be a human government at some point, likely with some kind of democratic participation. Humanity will insist on input in the decisions (which are leaving billions to die, after all). At a minimum a human government must be able to advise the AIs, look after humanity's interests, and run society to keep the population on board
the AIs cannot be that much better at human psychology than we are. The AIs will probably be unable to do things like weapons design or war planning, and they might well choose to leave certain activities for the humans to do alone, since we could do things that might be necessary but that they themselves could not.

Births:

Available wombs are unlikely to limit population growth (with alien technology every woman could have twins every year). Nor is gene diversity likely to be a problem (sperm banks). The limit is likely to be the manpower needed to bring up the children (see below)

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The last years of earth

Strategy:

The obvious strategy would be to fight for earth in space, then on the ground, relying on the earth as a resource base. I would put maximum effort into space defense, the galactic equivalent of coastal batteries. With the help of surprise we might smash so much of the Swarm fleet that they would need a year of two of reorganizing before they could come back in force. The first thing to do would be to mobilize as many nations as possible, and then spend everything on preparations for war and emigration. Apart from the battle for Earth I would gather strength and information and avoid raids, that would only alert the Swarm for little gain.
As long as the Swarm ignores human spaceships and scouts there is a unique opportunity to survey their inner systems and map their land use, movement patterns, organization and technology. Besides, any new weapon or tactic will eventually be picked up and countered by the enemy. Humanity is too weak and outnumbered to rely on brute force.
The first attacks on undefended targets should aim to cause massive devastation, economic disruption, misdirect the Swarm as to human intentions, and force the Swarm to divert resources into building defenses.

Population psychology:

Space defenses would allow people to hope (falsely) that the earth might be saved after all. That should make it easier to govern. People would grasp eagerly at any indication that their way of life, religion, and culture would continue. One might ship sperm and egg banks that covered almost every fertile human at little cost in shipping space.
Data banks could go as well (all libraries, the entire internet, anything that could be digitized in time, ...). Seed and gene banks might go as well, but that is probably the limit (though we might ship a few Rembrandts and holy relics). For the survival of Earths ecology we would have to hope for gentle behavior from the Swarm, but we might
consider burying any museum pieces that could survive it.

Evacuee selection:

Once Earth was fully mobilized there would be at least some places where people could be collected safely prior to shipping (Jan Mayen, McMurdo sound, Diego Garcia, Cheyenne mountain, ...). The gathering process could start as soon as a ship was signaled, saving time.

The 'warriors and concubines only' policy would likely have to be relaxed. Various specialists would be needed on the new planets, even if their CAP scores were lower. Urgency and lack of feed-back would still make it impossible to plan the colony populations properly, but one would at least try to throw some technicians into the mix.
Returning ships might request particular skills. Both the religious and the happily married would insist on the chance of bringing spouses. And some system of allocating places to regional and national champions would be extremely useful, politically. National, religious, ethnic, and political groups could feel they had a stake in the future, and some sponsors might appreciate the chance to choose fellow Christians/Armenians/Feminists.

Meanwhile the various groups would have an outlet for their energies by playing the system instead of fomenting rebellion. Even criminals could concentrate on whom to bribe. Some of this would have to be real, and farewell videos and positive messages from emigrated champions would be emphasized in the propaganda. Still, even national champions would end up as drones, unless they have the required CAP scores. A good way might be to do collections as always (gives everybody a chance), but bring everybody to a collection point. Every sponsor could ask for one specific person to be brought, and technical specialists, national champions, and discarded wives would be gathered at the collection point. The sponsor would then have a day or two to test and decide while the ship got ready. Getting your spouse used to having three
co-wives (or -husbands) while desperate hopefuls beg for a chance at her slot might actually make a good story. People who tried bribery, blackmail or force should probably be allowed to get as far as the collection point they could then be disarmed, interrogated, and quietly sent to Bear Island for the duration.

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Future society:

Social classes:

Large families with an all-powerful head are a perfect solution. The most efficient way of bringing up lots of children with no kindergartens, nannies, cleaning ladies, take-away dinners, or hairdressers available would be large households with several mothers who could help each other out. The military would have a very high status in a society fighting for survival (compare Israel), the aliens would insist on having high-CAP individuals in charge, the CAP test makes it into a meritocracy, and the form is well established in human history. Once evacuation is finished, you would have to provide slots for everybody, though. Every worker will be needed and will need a place to live, and families will not abandon their children to a life of misery when the evacuation no longer makes it necessary. So the organization will have to change.

Society would not consist of individuals but of households, grouped into clans. People would ask about your house and clan before they asked about your job. A house would look after everybody born into it, as a matter of honor and prestige if nothing else, and politics would be built around clans. Intra-clan justice, including honor killings,
would have to be allowed for. A household would belong to the same clan as the birth house of its head.

The heads of houses can hardly be called 'sponsors' once evacuation is over. I would go for 'lairds', myself. By whatever name they are the knights in shining armor. They hold all the power and wealth that goes with their house. In return they are expected to be honorable and risk their lives for humanity. Within certain limits they would
have total power over their household.

Drones would belong to the house. The laird would decide whom they had sex with, what children they had, what work they did, and could punish them at his pleasure. They could not own property, go to court, leave their household, or live alone. The law would protect them from being killed without reason, and from wanton cruelty and mistreatment on the line of our animal protection laws. Custom would grant them food, clothing, sleep, and rest in return for work and obedience, care in sickness and old age, a place at the hearth, access to (a) sexual partner(s), and two biological children each (possibly by IVF).

The details would be settled in the Sponsoring Contract between the laird and the drone's birthhouse. The contract could put further limits, e.g. on the work drones were to do (in or out of the house), time spent away from home, how they could be treated, number and gender of co-drones, etc. In practice drones would be under the protection
of their birthhouse and clan and it would be up to the birthhouse to enforce their contract.

There would be need of an additional class of person, that we might call a freeman. Specialists that are expensive to train and hard to replace would be too useful to society to be subject to the whim of their laird. They would also need the authority to act on their own in public. Furthermore this would provide a larger group of people with their own stake in the system, co-opting potential rebel leaders and making society more stable. Freemen might be technicians, architects, engineers, teachers, administrators, ... Some might have CAP scores just too low for lairdship, while others might have lower scores but specific talents. They would have the right to own some property, to go to court, to change households, to control their own sex life, and to decide over their working life. They would still be part of a house, and under the discipline of the laird, but indignities and physical punishments would be off limits except as punishment for severe transgressions. Custom would give them a single drone of their own as a sexual partner, but not necessarily the right to move with her. Freemen would have a duty to work in their specialty, and might have some political influence as part of a trade guild.

Numbers:

The fraction of the population that has laird-level CAP scores is not given. Besides one would assume that cutoff points were adjusted centrally to match the number of lairds with the demographics. I am assuming one person in twelve is a laird. In a stable society that means that the average household must have twelve members. This does make the drone allocations a bit larger than at extraction. With three freemen per laird the average household would have a laird, three freemen and eight drones, one each for the freemen and five for the laird. Alternatively one could have four freemen per laird. That would leave roughly the same drone allocations as at extraction, but it would make the laird rather crowded by his freemen. Either way I would assume a roughly 1:1 gender ratio for each social class.

Child rearing would have a very high priority the aliens want high CAP scores, the nation needs a highly educated workforce, and parents need high-status children to strengthen the clan and look after them in their old age. Let us say that mothers have children evenly spaced over a forty year period, and that children live at home till fourteen, starting school at six. That means that there will be minors in the home for 55 years, with a full basket of 0-14 year olds for half that time. A household with two births a year would have 28 children of all ages at the peak. How much manpower would that take? You would need two full-time adults to look after the six 0-3's (3:1 is the
UK standard for childminders). The six 3-6's would need another full-time adult. That leaves cooking, cleaning, mending, and shopping for a 40+ person household, time off for pregnancies, caring and help with homework for sixteen schoolkids plus some high school students. Surely all that will require another two adults. If we assume a class size of sixteen we will also need a full-time primary school teacher. So, raising 80 children to age 14 will take six full-time adults. Using half the total population for child rearing would give 80 children per household. It would require all the female and half the male serfs as 'homemakers', and give a doubling time for the population of around 9 years. This means enough construction to double the number of houses, communication facilities, roads, mines, and public buildings every nine years, besides running the industries, training the youth and fighting the war. Surely such rapid growth would be unsustainable. Using around 30% of the population for childrearing would make more sense. That comes out as three mothers per household, each having a child every 2.5 years (18 over 40 years), and leaves some female serfs free to do other things.

Household organization:

The average household should have three mothers (or two, plus a housekeeper) who bore and brought up all the children. Other women would have few babies or none. The mothers would bear children for everybody (including other women in the family, or egg-bank eggs). Sex would be completely separate from childbearing - IVF would see to that. Genetic parentage would be tested for, and the results made public; this is the only way of avoiding genetically harmful couplings.

A household would be allowed one drone per freeman. The laird would be allowed four (CAP 6), six (CAP 7) etc. To make sure that there was household slots for all (including males and freemen) and mothers for all households (including those with female lairds) the first seven drones in a household would be required to have a 4:3 gender division. Households would be allowed to swop quotas, though. The state (backed by public opinion) would use taxes, tax credits, salaries and the ration system to make sure everybody either worked or cared for children, and that the birthrate matched economic capacity and military needs.

Sponsoring would often be arranged between the parent households. Since households are responsible for their children, drones would often be given away in package deals, and many lairds would sponsor some of their siblings. Households would like backing up their young lairds with siblings, since this connects the new household more strongly to the clan. All this would tend to put siblings together. To counteract this tendency there must be a strong incest taboo. Sex between siblings is perverted. Sex between birth siblings (same birth mother), blood siblings (genetically closer than first cousins), or anybody from the parent generation of your household is dishonorable and disgusting. Bearing your sisters children is OK, but bearing you brother's is not, even by IVF. To avoid nasty gossip, lairds would avoid taking drones that are both siblings and potential sex partners, and brothers and sisters (if heterosexual) would only be allowed in the same household if one of them is safely married.

Marriage is a vow that a group of people (of whatever gender) will remain sexually faithful to each other and have each others' children as far as possible. Anybody can marry, but a marriage contract is binding only on those who sign it and drones cannot go to court anyway. It is a different story if the laird and birthhouse of the spouses
choose to co-sign. By signing they would grant the married people whatever rights were set out in the contract and guarantee to uphold them. Marriages would thus serve to partition off a couple (or group) sexually from the rest of the household. They would be used mainly between freemen and drones.

After all these preliminaries we can look at the organization of a typical household.

Strict monogamy is hard to enforce when households have an odd number of members and the laird has all the power. Only rare households with strong faith (and strong social pressure) would try it. Strict but polygamous marriage would be more common, also among unbelievers: marriages are official and rigid, the laird has several wives (two for CAP 6), and everybody else is monogamous. But most households would go for more flexible arrangements. Of course there is nothing to prevent the entire household from being a sexual free-for-all, but certainly the freemen would like some minimum guarantees in their sponsoring contracts. A male laird (CAP 6) would typically have two female freemen, each with her male drone. The last freeman would be male, often a brother or very close friend, and might serve as a second-in-command. He would speak for the laird when he was away and share with some freedom in the four female drones. The last male drone might be a brother to the laird he could be the lairds close friend, or unmarriageable so that only his clan would take him. He could be placed in various ways, shared among the female freemen, married, or taken care of by the female drones in some way. Of the females, three would be mothers, and the fourth would generally have a job that allowed her to travel with the laird, doing something useful in a ship or military base. Higher level lairds (CAP 7 and up) would tend to take more females.

The households of female lairds would be mirror images of the male ones, except that all the female drones are mothers, and all the male drones are in principle free to travel. Homosexual and bisexual lairds would have a slightly harder time. All-homosexual households would be frowned upon (although not unknown), and it is harder to form a household if you have to avoid siblings. It would be common to have heterosexual freemen in homosexual households, or vice versa.

National Service:

With the whole population available, two years of national service would be an obvious way to go. That gets everybody through basic training, provides a standing and ready militia at all times, lets the military check people out, and at worst provides a large mobile force of unskilled labor in a society where people are not that mobile. To fit with the rest of society it would have to be possible to do military service in two installments and at different ages. I am not the military expert, but one might consider taking another idea from the Israeli Defense Force and have everybody start as privates, get promoted from there to NCOs, then to officers. The armed forces would not be all-laird, except maybe at the sharp end. The rest of the economy would need lairds too, and with a shortage of skilled personnel you would use freemen and drones wherever you could. Drones in the forces would generally belong to lairds in the forces themselves, while freemen might be detached, or still unsponsored.

Childhood:

Childhood would be quite stressful. Adult attention would be scarce, competition fierce, there would be little space for affirming your individuality, and the 'choice' between laird and drone would loom over everybody. Your closest bond would be to your birth mother and birth-siblings. Other relationships would vary, some would have close ties to genetic parents, or to 'random' adults in the family. The laird would generally be a distant and awe-inspiring figure.

Children would be treated equally all though primary school. Then at 12 there would be exams and a preliminary CAP test. The last two years of childhood would be tough. You would struggle to make it to lairdship or freedom, and wonder about your place in the world. Meanwhile your birthhouse would start making plans and deals for getting you sponsored into a household. Underage sex would be shameful, and sex before sponsoring would be at best unwise virgins have an easier time getting married. Unsponsored pregnancies would be deeply dishonorable.

Young Adulthood:

Adulthood would start at 14 with the first real CAP test, but many people's status would not be finally decided till they were 18 or so. Keeping the possibility of promotion or demotion open would make it easier to motivate people. Besides there would be many people close to the cut-offs and no need to make a final choice yet. People would be given a minimum level, with indications about the possibility (if any) of achieving something higher. By the time people are 20 they will have reached their final level, and only disgrace or extraordinary heroism can get that level changed.

Anybody with hope of lairdship would check with the military at 14 about where they could go with their skills. The fighting services would have high prestige and be eagerly sought. Many would be sent back to high school with suggestions about what to study and instructions to join the cadet corps, effectively postponing the decision. High school students often live at home. Some would join a military program straight away and start specific training either part-time or full-time. Basic training and joining the military proper would wait till bodies and minds were more mature lairds stay long in the military anyway. Some people would get their lairdship, or extra level, only if they
did well enough. Some programs would even take people that did not quite make the grade and promise lairdship to the most successful or to the survivors. Full lairdship might come after your first year of national service, but the age where you got your lairdship and the age you were allowed to marry would be used as motivators to direct
youngsters towards particular programs.

People with hope of becoming freemen would also check in with the military but would almost always go back to high school or training. These people tend to be specialists, and can be more useful to the military when they are more educated. Of course those who fail to become lairds generally end up as freemen. All would generally do their national service at 17 or 18. People on the borderline to being drones might insist desperately on seeing themselves as freemen. If they fail they then have to submit with no mental preparation, and it would take a skillful (or brutal) laird to handle them.

Drones would have to concentrate on either getting sponsored or getting a profession. Those with particular talents or strong ideas about what they want would generally train in their profession and postpone national service (and often their sponsoring) till they were further along. Because three out of four female serfs end up as mothers this course would be less common for females unless they had notable talents or really poor parenting skills. Those with no particular ideas would go for national service straight away and aim for a quick sponsoring, as would those eager for sex. Sponsors prefer drones that have finished basic training. They are no good to their laird during basic training anyway, they have been away from home a bit, and they are used to obedience.

The lucky ones who get their lairdship confirmed at fourteen would generally take a single young drone. She would warm his bed and let him practice being laird while still under oversight of family and teachers. High schools and military camps would have room (and jobs) for one drone per laird. Lairds would start making their households
in earnest when they are 18-20. By then they will have higher incomes, as will their freeman and drone age mates. Those with higher CAP scores would often leave a slot or two open for later. The matchmaking of the households mirrors the pattern. Efforts start at twelve, and wise families try to have all their children cared for by the time they turn 19.

The Unsponsored:

Lairds will frequently die, leaving behind their household. If the household is small the members might get responsored. If not, it might continue under one of the freemen, with another laird from the clan acting as guardian with laird rights. At the latest when the last freeman dies a household would be dissolved, and members taken care of by their family, generally their laird children. Those too old or sick to work would get a pension to take with them.

The unsponsored can stay with their birthhouse, though they do not get full salary and rations. Freemen earn enough that they can often get a slot somewhere, provided they pay extra and keep to themselves. It is hard for them to have children, though. There are no mothers available in your birthhouse, and only integrated members of households get access to the household mothers. Drones can stay at home too, though they are a bit of a drain on household finances. Those who end up unsponsored, because their birthhouse is dissolved or because they are kicked out of whatever household sponsored them, effectively come under the poor law. They can stay with their families at reduced salary, if their family will take them. If not they are boarded out to whoever will take them for the least money. People under the poor law have no rights under custom and no protection from their birthhouse. These are the ones who might end up as prostitutes or working in sweatshops.

Alien medicine can cure most things, but there will still be some old or sick, who are generally taken care of in their households. Society might put up a few slots for those mentally ill, retarded, or demented that need special care.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))