Restrictions

   This article discusses a subject with undecided "Canon".  The Swarm Cycle writers need to discuss this on the email list, come to a decision, and then update this article to let readers know what Swarm Cycle "true canon" is.

The Restrictions

   Not Canon  Most Swarm Cycle stories are set in the beginning of the war, when the humans are still trying to figure out what they are doing.  Many stories are about trying something and discovering that it wasn't the best way.  One story, Zen Master's Ship's Morale Officer, is set in the far future some time after it has been realized that we need to make some major changes to the way we do things and after all the confusion of the changeover has settled out.
   One thing that had to change was the indiscriminate use of all the Confederacy's technology to make our lives easier.  If you make life too easy, humans never learn to strive, to struggle, to fight for what they need.  In order to raise the next generation of war-fighters that the Confederacy needed to win the war, it had to institute the "Restrictions", a set of social rules that were almost universally hated even though everyone saw the need.

Origin

   From the Darjee and AI's point of view, the ONLY reason Earth was contacted was to recruit the natives to serve as Janissaries or slave soldiers who would defend the Confederacy from an enemy -the Sa'arm- they could not fight.  The early recruits were able to convince the AI's that this would not work; the soldiers would have to be free and think of themselves as defending their homes and families or they would fail.  Volunteers were sought and a system for testing them for compatibility with the Confederacy's needs -the CAP test- was developed.
   The first generation of warfighters were recruited on Earth before the Sa'arm landed there, and while some Volunteers weren't emotionally suited for combat, the vast majority of them knew what they were getting into -many of them were veterans of Earth's own wars- and had little trouble fitting into the Confederacy's armed forces.  While there were never enough volunteers, by and large the recruits showed the Confederacy that, with proper support, this program could reach its goal of defending the Confederacy.
   Fast-forward 15 or so years.  Not only had Earth been mostly overrun by the Sa'arm, the few areas still under Human control were too busy trying to hold onto what they had to send warriors out into the stars.  The recruiters had to get their new formations and replacement soldiers and sailors from the colonies.  However, few of the colonies had the population needed to skim off the needed numbers.
   What was worse, most of the available manpower was temperamentally unsuited for service.  One of the inducements offered to recruits was all the technology available to Confederacy citizens: medical care far beyond Earth's best, replicators which could make an exact copy of any object they had the pattern for, and even Star-Trek style transporters.  On top of all that, the Confederacy had developed artificial intelligences or AIs which could direct any automated machinery and even masses of molecular machines or 'nanites'.
   Between the AIs, the nanites, and the replicators, almost anything a citizen could want was available within seconds.  Yes, all the technology DID make life easier for the pioneers settling on a new world. It also made life easier for the pioneers' wives, husbands, and children.  It soon became clear that children growing up with everything free for the asking would never learn to do anything for themselves.
   It wasn't that the AIs _wouldn't_, the AIs _couldn't_ lower their recruiting standards.  The Humans were the most violent and unstable species they had ever attempted to work with, and their instructions from their masters in the 'old' Confederacy ensured that they could not take a chance that the cure would be worse than the disease.  The CAP test they developed ensured that the accepted recruits would never be a danger to the Confederacy.  If you couldn't pass the test you couldn't serve, and the AIs couldn't make the test easier.  By Year 20 or so, it was becoming clear that, far from the fleets and formations expanding to take the war to the Sa'arm, the fleets and formations were going to have to _contract_ due to the lack of qualified recruits.
   It took almost another 20 years after the first formal statement of the problem before the Steering Committee, the Human part of the Confederacy's highest-level decision making entity, could finally agree on what needed to be done.  In Year 40 the SG passed a resolution that, in order to allow our children to learn from an early age to fight, to struggle, to compete, henceforth most of the human colonies would no longer have unrestricted access to many parts of the Confederacy's technology.  The AIs would still help the settlers and their families, but the AIs weren't going to do everything for them.

The Individual Restrictions

   The Restrictions were a small set of rule changes imposed around Year 40 which forced huge changes in Confederacy society:

Volunteer Status

   The most drastic of the Restrictions was the change in Volunteer status.  Before the Restrictions, Humans in the Confederacy were divided into three classes: Volunteers or Sponsors, Concubines, and Dependents.  Volunteers were those humans who scored 6.5 or above on their CAP tests and then volunteered to serve the Confederacy.  Concubines were all those humans who were past their 14th birthday and who were not Volunteers.  Dependents were everyone else; all those humans who had not yet reached their 14th birthday as well as the occasional human who couldn't be fitted into either 'Volunteer' or 'Concubine' status.  While the labels were different, the Concubines were, in every sense, slaves of the Volunteers.
   After the Restrictions went into effect, Volunteers were divided into two categories.  'Sponsors' were those Volunteers who had served the Confederacy for a minimum of twenty years, with at least five of those years in an actual war zone.  Sponsors had no limits on how many Concubines they could 'own'.  Sponsors could continue their military service, or they could 'retire' into a less-stressful lifestyle where they managed a factory or served as mayor for a town.  Either way, independent command was restricted to Sponsors only.
   This was one of the keys to the change: Henceforth, no one could order a Volunteer into combat unless they, themselves, had served in the war zone for long enough to understand the meaning of their orders.
   All Volunteers who had not yet served for 20 years were 'Citizens'.  Citizens were allowed to own zero, one, or two Concubines as before, but could not serve in any position where they held ultimate authority over other Volunteers.  Citizens could serve as junior officers with other Volunteers under them, but only if there was a Sponsor over them to take the ultimate responsibility for ordering men and women into combat.
   To ease the strain this change would cause on society, a temporary exemption was granted: Any Volunteer with a minimum of 10 years of service and 5 years in a war zone on the date of the resolution's adoption was eligible for "Sponsor" status.  Every two years, on the anniversary of the resolution's adoption, the minimum time-in-service requirement would go up by one year.  In Year 60, on the 20th anniversary of the resolution's adoption, this exemption expired as it now equaled the statutory minimum of 20 years.

Concubine Status

   Similarly, Concubines also gained a new subset.  A 'Free Concubine' was someone who had reached their 14th birthday and scored less than 6.5 on their initial CAP test, but who a board of Volunteers believed was capable of getting 6.5 or above in the future if they were treated like an adult and allowed time for personal growth.  Such a person was required to accept Concubine status, but not required to immediately accept a Volunteer.  Instead, they were allowed partial freedom to choose their path in hopes that a future test would gain them Volunteer status.  If there were any problems that needed their Sponsor to deal with, they could ask the AIs to contact a nearby available Sponsor to act for them.
   Of all the changes forced by the Restrictions, this was one which caused the most social strain.  Many of the "free conks" passed their next test and joined the ranks of the Cofederacy Citizens.  Unfortunately, as was to be expected with any new program, many of the free concubines never made the jump.
   Many colonies immediately outlawed 'Free Concubines'.  They could not prevent any Concubine for applying for the program, but they could force those accepted to the program to immediately leave their jurisdiction as well as punishing all those who applied but were not accepted.
   Other colonies jumped on the opportunity to free as many slaves as they could.  While those colonies supported the program as well as possible and generally had a high success rate, they also had a tendency to approve many Concubines who should never have been given a chance to cause trouble.  Naturally, those colonies which disapproved of the program were quick to 'recapture' any troublesome Free Conk who blundered into their system.
   It became common for a traveling Free Conk to enter into a temporary conditional contract with a similarly traveling Volunteer, good only while they were under the authority of that particular system.  Since every ship had several Volunteers in its crew, both Citizen and Sponsor, it was natural for the Free Conks to agree to temporary agreements with one or more of the crew, or even with "the ship".  Such an agreement could have any special clauses that either participant could think of and the other would agree to.
   The drama surrounding a ship with Free Concubines onboard which travels to a Colony which doesn't allow them to exist has to be a fertile bed for new stories to grow.

Transporter Use

   Before the Restrictions, we used transporters to move everything.  We used them to move cargo from planets up to ships.  We used them to move people from place to place. On some of our larger ships, we even used them to move people from one deck to another.  We built ever-larger transporters that could move ever-larger items.  The only limit was range, and there were rumors that even that limit was artificial, the 'old' Confederacy knew how to make them work across larger distances than we could.
   After the Restrictions, Confederacy space was divided into two zones, the supposedly safe "Secure Zone" systems and the non-secure "War Zone" systems.  Out in the war zone, transporters could still be used as before.  In the 'core' systems, transporters could only be used to move Volunteers, the Sponsors and Citizens, and even then only when their duties required the move.  Everyone else, from off-duty Sponsors down to babies, were no longer allowed to use transporters in any way.  They had to use stairs, elevators, and vehicles.

Med-Tube Use

   Before the Restrictions, Med-Tube use was limited only by our medical technology and our imagination.  We used them to enhance our Marines and sailors to better do their jobs, we used them to save the lives of those injured in accidents and combat, and we used them to modify our people in any way we chose.  Marines were all modified to a single size and shape by policy, simplifying equipment issues.  Naval personnel were often modified to improve their health, reflexes, and other attributes.  In one program, every pilot for a developmental close-support Marine aircraft were reduced in size to dwarfs, in order to maximize aircraft performance by allowing extremely small cockpits.
   Concubines in particular were often treated by their owners as infinitely-adjustable toys.  In many cases, Volunteers were allowed to modify their concubines with absolutely no oversight.  In some widely-publicized cases, the modified women were no longer able to care for children.  In a few extreme cases, they could no longer even have children, thus preventing the whole reason they had been evacuated to a colony in the first place.
   The Restrictions limited Med-Tubes to several categories of use:

• Initial 'intake' examination, telomere reset, repairs, tune-ups, and planned 'standard' modification, including augments, for all new extractees.
• Emergency medical support combat wounds and accidental injuries.
• Planned medical support for non-emergency issues.
• Modification and augmentation of all combat personnel as needed to support the war effort.
• Any proposed use of a Med-Tube other than the above list can only be approved by the responsible Sponsor, on a not-to-interfere basis.

Replicator Use

   Before the Restrictions, we used replicators for everything.  All they needed were the raw materials, a template to follow, and an AI to run them.  We used them to make our food, our air, our cold drinking water and our hot shower water, our uniforms, our repair parts, our weapons, and our ammo.  It would have been impossible to build most of our early colonies if we didn't have replicators acting as magic factories to make anything we wanted.
   The Replicators did have limits.  They had to have the right supplies; they couldn't transmute lead into gold or aluminum into titanium, and if you needed something the AIs didn't already know how to make it took massive AI support to create the template.  Of course, once you had the template even the marginal AI in a pod could make as many as you wanted.  As long as you didn't run out of raw materials, that was.
   In the 'core' systems which are expected to raise our next generation of self-starting problem-solvers, domestic replicators only produce common food ingredients like flour and sugar and other low-value, unpatented products like marbles, bolts, water, baby bottles, and tableware.  Many industrial processes like mining and fabrication are still automated, though.

Exemptions

   Generally, the actual warfighters are not held to the limits of the Restrictions. {section not complete}

• The Restrictions did not limit replicator use in a war zone, in any installation designated as 'dependent' or 'marginal', or in any hyper-capable ship which transferred cargo or passengers inside a war zone.  Such installations still needed to be supplied with raw materials, though.

Economic and Social Consequences

   The Restrictions returned the Confederacy to a scarcity-based society and economy.  In the 'core' systems, food had to be grown and transported to the people who would eat it.  Factories had to be built and workers had to make tools and equipment.  A sponsor could still have a dozen concubines and thirty children, but they all had to work if they were going to eat.
   The Steering Committee created the 'Confederacy Economic Credit' or 'CEC' (*) as the basic unit of economic value, and defined it as the value of eight hours of unskilled labor by an unaugmented adult.  At the same time, they directed all colonies to provide such work as needed, and provide housing and food for two adults at half a credit per day.  This allowed any single adult to support themselves well, or support a partner adequately.
   The initial decree also required all colonies to provide minimal shelter, clothing, and food for everyone over 14 even if they did not work.  Most colonies just handled that requirement as efficiently as possible, but some colonies wanted to minimize their 'welfare' population and expended significant thought and effort to make the required shelter, clothing, and food as unappetizing as possible.
   Finally, recognizing that child care was the single most important job that parents had, the SG decree provided a sliding scale of pay for child care to be paid to the parent family:

• Caring for an infant from birth to one month earned 15 credits per day
• Caring for a baby from 1 month to 4 months earned 10 credits per day
• Caring for a baby from 4 months to 8 months earned 5 credits per day
• Caring for a baby from 8 months to 1 year old earned 3 credits per day
• Caring for a child from 1 thru 4 earned 2 credits per day
• Caring for a child from 5 thru 9 earned 1 credit per day
• Caring for a youth from 10 thru 13 earned 1/2 credit per day

   The example given in the decree was of a Sponsor living on a 'breeder' colony with four (three female and one male) concubines who had one of the women get pregnant every year.  If every other pregnancy produced twins, after 10 years they would have 1 9-year-old, 2 8yo, 1 7yo, 2 6yo, 1 5yo, 2 4yo, 1 3yo, 2 2yo, 1 1yo, and two babies.  Caring for these children would earn the family between 25 and 39 Credits per day, depending upon how old the babies were.
   This many children would probably take all four adult concubines to care for, so none would be available to work outside the home.  On the other hand, housing, clothing, and feeding five adults and 15 children would cost 7 Credits or more just for their daily needs. Only the Sponsor himself would be able to work outside of the family and earn more income.  However, the family might well take in other children for day-care or babysitting for additional income, or if they had the funds send some of their children out for care.
   From these initial three valuations, more complicated valuations could be estimated for different skills from Confederacy military service as a Private who earned 10 Credits per day starting when he volunteered and had all his personal and professional needs paid for by the Confederacy, all the way up to a System Military Governor who earned 500 or more Credits per day and still had no professional expenses but could have high social expenses.
   * This was often pronounced as 'kak', an old English and German slang word for junk or trash or excrement.

Story References

From "Ship's Morale Officer":

...The Restrictions had changed a lot of things, bringing humanity back to a scarcity-based society, and full access to a med-tube was something that many people would kill for.

See Also

• Ship's Morale Officer, which first described the Restrictions

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