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.

Before and After Changes

   The Restrictions were a small set of rule changes that 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.

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.
   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.
   The drama surrounding a ship with Free Concubines onboard which travels to a Colony which doesn't allow them 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 secure 'core' 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.

• The Restrictions did not limit replicator use in the combat zone or in any installation designated as 'dependent' or 'marginal'.  Such installations still needed to be supplied with raw materials, though.
• 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.

Story Usage

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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