Sapient Snacks?

[Rowan]

Is there 'really' some market for these in THS? It looks so.. horrific. o.o The picture in the Shell-Tech PDF of the woman getting ready to devour this little naked man is just ... >.> disturbing. :O

Thoughts on Sapient Snacks?

[LaughingLonghair]

I'll admit I was equally horrified (and a little amused) with the idea at first.

But consider these products for their shock value, I can think of a few food products today that try to shock us into eating them (e.g. pop rocks and warheads sour candy, escargo, energy drinks, raw organic food) this could just be pushing that envelope a little further, a lot further down the line from our normal.

As for market, these would are diffently be banned in a number of places, and as we learned with Prohibition once you ban something you drastically increase it's appeal and value, and with Tech 10 bio/manufacturing being available these could easily be produced in small batches and sold at very high prices.

[sn0wball]

Without doubt, they are seriously appalling. Personally, I wouldn´t want have anythign to do with their fans.

Their existence casts an interestingly dark shadow over the THS universe. I mean, people aren´t killing mammals for flesh anymore, but some people ate sapients ...

But it is that kind of ideas which I like THS for. The idea seems absolutely novel to me. I never encountered it anywhere else before.

And it´s a nice feature for roleplaying - either as a colorful background detail or as the focus of an adventure, like, shutting down an illegal biolab franchise which fabricates those or helping someone who is wrongly accused of consuming those.

[Flyndaran]

But they aren't truly sapient. They are merely edible computer chips designed to mimic complex behavior with a personality program. They would look and act intelligent keeping up all disturbing appearances, but in the end you would just be eating a complex cd drive.
Full sapience would be vastly more complex, larger, and even more importantly, expensive and HUGE and break into non-functioning with most still on the plate.

[sn0wball]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But they aren't truly sapient.

Yeah, sure. That what it says on the label. But a friend of my brothers niece knows someone who works for the company and he saw two of those snacks, which fell out of a case, playing chess with each other.

Also, I have heard that if you swallow those biochips intact, they can take control of your implants. I wouldn´t touch them with a ten feet pole.

[Nelson Cunnington]

One shows up in Adam Warren's Dirty Pair series Run from the Future, in the Jeannot Delagauchetierre scene: "I may only be a pseudo-sentient snack food... but I really do feel that I feel p-pain... Aargh!" Naturally being eaten by the villain of the piece.

What I'm unsure about is whether Adam swiped from David, or vice versa. Or is it just a spooky coincidence?

[Frost]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

Their existence casts an interestingly dark shadow over the THS universe. I mean, people aren´t killing mammals for flesh anymore, but some people ate sapients ...

Given some of the things fully sentient beings are created/ bred for across the setting I am not so sure that this is such a big surprise. Given bulk tissue cloning for meat I would not be surprised (nauseated, but not surprised) to find a quiet reappearance of cannibalism in some places.

All you need is a tissue sample and someone with the right gear. Actually that is a though, edible voodoo dolls. Sentient snacks plus bulk cultured human flesh- nauseating and on topic.

[Rowan]

Well, just exactly what are these sentient snacks made out of anyway? I mean is it just like raw flesh, or like some kind of candy or...?

I must say the more I think about these things, the stranger they seem. O.O

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Frost

Given some of the things fully sentient beings are created/ bred for across the setting I am not so sure that this is such a big surprise. Given bulk tissue cloning for meat I would not be surprised (nauseated, but not surprised) to find a quiet reappearance of cannibalism in some places.
...

There's not a darn thing wrong with canabilism that proper disease prevention couldn't fix. I personally dislike all the meat wasted with toxins and stuck in the ground in impermeable boxes.
Can ya' tell I'm an atheist? :)

[Ramidel]

I cannot say that I am in the least surprised at this idea existing. (Whether it's ethical...::shrug:: Probably.)

I have to wonder how long it'll be until someone develops the technology to make sapient-snack bioshells and upload ghosts into them (and get them back out after death). There'll be a hell of a market for that.