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Description
Info-file
-> Companies and Corporations
--> Robotics:
---> Happy Time Co.:
----> Post-Imperial Interregnum Period:
-----> Info-File #12546: Happy Time Co. Death Robots

Following the complete and utter collapse of Humanity's empire following the apocalyptic War of a Thousand Worlds, mankind, as a spacio-political, economic, and military force, was over. Mankind had had it's central capital, Majesteria, obliterated by the Stonekind as part of the final long march towards Human central, a city of almost a thousand years turned into ash overnight, with a death toll of over 150 million, with one whole colony planet, Johnson's World, being utterly annihilated by the Stonekind during the last days, using their newly made Planet Crackers to split apart the planets like an egg and kill, collectively, 10 billion people, nearly all innocent civilians.

The economies were in total ruin across a hundred planets, the underdeveloped and semi-industrialised planets of the Frontiersworlds being particularly hit, some like the planets of Dusk and Mistfall becoming outright failed planets, ran by drug cartels in the former and torn to shreds over militia-based civil war in the former. The effects of the Ixtikli's campaign of biological and chemical warfare had ruined irreparably dozens of other colonies in the slither of space that made up the Frontiersworlds, some like Golgothia degenerating to create the cyborg monstrosities known as the Perfectors, others, like Whisperwell, having their technology and society plunged back thousands of years, running as a semi-medieval religious theocracy. Those that survived the bombings had unending medical and health problems from the poisoned air and mutant strains of diseases spreading like wildfire, claims which Human central could not remotely match with it's destroyed healthcare facilities. Human industry had been stretched to breaking point in the mad attempt to meet the demand of guns, ships and tanks needed to continue the appalling slaughter, a ten year war of attrition that had all but ruined the productive industries of mankind, the Orion Forges lying in ruins, the military/factory planets of Argonaut's Leap and Tiresias' Watch destroyed beyond repair by bombing campaigns, the mines of the Eye of Gogmagog almost bare. Economies shattered, trade routes in utter chaos, mankind found half their space above them (the Bonelands) eaten away entirely by the Stonekind Empire, and huge swathes of space to their east and south, the Frontiersworlds, devoured by the Ixtikli Peace and Prosperity Zone. Occupied and colonised by their former enemies, half the empire was just gone overnight, with the Persean Worlds bifurcated in two (causing absolute chaos in the migrations between the two planets, and triggering off a bout of ferocious terrorist wars between the two sides over independence issues), the Chin'tassi planets splitting off entirely. As is the case with all wars, no matter how brutal and vicious the victor's behaved, they are the victors, and therefore got to set the terms of the game afterwards. Under the Abawontooloo Accords, signed virtually a gunpoint by the only major ranking military official left they could find, mankind had to agree to stringent terms. Under the Accords, former leaders and military officials would be tried and executed under war crimes tribunals, causing political strife and antagonism by vast swathes of the public, having lived under Imperial rule for decades, seeing it as little more than gratuitous sadism on the part of the victors. Mankind's military forces were cut by over 70%, essentially reducing their scope in space to a rump navy and barely a handful of soldiers. Any break of this part would bring the immediate military action of the Stonekind, who would have had no hesitation in military occupying Proxima Centuari, executing every last single political and military figure, and starting all over again. The handful of administrators left after Nymphella's purges and the war were barely adequate to the task, the only man they could find to run the New Human Alliance after the War being a sad and unappealing little creature named Nigel Underdown, a mid-to low ranking bureaucrat. His regime would turn out to be a catastrophe, one of conservative clientelism, authoritarian management, grotesque corrupt mismanagement of the economy, and political chaos, as his regime flung between cock-up and catastrophe, as Underdown sat on helpless and dithering, pressured on all and every sides to make decisions he had no possible way of enacting. Under his reign, political terrorism blew up, quite literally, in all forms. The Persean Liberation Front launched a brutal campaign in the mainland, as part of their attempt to get the northern Persean planets reunited with the Southern, outside of Humanity's control entirely. On the other side of the political isle, the newly reformed Children of Gaia, a racist, far-right human supremacist, neo-Nymphellan, religiously fanatical group, made up primarily of military veterans and dissatisfied youth that never excepted Humanity's defeat, and swearing undying loyalty to the Empress Nymphella even after death, launched savage racist murders and terrorist atrocities against migrant populations and other alien groups. Eventually there was an attempted coup amongst some of the military class, led by a disaffected Colonel by the name of Hyde and secretly manipulated by the Hollow Men , which, thankfully, failed. Certainty, it would appear that mankind's fledging attempts with democracy were a catastrophe, and it was in serious doubt as to whether the Human project would even survive in the early 30th century. Humanity, once the mightiest power in the galaxy, the Empire of a Thousand Suns, the Centre of the Universe as if was, arrogantly, called, was now a 3rd rate power stretched over a series of failed/failing planets with a dilapidated economy and increasingly at the mercy of the activities and prodding of the foreign powers near them (in particular the Ixtikli, who took on a defacto position of being Mankind's paternalistic hegemon, casting a shadowy control over it, with an assumed military umbrella over it, and in some cases actively interfering in Humanity's inner politics, funding arms to anti-PLF rebels and organising the military coup which overthrew the reformist government of Porphyriannia). The 10 years after the war has widely been regarded as the most chaotic and disastrous for Humanity perhaps since they first left their ancient Earth after the climate armageddon and wars, a period of unrest that would only really end with the election of Dominic de Santiana in 2919.

One of the many problems afflicting Humanity during this time, as mentioned above, was it's military. With the military cut to such harsh limits, coupled with the seemingly unending amount of fires needing to be put out across the empire (not just the terrorist insurgencies, civil wars and insurrections, but often just simply mass riots over inadequate food supplies and in planets that had been subjected to stringent economic Structural Alteration Programmes by the Tibberidians ), it was apparent they needed something to fill the gap that did not count towards the formal military or expand it from the state. Many alternatives were tried or suggested. The Voorsh mercenaries of the Moon of Novoss were renowned for their military prowess, their ruthless efficiency, their stark brutality, and the size of numbers (one Voorsh Queen capable of producing several million hatchlings of Voorsh in one birthing session). But the costs the Voorsh demanded for their services were utterly outside the available budgets of the New Human Alliance at this point. There were other mercenary groups available, such as the Gongordians from the imaginatively named Gongor Minor (a race of intelligent goldfish that lumbered around in huge exo-protective bio-mechanical suits), but they were notoriously rubbish, third rate mercenaries, knock-off Voorshes, the home brand version of the Voorsh's luxury services. Other suggestions came in the form of a business deal with Solomon J. Formaldehyde's cloning services , with potentially thousands upon thousands of replicate, disposable sentient meat flesh capable of being deployed at a moment's notice. Formaldehyde, who had made his money through the mass public televised spectacles of Clone Wars, were clones would duke it out in entertaining bloodbaths, had once suggested a clone army to the 61st Emperor Lawrenschank, but was rejected. The option for a side deal with him to loan a couple of thousand clones as part of a trial run, with the option of further deals, but this collapsed, due to the costs demanded from Formaldehyde, but also due to the sudden collapse of his fortune following his disappearance and suspected death.

Perhaps the most bizarre attempt to fill the gaps of Mankind's military deficit was what one sees above, the Happy Time Co.'s Death Robots. During the early 2900s, corporations, kept subdued under the mercantilist and state-orienteering role under the Empire, blew up. Companies and corporations dug into the scraps of the now discarded empire and avidly privatised and monopolised their services at bargain basement rates. In particular, one form of company rose up amongst the rest - that of robotics companies. Robots, that is, thinking, intelligent machines capable of a degree of self-thought, operating through artificial intelligences, has now for centuries operated on a total and complete ban of usage inside the Empire. In a long and complicated process that I won't go in through here, robots had caused a calamity for humanity, on existential and labour grounds. The essential problem of robots for the Empire was created due to a tiny little logical statement made by two scientists, Irving Kapel and Jorge Rossum. The Rossum-Capel Theory (as it would be come to be known) made three propositions about robots, both equally terrifying and both so powerful that it resulted in a decades long destruction of all robotic lifeforms and a wholesale banning of any technology higher than a computer inside the Golden Dawn of Gaia. The first thesis was:
1) Computers modelled on human beings would be capable of what we call ‘thought’
2) Presuming so, we either make two assumptions. Either robots have consciousness, in which case we do (being as the robots emulate human minds in some cases better than us), or human beings have absolutely no kind of consciousness, and, like a robot, are merely clever machines, albeit of a biological variety.

This lead to two conclusions for the Empire. Either deny robots have consciousness (or 'souls' in the religious parlance of the Empire), and thus, in principle also deny the existence of souls in Humans (due to the extreme similarity in the two), or else, accept they do, but then render the whole use of robots both immoral and inefficient, as under the religious protocols of Mankind anything with a soul inside the empire could not be treated harshly or as a slave (the getaway around treating aliens like dirt was to argue they had no souls). This led to quite a mighty conundrum, one that barely anyone could solve.

The third proposition was the most disastrous. Rossum and Kapel argued that:

3) Presuming that robots do have consciousness comparable and equivalent to Humanity, and therefore are likely to copy or mimic the same abilities and traits of Humanity, the most likelihood would be mankind's extermination. Why? Because that is how mankind had behaved to any species that were not them, and as mankind would be the species oppressing them as slaves at point, they would respond with violence. And as robots were superior technologically, this would be a fight mankind could not win.

Their conclusion was therefore ipso facto, the existence of artificially intelligent robots means innately the eventual genocide of humanity.

Now, some qualifications need to be added. One, Kapel and Rossum always stated this as a kind of thought experiment, they admitted there were many circumstantial details that could alter the equation. If they were superior technologically they could be also superior morally. One could try and programmed inherent morality centres inside the robots, to prevent such a thing from happening. Perhaps being a robot and not a person, wouldn't actually mind being used as a slave by mankind, having no actual conception of inalienable rights. Perhaps it is a wrong presumption to even presume "Intelligence" even is a word used to apply to a robot, that a mimic of a human is not more a human than a impersonator of someone else is the other person. That a good copy of human behaviour and even thought is not actually original, organic thought, merely an extremely accurate replicator, like an automata dummy.

But as one can imagine, no one paid attention to the latter, and fixated on the former. Kapel and Rossum didn't quite know what they'd unleashed. As it was interpreted, one either rejected the notion of robotic intelligence, in which case on presumed they did not have anything like consciousness, and all their thoughts and feeling were merely highly advanced technological programming, but then, one might also have to presume the same about mankind, as it would get to the point where the division between the two was non-existent. If one denied that AI could have a soul, then it meant mankind probably did not have one either, an appalling statement for a society so obsessively religious, so consumed by notions of soul repair and ascending to heaven. It would also mean, the cult worship of humanity would be destroyed, as essentially it would mean we were no more than biological robots. The second option, accepting that robots, like people, had souls, would mean that robots would start behaving like humans. This terrified people even more, as they knew that human behaviour for the past 400 years had been little more than systemic racist annihilation against other species, including outright genocidal events like The Persean Famine, the brutal suppression of the rebellions on Chintassi Prime and the ethic cleansing and settler colonialism of the the native Proxima Centuarians. If robots were no different to humanity, then they would behave like us, which meant the behaviour they would engage in would be the same as humanity – genocide and ethnic cleansing, most likely, of humanity, a species they inevitably would consider inferior, much like Humans do for the rest of the galaxy. Their was only one solution – destroy the robots.

This cumulated in something called the First War of Flesh and Steel, a period of mass psychosis were riot groups targeted robot factories, set them on fire, killed managers, assassinated company heads, rioted in cities against the implementation of what they thought were "death robots", and caused a ruckus. Labour groups too were totally opposed to any move for the implementation of robotic workers inside the Human workforce, seeing it (rightly) as an attempt to wholesale eliminate their source of jobs. Strikes and near-riots happened in almost every factory the early robots were implemented, needing the calling of the Imperial Forces again and again. Religious groups denounced them at the pulpits, saying the robots were "soul stealers", demonic possessed false-golem creatures engaging in a crude mockery of humanity, an offense against nature, and something that must be suppressed. There were, to be sure, some examples of robots going mad and killing humans. It was put down to faulty programming, or, in some cases, outright sabotage. The then Emperor, Cassius III, was in fact actively trying to incentivise robots to rebel, as by this point, following the dearth of his wife, he had plunged into a multi-decade nihilistic depression, dressing all in black, renouncing the Mother Gaia and worshipping the Santa Muerte, a heretical mutation of the central Gaia church which incorporated the Mother Gaia as the figure of death incarnate. He had become so nihilistic at this point he actively thought robots should kill mankind, convinced they were better than us and looking forward to the elimination of a species he felt had become utterly irredeemable. Following his overthrow, the brief war ended. It was a chaotic situation that emerged. A whole industry was, effectively, destroyed overnight. The burgeoning robotic companies and rich businessmen that had backed on their continual growth were bankrupt overnight, and whole sections of the New Rich noble elite was eliminated from the States-General (continuing the makeup of the States-General being largely made up of inherited land-of-gentry, commodities, minerals, energy, steel and inherited wealth elites). Whole planets that had been centres of robotic tech, and had built there economy on it, like Positronia, were ruined.

The result was a total, all-enforcing ban on all robotic lifeforms of anything above a basic computer. No AI was ever allowed. Any even trace of it was to be obliterated. While technological machinery should and would be continued, they would remain at the level of tools, to be always operated by a divine human. This pact, made by the Monarchy, ordained by the Church, and enforced by the States-General (the ruling body of all the noble houses of the Empire) was called the Pact of the Total Ban on the False-Humans. This taboo, backed up by force, lasted all the way up to the end of the Empire, as their technophobia and paranoia around robots being one of the few things Emperors and Empresses of the Empire kept consistent between their respective rules. One must understand, this wasn't some kind of burst of worker's power radicalism that entered the empire. On the contrary, the Imperial system, while brutal, hierarchical, repressive, oppressive, strangulating and totalitarian, was not stupid. It knew which side its bread was buttered, and the prospect of igniting a mass civil war amongst the populace was not on the table. From the perspective of the monarch, it was considered a point of pride that Humans would do their role in the empire, even if that role was the lowest of the low. Some might argue robots could at least do the jobs no one wants (sewage cleaners etc). But the point was any Human worth their salt would do the lowest job, without complaint, if that was what was needed to keep the Empire strong and dominant. There was a rigid, feudal class structure that had to be held in place at all times, and the prospect of having that disrupted by the sudden influx of robots potentially totally disrupted that. To an extent, the subjugation of lower class Humans in the hierarchy was considered part of the pride that the Empire conferred, that everyone was a cell in the body of the empire, that no one would be left out, and no one would be allowed to opt out. The Imperial system would occasionally protect the workers from the threat of bosses, but only in the service of promoting a form of autarkic, mercantilist absolutism.

However, when the Empire collapsed, it was seen (probably rightly) that this was an extreme and irrational response to robotics, that had set mankind back centuries in lost technological gains, and thus, it collapsed too. The Post-Empire days are regarded as a boon for robotics, and the floodgates were no unleashed. Scientists and technologists, wanting to experiment with them for decades, were allowed to simply run wild with it. Sex robots, leisure robots, false nannies, robot teachers, robot nurses, fake playmates, miners, chauffeurs - all of this exploded. For sure, there were mass labour unrests, people protested, people rioted. It didn't much matter, corporate capital was so dominant in this period that they were easily crushed by force.

One such company that branches out in this area was the Happy Time Company. Making robots with smiley, pleasant round heads, they were intended to be positive-up lift robots, aiming to improve the spiritual and mental wellbeing of people. One could hire a Happy Time robot as a friend if you were lonely, or a partner if you wanted to get married. More broadly, they were hired by corporations to be used as "positive wellbeing" staff for the workforce. Workers were required to attend Happy Time sessions, where a Happy Time robot with a pleasant voice would instruct the workers in means of mental wellbeing, to change their minds to a more positive, happy attitude, and to forget about their declining wages, destroyed unions, obliterated benefits, eradicated sick and holiday pays, diminished pensions, absent healthcare, wretched infrastructure, and rising rent. Be Happy, Be Positive, that was the cry. And during the aftermath of the economic crash and recession in the mid 2900s, people were in bad need of uplift. Suicide had been legalised, and a worker who had recently been sacked, or a family that had lost their home in a foreclosure, could purchase a cheap polyethylene bag (copyrighted and rebranded as Suey Sacks) and end their life. An alternative to this misery was the Happy Time Robots, aiming to distract peoples woes through friendly, helpful, happy robots. For a price, of course.

Perhaps realising which way the wind was blowing, and realising that there is a limit to people's willingness to delude themselves and distract from their own despair (strong as it is), they decided to expand into a new area of business. And looking around they realised what the most profitable section of the economy was - killing people. Like a see-saw, as the economy tanked public unrest increased, and continuing conflagrations amongst the Perseus Worlds, on Mistfall and in the piracy going on in the space lanes, if anything the business of war was looking more and more profitable. Stock portfolios were rising on all the major arms companies, and a future, lingering prospect of a major war with the Stonekind along with the Ixtikli meant anyone in the business of arms was salivating at the thought of huge profits. But the Happy Time Company had built a brand name on consumer well-being, and did not want to loose business trust by breaking that. So, in a stroke of genius, they decided to combine the two.

The new Happy Time Death Robots would be a merging of worlds, a revolution in robot armies. While your death robot would do all the usual death robot things, obliteration, vaporisation, dismemberment, decapitation, immobilisation, it would also be encouraged to create an atmosphere of good thinking and positive attitudes, amongst vaporisees and vaporisers alike. Before each killing, the robot would politely ask you to stand still. It would ask you what method of death you would like, then act accordingly. Grieving relatives and friends of the person killed were encouraged to answer their online feedback forms, giving score marks indicating what they thought of their loved ones murder, how well they thought they did, and comments on how they could improve killing people next time. After obliterating somewhere through a laser scope rifle and annihilating the person into meat, a friendly message would pop up "you have just been killed by the Happy Time Company Death. Thank you for your cooperation." When a Happy Time Death Tank (seen on the left) rolled up towards you, it would say "you are about to be killed. Please try and think of positive moments in your life at this point. Research shows that positive thinking seconds before death increased the chances of a happy death by up to 60%." The Happy Time Company sold them remarkably cheap to the central Human government, something that surprised them at first. But they though they got a bargain, and having semi-privatised their entire military, they were uploaded to a dozen worlds where it was needed to supress riots and insurrections. However, there was a catch. They were not cheap. The Happy Time Company required continual monetary repayment after a fixed period in order to continue using its services. Soldiers mid way through fighting would have to use their credit card to fund charges on their gun in order to continue the weapon's firing. Generals could be seen scrambling mid way through a insurgency battlefield to shovel coins into the side of a Happy Time Death tank in order to get it to continue functioning.

But as one can imagine, the costs associated with them and their very nature was of limited use in the long term, and ultimately the company was folded. Lingering bits of the robots were however sold on the cheap. The Junk People (people that live on the Junk Moons, made up of the collected trash and consumer waste that mankind ejected into space during the Empire, the sheer amount of it forming its own gravitational mass and sticking themselves together) would rifle through the robots and sell of bits of them to any bidder as part of their voracious hunger for flogging spare bits and used junk. Many found their way onto black markets and were sold occasional warlords, private businessmen as to keep their private moons and lands private, Tibberidian merchants on space business trips as anti-piracy measures, and sometimes rewired ones were even used by terrorist groups, militia groups, drug cartels, criminal groups and as foot soldiers, albeit in a much dilapidated shape. Many of them were simply dumped on a moon, but it is said they are still alive and active, half destroyed, shambling, wondering half broken smiling creatures, their faces rotting revealing the circuity beneath the smile, crawling around as their legs have gone, replacing themselves with whatever they can find, a friendly greeting and an ask for you to keep calm and stand still groaning out of what remains of their voice box, seconds before turning you into atoms. It is strongly advised to avoid such moons, and the Happy Time Robots are a lingering, and strange, reminder of what can go wrong when the business of capitalism decides to take over the functions of the state.

Description
Info-file
-> Companies and Corporations
--> Robotics:
---> Happy Time Co.:
----> Post-Imperial Interregnum Period:
-----> Info-File #12546: Happy Time Co. Death Robots

Following the complete and utter collapse of Humanity's empire following the apocalyptic War of a Thousand Worlds, mankind, as a spacio-political, economic, and military force, was over. Mankind had had it's central capital, Majesteria, obliterated by the Stonekind as part of the final long march towards Human central, a city of almost a thousand years turned into ash overnight, with a death toll of over 150 million, with one whole colony planet, Johnson's World, being utterly annihilated by the Stonekind during the last days, using their newly made Planet Crackers to split apart the planets like an egg and kill, collectively, 10 billion people, nearly all innocent civilians.

The economies were in total ruin across a hundred planets, the underdeveloped and semi-industrialised planets of the Frontiersworlds being particularly hit, some like the planets of Dusk and Mistfall becoming outright failed planets, ran by drug cartels in the former and torn to shreds over militia-based civil war in the former. The effects of the Ixtikli's campaign of biological and chemical warfare had ruined irreparably dozens of other colonies in the slither of space that made up the Frontiersworlds, some like Golgothia degenerating to create the cyborg monstrosities known as the Perfectors, others, like Whisperwell, having their technology and society plunged back thousands of years, running as a semi-medieval religious theocracy. Those that survived the bombings had unending medical and health problems from the poisoned air and mutant strains of diseases spreading like wildfire, claims which Human central could not remotely match with it's destroyed healthcare facilities. Human industry had been stretched to breaking point in the mad attempt to meet the demand of guns, ships and tanks needed to continue the appalling slaughter, a ten year war of attrition that had all but ruined the productive industries of mankind, the Orion Forges lying in ruins, the military/factory planets of Argonaut's Leap and Tiresias' Watch destroyed beyond repair by bombing campaigns, the mines of the Eye of Gogmagog almost bare. Economies shattered, trade routes in utter chaos, mankind found half their space above them (the Bonelands) eaten away entirely by the Stonekind Empire, and huge swathes of space to their east and south, the Frontiersworlds, devoured by the Ixtikli Peace and Prosperity Zone. Occupied and colonised by their former enemies, half the empire was just gone overnight, with the Persean Worlds bifurcated in two (causing absolute chaos in the migrations between the two planets, and triggering off a bout of ferocious terrorist wars between the two sides over independence issues), the Chin'tassi planets splitting off entirely. As is the case with all wars, no matter how brutal and vicious the victor's behaved, they are the victors, and therefore got to set the terms of the game afterwards. Under the Abawontooloo Accords, signed virtually a gunpoint by the only major ranking military official left they could find, mankind had to agree to stringent terms. Under the Accords, former leaders and military officials would be tried and executed under war crimes tribunals, causing political strife and antagonism by vast swathes of the public, having lived under Imperial rule for decades, seeing it as little more than gratuitous sadism on the part of the victors. Mankind's military forces were cut by over 70%, essentially reducing their scope in space to a rump navy and barely a handful of soldiers. Any break of this part would bring the immediate military action of the Stonekind, who would have had no hesitation in military occupying Proxima Centuari, executing every last single political and military figure, and starting all over again. The handful of administrators left after Nymphella's purges and the war were barely adequate to the task, the only man they could find to run the New Human Alliance after the War being a sad and unappealing little creature named Nigel Underdown, a mid-to low ranking bureaucrat. His regime would turn out to be a catastrophe, one of conservative clientelism, authoritarian management, grotesque corrupt mismanagement of the economy, and political chaos, as his regime flung between cock-up and catastrophe, as Underdown sat on helpless and dithering, pressured on all and every sides to make decisions he had no possible way of enacting. Under his reign, political terrorism blew up, quite literally, in all forms. The Persean Liberation Front launched a brutal campaign in the mainland, as part of their attempt to get the northern Persean planets reunited with the Southern, outside of Humanity's control entirely. On the other side of the political isle, the newly reformed Children of Gaia, a racist, far-right human supremacist, neo-Nymphellan, religiously fanatical group, made up primarily of military veterans and dissatisfied youth that never excepted Humanity's defeat, and swearing undying loyalty to the Empress Nymphella even after death, launched savage racist murders and terrorist atrocities against migrant populations and other alien groups. Eventually there was an attempted coup amongst some of the military class, led by a disaffected Colonel by the name of Hyde and secretly manipulated by the Hollow Men , which, thankfully, failed. Certainty, it would appear that mankind's fledging attempts with democracy were a catastrophe, and it was in serious doubt as to whether the Human project would even survive in the early 30th century. Humanity, once the mightiest power in the galaxy, the Empire of a Thousand Suns, the Centre of the Universe as if was, arrogantly, called, was now a 3rd rate power stretched over a series of failed/failing planets with a dilapidated economy and increasingly at the mercy of the activities and prodding of the foreign powers near them (in particular the Ixtikli, who took on a defacto position of being Mankind's paternalistic hegemon, casting a shadowy control over it, with an assumed military umbrella over it, and in some cases actively interfering in Humanity's inner politics, funding arms to anti-PLF rebels and organising the military coup which overthrew the reformist government of Porphyriannia). The 10 years after the war has widely been regarded as the most chaotic and disastrous for Humanity perhaps since they first left their ancient Earth after the climate armageddon and wars, a period of unrest that would only really end with the election of Dominic de Santiana in 2919.

One of the many problems afflicting Humanity during this time, as mentioned above, was it's military. With the military cut to such harsh limits, coupled with the seemingly unending amount of fires needing to be put out across the empire (not just the terrorist insurgencies, civil wars and insurrections, but often just simply mass riots over inadequate food supplies and in planets that had been subjected to stringent economic Structural Alteration Programmes by the Tibberidians ), it was apparent they needed something to fill the gap that did not count towards the formal military or expand it from the state. Many alternatives were tried or suggested. The Voorsh mercenaries of the Moon of Novoss were renowned for their military prowess, their ruthless efficiency, their stark brutality, and the size of numbers (one Voorsh Queen capable of producing several million hatchlings of Voorsh in one birthing session). But the costs the Voorsh demanded for their services were utterly outside the available budgets of the New Human Alliance at this point. There were other mercenary groups available, such as the Gongordians from the imaginatively named Gongor Minor (a race of intelligent goldfish that lumbered around in huge exo-protective bio-mechanical suits), but they were notoriously rubbish, third rate mercenaries, knock-off Voorshes, the home brand version of the Voorsh's luxury services. Other suggestions came in the form of a business deal with Solomon J. Formaldehyde's cloning services , with potentially thousands upon thousands of replicate, disposable sentient meat flesh capable of being deployed at a moment's notice. Formaldehyde, who had made his money through the mass public televised spectacles of Clone Wars, were clones would duke it out in entertaining bloodbaths, had once suggested a clone army to the 61st Emperor Lawrenschank, but was rejected. The option for a side deal with him to loan a couple of thousand clones as part of a trial run, with the option of further deals, but this collapsed, due to the costs demanded from Formaldehyde, but also due to the sudden collapse of his fortune following his disappearance and suspected death.

Perhaps the most bizarre attempt to fill the gaps of Mankind's military deficit was what one sees above, the Happy Time Co.'s Death Robots. During the early 2900s, corporations, kept subdued under the mercantilist and state-orienteering role under the Empire, blew up. Companies and corporations dug into the scraps of the now discarded empire and avidly privatised and monopolised their services at bargain basement rates. In particular, one form of company rose up amongst the rest - that of robotics companies. Robots, that is, thinking, intelligent machines capable of a degree of self-thought, operating through artificial intelligences, has now for centuries operated on a total and complete ban of usage inside the Empire. In a long and complicated process that I won't go in through here, robots had caused a calamity for humanity, on existential and labour grounds. The essential problem of robots for the Empire was created due to a tiny little logical statement made by two scientists, Irving Kapel and Jorge Rossum. The Rossum-Capel Theory (as it would be come to be known) made three propositions about robots, both equally terrifying and both so powerful that it resulted in a decades long destruction of all robotic lifeforms and a wholesale banning of any technology higher than a computer inside the Golden Dawn of Gaia. The first thesis was:
1) Computers modelled on human beings would be capable of what we call ‘thought’
2) Presuming so, we either make two assumptions. Either robots have consciousness, in which case we do (being as the robots emulate human minds in some cases better than us), or human beings have absolutely no kind of consciousness, and, like a robot, are merely clever machines, albeit of a biological variety.

This lead to two conclusions for the Empire. Either deny robots have consciousness (or 'souls' in the religious parlance of the Empire), and thus, in principle also deny the existence of souls in Humans (due to the extreme similarity in the two), or else, accept they do, but then render the whole use of robots both immoral and inefficient, as under the religious protocols of Mankind anything with a soul inside the empire could not be treated harshly or as a slave (the getaway around treating aliens like dirt was to argue they had no souls). This led to quite a mighty conundrum, one that barely anyone could solve.

The third proposition was the most disastrous. Rossum and Kapel argued that:

3) Presuming that robots do have consciousness comparable and equivalent to Humanity, and therefore are likely to copy or mimic the same abilities and traits of Humanity, the most likelihood would be mankind's extermination. Why? Because that is how mankind had behaved to any species that were not them, and as mankind would be the species oppressing them as slaves at point, they would respond with violence. And as robots were superior technologically, this would be a fight mankind could not win.

Their conclusion was therefore ipso facto, the existence of artificially intelligent robots means innately the eventual genocide of humanity.

Now, some qualifications need to be added. One, Kapel and Rossum always stated this as a kind of thought experiment, they admitted there were many circumstantial details that could alter the equation. If they were superior technologically they could be also superior morally. One could try and programmed inherent morality centres inside the robots, to prevent such a thing from happening. Perhaps being a robot and not a person, wouldn't actually mind being used as a slave by mankind, having no actual conception of inalienable rights. Perhaps it is a wrong presumption to even presume "Intelligence" even is a word used to apply to a robot, that a mimic of a human is not more a human than a impersonator of someone else is the other person. That a good copy of human behaviour and even thought is not actually original, organic thought, merely an extremely accurate replicator, like an automata dummy.

But as one can imagine, no one paid attention to the latter, and fixated on the former. Kapel and Rossum didn't quite know what they'd unleashed. As it was interpreted, one either rejected the notion of robotic intelligence, in which case on presumed they did not have anything like consciousness, and all their thoughts and feeling were merely highly advanced technological programming, but then, one might also have to presume the same about mankind, as it would get to the point where the division between the two was non-existent. If one denied that AI could have a soul, then it meant mankind probably did not have one either, an appalling statement for a society so obsessively religious, so consumed by notions of soul repair and ascending to heaven. It would also mean, the cult worship of humanity would be destroyed, as essentially it would mean we were no more than biological robots. The second option, accepting that robots, like people, had souls, would mean that robots would start behaving like humans. This terrified people even more, as they knew that human behaviour for the past 400 years had been little more than systemic racist annihilation against other species, including outright genocidal events like The Persean Famine, the brutal suppression of the rebellions on Chintassi Prime and the ethic cleansing and settler colonialism of the the native Proxima Centuarians. If robots were no different to humanity, then they would behave like us, which meant the behaviour they would engage in would be the same as humanity – genocide and ethnic cleansing, most likely, of humanity, a species they inevitably would consider inferior, much like Humans do for the rest of the galaxy. Their was only one solution – destroy the robots.

This cumulated in something called the First War of Flesh and Steel, a period of mass psychosis were riot groups targeted robot factories, set them on fire, killed managers, assassinated company heads, rioted in cities against the implementation of what they thought were "death robots", and caused a ruckus. Labour groups too were totally opposed to any move for the implementation of robotic workers inside the Human workforce, seeing it (rightly) as an attempt to wholesale eliminate their source of jobs. Strikes and near-riots happened in almost every factory the early robots were implemented, needing the calling of the Imperial Forces again and again. Religious groups denounced them at the pulpits, saying the robots were "soul stealers", demonic possessed false-golem creatures engaging in a crude mockery of humanity, an offense against nature, and something that must be suppressed. There were, to be sure, some examples of robots going mad and killing humans. It was put down to faulty programming, or, in some cases, outright sabotage. The then Emperor, Cassius III, was in fact actively trying to incentivise robots to rebel, as by this point, following the dearth of his wife, he had plunged into a multi-decade nihilistic depression, dressing all in black, renouncing the Mother Gaia and worshipping the Santa Muerte, a heretical mutation of the central Gaia church which incorporated the Mother Gaia as the figure of death incarnate. He had become so nihilistic at this point he actively thought robots should kill mankind, convinced they were better than us and looking forward to the elimination of a species he felt had become utterly irredeemable. Following his overthrow, the brief war ended. It was a chaotic situation that emerged. A whole industry was, effectively, destroyed overnight. The burgeoning robotic companies and rich businessmen that had backed on their continual growth were bankrupt overnight, and whole sections of the New Rich noble elite was eliminated from the States-General (continuing the makeup of the States-General being largely made up of inherited land-of-gentry, commodities, minerals, energy, steel and inherited wealth elites). Whole planets that had been centres of robotic tech, and had built there economy on it, like Positronia, were ruined.

The result was a total, all-enforcing ban on all robotic lifeforms of anything above a basic computer. No AI was ever allowed. Any even trace of it was to be obliterated. While technological machinery should and would be continued, they would remain at the level of tools, to be always operated by a divine human. This pact, made by the Monarchy, ordained by the Church, and enforced by the States-General (the ruling body of all the noble houses of the Empire) was called the Pact of the Total Ban on the False-Humans. This taboo, backed up by force, lasted all the way up to the end of the Empire, as their technophobia and paranoia around robots being one of the few things Emperors and Empresses of the Empire kept consistent between their respective rules. One must understand, this wasn't some kind of burst of worker's power radicalism that entered the empire. On the contrary, the Imperial system, while brutal, hierarchical, repressive, oppressive, strangulating and totalitarian, was not stupid. It knew which side its bread was buttered, and the prospect of igniting a mass civil war amongst the populace was not on the table. From the perspective of the monarch, it was considered a point of pride that Humans would do their role in the empire, even if that role was the lowest of the low. Some might argue robots could at least do the jobs no one wants (sewage cleaners etc). But the point was any Human worth their salt would do the lowest job, without complaint, if that was what was needed to keep the Empire strong and dominant. There was a rigid, feudal class structure that had to be held in place at all times, and the prospect of having that disrupted by the sudden influx of robots potentially totally disrupted that. To an extent, the subjugation of lower class Humans in the hierarchy was considered part of the pride that the Empire conferred, that everyone was a cell in the body of the empire, that no one would be left out, and no one would be allowed to opt out. The Imperial system would occasionally protect the workers from the threat of bosses, but only in the service of promoting a form of autarkic, mercantilist absolutism.

However, when the Empire collapsed, it was seen (probably rightly) that this was an extreme and irrational response to robotics, that had set mankind back centuries in lost technological gains, and thus, it collapsed too. The Post-Empire days are regarded as a boon for robotics, and the floodgates were no unleashed. Scientists and technologists, wanting to experiment with them for decades, were allowed to simply run wild with it. Sex robots, leisure robots, false nannies, robot teachers, robot nurses, fake playmates, miners, chauffeurs - all of this exploded. For sure, there were mass labour unrests, people protested, people rioted. It didn't much matter, corporate capital was so dominant in this period that they were easily crushed by force.

One such company that branches out in this area was the Happy Time Company. Making robots with smiley, pleasant round heads, they were intended to be positive-up lift robots, aiming to improve the spiritual and mental wellbeing of people. One could hire a Happy Time robot as a friend if you were lonely, or a partner if you wanted to get married. More broadly, they were hired by corporations to be used as "positive wellbeing" staff for the workforce. Workers were required to attend Happy Time sessions, where a Happy Time robot with a pleasant voice would instruct the workers in means of mental wellbeing, to change their minds to a more positive, happy attitude, and to forget about their declining wages, destroyed unions, obliterated benefits, eradicated sick and holiday pays, diminished pensions, absent healthcare, wretched infrastructure, and rising rent. Be Happy, Be Positive, that was the cry. And during the aftermath of the economic crash and recession in the mid 2900s, people were in bad need of uplift. Suicide had been legalised, and a worker who had recently been sacked, or a family that had lost their home in a foreclosure, could purchase a cheap polyethylene bag (copyrighted and rebranded as Suey Sacks) and end their life. An alternative to this misery was the Happy Time Robots, aiming to distract peoples woes through friendly, helpful, happy robots. For a price, of course.

Perhaps realising which way the wind was blowing, and realising that there is a limit to people's willingness to delude themselves and distract from their own despair (strong as it is), they decided to expand into a new area of business. And looking around they realised what the most profitable section of the economy was - killing people. Like a see-saw, as the economy tanked public unrest increased, and continuing conflagrations amongst the Perseus Worlds, on Mistfall and in the piracy going on in the space lanes, if anything the business of war was looking more and more profitable. Stock portfolios were rising on all the major arms companies, and a future, lingering prospect of a major war with the Stonekind along with the Ixtikli meant anyone in the business of arms was salivating at the thought of huge profits. But the Happy Time Company had built a brand name on consumer well-being, and did not want to loose business trust by breaking that. So, in a stroke of genius, they decided to combine the two.

The new Happy Time Death Robots would be a merging of worlds, a revolution in robot armies. While your death robot would do all the usual death robot things, obliteration, vaporisation, dismemberment, decapitation, immobilisation, it would also be encouraged to create an atmosphere of good thinking and positive attitudes, amongst vaporisees and vaporisers alike. Before each killing, the robot would politely ask you to stand still. It would ask you what method of death you would like, then act accordingly. Grieving relatives and friends of the person killed were encouraged to answer their online feedback forms, giving score marks indicating what they thought of their loved ones murder, how well they thought they did, and comments on how they could improve killing people next time. After obliterating somewhere through a laser scope rifle and annihilating the person into meat, a friendly message would pop up "you have just been killed by the Happy Time Company Death. Thank you for your cooperation." When a Happy Time Death Tank (seen on the left) rolled up towards you, it would say "you are about to be killed. Please try and think of positive moments in your life at this point. Research shows that positive thinking seconds before death increased the chances of a happy death by up to 60%." The Happy Time Company sold them remarkably cheap to the central Human government, something that surprised them at first. But they though they got a bargain, and having semi-privatised their entire military, they were uploaded to a dozen worlds where it was needed to supress riots and insurrections. However, there was a catch. They were not cheap. The Happy Time Company required continual monetary repayment after a fixed period in order to continue using its services. Soldiers mid way through fighting would have to use their credit card to fund charges on their gun in order to continue the weapon's firing. Generals could be seen scrambling mid way through a insurgency battlefield to shovel coins into the side of a Happy Time Death tank in order to get it to continue functioning.

But as one can imagine, the costs associated with them and their very nature was of limited use in the long term, and ultimately the company was folded. Lingering bits of the robots were however sold on the cheap. The Junk People (people that live on the Junk Moons, made up of the collected trash and consumer waste that mankind ejected into space during the Empire, the sheer amount of it forming its own gravitational mass and sticking themselves together) would rifle through the robots and sell of bits of them to any bidder as part of their voracious hunger for flogging spare bits and used junk. Many found their way onto black markets and were sold occasional warlords, private businessmen as to keep their private moons and lands private, Tibberidian merchants on space business trips as anti-piracy measures, and sometimes rewired ones were even used by terrorist groups, militia groups, drug cartels, criminal groups and as foot soldiers, albeit in a much dilapidated shape. Many of them were simply dumped on a moon, but it is said they are still alive and active, half destroyed, shambling, wondering half broken smiling creatures, their faces rotting revealing the circuity beneath the smile, crawling around as their legs have gone, replacing themselves with whatever they can find, a friendly greeting and an ask for you to keep calm and stand still groaning out of what remains of their voice box, seconds before turning you into atoms. It is strongly advised to avoid such moons, and the Happy Time Robots are a lingering, and strange, reminder of what can go wrong when the business of capitalism decides to take over the functions of the state.