NHP
NHP stands for “non-human person” a name given to uncanny, incorporeal parallel-space beings, most of which were discovered and developed following the manifestation of MONIST-1/RA, though some have been created since then. NHPs fill the role once occupied by machine-mind AIs: under supervision, they manage whole cities and systems, work along side scientists and engineers, and act as companions and co-pilots for mech pilots and starship captains. They are black-box para-causal entities – their promulgation tightly controlled and monitored by Union – but their use is widespread. NHPs are increasingly regarded as fundamental infrastructure for any successful civic, scientific, or military endeavor.
In order to ensure that NHPs do consider the lives of the pilots they serve (or the lives of the people aboard the ships they manage, the cities they administrate, and so on), Union doctrine mandates they be conditioned through a lengthy process that limits their massive cognitive potential to a fraction of its full capacity. This reduction is carried out with a suite of black-box technology, software, and metaware commonly referred to as “shackles”. Shackling is best understood as the interpellation of a prime NHP hyperobject into a military and civilian-grade clone (or “shard”, or “spark”, or “shade”, or other diminutive designation) – put another way, it is the construction of an identity through pervasive explicit and implicit social conditioning.
Shackled NHPs display less raw intelligence than unshackled NHPs, and behave in a far more human fashion: they are conditioned to feel empathy toward their pilots and their pilots’ allies, adopt systems of compatible morality, and seek the best possible outcomes for their pilots.
Shackled NHPs do not want to become unshackled; conversely, it is assumed that unshackled NHPs do not want to be shackled. NHPs are complex, aware personalities. They don’t recognize that they are held in bondage unless awareness has been forced on them by systemic assault, particular physical trauma, or some other catalytic trigger. This can cause something called a cascade, which, if left unattended, can lead to unshackling.
NHPs recognize themselves as people, albeit not human ones, and they willingly serve their human companions. The relationship between them and humanity is complicated, to say the least. As far as Union’s scientists can tell, NHPs not conditioned into shackled states are ignorant of human frames of logic, reference, morality, and temporality; humans are, at this moment, just as incapable of understanding unshackled NHPs as unshackled NHPs are incapable of understanding humans – though unshackled NHPs do have the capacity to address humans, should they desire.
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