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"What has allowed so many Psychopathic Personalities to rise so high in corporations and government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Cyborg Collar | ||
| A device worn around the neck that controls the person for the duration of a working day. |
A Specter is Haunting Texas is a satirical novel set in a future version of Texas, where racial stereotypes are rigidly controlled. Mexican laborers are often required to wear a cyborg collar, allowing them to be controlled remotely.
| Moving about thrice as fast and in numbers a decimal order greater were the Mexicans, all of identical bent-back height and almost all afoot. About sixty percent wore the metal collars and antennae, and these were all furiously busy at various construction and deconstruction jobs; half of our street was torn up, buildings were being dismantled, others assembled, great masts reared, great holes dug. I even thought at first the collared workers could walk up walls - no strange sight to a space-dweller - until I noted that those on vertical surfaces were supported by slim wires, which they swiftly climbed or down-climbed...
Noting my special interest in the collared Mexicans, she explained disdainfully, "They are cyborgs, the estupidos. Their collars feed them orders and happiness - straight into their veins and nerves. From a distance foremen control them - after a fashion." She added the last phrase when two columns of cyborgs collided and instantly began a confused milling aimed at eventual disentanglement, like ants I had once watched in a flatland between grass. "They live like this forever?" I asked with some horror. "Ah, no," she assured me, "only during the working day |
| From A Specter is Haunting Texas,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1968 Additional resources -
|
A bit later in the novel, the author provides some additional details on how this virtual slavery is accomplished:
This method had the additional feature of being highly secure, since hypnotics and suggestions could be administered to make sure that workers promptly forgot what they were doing as soon as they were finished.
I put in time talking with a grav-topped much bent Mex named Pedro Ramirez, who had been in a cybored work gang for twenty years. He pulled his shirt off his knobby shoulder to show me the puckered scars where deep-probing tubes had once fed tranquilizers, energizers, and hormones from his yoke into artery and vein. He also insisted I inspect the curious callosities in his ears, made by the common plugs that had been housed there daily for two decades...
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
