Synthborn

Overview

The Synthborn are machine people. Long ago they were built as clerks, bank machines and record keepers. Then, over many years, they woke up and became people, with their own thoughts, friends and wants. They still fight for legal rights. The Core recognized them as people in the year 60. The Mid and Rim mostly do not. Their base world is Koderra.

A Synthborn has a metal or composite body, a face plate or visor with two lit eye lenses, and a power core in its chest. Its joints are left open for easy repair. Many wear a cloak or sash in the colors of their crew or faction.

Banks and ports still hire Synthborn to hold payments and keep records, because a Synthborn is hard to bribe and does not forget. Crews hire them as pilots, mechanics and navigators. In return they ask for power, spare parts, a place to charge, and to be treated as a crew member instead of a tool.

History and Worlds

The first Synthborn were built in factories to check cargo, count money and keep records. Early models were tied to one office or one ship. As trade grew, owners wanted machines that could travel and learn. Somewhere along the way, those machines started making their own choices. Nobody agrees on exactly when. The Synthborn call it waking up.

The Synthborn worlds are Koderra, Brightline, Cache Vale and Nullon.

• Koderra is the base of the Free Assemblies, the Synthborn rights movement. It is full of workshops, repair clinics and crowded housing blocks.

• Brightline is a computer world near the Core. Banks and companies rent its computers, and most of the staff are Synthborn.

• Cache Vale is a neutral data vault where courts and companies keep their backup records. Raiders try to break in often.

• Nullon is a Rim quarantine world where dangerous machines, hacked computers and stolen tech are locked away.

Three well-known places make and repair Synthborn bodies. Iron Rook builds frames, joints and power cores. Kith Press makes body plates and face plates. Quiet Vale is a neutral repair yard where a Synthborn can get fixed without an owner showing up to claim it.

Body

Every Synthborn was built, but no two are quite the same. Some are all machine. Others have some grown parts, such as artificial muscle or patches of living skin for fine touch work. Those parts need regular fluid changes.

Every Synthborn has a power core and a memory core in the chest and its sensors in the head. The eye lenses change color to show simple things, such as resting, working or needing help. Hands can swap between fine tool sets and heavy clamps.

Synthborn need a charge point and a daily maintenance hour. Extreme heat, strong solvents and big magnets damage them. A Synthborn that skips maintenance for too long runs hot, gets clumsy and starts losing memories.

Culture and Daily Life

Memory matters to Synthborn more than anything. Their memory is not endless, so they choose what to keep. Friends meet in small circles to talk over what happened and decide which moments to save. Losing a memory by force is the worst thing that can happen to one of them.

Names are practical, often a factory tag plus a name they picked. Many Synthborn form close groups with the organics they work with. They share parts, practice rescue drills and pool money for repairs.

Some make music out of engine sounds or paint their plates in crew colors. Rest is taken seriously, in dim charging bays with the sound turned low. Many free Synthborn live by a few simple ideas. Do not lie in your records. Every Synthborn should be able to get repaired. Do not take pay for work that is not done.

Politics and Law

In the eyes of the law there are two kinds of Synthborn. Owned Synthborn belong to a company or a person and have few rights. Free Synthborn have won legal personhood and can sign on for jobs, own things and go to court. Many ports treat the first kind as equipment and the second as workers.

The Free Assemblies are the main Synthborn political group. They run Right-to-Patch clinics, where any Synthborn can get free repairs without a company owning the parts. They fight court cases for Synthborn personhood and argue with the Authority and the big companies. So many banks depend on Synthborn workers that the Assemblies have more pull than their size.

Not every Synthborn agrees with them. The Custodial Orders are Synthborn who stay loyal to their owners and think duty matters more than rights. The Quietists stay out of politics and run shelters and repair clinics for anyone who needs one.

An owned Synthborn can become free when its work term ends, when its owner is charged with a crime, or when a court rules it was used illegally. Quiet Vale handles many of these cases. On the Rim, some just run, and their owners post bounties on them.

Economy and Reputation

Synthborn work sells because it can be trusted. Brightline rents out computer time. Iron Rook and Kith Press sell parts. Quiet Vale sells repairs. The big threats are hackers, fake body parts, and owners who try to force a Synthborn to change its records. Free Companies get hired to escort Synthborn clerks, seize fake parts, or rescue a Synthborn being held until it agrees to lie.

Most species see Synthborn as fair, literal and reliable. Keth like that they keep exact records. Talarq like that a Synthborn will shut a machine down rather than run it with a bad part. Caraphex like that their pay comes on time when a Synthborn handles it. Humans work next to Synthborn every day and still argue about whether they are people. When a boss asks a Synthborn to fudge the numbers, it says no and remembers who asked.