Just read the update. Horrifying in a nice way.
This chapter gives a serious look at the logistical difficulties a dedicated eugenics program would face in real life, and how the already-flawed idea is ruined even further by the inherently flawed authoritarian ideals of Drakia.
the Human Instrumentality Project- the Dragon’s great attempt to take the reigns of evolution once and for all, and create the Master Race through artificial selection.
I don't know which is worse: Gendo, or Stoker?
Artificial insemination was not a new technology- it dated back to the 19th century if not the 18th- and the Dragon’s Nest had been using it to impregnate politically disloyal but genetically Superior (white) women from Drakian Europe with semen from disabled Drakian military veterans.
This is basically institutionalized rape, and I'm not even surprised Draka is that depraved.
A new innovation changed things however;
in vitro fertilization. Pioneered by Scandinavia, IVF had been quickly adopted in the demographically devastated countries of Central Europe, and barely a decade after the birth of the first successful IVF baby in Oslo, the Bureau for Technical Progress felt that it had sufficiently mastered the technique for Drakia to put it into wider use. IVF meant that it was possible to combine the Superior genes of two individuals and then leave an imperfectly Superior or even Inferior woman to go through the trouble of actually being pregnant as a surrogate mother. The Empire could therefore breed large numbers of Superior persons without either unduly discommoding loyal Drakian women who didn’t want to be continuously pregnant, or including less than perfect genes from unwilling anti-social women.
Oh my. Oh dear. OH NO!
As envisioned by the planners at the BTP, the Human Instrumentality Project was to carefully select five hundred Drakian men of “the most eugenically Superior genes” as sperm donors and two thousand similarly Superior Drakian women as egg donors. Fifty-thousand Bondswomen would be designated as surrogate mothers (Imperial documents literally referred to them as “incubators”) and impregnated using IVF with the goal of producing one hundred thousand children over two years who would be raised first in Dragon’s Nest creches, and then through the Agoge.
Oh god oh fuck they're doing it!
Seriously though, These two (parts of) paragraphs are very good. The first one is merely a technical description of IFV, albeit increasingly colored by Drakia's twisted notions. It tells the reader what IFV is capable of, and reminding you of Draka's twisted ideals it invites you imagine what depravities they might get up to. And as you're wondering if they'ed really do it, the next paragraph makes it very explicit:
Breeding slaves.
Bravo.
Naturally such persons (including Ulysses Kobold himself, and Virgil Stoker) must be eugenically Superior or else they would occupy the offices they did,
Shouldn't this be "or else they would NOT occupy the offices"?
Naturally the Human Instrumentality Project solved this problem by falsely reporting a much lower rate of congenital anomalies and secretly disposing of most of the embarrassments, leaving behind just over forty-five thousand new Drakensis for the state to raise.
Well well well. My guess:
At some point a person who's cogenital sickness has been covered up is going to ascend to a position of high power in Drakia, and
really mess things up while people continue to deny that a project of their eugenics program could ever have problems.
The first ever of the much-bragged-about Drakensis to defect to the Alliance for Democracy described the hellish conditions of his upbringing.
Glad to see that after America's alliance falls apart, a new one will rise to pick up the torch!
and in the United States technological innovation drove other grand new projects totally alien to Drakian sensibilities.
Iooking forwards to seeing the way America and its actually decently functioning scientific establishment will utterly FLEX on the snek bois.
Human Instrumentality Project? And a set-up that is basically an inverse Darling and the Franxx?
I know about evangelion, but not much about Darling so I don't see the parallell.
Why I do suspect that the the limnic eruption problem is not going to self-correct anywhere as quickly as the Drakian scientists (still on Stoker's paybook?) thought?
While I too doubt they'll be over so quickly, I don't really see how they could cause more damage than they already are.
