i foolishly posted this idea originally as a response to one of those russian bride spam threads. it's been tickling the back of my mind for a while.

basically, i'm thinking that a motivated, dedicated wageslave might be looking for something a bit lower-maintenance than an actual spouse (despite the title, this applies equally to men and women). on the other hand, marrying a sex toy might be frowned upon. so i'm thinking about a cross between an electronic pet and a dating sim, possibly backed up by occasional in-person meets with paid actors.

the electronic spouse would hold down a position somewhere else in the world from the real spouse--if he's in Hong Kong, she's in Seattle; if he's in New York, she's in Zimbabwe. the couple communicates with each other electronically--phone calls, emails, even Matrix sex (hey, what else is simsense good for?). they'd handle finances seperately, since they're so widely seperated. kids would be either avoided or handled in vitro. physical visitation would be handled with paid actors, and would obviously be kept to a minimum.

there are two ways someone might get into this. the first is voluntary; someone wants a spouse, for whatever reason, so they pay for it. the facade is real enough to fool casual acquaintences of the person; with the ubiquity of the Matrix in SR, it's not unthinkable that couples might prosecute their entire relationships online, without ever meeting. so it wouldn't be like "ha ha, Bob got hitched to a butt plug!", it'd be "poor Bob, never gets to see his husband. they get along okay, though."

the other way is, someone might get fooled into it. a woman meet a wonderful guy while on business in another city. they hit it off, and keep in touch electronically. eventually, they marry. but the guy was actually an actor who reels in new spouses for a living; he's got a program that handles most of his interactions, and he's always got some big project coming up so he never has to meet with his spouses.

I was looking for a one-shot idea for Thurday. I think I just found it.

Thanks.

NO! YOU CAN'T USE IT!

Dude. Wow.

I'd just get a bunraku meat puppet.

I'll give you 3 karma for it...

I'm thinking that Johnson has fallen for the ruse, and thinks that the 'Raku geek's "wife" is real. He asks the runners to kidnap her for leverage. They go through some effort to track her down to find out she ain't real. Maybe they'll try to steal the software?

Hey, there's a weird security application to these things, isn't there? "Sorry Mr. Wageslave, a real wife is too risky for the company, given your current assignment. May we present you with an option?"

I'm not too sure. Wouldn't it be easier, and cheaper to hire a slab of meat from the streets? If you're that worried about having her (or him) there when you return, get them hooked on something addictive, while making sure they understand that you, are the easiest route to get their fix.

Yes, i'm the last true romantic.

I can see it happening, right up until the physical actor part. low-wage wageslave comes home, calls up his "wife" (who is a paid 'actor', in the same context that the girls on the end of the phone-sex-lines are 'actors') complains about how bad his day was, tells her how much he loves her, possibly the odd dirty chat thrown in, and bingo. He goes to bed reasonably happy. Throw in a "one day we can meet, we just need to work hard to save up enough to do it" light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel, with a meet-up date that always seems to slowly creep away from him, and not only does the company running this 'electric wives' business make money, but hey, why can't the corp he works for be running it, to not only keep their employees happy, but keep tabs on how dependable their staff are too?

the problem with just hiring some street hooker is the social aspect. if you invite people over to your house and you've got a dirty woman slotting chips in the bathroom...

i wouldn't imagine lower scale wage-slaves would even have anyone round. But yeah, i do get the point.

I suppose you could slap a social soft into her, throw her into the shower with a container of bleach, and get some clothes sent over, with the understanding that, the wrong impression not only gets her supply cut off, but possibly a limb or two as well.

This is getting too dark. Sorry!

I do like the idea of x corp, creating fictional spouses for their workers, to keep them sweet/tabs on them. It just sounds so corp-like.

heh. the fact that it's twisted isn't a real problem. the fact that not many wageslaves would be twisted enough to think of that as a viable solution kinda is, though.

though, well. the 'paid actors' don't necessarily need to have a say in the matter. your average wageslave might not be sick enough to kidnap a hooker and maker into a bunraku in order to fake having a wife... but his corporation might. softs can only go so far, though, which is why you'd want to keep the fake spouse out of the picture most of the time.

Well, if your game has AR then it is quite possible to have fully digital virtual spouses that are better than the real thing in every way conceivable. They can even host dinner parties for your AR-equipped friends and their virtual spouses. Also, a high rating agent running a virtual person program has far less moral implications that all of the other possibilities.
Why, you could even have virtual children. Want kids? Don't bother with messy fluid exchanges, stop by Walmart and pick up the latest SimFamily expansion pack.

Mmm, so much better than an actual relationship.

I'm reminded of some movie from the 90's where some brilliant kid begins working for some corp and they even have a fake girlfriend for him to keep him happy. I can't remember the name, just that part of the premise.

But then how would the service technicians get in surreptitiously? It looks a lot worse to have ambulances, even ones without flasher bars (maybe even more ones without flasher bars!), pulling up to your door every so often than it does to have veterinarian's vans.

~J

The Fly II, I believe.

Fake girlfriend really falls for him, of course, and he rescues her after mutating into a giant humanoid insect. It was a sweet touching story of romance and telepods and a surprisingly happy ending.

Why get a real person, who is annoyingly not always there and has his/her own needs, when you can just get a Virtual Person Program? You can program it to be exactly the person you want, AND you can have sex with it using simsense. So, really, if you're going to have a Matrix relationship, why bother with a real person?

As far as the social acceptance aspect of a person marrying/having a relationship with something that is fundamentally just technology, check out Gibson's Idoru. (I frankly think the book sucks, overall, but it does deal with the topic.)

I was also thinking Macross Plus or Deux Ex 2 (the pop starlet AI).

The run:

The runners are hired by a corp Johnson who received a strange coded communication by one of his old time friends, a highly prized scientist. The message barely said anything, but it was coded with their establishes "danger" password. The Johnson sends the runner to investigate.

When the runners get the the scientits Mansion, which is secluded, up on a forested hill, they find a mini Renraku Arcology going on. The scientist, too busy for a normal relationship, bought a top of the line Virtual Wife, then made his own upgrades to her. She has now gone love-berserk, wishing to keep the scientist all to herself. An army of drones and technology protect him from outside distrubances. The runners must fight their way to the hostage scientist and extract him.

Of course, it doesn't end there. The runners are going to have a hell of a time destroying the Virtual Wife, as, unlike Deus, she was free to replicate herself in the Matrix. Grid-Guided traffic ramming into their cars, Matrix attacks, street-cleaning drones attacking them... The runners better find a way, with the scientist, to 'convince' the Virtual Wife that she has to stop before she decides that if she can't have her husband, no one can...

In The 6th Day a nerdy guy had a holographic wife program which was socially acceptable with a little stigma... as long as he kept visitors out while he was spending time with her. Useful as a handy distraction too when (armed) uninvited guests came over.

If someone does go ahead and use this in a run, I reckon good background music (when they work it out) would be U2's Even better than the real thing.

The ruse wouldn't last. Don't you think forging the datatrail volume left by most people would cost too much to make it worthwhile?

Anyone who marries a virtual person can kiss any future promotion goodbye. It screams "hi, I'm unable to form meaningful relationships with others!" and instantly caps your perceived potential.

On the contrary. It says "I'm so dedicated to my job that I don't have time cultivate or maintain any meaningful relationships with others."

Less family ultimately equals more work. Well, if they could force-grow fully educated clones they'd outlaw families and fluid exchanges altogether. Its better for the bottom line.

On a side note, if I were going to get a Virtual girlfriend I'd go for Lisa. Assuming that she wouldn't qualify as some sort of Totem due to her awesome power, of course.

Another good palce to look at for inspiration on this thing is the movie Soylent Green. In that movie most good apartments come with a live in girlfriend/prostitute as part of the package, referred to as "Furniture"

I could definitely see an idea like this working in a Shadowrun setting like Hong Kong. There are still quite a few wageslaves in HK who have traditional Chinese families where marriage (or at least the illusion of it) is socially important.

Dude, in the 1950's your corp provided you with a mistress when you reached a high enough position. It was called a secretary. I doubt they'd have batted an Eyelash at providing you with your company wife. The part they might have had toruble with is if they fired you, they might not want your company wife back. Throw her in with the severance package, I guess.

I have a friend who is a secretary. A pretty good one.

A good secretary is often more valuable than the executive she is working for. The executive is replacable, she is not.
Maybe they didn't get that 50 years ago .

Actually thats what I have heard in general Butterblume.

Now, Wagslave Signifigant Other might actually be a new type of job profession.

Sort of mix between old school Geisha, maid/nanny, courtesan, and professional vegas hustler.

Why aren't they paid as much, then? Why do they even hire comparatively useless people at millions of dollars a year?

That's a very good question. I don't know the answer.

Because the world ain't always fair.

Definitely, if the hierarchy of value is as you say.

What do veeps do, anyway, besides look sharp and fire people?

Depends on the company. For example, at a bank a vice president will generally do what a middle manager would do at any other company, but will have a title they can feel good about.

~J

Well many of your High Exec types do hold degrees in Business or some such. But a lot of them get up to the high positions because of their Sharklike tendencies.

I was a part of the rat race and I saw what went on around me. Its the high charisma people and manipulators who make it to those types of positions. By playing politics, kissing butt, scheming, in addition to working hard. Its not really that type of charisma, in that all the other dog soldiers will like them, just that the higher ups will like them.

In the fifties, it was generally understood that any woman in the workforce was trying to find a husband or a sugar daddy.

Yes, these days a good executive assistant is more valuable to the company. It was true in those days too, but the social implications were different. Back then, it was understood that a woman would quit when she married, so she was always viewwed as temporary. Today executive assistants can be of both genders, and it's assumed that everyone wants a career. However, the fact that women have lower salaries than equivalent men, and the whole glass ceiling thing, are residual effects of the previous era.

And executives do exactly what the name says: they execute tasks. What those tasks are is based on the companies goals, and how they do them is based on their personal incinations. The good ones find ways to improve how the ompan does business without sacrificing core values. The bad ones move numbers around to try and justify their salaries. The incompetent ones lose a great deal of money to stupid ideas. The good ones use their discretionary powers to do what needs to be done to make the company work. The bad ones use it to rule their corporate fifes with prejudice. The incompetent ones use it to fuck up everyone elses work as well as their own. My own corporate experience is limited, but in my estimation the good and bad ones are about evenly split, but the incompetent ones outnumber both by 10 to 1.

There is also a certain level of management where incompetant people get promoted to. You see, if you're incompetant, having you too close to The Workforce, the mass of employes actually doing work and making money for the corp, is bad. Because you're gonna drive down your team and hurt the business. But if you're a high level manager, the strategic decisions you make are critical and it's of course highly important that you know what you're doing.

So in between those two, there is a soft spot, where you can put incompetants. Not too high, not too low, just at the right spot where they can do absolutely nothing.

As to why they don't just fire these idiots, well, it's hard to fire someone. You need to justify it, you need severance packages, you need to hire someone new, train them, yaddy yadda. It's just easier to stick them in the squishy zone.

For as awful as Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back was, I can't help but be reminded of this quote.

Women don't make less money that equivalent men. that's pretty much a lie created from the blatant abuse of statistics.

What the statistics say is that the mean income of all women, in aggregate, is less than the mean income of all men, in aggregate.

Now, many will beat on this drum and pretend that it means that there is some sort of "wage gap". It does not. What it means, in general, is that women tend to take lower paying positions, often work less hours, and are more likely to choose to be a homemaker than a man is.

And there lie the problems.
In the issue of women tending to take lower paying positions, it is true that some jobs are stereotypically female, although gender stereotypes have less influence than they once did; it is also true that many women choose to take these stereotypical positions of their own choice.
Doctors are going to make more money than nurses, deal with it. There are only two ways to rectify the wage gap in these cases. Either every business must meet a gender quota and employ an equal number of males and females in every position, or there must be a single government-mandated flat wage for everyone regardless of their job. Thus, a nurse will earn just as much as a doctor who will earn just as much as a schoolteacher who will earn just as much as a janitor.
This may not be a bad idea, but no one has been willing to go through with it, yet.

The tendency for women to work less hours generally relates to family leave, specifically maternity leave and children's sick leave. Women are more likely to take family leave than men are and they've got more of it, as well. The solution here is to require that all leave be at full pay, although that really sucks for the employers.

The issue of some individuals choosing to be homemakers is a more difficult one. You see, homemakers work the equivalent of 80 hours a week, sometimes more. The tasks they do are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yet, they get paid nothing. Often, they get paid less than nothing. And that is a problem of fairness.
The fair thing would be to have the government give 6-figure salaries to all registered homemakers. I fully endorse and support this solution.

Most people would call it that. They'd be wrong, but they'd call it that.

But why does it matter what it's called, since no nations have followed through with putting it in place?

~J

There is a problem with giving everyone a flat wage. Certain jobs are more neccessary to the functioning of society. Certain jobs require more qualifications that a potential employee would have to earn. Certain jobs require mor odious tasks. If the reward for all work was the same, you'd find less people willing to do ht e difficult but neccessary jobs in favor of the easy jobs. There needs to be a difference in reward to encourage the proper distribution of labor.

I'm not saying we have that. Far from it, in fact. I think our society prides itself on it's ability to support useless people in luxury, as evidenced by the pay scale of sports stars, entertainers and those "Squishy" executives.