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Sooboo
Adding to the vast numbers of the miserable, they wander the slidewalks and virch-plexes, scavenge discards piles or hang out among the augment pavilions and samples distribution points, always looking for that elusive mod or augment that will give them privileged su-hood, or even just restore them to what they were before. Or they wander around helpless, locked in their own cognitive or sensory delusions, chased out of most subcultures by the locals who don't like the riffraff making the place look cheap, ending up in ghettos and shantytowns and sewerslums. Sometimes they are violent to non-sooboos, in which case they are quickly neutralized by the local authorities, but more often they are a danger to themselves, and are preyed upon by pimps and owners, vivisectionists and biont-baiters and pitfights. The lucky ones remain in self-sufficient apartments or habitation modules, or are cared for by friends or companion AI who keep them out of trouble.
-Seroz 12, Author , Tauhgish-Dorminy, Tauhgish-Dorminy Convers war period, 3008 AT.
Sooboo
An old slang term in the Tauhgish-Dorminy star system for a failed superior or ascendee to near-superior status. The term was widely used by various characters in the series bAdmod and is still often part of the lexicon of the most dedicated fans of the series. Occasionally, it resurfaces and is widely adopted by locals at Tauhgish-Dorminy, or more rarely in other star systems, during fads in fan communities or renaissance fairs- especially those sponsored or organized by the Fomalhaut Acquisition Society.Sooboos were a common dysfunctional sophont in some parts of the Tauhgish-Dorminy star system during the Consolidation Wars period (approx 2500-3900AT). Frequently, this was a sophont with insufficient advice from a subsingularity ascension tool or knowledge base, who attempted to install genemods, psychoware, and other augmentations without fully following the warning texts and tutorials. Though increasing intelligence and a variety of other traits, even to superior level, could create many dangers and left failed ascendees with many mental illnesses, the concept and term 'Sooboo' was not as applicable within the vast majority of the sephirotics, where society-wide failures like this were, and still are, a rare occurrence. In most societies, Angelnets and other regulatory systems have automatically caught the illegal augmentations, either disassembling them or rendering them non-harmful. If the augment is legal but incompatible, the angelnets warn the user and disable the mod, or replace it with a compatible variant. In less regulated and developed systems like Tauhgish-Dorminy during the Consolidation Wars period however, many augmentations were also installed without proper documentation, or with deeply inadequate augmentation guides. This was especially the case with illegal, non-sephirotic approved modifications and augmentations.
Historically, when the Augmentation was injected, installed on the skin ("derming"), or assimilated into the body, the modification or augmentation altered the physiology, metabolism, or neurology of the user, but often according to default settings, which was often incompatible with the users' own requirements because of the diversity of possible bionts. Even if the default was compatible, the augment itself might have been a malicious product, locally called "prankware" or "hurtware", and deliberately created dysfunctions.
Some of these "Sooboos" managed to visit Sephirotic worlds and non-aligned, but developed polities, where the authorities restored them to their original condition, and removed the psychological compulsion that drove some of them to destroy themselves because of failed toposophic ascension. For those who attempted ascension during some of the worst historical periods in Tauhgish-Dorminy during the third millennium AT, patients had to wait for a skilled genemodology and augment-instruction-expert system (such as are members of Healing Interstellar, Biont Care, or other charity organisations) who had arrived in the star system.
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 04 November 2004.
Article rewritten by Worldtree and Rakuen for updated canon, October 2025
Initially published on 04 November 2004.
Article rewritten by Worldtree and Rakuen for updated canon, October 2025
Additional Information
Unfinished bAdmod serial here, by M. Alan Kazlev bAdmod
