No matter how much one tried, a human slave had certain limitations. A master could make his slave train for as long as it took to be a force of lean muscle and quick reflexes, but still could not get that same slave to be able to lift stacks of bricks, or calculate physics problems in their head. One could try, but trying to change a slave so that he or she was turned from a blonde to a brunette, or changed several cup sized in a bra, would usually mean some sort of medical intervention.
Yet, if a slave was built from the ground up, then that slave would be able to fit whatever an owner would desire. If a master would want a tall man with big muscles, then that was what that master would get. Should a master want a petite little slave that looks delicate, then that would be what he or she would get. That would make things easy, but as there was an understandable dislike of trying to shift human slaves without their permission, the idea of having a slave that one could change on a whim, like changing an accent, wasn't going to go straight with flesh and blood.
What was interesting happened to be that the technology was there for something similar though. One just couldn't switch out parts on most humans, but one could do that with a machine. In fact, one could design the robot from the start. Then someone could design an android that would look like a busty schoolgirl, and had the strength to carry a stack of steel piping around without any trouble. Research had been going on into it, given that this could give them 'slaves' that would be fully programmable from the start, would accept downloads of skill sets and programs. Sure, this would steal some of the thunder of 'real' slaves, but the help that they would give in certain situations would be quite welcome. And, some even envisioned things like human slaves with implants that would directly access the brain, allowing contact to be made with thoughts and memory, or limb replacements, but acceptance of that was a hard thing to get.
That wasn't to say that it was an easy thing to research. Their technology was at a high level, but it did take some effort to make advancements in the field. Each and every advancement would do a lot for helping robots do more for humans, though some did think that there would be a market for slaves of flesh and blood, given the 'appeal' to some of having control over another person.
Ranma knew about none of this. In his mind, there was little reason to analyze things like market price or history. Such was the case with what happened when he did his laundry, so he never really applied it to anything else. Instead, he merely accepted that he owned a girl, and if she happened to have metal parts in her, then that was what the situation was. His attention was directed towards her in other ways, so it wasn't as big a deal as it could have been.
However, it still didn't change the fact that he was the 'proud' owner of:
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(Posted Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:33)
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