"Imagine that you belonged to an immortal race, created by some other long lost race to be the perfect servants... Right down to a code of conduct — a list of hundreds of rules of behavior — written into your very blood, that you could no more disobey than a mortal could refuse to eat or pee. Even aeons after the last of your masters was dead... even when most of the "laws" no longer make any sense. Completely without free will... and conscious of it every moment. No wonder they're all half-barmy."
Peridot: No, no. You're confused. A Pearl can't build a thing like this.
Steven: Why not?
Peridot: Because Pearls aren't for this! They're for standing around, and looking nice, and holding your stuff for you... right?
Pearl: That's enough! If we're going to work together, you're going to have to listen to me.
Peridot: Listen to you? [laughs loudly, then turns to Steven] Did you teach her to talk like this?
Steven: What are you talking about?
Peridot: She's a Pearl. She's a made-to-order servant just like the hundreds of other Pearls being flaunted around back on Homeworld. [...] And she looks like a fancy one, too. [...] So, who do you belong to anyway?
Pearl: Nobody!
Steven: Why not?
Peridot: Because Pearls aren't for this! They're for standing around, and looking nice, and holding your stuff for you... right?
Pearl: That's enough! If we're going to work together, you're going to have to listen to me.
Peridot: Listen to you? [laughs loudly, then turns to Steven] Did you teach her to talk like this?
Steven: What are you talking about?
Peridot: She's a Pearl. She's a made-to-order servant just like the hundreds of other Pearls being flaunted around back on Homeworld. [...] And she looks like a fancy one, too. [...] So, who do you belong to anyway?
Pearl: Nobody!
Imagine an existence of genetically engineered servitude. The conditioned ecstasy and ingrained hatred of your work, to endlessly fight or labour or copulate and die at the whims of your Creators. Pleasure as a means of control, for the seduction of collaborators and placation of frustrated soldiers. But what happens to the soldier when the war comes to an end? What is your purpose when the Creators have no further use for you?
— Strange New Girls, a Star Trek: Enterprise fanfic
"Fabricants cost very little to cultivate, Archivist, and have no awkward hankerings for a better, freer life. As a Fabricant xpires after forty-eight hours without a highly genomed Soap whose manufacture and supply is the Corp's monopoly, 'it' will not run away. Myself excepted, Fabricants are the ultimate organic machinery. Archivist, do you still maintain there are no slaves in Nea So Copros?"
— Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas
Dolls are no longer the novelty toys of the rich. They are used as cheap, versatile, computer-controlled labour in industries where working conditions are traditionally hazardous — chemical refineries, deep coal mines, intensive horticulture, nuclear fission power stations. Gradually, they replace human workers in the emergent nanotechnology industries: driven by plug-in chips and fembot-gown neural nets, dolls can work for twenty hours a day accurately electron-etching primary fembot templates no bigger than bacteria. Killing Fields franchises are built in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Budapest and Moscow. Every day, more than a thousand dolls are hunted down and killed for sport across the European Union. There are women-only arenas, arenas for senior citizens, arenas where the chemically disturbed therapeutically discharge the murderous fantasies of their superegos.
It is an age of excess.
It is an age of excess.
— Fairyland, by Paul J McAuley
