User:Handle2/Articles/WifeUnits
Wife Units - An Unusual Necessity For An Unusual Place
by Aymee Ichigo (excerpted from Little Sanctuary Inquirer - NSFW Edition, 16th April 2083 issue)
The Families Programme and Housing Programme are two of Little Sanctuary and Arendtcore's hallmark initiatives and one of the ways we strongly encourage employee loyalty as well as that of indies who choose to put down roots in the Corporate Region. The Housing Programme provides every family with a home sufficient to fit their needs, while the Families Programme ensures that members of the community are paired off with each other with incentives and rewards to encourage the addition of children via procreation, adoption, or fosting from various sources within and outside of the community. In fact, active participlation in the Families Programme is required to maintain employment at Arendtcore as well participation in the Housing Programme - no loners allowed in Little Sanctuary, I'm afraid!
Unfortunately, the Company and the Region both have a bit of a 'sausage factory problem': 70% of those who migrate to Little Sanctuary are male. This is partly due to the nature of many of the Company's various integrations being more male-centric in terms of the kind of people they attract, as well as the Gender Disaster afflicting the world demographics in general (in fact, 90% of the world population is male, a serious issue that merits discussion elsewhere) . Given this dismal picture, the Families programme is both even more important, but accomplishing its aims of pairing folks up becomes trickier especially in traditional heterosexual relationships.
Eating One's Own Dogfood
The end result is that since 2045, male participants in the Familiies Programme have been permitted to opt for inorganic partners after prolonged and failed attempts to pair off with actual human women (or their preferred gender) in tne community, and in fact, the company has actively worked on such substitutions for this purpose.
Arendtcore Holdings ('the Company') keeps a Psychology department active in the Complex. While its primary function is to ensure the continued well-being and loyalty of company employees and regional inhabitants, it also helps new employees determine if their desired needs in a family can be met by conventional dating or pair-ups with other human members of the community. Where this is not possible, it assesses what the employee both needs and desires in a 'no fails possible' exam, the results of which are funnelled into design and production of Wife Units for such individuals. These are rented out on a 5-decade lease, on the assumption that the employee continues to remain either in good employ with the Company, and/or as a continued member of the Little Sanctuary community.
Assigning a Proper Spouse
Arendtcore Robotics is one of the oldest parts of the company and in fact was the entirely of the company initially (before massive integrations and acquisitions expanded it into the multi-industrial coglomerate you see today). The production of Wife Units for most personnel is usually based off technical designs that are available to the public outside of Little Sanctuary , but depending on the seniority of the Employee involved, extra care may be taken. In some cases, it may even be determined that an older refitted unit (complete with its prior experience data) or a Cy-Fur (animal android, often a Catdroid or W.O.L.F) may be more suitable than a brand new model.
The technology available to the Company in current times has allowed for a more diverse range of ethnicities (over 60 at current count) to be represented at least visually if not in cultural adaptations as well in many cases. As many Arendtcore designs to date have relied on Mel-Eisner Open-Source Compatible animatronic head modules, it is easy to do customised heads with different hairstyles, facial shaping as well as vocal synthesiser fonts. In fact, in the case of many lower-echelon staff, it can be as easy as getting a body out of the assembly line and fitting it with a head and programming that fits their desired/needed qualities.
In virtually all cases, WIfe Units are programmed for basic fulfilment of the 4 Cs: Cooking, Cleaning, Cardio/Callisthenics and Companionship/Coitus, as well as reasonable learning and adaptive capabilities to learn from continued living and interaction with their intended human family, including human children and Child Units (androids designed and programmed for fulfilling 'child' roles). They are relatively world proofed, including water resistance up to 500m in water depth, resilience against reasonable forms of heat, cut, and impact damage, and limited self-recovery and self-repair functions sufficient to at least put them within reach of the local Yellow Reset Crew Teams and the local Medicalcare facilities.
Wife Units are usually also capable of limited food and drink consumption, though this is mainly to help keep appearances and does nothing to service their needs. The food and drink is composted and removed during 'toilet trips' in a hygienic and clean manner, preventing foul odours or leaks (except during digester malfunctions). In fact, most Wife Units are designed with taste and smell capabilities sufficient for home coooking, though asking them to cook something outside of their database of recipes is asking for a disaster, at least the first few times a new recipe is attempted!
Old Can Be Gold, But...
In some cases, Wife Units are recycled on from families that have failed due to the Employee leaving the employ of The Company without making arrangements to bring them along on their exile from the community, or from the simple fact that people eventually die of old age or other reasons. They may be redeployed as is, or given changes in visual design to fit with the times and/or their new human spouse. For privacy reasons, memories may be partially edited to preserve the identity of prior spouses, but the value of learning and adaptations from prior functioning usually outweighs any benefit that could be derived from a full wipe.
Such units are watched carefully at least initially in their new homes to ensure that prior neural pathing does not cause problems in their interactions with new spouses. In practice though, many Wife Units are capable of partitioning off their prior histories and do not have issues adapting to a new family. When a unit is assigned on this recycled basis, the lease term is reset, allowing the new spouse to potentially enjoy at least 5 decades of the unit's company without the baggage of an earlier expiry.
My Mom Is Now My Wife
In certain very old families, the Wife Unit can even be a Wife Unit previously assigned to an older generation of the family that is reconditioned and set up as a inheritance for a child. This has resulted in some peculiar situations where some folks have Wife Units as spouses who at one point may have been their mothers. We see nothing wrong with this, and frankly, most people where this arrangement is made are actually happier than with a brand new unit, because apparently having a spouse whose experiences with you incude your childhood can boost kinship, regardless of their prior and new family roles.
Does It Have To Be A Human?
In recent years, Cy-Furs (Animal Androids) have become an option in the Families Programme's list of possible Inorganic Partners. These are usually either Catdroids, or W.O.L.Fs, though almost any species covered within the Cy-Fur design range is possible. This option often attracts 'furry' fans, but it has to be noted that Psychology evaluates such requests extra carefully and is likely to reject any request based simply on "I like xxx animal". In fact, Cy-Furs are often assigned to people who might seem initially to be the very last kind of people who want one as a spouse. This has seldom resulted in a return - a testament to how canny the staff at Psychology are in determining the actual needs of a Employee despite what they may right down as 'what they want' (which is often what they desire instead - often a very different thing!)
Cy-Furs are capable of limited food and drink consumption as well as emulating many experiences experienced by their actual animal and/or humans in general, but to date, the massive variety of food diets means that Cy-Furs (with some marked exceptions) SUCK AT COOKING. Not recommended for folks who actually want their spouses to cook proper dinners rather than char it and douse the results in inedible flavorings. On the flip side though, a catdroid or WOLF has many of the advantages of having a cat or dog for a pet, combined with the companionship of a human wife. and yes, that does include sex - the less said about that, the better...
Does It Have to Be From Arendtcore?
Another occurrence that happens more as a result of increasing migration to Little Sanctuary is the importation of units from other brands to act as Wife Units. Applications for such imports are scrutinized carefully to ensure the resulting unit is capable of fulfilling most of the requirements placed on Wife Units, and also to ensure that the unit can be properly maintained and serviced within Little Sanctuary by authorised agents or dealers. This has increased the variety of possible inorganics placed into the role of spouse, but also created new headaches in terms of logistics and servicing, though these are mainly placed on the employee applying for the import.