Mucking about with a neo-raccoon campaign seed.

I honestly don’t know whether I should go further with this. I mean, it’s interesting, but I’d have to do some serious reading up on raccoons before I can go any further. And I have other demands on my time.

Still, not too bad for about an hour and a half’s worth of work.

Neo-raccoons

As bio-engineered plagues designed to bring about the Singularity go, Sterling Syndrome was practically benign.  Of course, it wasn’t intended to be. What it was intended to be was a great karmic backlash against Man by raising the intelligence and vigor of mammalian species to human levels, whereupon they would presumably hunt humanity all down to extinction. Or so the various local authorities presume: the people who came up with this particular infectious genetic modification were rather better at splicing genes than they were at writing coherent manifestos. They also blew themselves up once the Sterling Virus was released into the wild, so they’re not available for further commentary.

The good news? Radical deep ecology gene-terrorists typically enforce poor quality control.  Sterling Syndrome works perfectly well… in one species: Procyon Lotor, or the raccoon.  The alterations increased intelligence; whether or not the increases in size and extended lifespan are direct results of the modifications, or just by-products of raccoons being smarter is the subject of interested debate. Including, increasingly, by the neo-raccoons themselves.

The changes did not include alterations to raccoon voiceboxes or paws: neo-raccoons cannot speak human languages, or have true opposable thumbs. But they can now easily enough understand human languages, both spoken and written; and their forepaws are capable of a decent amount of gesturing, as well as manipulating a keyboard. They’re never going to be speed typists, but a neo-raccoon can learn to use a speech vocoder. Among themselves they’re developing a language whose grammar and syntax seems largely drawn from German (see below); it’s theoretically possible for a human to learn it, but speaking it would be as much a problem for humans as speaking human languages is for a neo-raccoon.

Surprisingly, the first real impact of Sterling Syndrome wasn’t felt in North America, but in Europe: Germany had a remarkable number of raccoons (almost a million, even pre-Syndrome) and not much in the way of genetic diversity, as the species was effectively introduced in the 1930s and 1940s. Germany is also smaller than North America, so urban interactions between neo-raccoons and humans was more likely. It all went… moderately well, all things considered. The official legal status of neo-raccoons in Europe is still very much up in the air – it may take decades for the EU to decide how to classify them – but in general there are enough competing interests to keep the European neo-raccoon population from being publicly exploited. Note: ‘publicly.’ Rumors abound of secret programs, and probably some of those rumors are true.

The North American neo-raccoon population had a slightly different path. The Sterling Virus didn’t hit the United States until well after it was established in Germany, which meant that authorities there at least had had some advanced warning. More importantly, so did various activist groups, which meant that lawsuits and petitions for relief were set up and ready to go the moment it was confirmed that neo-raccoons were present on the continent. The cross-spectrum of support for protecting neo-raccoons surprised many: in particular, pro-hunting groups were adamant about establishing protected lands for neo-raccoons*. Said support was enough to get an expedited Supreme Court decision, to say nothing of what most people ended up being the ‘right’ decision: an acceptance of raccoons as being at least ‘people,’ if not necessarily citizens.

That debate is still going on, as well; in the meantime, in the USA the federal government largely tries to treat neo-raccoon populations like autonomous Native American tribes.  Not precisely – the presence of neo-raccoons in urban areas alone make any kind of reservation system impossible – but individual members of the species is heavily encouraged to join recognized neo-raccoon ‘communities’ and abide by those communities’ rules. As Federal aid flows through the communities, the government has had some success with this tactic.

*It was not until somewhat later that people noticed that said protected lands ended up teeming with game animals, given that the indigenous neo-raccoon population had no intention of letting predator species thrive in their territories.  And that local neo-raccoon governing groups were remarkably indulgent about encouraging the tourist hunting trade; indeed, many hunters consider neo-raccoon guides de rigeur for any extended shooting trip. But then, the species has always been able to find a way to get along with humans.

5 thoughts on “Mucking about with a neo-raccoon campaign seed.”

  1. Presumably they’d be smart enough to make a dent in the rabies plague as well?

    1. In Bruce Sterling’s Our Neural Chernobyl (and now you know where the name came from) he had raccoons doing suicide rabies strikes in order to get humans to back off. I’m generally more good-natured than Sterling is, so…

  2. And so, the bluetick and black-and-tan coon dogs go the way of the dodo. Ah, the horrific unintended consequences.

  3. Does the virus affect all raccoons? If not, then how do neoraccoons treat their unmodified cousins? (Or do the neos deliberately infect the others?)

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