Client

**Clients** or **Client Species** were subjects of the Grysk Hegemony, twisted to obey the will of the Grysk. Biocybernetic implants were used to subjugate these Clients, forcibly linking them together into planetary hiveminds. These hiveminds were used by the Grysk as massive supercomputers, each implanted Client acting as a single neural node in a vast planet-sized brain. The planets chosen to host these hiveminds, called **Hives** by the Grysk, were usually rogue planets. These planets roamed in chaotic orbits, without parent stars or native intelligent life, and could be kept isolated from the rest of the galaxy.

## Society and Culture

> I'm a Client of the Grysk Hegemony. The lines between species are less important for us than for you. I'm not even sure what my sire was. My mother kept several mates. Which, if any, was my sire was unimportant.
>
> Dr Calla Katsuo to Dr Leta Weyland when asked about her species

By galactic standards, the life of a Client was carefully controlled. Children received their first implants at an early age, after the second growth stage of toddlerhood. Once implanted, these children were tested to determine their talents and abilities and then matched to a job function. Education and training was based on this matched function.

Job functions for Clients all focused around maintaining the Hive. Since these Hives were most often found on rogue planets without parent stars to provide heat or light, this meant the entire Hive was reliant upon technological support. Mining, power production, food production, and biocybernetics were the most important functions in a Hive. Yet because of the nature of Client worlds, there was no inherent prestige in any particular function as every function represented a necessary service to the Grysk. This led to a deeply inclusionist view within Client society. Since every function served the Grysk and every service was necessary, stratification of society into economic or social classes never developed. Like anything else that didn't serve the Grysk, stratification was deemed 'unimportant'. This rejection of the 'unimportant' led to the eventual breakdown of the separation of species so inherent in the rest of the galaxy. Monogamous relationships were also a foreign concept as jealousy was both unimportant and nearly impossible within the hivemind, leading to each Client often having several mates at any given time in large family groups. If a pairing produced offspring then it was considered successful regardless of the species of each parent and cherished within their family group.

On occasion, a Hive would be required to take in **Client Captives**. These represented captured members of an enemy species that the Grysk wished to have implanted. These Captives were the main source of information gathered by a Hive on the galaxy at large and generally left most Clients with a sense of confusion and a reluctance to leave the Hive.

Still, it often became necessary for a Client to serve the Grysk by leaving the Hive. This individual Client would be prepared for their separation from the Hive with extra education, access to the memories of Captives, linguistics studies, and the addition of any extra implants they might need to maintain their health. They would leave the Hive on the command of their Grysk masters, secure in the knowledge that their memory remained behind.

## Implants

Each Client was implanted with one primary implant visible as a 2-3 centimeter disk on the right side of the neck. Beginning within hours of implantation, tendrils extending from the underside of this disk would grow along the cervical nerves, up the spinal cord, and into the brain stem. The *medulla* was destroyed first, the implant taking over the autonomic functions of the body, and then tendrils grew up into the visual cortex. At that point, removal of the implant was no longer possible without killing the host.

Over time the primary implant grew to infiltrate the entire central nervous system, replacing the white matter of the brain and spinal cord with an organometallic matrix based off of metallic gold. This gold metal had to be ingested in colloidal form as part of a Client's diet or introduced into the body intravenously. Gold was used due to its superior conductive properties and its inert and relatively worthless nature. Unlike other metals it could replace the Client's natural nerve signalling without triggering an immune response. Unlike a purely protein-based structure, the Client required supplementation to maintain the implant and its continual growth, thus giving the Grysk an extra layer of physical control over the Clients in a Hive.

Once the primary implant had infiltrated the central nervous system, secondary implants were considered based off of each Client's individual roles within the Hive. Implants in the hands were common and were a requirement for interfacing with and operating Grysk weaponry. Implants in the eyes were also common, necessary for any task that required complex visual analysis. Other sensory implants such as olfactory, electrosensory, or magnetoreceptive existed but were less universal.

Additional implants were considered on a case-by-case basis. These were often necessary for the children produced by the interspecies mixing in a Hive. They were also made available to Clients who were ordered to leave the Hive in service to the Grysk.

## Implantation

#### Native Born Clients

Children born into the Hive received their implants early in life. Children were considered for their primary implant once the second growth stage of toddlerhood had concluded. These children would be told what was about to happen to them, the act framed as a loving embrace into the togetherness of the Hive. Once they had accepted their fate, even excited for it, they would be brought to the biocyberneticist. The child would sit on the lap of an adult of their choice, often a parent or member of the family group, and the disk implanted into the neck. From there the implantation was considered complete and the child sent home with the family group.

After a few hours the implant's tendrils would reach the brain and begin to work. This caused no pain in the host but the child experienced vivid hallucinations as the implant took control over the brain. The child was kept calmed and comforted by the family group during this time. As the process continued the child would begin to feel the family group through the Hive as they were incorporated into it, and would often reach out through the Hive in response. After this stage the child would sleep for several days, dreaming intensely through the entire period and sharing the dreams of the Hive for the first time. Finally the process was considered complete when the child woke up. The survival rate of such an implantation was effectively 100%, the process considered routine.

From here, children were taught through study and shared memories how to control their connection to the Hive, how to feel the thoughts of others, and how to share their own thoughts.

#### Client Captives

Captives taken in by the Hive, or left at the mercy of the Hive by circumstance or the Grysk, also underwent implantation. A primary implant was grown unique for each Captive, as adult Captives were less neuroplastic than children and therefore had a much greater risk of damage during the process. In addition, the Captive would often fight the process at every possible step, necessitating breaking the Captive before implantation. Some biocyberneticists were skilled in the practice, though more often the breaking was carried out by specialized torturers that drew upon the fear of the Captive. The most skilled could torment a Captive to a breaking point using only the Captive's own fear.

Once broken, the Captive would be brought to the biocyberneticist for implantation. The process was done without any sort of painkillers as aside from the initial implantation of the disk, it caused no physical pain. The Captive was restrained and implanted then left restrained as the implant's tendrils grew up into the brain to cause the same alterations as it did in a willing host. From then on a group of volunteers would stay with the Captive, touching and stroking and maintaining physical contact for the entire duration of the process. This physical contact was necessary once the hallucinations began, to keep the Captive grounded in the Hive even as they fought against the process with all of their being. The survival rate of such an implantation ranged from 80-95%, dependent on the skill of the biocyberneticist, the species of the Captive, and the willingness of the volunteers.

Once the Captive fell into a state of dream, they were unrestrained and transferred to a facility where they might sleep. The volunteers followed, maintaining skin-to-skin contact until the Captive woke up. This process often took several standard days as the Captive's mind fought to retain its own self. Once the Captive woke up in the Hive and understood what had happened to them they often broke again, losing all will to resist. From there it was a simple matter of pulling memories from the Captive's mind through the primary implant, allowing the Grysk or the Hive to access any memory they wished.

#### Secondary Implants

> On Kayaman he would not be alone to take these or any implants. Up to a dozen of his closest friends and mates would be here to keep him grounded, to touch and calm and assure. Beyond them, the entire hive can reach out beneath the layer of conscious thought to whisper their presence and to take his pain from him.
>
> Dr Katsuo to Dr Weyland during the implantation of RX-3081's hands

Once the Client had stopped growing and their primary implant had expanded to replace all of the white matter in the central nervous system, secondary implants could be added to the Client's body to form a **personal network**. These personal networks allowed a Client to regain some semblance of privacy by forming a tiny pseudo-hive of multiple implants within a single body. Such a personal network was a requirement for a Client forced out of the Hive as their primary implant would otherwise attempt to form a new hive out of whatever technology it found, often driving the Client insane.

Secondary implants were taken without anesthetic as the structure of the primary implant made a painless surgery impossible. Instead, the Client would be restrained as a Captive with friends and mates and volunteers maintaining physical contact to keep the Client grounded through the surgery. The Hive itself could also respond, submerging the Client's conscious mind where it would not experience any pain that the body might endure. Once an implantation was successful, the Client would be allowed to sleep as the secondary implants fully interfaced with the primary.

## Hive Supercomputers

> I suppose you would call it a collective sub- and semi-consciousness shared heavily through dreams. The easiest word we use with others is 'hive'.
>
> Dr Katsuo attempting to describe the Hive of Kayaman

One of the most important tasks of any Client in a Hive was to sleep. While asleep, every Client in the Hive experienced the same shared dream. This dream represented the single greatest asset that the Grysk extracted from their Clients.

Every Client Hive was an organometallic supercomputer. Every Client with all of their implants represented a neural node within that supercomputer. The Grysk used isolated rogue planets specifically for their isolation, to prevent interference from the rest of the galaxy in their calculations. The dream was how the Hive experienced the supercomputer at work, the brains of countless Clients put to work to solve problems. Most often these problems were related to hyperspace navigation but there were rumors of Hives used to calculate the movements of Shepherds within the Maze, to predict the actions of the Chiss Ascendency, to calculate the solutions to problems of dark matter and dark energy, and to puzzle out problems raised by the Attendants concerning the Force.

Smaller Hives were kept on Grysk ships to act as advanced scout troops, as infiltration units, and to be tapped as backup computing power for calculating hyperspace jumps. These smaller Hives had their drawbacks and in some situations, individual Grysk themselves would take secondary implants to expand such a small Hive so as to keep a calculation running. In extreme emergencies, a Grysk would take a primary implant; these Grysk were considered 'the sacrificed dead' by the Hegemony and became Clients themselves.