they’re lesbians your honor

to hear the union tell it, andi was born to be a technocrat. ae displayed insatiable curiosity and a brilliant mind from a young age; a child born imagining what might lie beyond the stars and thinking up ways to reach them. andi was also born with a disability. to hear the union tell it, aer genius was inhibited only by the """failures""" of aer body. fortunately, the Enlightened Science TM of the technocracy saved them from a life doomed to obscurity and dependence by giving them the ability to walk again. ae dove headfirst into their new life as AND-10224-M31, a void engineer researcher stationed out in the far reaches of deep space. when they saw the true face of the technocracy, the "dirty side of the coin" as the M20 book puts it, however, their faith shattered. so off ae went for some Processing. this cycle repeated, over and over again. if the union had their way, it wouldn't have ended until there was nothing of them left.

in reality, aer story is much, much more complicated. they were born in the 13th century and grew up to be a genius inventor, spearheading astronomy and technology that no one thought should be possible. andi was also born with a disability - and a whole ship's crew of family who helped them build the tech ae needed to go on adventures of aer own. they trailblazed theories of heliocentrism, engineering, and astrophysics, and nearly lived to see the order of reason's founding. however, in the time and place that ae lived, others had a lot of opinions about what andi could or should be able to achieve. thus, they lived a very accomplished but lonely life. ae hoped to travel to distant galaxies, in hopes that ae might find somewhere they belonged.

through a complicated and messy sequence of events that can really only be accomplished by a technomancer with 5 dots in the time sphere and a healthy disregard for their own safety, andi ended up getting shot through time all the way to the present day. ae were shortly captured by the technocratic union, who planned to use all of the greatest technocratic minds throughout history to win the ascension war. when andi was absolutely horrified to see what the order of reason had become, however, the union had to use more... persuasive measures.

however, in yet another series of unhinged bullshit happenings involving a cigar-smoking furby, an eldritch horror, and an 80s teenager crawling in the vents of their voidcraft, andi was able to escape the union's clutches. the good news is that they remembered everything! the bad news is that they remembered... everything. also, the world is ending, so good luck processing all that room 101 trauma!

when i was making andi, i wanted to dig into the way that the technocracy seems to perfectly align with this one particularly insidious view of disability: the way that scientific hegemony dictates that we are sick and broken, and their financiers sell us the cure. while every disabled person faces this in one form or another, i was particularly drawing on the inspiration porn that constantly pressures physically disabled people to conform. those headlines about allegedly "heartwarming" stories about wheelchair users forcing themselves to walk for wedding or graduation, or that highlight billions of dollars being poured into hyperfuturistic bionic arms instead of making one-handed technology more accessible.

this view of disability in which it is an Individual Failing to be fixed rather than a complex part of social identity. interventions are created not to meet disabled people's actual needs, but rather to make them seem more "normal".

the union is that exact blend of hyperfuturistic tech combined with the profit motive, both of which are solely oriented towards one thing: Control. and this is pretty textual in my opinion between the progenitors and the iterators. as for my personal opinions on that shit, this article sums it up pretty well.