Regarding Soldier G65434-2's surgery...

[681045c4c0ebaDark-Star88]

Many thanks to the retired US Army friend who pointed out something I missed all these years.

We all know that the procedure to install the R-grade implants was authorized by you-know-who  masquerading as Dr. Janice Polito, as was the additional forged order to Bayliss to mess with his memory restoration.

But Polito was a civilian doctor under TriOptimum. Bayliss was UNN personnel. In what universe does a civvie get to order a military officer around? Much less tell him "tell this grunt he's going to undergo a major medical procedure, like it or not" 

Have the boundaries between civilian and military authority been blurred in the far future? Or is TriOp so big and influential of a mega-corporation that someone high enough up in their ranks CAN actually do this?

Doesn't the recipient of said major procedure have a chance to object to what amounts to life-altering brain surgery?!?   

I find both possibilities intriguing and horrifying. It's one thing for a soldier to be ordered to get a vaccine. A procedure of this magnitude being involuntary is just 7 shades of nightmarish. Then there's the memory-wiping...

The devs probably didn't intend this, but the fact that memory-altering technology A: exists and B: is reliably useful in the SS2 universe comes off as one of the biggest horrors of the game in my opinion. Obviously, the Soldier's memory wasn't entirely scrubbed or he'd have come out of surgery a drooling idiot. But even if all you can do is erase memories and not implant false ones, that opens the door to more kinds of abuse than I could think to type.

And unlike the Many, the technology to play Photoship with someone's brain isn't destroyed during the events of SS2.

[681045c4c1112icemann]

Reminds me of something from Babylon 5, where a civilian office attempted to order for martial law to be imposed on the station, but then was refused since those are only to be done via military officials.

But then not everyone would call that out. Many just go along with it.

[681045c4c12cevoodoo47]

she may have had some special authority under certain conditions, real or fake (Shodan).

[681045c4c279bsarge945]

This reminds me of how "doctors orders" can supercede those of a high ranking officer, such as a captain.

Overall, SS2 is far less psychologically terrifying than SS1, in my opinion. Memory wiping is terrifying. So is hybridization. But all of that pails, at least in my opinion, to mutation, especially since the mutants in SS1 give me major "I have no mouth and I must scream" vibes. For me at least, being mind controlled by an alien seems significantly less terrifying than having an AI with the power to literally manipulate my DNA to her whims. I know the many can also manipulate DNA to make, say, psi reavers, but even that seems more utilitarian than whatever nefarious purposes Shodan has in mind. Don't even get me started on the existential problems with potential immortality that come with being a Cortex Reaver