Life as a Miniature Person

[RVM45]

Imagine that you could make very sophisticated Miniature Humanoid Androids.

Perhaps only an inch tall; Maybe two or three inches.

Make a few changes from strictly Human form.

#1} It is hard to gather enough light for good Vision on such a scale. To compensate, our little men have two fist-sized (Their Fist) compound eyes, with three smaller eyes in a triangle on the forehead (Like a Grasshopper). They also have two Wide Field Eyes on the end of Antennae.

#2} The brain is a Computer, of course. No way that you could have intelligence with that small a Biological Brain. Of course, we don't have computers the size of BBs, that can do everything a Human Brain does, and more--but lets suppose that someday we will.

#3} These little guys have a largely human internal Skeleton, Lungs, a four-chambered Heart--maybe a pair of Hearts.....

But they also have a fairly complete Chitinous Armor Covering--and a number of extra muscles taking advantage of the Exo-Skeleton to fasten onto at one, or both ends.

#4} These little Guys have Wings coming from their backs--Fairy style. A that size, they should be able to fly with such a set-up.

#5} Obviously they couldn't reproduce--no way for a biological body to produce Silicone Brains and super-sophisticated Optics.....

But let's take it a Step farther, and say that they are both Unisexed and Asexual (There isn't "Male" and "Female" shaped bodies--just one standard model.)

So, what are they for?

For Capital Punishment, they download your personality into one of the "Fairy" Bodies and throw the Fairy out the nearest open window.....

There are a number of odd questions that come to mind.

#1} Could the Fairies start a tiny bonfire? I'm not sure that you can have a self-sustaining flame that small. A cigarette ember burns fairly well--but the Fairies have no way to compact the organic material on-hand anywhere near as tightly as the tobacco in the Cigarette--nor do they have a set of bellows comparable to a full-sized Human's mouth.

Yes, big fires can start from embers, but can one exist as a tiny ember neither growing, nor going out, indefinitely?

#2} I'm not at all sure that the Fairies could make use of cutting/slashing tools and weapons at all. There is a limit to how sharp something can be--even with a tiny Fairy honing it.

Sure, you can cut a praying mantis in two, or carve off a haunch of Mouse--but your hand is far heavier and stronger than a score of Fairies. Could they swing a hypothetical Razor-Sharp Battle Axe hard enough to kill a mouse, toad, or Praying Mantis?

#3} Tiny Firearms would be scant use to them. A bullet needs a reasonably high Sectional Density to penetrate--this is largely a matter of how long the bullet is.....

But you can't get any kind of accuracy when the length of the bullet exceeds 4 times the diameter (it won't spin and stabilize properly--it will tumble.)

A fairy packing a Rifle in .22 Short would feel like he was carrying a Bazooka, each reload would be as thick as his forearm. Could he even Kock a Hammer with a stiff enough mainspring, to set off the Round?

The best weapon might be a long needle sharp Lance. Poison-Dipped would be cool. Making it hollow and attaching it to a source of CO2--Like a Shark Billy.....

A shark Billy uses a single CO2 Cartridge, and injects it all instantaneously upon insertion--and destroys a Basketball-Sized piece of soft tissue.

If a Fairy could carry a big enough charge to destroy a Ping-Pong Ball sized piece of tissue.....

And hopefully, his lance has a big enough charge to shoot several times on one (Fairy-Sized) CO2 Charge.

The death rate among the Fairies would be high, but lets suppose their bodies will last them almost indefinitely, biological parts will regenerate, and hardware can be scrounged from other dead Fairies.

The Powers That Be want them to suffer. The Fairies are nearly immortal, in hopes that at least some of them would suffer very long indeed.

TPTB would scoff at the idea that the Fairies would ever create a weapon powerful enough to make them a threat to Society.....

But of course they underestimated them.....

Any Thoughts?

.....RVM45

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Imagine that you could make very sophisticated Miniature Humanoid Androids.

Perhaps only an inch tall; Maybe two or three inches.

Make a few changes from strictly Human form.

#1} It is hard to gather enough light for good Vision on such a scale. To compensate, our little men have two fist-sized (Their Fist) compound eyes, with three smaller eyes in a triangle on the forehead (Like a Grasshopper). They also have two Wide Field Eyes on the end of Antennae.

Not sure if they need to compensate. If the tech exists to make them in the first place, surely it exists to make this possible? Also, if we can have ball point pen night vision fibre optics, not sure if this even needs to be addressed. Your readers can reasonably assume that they can see, and if someone writes to you complaining as per your point above, you probably don’t want to be involved with them anyway.

#2} The brain is a Computer, of course. No way that you could have intelligence with that small a Biological Brain. Of course, we don't have computers the size of BBs, that can do everything a Human Brain does, and more--but lets suppose that someday we will.

Okay, I think the problem that you’re forgetting here is scale. If we’re advanced enough to make them, then we’re advanced enough to surmount these problems.

#3} These little guys have a largely human internal Skeleton, Lungs, a four-chambered Heart--maybe a pair of Hearts.....

If they can have a pair of hearts, they can surely have a brain as per point 2.

But they also have a fairly complete Chitinous Armor Covering--and a number of extra muscles taking advantage of the Exo-Skeleton to fasten onto at one, or both ends.

#4} These little Guys have Wings coming from their backs--Fairy style. A that size, they should be able to fly with such a set-up.

#5} Obviously they couldn't reproduce--no way for a biological body to produce Silicone Brains and super-sophisticated Optics.....

But let's take it a Step farther, and say that they are both Unisexed and Asexual (There isn't "Male" and "Female" shaped bodies--just one standard model.)

So, what are they for?

For Capital Punishment, they download your personality into one of the "Fairy" Bodies and throw the Fairy out the nearest open window.....

Not sure about this. Surely any government official looking at penal expenditure would veto spending billions on development when gas will do. Also, not sure how punishing this would be since they can fly.

There are a number of odd questions that come to mind.

#1} Could the Fairies start a tiny bonfire? I'm not sure that you can have a self-sustaining flame that small. A cigarette ember burns fairly well--but the Fairies have no way to compact the organic material on-hand anywhere near as tightly as the tobacco in the Cigarette--nor do they have a set of bellows comparable to a full-sized Human's mouth.

Yes, big fires can start from embers, but can one exist as a tiny ember neither growing, nor going out, indefinitely?

If they’re two or three inches, they can easily start a fire. Matches?

#2} I'm not at all sure that the Fairies could make use of cutting/slashing tools and weapons at all. There is a limit to how sharp something can be--even with a tiny Fairy honing it.

Couldn’t one of them use a scalpel as a halberd? Look at a man’s razor, and imagine one of the tiny, razor sharp blades affixed to something.

Sure, you can cut a praying mantis in two, or carve off a haunch of Mouse--but your hand is far heavier and stronger than a score of Fairies. Could they swing a hypothetical Razor-Sharp Battle Axe hard enough to kill a mouse, toad, or Praying Mantis?

Scale again. Could a human fight a giant mouse?

#3} Tiny Firearms would be scant use to them. A bullet needs a reasonably high Sectional Density to penetrate--this is largely a matter of how long the bullet is.....

But you can't get any kind of accuracy when the length of the bullet exceeds 4 times the diameter (it won't spin and stabilize properly--it will tumble.)

A fairy packing a Rifle in .22 Short would feel like he was carrying a Bazooka, each reload would be as thick as his forearm. Could he even Kock a Hammer with a stiff enough mainspring, to set off the Round?

The best weapon might be a long needle sharp Lance. Poison-Dipped would be cool. Making it hollow and attaching it to a source of CO2--Like a Shark Billy.....

A shark Billy uses a single CO2 Cartridge, and injects it all instantaneously upon insertion--and destroys a Basketball-Sized piece of soft tissue.

If a Fairy could carry a big enough charge to destroy a Ping-Pong Ball sized piece of tissue.....

And hopefully, his lance has a big enough charge to shoot several times on one (Fairy-Sized) CO2 Charge.

The death rate among the Fairies would be high, but lets suppose their bodies will last them almost indefinitely, biological parts will regenerate, and hardware can be scrounged from other dead Fairies.

The Powers That Be want them to suffer. The Fairies are nearly immortal, in hopes that at least some of them would suffer very long indeed.

TPTB would scoff at the idea that the Fairies would ever create a weapon powerful enough to make them a threat to Society.....

But of course they underestimated them.....

Any Thoughts?

Okay, I think you’re getting unnecessarily bogged down in the science. The readers won’t care very much about it (well, most of them). In most cases, I think it simply enough to say that they exist. People will be willing to take the ride with you.

I can think of many situations where ‘fairies’ would be a huge threat. Infiltration for a start. Then, if they can slip into a tiny space in a computer and start playing around with wires, who knows what might happen. Bringing down credit card company mainframes, hospital power sources, main line power sources. There’s nothing they couldn’t do. With regard to point #3, our firearms would be just as useless. No point calling in the military when all a ‘fairy’ has to do is get into a tank and start yanking wires.

Also, just on scale- imagine a world of giants, where humans are the small ones. What could they get up to? Maybe check out Stephen King’s ‘Battleground’ (in the ‘Night Shift’ collection) for some mental fuel along these lines.

Comic book version here: http://petersenart.com/images/_artwork/sequential/Battleground.pdf

 

[Vertigo]

There was a trilogy of books by Lindsay Gutteridge from the 70s that I stumbled on and bought years ago in a charity shop. They're not desperately well written but make an interesting curio. The science of the miniaturisation was distinctly wobbly; humans shrunk to less than a quarter of an inch with some treatment. However the portrayal of the miniature world they found themselves in with all it's dangers from insects was quite interesting.

The objective of the whole thing was for spying purposes. And I recall one of the most effective weapons they came up with in the first book was a spear made from the stinging spines from a nettle.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

I'm intrigued!

 

[Vertigo]

Oh a couple of other thoughts RVM; I would imagine that, especially as these are criminals, there would be some unremovable way of tracking them, which might make it difficult for them to create mayhem. Also if they operate with lungs or some sort of lung analogue then that would suggest they would be vulnerable to gas and probably in quantities that normal people would not even notice. In fact they could be specifically designed to be vulnerable to some designer gas that has no effect at all on normal humans.

HJ what are you intrigued by? The books I mentioned or RVM's idea? If it's the books, don't expect too much - interesting idea but rather pulpy books but here's a link to more info http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/lindsay-gutteridge/

 

[MstrTal]

#2} The brain is a Computer, of course. No way that you could have intelligence with that small a Biological Brain. Of course, we don't have computers the size of BBs, that can do everything a Human Brain does, and more--but lets suppose that someday we will.

In this regards all they really need is something to allow them the ability to network. Think of it as a Hive mind or Cloud connectivity. Sure each of their tiny little nano brains are underpowered and not capable of much on their own but networked they can rival or exceed the human mind and with the right indexing software each "Fairy" could have its own individual personality. Take it a step further and with privacy protocols, backup storage and this being scifi the advances in AI generation you can breath a whole new life into them.

 

[Hex]

I am one of those readers who never asks sciency questions but there's always a first time, so:

I have a question about the division between personality (as downloaded into the tiny people) and intelligence (which they get - or not - from their tiny computer brains). Is intelligence not part of personality? Wouldn't you need enough processing/ storage capacity to maintain identity and consciousness? Wouldn't that take a fair amount of capacity? (more than you're hypothesizing currently - if you're not going with Dubrech's suggestion). Unless, like MstrTal suggests you have some sort of shared capacity - but then the link between the tiny body and the individual personality gets a bit less immediate. Doesn't it?

It's not a punishment, really, if you're no longer you -- just an elaborate but rapid death sentence. You do say it's capital punishment, but I assumed you meant of the individual's body, not their identity.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

So, what are they for?

For Capital Punishment, they download your personality into one of the "Fairy" Bodies and throw the Fairy out the nearest open window.....

Not sure about this. Surely any government official looking at penal expenditure would veto spending billions on development when gas will do. Also, not sure how punishing this would be since they can fly.

I'm with Dubrech on this one. I can't see this as a viable solution for capital punishment, particularly in the way of government funding for it. The train of thought that must have led to this decision (on the part of the government in question) is mind-boggling. I don't think I would accept that premise. But on some other premise, I would ride along -- and as Dubrech said, you wouldn't have to get that bogged down in the science.

They could well be a government experiment, though, because anything can be stolen by the criminal element, or tempt otherwise good people to turn criminal in its use.

 

[RVM45]

About the fire--Sure they could start a conflagration, if that was their goal--but could they start a tiny fire the size of a Match or Candle Flame, and nurse it through a cold night--without the fire either A.} Growing Out of Control, or B.} Being Snuffed Out--

Granted, a Candle flame is a stable phenomena--but I don't think that they're too likely to load themselves down with Birthday Candles.

New idea--Maybe they aren't being punished--they're actually some sort of experiment--But they're implanted with at least partially ficticious memories.....

Some of the other comments were thought invoking.

Thanks.

.....RVM45

 

[chrispenycate]

The reason you can imagine electronic calculation getting smaller than biological (which it isn't yet, by a long chalk – how many gate equivalents are there in an ant brain? Transistors etched into a silicon substrate are still larger than neurones.) are largely due to the latter's multiple functions (and cooling system. You won't be able to mount CPU cooling fans for your faeries, or radiator fins).

But even if we do go electronic, silicon isn't the only candidate. Germanium would possibly be preferable, demanding lower voltages. But who's to say we couldn't develop an organic semiconductor? Carbon is a tetravalent, and you can build transistors by doping diamonds (useless for our purposes. too high a voltage and temperature needed to operate). But it's not unthinkable that large molecules function as switches, others insulators or conductors, while instead of diffusing impurities into a hyper-pure substrate (an essentially two dimensional technique, not capable of generating many usable layers) we might depose layers like growing a crystal, from an ever changing solution, directing metal atoms with focused electrostatic fields for interconnections; a fully three dimensional puzzle.

Obviously this could be easiest done in a factory, with continuous computer control, ultra short wave laser etching and regular tests and rejections of faulty units – but it's not impossible to think of it being performed inside a fairy's body, giving them the ability to reproduce, even if it takes a long time and many, if not most, of the offspring are born brain dead, incapable of accepting programming.

The template would be stored in the 'mother', of course – no conventional equivalent to DNA and sexual reproduction, pure parthenogenesis. But if you want a two parent family, you can always share software.

The cooling fluid for the brain would be a thin, non-conductive oil, with a heat exchanger to the main circulatory system; any aqueous fluid such as blood would short out all thought. However, depending on memory storage techniques, it might be possible to flush the brain out and attach it to the same or another body and reboot, without loss of continuity.

Maximum sharpness would be a monomolecular edge, and that would cut almost anything, not just fragile human skin, with the force one of your microwarriors could apply. Trouble is, no metal is hard enough to keep an edge like that, and most very hard substances are brittle. Machining diamond, if they are making their own weaponry, is not easy. One use weapons? A spearhead forged out of a Gilette double edged razorblade, and hollow ground? A poisoned penetrating weapon improvised out of a one use hypodermic syringe?

For distance weapons – even if a small, high-velocity round hasn't the stopping power of a 9 mm. slug it still has a lot of penetrating power, and considerable accuracy if we're not looking for telescopic sighted sniper weapons. And I'm thinking small here; even the recoil from a .22 would send someone a thousandth of our mass flying backwards as if trying to fire a field gun from the shoulder – cube/square law counts. Miniature crossbow bolts? – and if they were treated with something seriously nasty, has either side in this conflict signed the Geneva agreements?

This seems to be getting a bit long; perhaps I'll save compound eyes (and inefficiencies of such) and small girls for a later post
Chrispy.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Yeah, what Chris said

 

[MstrTal]

Quick question.

If technology has advanced to the point that it can produce micro-clone fairies then would it not stand to also reason that weapon technology has progressed to the point of creating micro high yield explosive compounds? Yield to size ratio on the order of level a highrise with a thimble or bust a bunker with a 30-06 size round. Were such to be the case then should ones fairies to acquire such components and improvise with objects their scale things could get interesting.

Another thought.

Unarmored humans taken unaware are, for lack of a better term, squishy. It does not take much to put one of us down. A bit of knowledge in regards to anatomy and good aim coupled with the determination to follow through is generally enough to drop even the strongest wo/man. I believe there is an old saw about preparation favoring something or other.

 

[chrispenycate]

Please, please ignore most of what I've written, and only adopt ideas that suit you. I'm known for this, it should be in the standard warnings, along with "don't give Ursa an opening for a pun", "keep Chrispy away from your ideas". Whenever I'm not installing commas or semicolons I have a distressing tendency to grab an idea and run with it. One thing this does demonstrate; your original idea is not without interest.


Compound eyes, and why I don't like them.
The amount of calculation needed to take a series of overlapping images and integrate them into a single overall picture is excessive, and I'm trying to keep processing to a minimum, especially in something as important to human experience as the visual cortex. Furthermore, it can't zoom in without changing all the parameters, unlike a mammalian (or reptile or avian) eye.

Handy for spotting relative motion in peripheral vision, it's al but useless in reading an instruction manual, or anything else that requires an overall analysis.

A mouse – oh, all right, a mouse is much bigger than our Lilliputian, but a convenient reference – a mouse's eyes, while a lot smaller than a human's, give perfectly adequate low-light performance. Modern day TV technology demonstrates that improved signal to noise ratio on your detectors can replace larger light concentrating lenses, and I will assume this can be carried over into biological systems.

A mouse could also use binoculars, a microscope or infra-red sniperscope, none of which would be available to an insect.

Sure, closer spaced eyes and ears give less distance estimation from parallax,but multiple lenses are not going to compensate for this.

So, their eyes may be proportioned as large as a Manga character, but they are mammalian structure, with iris and pupil, be it round, slitted or star-shaped) mounted brachiator -wise on the front of the head, not multifaceted lumps on the sides. If they have extra optical sensors, on the head or elsewhere, these are differential movement detectors triggering a 'something's there' response, not sophisticated analytical instruments.

The traditional pointy ears have difficulty with directional response for any sound without ultrasonic components, and low frequencies are detected through all the body surface.

Antennae? I hesitate, since we want to download human personalities, to enlarge the sensorium – to a large extent the world is your senses – but perhaps a Wi-Fi (or future development of same) adaptation?

Power supply
Essentially we need two totally separate energy sources, the biological one from eating food, and an electrical one to run the brain.

I don't know how to convert from the former to the latter. A 'fuel cell' style would generate a fair amount of heat, , and I'd like their infrared signature to be comparable with a small mammal rather than a tiny mobile furnace; that would make them too easy to develop security sensors against.

Perhaps make breathing harder work and incorporate a turbine generator? The rhythmic spin/stop/reverse of the magnets might make a recognisable signature for detectors, and it renders them vulnerable to magnetic fields or large masses of ferromagnetic metal ( Oh, no! Fairy, steer clear of cold iron) but it pulls the requisite power from the biological side so they don't need solar cells and battery packs, a bit like pulling an automobile's air conditioning from the fan belt rather than the battery. And power, and cooling, we are going to need. I doubt whether we can hold the dissipation in the brain below two or three watts and all that energy's got to come from somewhere, and go somewhere.

What time rate do they live at?
Most small warm-blooded creatures run their metabolisms faster than larger ones, if only to compensate for cube/square heat loss. If the miniwarriors' reaction speed were ten times that of a full sized human being, they'd need a lot of nourishment, and could starve to body death (not brain death) in a few hours. Still, they could avoid observation easier, and most scanning security detectors. It would also make tending a very small fire no problem; small fragments of charcoal burn just fine, it's just that reaching the extremes of suffocating in its ash, or burning completely to ash, happen so much faster. Accelerating the feedback loop would compensate for this and make maintaining the temperature no more difficult than with a normal human camper.

Obviously, different time rates would make communication between the species much more difficult.

What do they eat?
Can they subsist on grubs and roots, or are there special additions their biological section needs? (Believe me, if I were intending to install software from the sneakiest, most underhanded species so far discovered I'd make sure there was one essential component only available from my laboratory.)

If they are non-isothermic (cold blooded)their food requirements would be much reduced, but cold weather would make them torpid, body and brain running slower, easy to fool, easy to trap.

Each situation brings its own problems. Where does a society totally au fée with agricultural techniques hide its granaries of grass seeds, its freezers of vole chops and filet of stickleback? Or do you live as Borrowers, stealing from the supermarkets of human beans?

But equally, how do you hide your winter workshops and manufactories, kept warm by the action within, from which your scouts in silken undergarments and warm mouse-skin jackets sneak off to warn against intruding bigguns?