Freefall

I mean, I dont know if I could date a woman with a snout, but hey... it's Florence.

Pigs have snouts; dogs have muzzles.

But yeah, imagine waking up to that: your girlfriend rolls over in bed and kisses you — planting her cold, wet nose right in your ear.

Wouldn't be the first time she gave Winston an earful in an unexpected manner.

Cue the doggy-style jokes

groan

Honesty◊. The key, generally, is to care more about the other person than what other people might think. That said, for especially socially subversive relationships, sometimes you have to be careful to ease people into it.

Indeed. Honesty is by far the best policy here. That both Florence and Winston know this is a good sign for them.

That they're on a frontier planet would also suggest not totally ignoring what others say. Anyone who's grown up in a small town can probably tell a tale or two of someone who fell afoul of the local social norms (so to speak) and had it cause them problems.

In this particular case, with nearly instant communication anywhere (within the limits of the speed of light, anyway, as we're seeing with the miners serving on the Kornada jury) outrunning the gossip isn't as easy as it used to be when the fastest communication method was a rider on a horse.

Hmm... and given that most of the population believes that the Bowman model is still largely Three Laws compliant, I could even see some well-meaning folks going after Winston due to the consent issues.

Bowman mucked around with Florence's brain so she can only get direct orders from about three people now.

Yes. And we know that Florence was able to work around the safeguards even before then. But the general public does not know that, which means it looks like Questionable Consent at best, Sex Slave if someone really wants to make a stink about it.

Not to mention the question of bestiality. Are you in a relationship with an animal if said animal is uplifted to the point where she's probably smarter and more highly educated than you are?

edited 24th Apr '17 4:00:44 PM by pwiegle

I'm not sure she's more educated, Winston is a doctor and she's an engineer. But your point still stands.

edited 24th Apr '17 10:22:07 PM by Medinoc

Florence is not an animal, she's a un-human but fully sapient lifeform.

Technically she is a wolf. A heavily engineered one, but a wolf nonetheless.

Yeah, but ultimately that's not the problem.

We are all animals. In the parts that matter — capacity for sapient thought — Florence is definitely our equal.

@Medinoc: Doctors learn one model for life, Engineers learn new models every so often :V

I personally know both doctors and engineers who would strongly dispute that either one is "smarter" or even "more highly educated". Differently educated, and "more time spent at it originally" but not "more"

edited 25th Apr '17 11:16:46 AM by Madrugada

This is exactly what I mean; if there's any room for dispute, somebody's gonna make a big stink over it.

I'll admit that I had not thought about Eleanor and The Chief as a couple◊.

Cue the "I want you inside me" jokes...

I see we're celebrating Pretzel Day.

I like how even the vendor knows exactly what they are talking about. Truly, there are no secrets on Jean.

Well, the Chief is also one of the highest people in authority on a planet with relatively few humans (I think it was a population roughly the size of a mid-sized modern city) - it's not unrealistic that people could hear a brief but distinctive description and figure out who they mean when it's one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Adaptation◊