Some Thoughts on Technology in A.A.S.S.I.: On Automata and Constructs

Automata or automatons (what we today would consider thinking computers or robots), are by the 1880s widely available both in civilian and military occupations both in fixed and mobile forms to assist humans in various labour saving tasks in various industries or in tasks considered excessively dangerous or just exceedingly unpleasant for ordinary humans. Automata are divided by purpose and whether they are considered thinking (but non-sentient), semi-sentient or sentient machines. Legally no automata has any rights as humans would understand them, although there are a few laws and statutes protecting them in the more progressive states of Europe and North America. Automata form is often defined by function and utility, but a great many are humanoid in configuration regardless of task assigned although the number of limbs they possess and their size and general appearance can vary widely.

Constructs differ from automatons, which are generally made from inorganic metallic (although wood timber isn't unknown) materials. Constructs are constructed from organic or semi-synthetic organic materials. Popularly and often pejoratively they are also call stitch folk, meat-puppets, flesh constructs, flesh golems, neo-homoculi, etc. Whatever name they go by they are regarded as one step away from automata by most humans and an abomination by  others, the only difference being they are made of flesh and bone rather then metal and wire. Further flesh constructs have elixiers for blood rather then haemoglobin. The first constructs became commercially available from the 1800s onwards, being fashioned from pieced together cadavers (these are often still referred to as resurrected constructs), which due to the hostility of the established churches quickly fell by the wayside. Today they are fashioned from component limbs and organs made to order and grown in special alchemical vats or chemical baths, it has been argued that it would be simpler to grow a whole flesh construct in a single large vats or iron wombs in practice however this is rarely the case. Their all to obvious assembly  stitch seams, surgical scars and deathly pallor mark the average flesh constructs out in society as something other then human as does their prominent skin tattoo brands and coding numbers indented into their skeletal structure.

Most national governments strictly regulate the production of flesh constructs and the licenses to produce them are in theory, very tightly controlled and detailed background and financial history checks into those seeking them is mandatory. Surprise governmental audits and inspections of flesh construct assembly factories are seen as a irksome although necessary cost of doing legally acceptable business. This doesn't however stop the unlicensed construct "chop" shops from springing up and providing the criminal underworld and those with the money to pay for their illicit wears on the black market. Like automatons, flesh constructs have few to no legal rights and are considered even more disposable then automatons for dangerous tasks and occupations as they are most definitely not regarded as human. In point of fact it is sometime arguable if they are even regarded as sentient by most humans.