Prevention by Drone, Sanction by Neighbours: Measuring the Culture's Social Penalty in Twenty-Three Slap-Drone Assignments in the Tessendrine Hub Register, 1410–1890 CE

1. Introduction

Visitors from other civilisations often ask Contact how the Culture punishes crime. Contact's answer is that it does not, in any sense they would recognise: there are no laws to break, no courts and no prisons, and behaviour is kept within bounds by manners, reputation and the regard of others (Distaffe, 1861 CE). The Culture does not hide the last of these. It says plainly that disapproval is its main sanction, and that in a society without want the loss of other people's good opinion is the heaviest cost most people can suffer (Brashend, 1842 CE).

Killing still happens, rarely (Lanvey, 1799 CE). For some who kill, the Culture adds one formal response: the slap-drone, a drone assigned to go everywhere with them and to stop them if they try to do it again. The slap-drone is well known as an idea and almost unstudied as a practice. Its logs are private, Hubs do not publish their assignments, and the social sanction that surrounds it, though openly acknowledged, has never been measured.

This paper uses one Hub's complete register to measure both. Tessendrine Hub has kept a register of every slap-drone assignment on its Orbital in its present form since 1410 CE, when it replaced summary lists that survive only in outline, with the assigned drones' logs and its own notes on each case (Tessendrine Hub, 1410–1890 CE). Tessendrine Hub is also the third author of this paper. We describe below how we handled that.

We ask what slap-drones did, what else happened to the people they accompanied, and how large those other consequences were compared with ordinary life on the Orbital.

2. Sources and Method

The register lists 23 assignments between 1410 and 1890 CE. For each, it records the harm that led to the assignment, the dates of assignment and release, and the Hub's reasons for release. It records assignments, not harms: the Hub's separate record lists 64 killings on the Orbital in the period, and a drone was assigned after 19 of them. In the others, the notes record that the person left the Orbital at once or that the Hub judged a repeat unlikely from the start. The drones' logs record every intervention. The Hub's notes, written at the time, record what it learned of each person's life during and after the assignment.

Observation came from two sources, which need distinguishing. The drones watched the people they accompanied, by the nature of the assignment, and their logs are the one source not written by the Hub. The Hub itself, as its practice on Tessendrine, did not read minds or monitor private life, so its notes record what people chose to tell it (Brashend, 1640 CE). Registers of this kind are kept by many Hubs, in forms that vary from Orbital to Orbital (Tallise-Ombrecht, 1874 CE).

Two of us, Brashend and Distaffe, read every entry independently and coded the harm, the duration, each intervention, any known later harm, whether the drone stayed in view or out of sight for most of the assignment, and the social consequences mentioned in the notes: withdrawn invitations, ended friendships, changes of household and moves away. Disagreements were settled by discussion. Tessendrine Hub answered questions of fact but did not take part in coding.

The register is complete for its period, so we report counts, with percentages rounded to whole numbers, and make no claim that Tessendrine stands for other Orbitals. For moving away, the Hub supplied a baseline from its residency index: in any ten-year period between 1410 and 1890 CE, on average 31% of adult residents moved off the Orbital. We compared the offenders with that figure by an exact binomial test.

3. What the Drone Did

Every assignment followed lethal violence. Nineteen of the 23 followed a killing (83%) and four followed an attempt to kill. None followed lesser harms, which on Tessendrine were left entirely to social consequence. The register describes every assigned drone as sentient. Assignments lasted a median of 11 years (range 3–38) and ended when the Hub judged, from the person's life and from those around them, that a repeat was no longer likely. Time-limited assignment is Tessendrine's practice as the register shows it; we do not claim it is the rule elsewhere.

Prevention was the drones' whole task. Seven intervened physically at least once, always to restrain the person from violence, and every intervention fell within the first two years. The logs record no act intended to hurt, shame or confine. The drones did not stop anyone from travelling, working or seeking company. In 8 of the 23 assignments the drone kept out of sight for most of the time, at the person's request; in the other 15 it remained in view.

None of the 23 people harmed anyone while accompanied. After release, one is known to have done serious harm again, years later and on another Orbital, where a drone was assigned again. What the register knows of life after release is limited to what was reported to the Hub, so this figure is a minimum.

4. What the Neighbours Did

Social consequences followed in almost every case. In 21 of the 23 the notes report that the person's invitations to gatherings stopped or dwindled within a year of the harm. Friendships ended in most cases, and in several the notes record strangers declining the person's company once they learned who they were. These reports come from the people involved and cannot tell us how much of the distance was kept by others and how much by the offender, withdrawing from shame.

Departure was the clearest measure. Seventeen of the 23 (74%) moved off the Orbital, to another Orbital or to a General Systems Vehicle, within ten years of the harm, usually while still accompanied. Against the baseline of 31% of adult residents in any ten-year period, that is far above the ordinary rate (exact binomial test, p < .001). Nobody was required to leave, and the notes attribute most moves to the person's wish to live among strangers.

The drone's visibility may have played a part. A drone that follows someone openly for years tells everyone nearby that something has happened. Twelve of the 15 people whose drone stayed in view moved away (80%), against 5 of the 8 whose drone kept out of sight (63%). The numbers are too small to separate the two, and a person who asked for the drone to stay hidden may also have been one more determined to stay.

Some neighbours also forgave. In six cases the notes record that the person was, after some years, received back into a household or circle, and in four of these the Hub cited that reconciliation when it released the drone.

5. Discussion

The register confirms what the Culture says of itself and, for the first time, puts a size on it. The slap-drone did nothing in these records intended to punish. Its task was prevention, and its assignment on Tessendrine depended on a judgement about future risk, not on a proportion between harm and penalty. The sanction the Culture names as its main one, the loss of company and standing, fell on almost everyone the drones accompanied and drove most of them to leave, at more than twice the ordinary rate.

Its character deserves attention. Withdrawal of company is not ordered, measured or limited by anyone, and it can be generous or unforgiving. The six reconciliations show the first; the seventeen departures show the second. A civilisation without laws has, on this evidence, a strong informal law of reputation, enforced without appeal, and the drone's presence may itself be part of how it is set in motion. Whether neighbours read an assigned drone's aura as the drone's own speech or as a signal about its charge is a question the register cannot answer; recent work on auras as a register of communication suggests it could matter (see the study of drone aura fields in this journal).

6. Limitations of the Record

The register covers one Orbital. Practice on other Orbitals, and on General Systems Vehicles, may differ, including in how long drones stay assigned and which killings lead to an assignment at all.

Several findings rest on the Hub's notes alone: the reasons for release, the reports of withdrawn invitations and ended friendships, the reconciliations and the one known later harm. Social consequences that nobody reported are missing. The register also records almost nothing of what the assigned drones thought of their work.

Finally, the third author made every assignment studied here and wrote the notes that explain them. It supplied the register, the count of killings and the residency baseline, and answered questions of fact; Brashend and Distaffe did the coding and wrote the interpretation. Readers should still weigh the release notes as the account of an interested party.