[UA] Crash Test Dummies

[Patrick O'Duffy]

So it's Saturday night, and I'm watching a documentary about crash test
dummies.

(Why no, I don't have any kind of social life. Why do you ask?)

A few salient and UA-able points:

- Modern crash test dummies cost about $100,000 US each, and every part of
their construction is regulated by law. That's a lot of effort and money -
for an item (entity?) that exists only to be destroyed.

- In the past, crash tests and the like used corpses, animals, or even
living people as experimental subjects. In some respects, the dummy is the
proxy for the living being that should be killed or hurt - possibly for the
guy who developed the modern dummy, a researcher who used _himself_ as a
subject for crash tests.

- Then of course, there are the tie-ins to Roswell and Nazi Germany, but the
programme's still running.

Two possible UA artifacts:

- A dummy that's survived test after test; it never seems to 'die'. Now it
acts as a protective artifact of sorts; drive with it your car, and you and
the dummy will both escape unscathed. The cost, of course, is that the
injuries don't disappear; they're just diverted to some other poor bastard.

- A dummy that's a proxy for a person; injure that person, and you injure
the dummy instead. But the dummy becomes self-aware by experiencing pain -
and when it finally comes alive, it wants _revenge_...

Any other interesting CTD ideas?

--
Patrick O'Duffy, Brisbane, Australia

You really do moan at an Olympic level, don't you?

- Spider Jerusalem, TRANSMETROPOLITAN #37


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