Comment:

One of the visual tricks I've been doing with Forward - I'm sure you've noticed - is the different colouring styles in different areas. In particular, the back offices of the college are washed out and pastel. Bastacia Marron, with their red hair and green epidermal designs (as mentioned, it's simpler to swap in modified tissue than to use primitive needles) seems chromatically fainter, in this place. Patricia Hightower does not. This is Patricia's place of power, constrained and stymied though it may be.

Mezzer Hightower is charged with protecting Rosenthal and its reputation for the greater good of thousands of students, teachers, and individuals in the surrounding community. Necessarily, with that scale of responsibility, there can be a certain dismissive attitude towards individuals.

One is reminded of Bette Middler's song "From A Distance", wherein a deity observes Earth from far enough away that it appears beautiful and blue and peaceful. The melody and instrumentation of the song is meant to make it feel soaring and beautiful and hopeful, but I, personally, can imagine no crueller fate than to live in a universe managed by an omnipotent being with such a view. How much more of the planet would we have to set on fire before it notices?

Of course, the inverse, for any god cursed with empathy, would surely be unbearable. You think it's rough on you, emotionally, to see starving children and rubble on your average social media doomscroll? Imagine constant, unblockable, cosmic awareness of every life form that is currently in pain, and mirroring that pain within yourself. Such a deity would surely have to harden its heart, to keep from immolating in shame for having created this malfunctioning world and guilt for being responsible for its gigatons of misery.

You may speculate, amongst yourselves, which coping mechanism this patrician in their high tower (you see what I did there?) has chosen. I'm sure we'll delve into their backstory and psychology soon enough.

Transcript:

---------------------------------------------------------------
0399– 2167/07/07/12:04 – Orb’s office
BM: Uhh… to be clear, Mezzer Hightower, Orb hasn’t disclosed any personal information of-
PH: Mezzer Marron, this is a sensitive matter. Do you mind if we step into your spouse’s office for a moment?
BM: Oh, yes, of course.
----------------------
PH: Rosenthal College has already fielded numerous complaints about the robot and the student in question, not only from other students, but from the general public, including a parents’ advocacy group.
BM: Oh, well, that makes se-
PH: The robot is actually a general-purpose automaton with a sex toy incorporated into its head. As you might imagine, students who filter for sexual content were quite disconcerted to see a floating censor bar walking around the halls and, worse yet, participating in class discussions.
----------------------
BM: I can imagin-
PH: The complaint from some other parties, however, was not that they couldn’t see the robot, but that they could. The student had managed to recategorize the sex toy as something else, bypassing viewer’s perceptual filters, despite the fact that visually, it was still clearly a sexbot.
BM: That’s certainly not-
PH: And the reason why this is a particularly sensitive topic for the college is not only that we permitted it, but, because the sexbot was classed as an Emotional Support Aid and it was an independently rented device, we were basically tricked into paying for all of this. Potentially thousands of creds, if the semester had run its course.
----------------------
BM: ...but it was smart enough to quote Socrates?
PH: I run an institution of higher education, Mezzer Marron. I can assure you, mindless drones that quote philosophers are not in short supply.
---------------------------------------------------------------