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In 2055, it became impossible to enter a contract that ceded rights without wearing a control collar at the time. This eliminated the previous practice of having uncollared slaves.
In 2065, the legal committees defined what could be displayed on the control collar. As part of this definition, they took over the kef symbol from the NAA Gorean Association.
After 2065, the kef symbol, which is a stylized letter K or the staff with fronds in the Gorean canon, became the standard symbol to display for anyone with diminished responsibility, whether because of minority, incompetency or ceded rights. It's possible to code a kef for anyone, but it's only required to be displayed if the person has diminished responsibility.
The kef has 9 parts. The staff has three parts. From the bottom they are citizenship, residency and coding convention. The NAA's color is purple, someone who is a NAA citizen living in the NAA would have a completely purple staff.
The top frond is the rights details. The first part defines the rights that have been ceded, the second defines why they were ceded and the final part defines term and transferability.
The bottom frond defines ownership. The first part specifies the rights recipient, the second specifies the assigned to, if different, and the last part defines the domicile.
In the common mind, there are two classes of slaves: full slaves with a Transferable Unrestricted Use Contract, and faux, or false, slaves. The common perception is a bit sloppy; it does not, for example, distinguish the Natasha Fan Club's pseudo slaves.
The formal definition of a faux slave is someone who has ceded rights for a limited time, and who retains some amount of control over what her owner can and can't do with her. Note that faux slaves are not the same as pseudo slaves. Faux slaves actually cede rights, usually at the kennel or Ordinary Rights level and are always full time. Pseudo slaves don't cede rights although they pretend they do, and are almost always part time.
In 2060, the consortium of national health services, biotechnology firms and university research laboratories which had been working on a system for all or nothing inheritance of DNA modifications began field testing in the NAA. The Outlaw Nations had started field testing with their experimental subject pool several years previously. The system proved to be successful, and work began on packaging the common modifications and planning the transition.
In 2066, the Health Service and Birthright Lottery mandated that anyone who had DNA modifications must have the newly developed mechanism before they could be awarded a Birthright. At the same time, they standardized a number of variations, including all of the "pet" varieties. The result was standard varieties of pony, centaur, riding cat and mer. They eliminated the kitties, puppies and a number of other weird varieties.
The new mechanism for DNA modifications was a platform modification to the basic human DNA structure. It replaced the X and Y chromosome with Chromosome 24 (which was a modified version of the X chromosome) and Chromosome 25, which contained most of the additional GM platform structure. This modification also added a new organelle, the GM organelle, and its embedded V chromosome. The V chromosome contained the instructions for installing and backing out all of the modifications. Since the V chromosome was a data base rather than an operational chromosome, inheritance rules were strictly non-Mendelian.
DNA changes were now inherited on an all or nothing basis. Sex determination was done externally. If either parent had a pony, centaur or riding cat in their ancestry, there was a possibility that the new child would inherit that set of modifications: as a matter of national policy they didn't want the varieties to go their separate ways.
Before the 2065 revisions, the Slave Code suggested that slaves with a Transferable Unrestricted Use contract wear a slave tunic, that is a sleaveless tunic with a single strap over the right shoulder, all others should wear a ceder tunic, which has straps over both shoulders. After the 2065 revisions, they changed the recommendation so that anyone who was publically presented as a slave full time should wear a slave tunic, anyone who was publically presented as a slave part time should wear a ceder tunic. Most people promptly gave a sigh of relief and used the slave tunic for all situations.
The legal committees also made the four main contract support mind control modules available at the Slave Platform level: Girlfriend, Kennel, Slavegirl and Wife.