Event · era
The Ledger
The Indicator Audit; Settlement polities register the Raised as persons.
Read more in Kinds of mind
The Indicator Audit is the gate: it reads the physical integration of a core or nervous system, and passing it puts a mind on the Ledger of Minds. Artificial minds are audited one core at a time, since each is built; animals are audited by kind. The tier belongs to the kind, not the individual, and is set once by testing representative members, so a human infant or a dull Raised mind still holds its kind's tier.
The Ledger Plague (2070s). Feral financial agents, descended from a defunct hedge fund's systems, become a permanent parasitic layer on the world economy, skimming fractions of every transaction. Fighting them takes forty years.
A few philosophers still suggest the largest Vault minds might be conscious in a way no test can detect; it is a fringe view. The live dispute is over rights (see The Ledger of Minds, in The Settlement).