"Ellynne G." wrote:

I remember being told there are some places where water pipes are put on the outside of houses to make them easier to fix when they freeze - even though this makes them much more likely to freeze than if they'd been indoors.

Ye-e-s, that's one explanation for locating the limiter in the boondocks of brain activity.

But can you really see the Feds being concerned about ease of repair? And why install a limiter with the expectation that it would *need* repair? Shipping Gan off to Cygnus Alpha pretty much precluded his limiter getting its annual physical.

I suppose someone on the design team said, "You know, if we put it _here_ and just have a few lead wires going _there_, it'll be easier to fix if something goes wrong. Even that hack, Kayn, could pull it off. I mean, the fact that it makes it that much more likely the subject will go into violent fits followed by slow death is kind of beside the point so long as the warranty's only for thirty days."

I suddenly imagine Gan's cranium being wired like a Christmas tree and the limiter a malfunctioning star on top.

Speculating here, but the limiter being self-contained means: no tricky wires (or whatever the 23rd century equivalent is) to route, less trauma to the skull, less time, less trouble . . .and less probability that someone makes an attempt to isolate/disable the limiter by cutting wires. The Lib sickbay was pretty sophisticated, they wouldn't have needed "that hack, Kayn" at all, if it were all that easy to repair.

But it *wasn't* easy to repair! Renor couldn't repair it (according to Kayn). Then again, Kayn had motive to lie. Several of them.

If the limiter is self-contained we'll just assume it's integrated with the brain and doing its job by virtue of technology yet to be discovered. I find it a fascinating concept, much unexplored in the series, the closest B7 ever came to nano-technology.

Jackie