I brainstormed a story set in the same universe as Ten Thousand Miles Up, completely different place and set of characters but it's a techy sort of story so I decided to run with it.

The screacers are a subjugated race to the lio; in exchange for protection from various worse fates under the Krakun or other dominant species, a number of their kind are sacrificed to the lio for scientific experimentation, having little else to offer. Screacers are highly docile, fast healers and resistant to pain, so even moderate lio approve of the life-saving experiments--how else would they be able to stay on top of the tech race?

However, over the years it has devolved into a kind of complacency--most scientists don't see the screacers as much more than lab fodder. Though the maximum lifespan of a screacer even with advanced medicine is only thirty years, they breed quickly--even at a 70% conscription rate their population is barely kept under control. Most civilian lio see them as pests and leeches, and even the scientists stopped thinking of them as sapient beings, most not even bothering to learn the dialect they speak in order to keep the experiments "pure".

That brings us to this experiment. Already advancements had been made in the field of mind control, but this is the first time it has been perfected on a living subject without opening them up. The suit that subject 059 wears attaches to her spine and various nerve clusters, and can manipulate the mind using electrostatic charges without even having to touch her brain directly--after a few months of training, she is under direct control of her operator, Tunac.

Tunac is a low-level lab employee, and therefore does the busywork of running her through nearly the same test every day, for weeks and weeks. He's attempting to find flaws in the design, such as evidince that she can resist whatsoever, and how much she can problem-solve on her own without operator input. Despite repeated funding cuts, the lab expects the suits to be flawless, so now he's stuck in a dead-in job in a dark room facing glass walls and monitors with stacks and stacks of reports to go through . . .

. . . and he wonders why he finds her so interesting.