GCU Grey Area

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The GCU Grey Area is a General Contact Unit of the fictional Culture society that has turned eccentric. It is described in the novel Excession and has the dubious honour of being one of the few Culture ships to not to be listed in official records by its chosen name.

The Grey Area has a fascination with war, genocide and pain and the methods of inflicting it. Its interior is a museum containing devices that inflict pain and documents detailing their use.

The Grey Area also has chosen to ignore the Culture's taboo on non-consensual mindreading. It is for this reason that the ship is more commonly known among the other Culture Minds as Meatfucker. In the novel Look to Windward it is explained that the denial of a Culture Mind's chosen name is viewed as a grave insult and mark of disapproval by its peers.

During the events of Excession, the Grey Area pauses its historical research into a very comprehensive incident of genocide to help deliver Byr Genar-Hofoen to the Sleeper Service GSV. It travelled within the Sleeper Service to the excession, and near the end of events appeared to allow itself to crash into the energy grid near the excession and was presumed by the Culture to have been destroyed, though this was not the case, with the ship obviously having transcended some sort of boundary between universes or else having been assimilated into another consciousness.