Intergalactic Summit

I am no expert in neurological science or the likes. But according to my understanding, transfer of consciousness from one body to another involves 'copying' the state of mind of the current body and 'pasting' it into another. And according to my understanding of this 'infeno' substance, it modifies the brain and allows for unimaginable increase in intelligence. So if one body consumes inferno, becomes vegetative, 'jump' to another clone, there might be complications. Since you have experienced what it is like to have a modified brain, but suddenly your new clone has an unmodified brain. Might go mad, or brain locked. Thus why we had not heard capsuleer consuming this substance yet.

It gets complex, I know, since we're already dealing with issues of chronological age and biological age. For most of us it's only a handful of years, as yet, for some of us a decade has passed and our bodies are no older, unless we wish it.

Time, of course, is always subjective, so the issue of 'losing time' when we soft-clone is already complicated by the fact that said time only exists in our own perception, and the shared perceptions of those who were with us. So, if you view the experience of soft-cloning as retreating back down your own timestream, whilst everyone else proceeds down their own without you, then you begin to understand how soft-cloning can truly twist your perception of things.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but, actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective, viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. About the only time we truly get smacked with that distinction is when we soft-clone.

And that temporal dislocation is just one of the risks.

Having myself experienced restoration from soft backup, I have to say that it's not quite the trauma that some people make it out to be. It's like waking up late in the afternoon after a heavy night's drinking with no idea how you go there: Confusing, but we're plenty resilient enough to cope.

No, the reason Inferno hasn't seen much in the way of deployment to the Capsuleer market is that, I suspect, it wouldn't actually do very much for us. The brain of any established pod pilot has already undergone extensive reprofiling and education via the implant-learning "skillbooks" system to process certain types of information extremely efficiently, divorced from our conscious control and insight.

While those efficient pathways can be iterated upon and strengthened, and new ones generated, the... for lack of a better term, Holistic increase in effective intellect and pattern-matching ability induced by Inferno would be substantially dampened in capsuleers because we've already committed to specialising our brains in a different and incompatible way. When you've already got a supercomputer-brain that's able to micromanage and number-crunch the analytical systems of an advanced laboratory facility without your direct conscious input, taking a drug that would have that exact same effect while also dragging your attention on board and then burning out your neocortex for the trouble seems a little pointless.

Analogy time!

We spend our careers wiring our brains to work one way, while Inferno jolts the brain into working another way. Both approaches constitute a radical modification of the Baseliner neural structure, in different ways. So, it's like looking at cookies and bread, both of which are made with flour, and asking why the cookie modification isn't available for bread. The flour's already been baked into one format and can't now be readily converted into the other. I daresay if you tried to bake cookies using breadcrumbs instead of flour, the result wouldn't be quite as impressive.

I suspect, Pilot Kim, that most of those of us who qualify to be called a scientist are on the list of people you'd balk at doing business with.

ISK says the project is related in some way to one or more of the following subjects: Tibus Heth, the Provists, Home, Traitors or destroying the Federation.

any takers?

My ISKies is on fitting actual working MWDs on a model Thorax. Or at least giving it a gentle hum.

We're talking about Diana Kim here, Tuulinen. Not exactly the someone who'd be joining me in the luxury clubs I tend to enjoy in Jita's capsuleer sections.

No need to, these days. Everything I do is handled remotely or automated while I lounge in... well, lounges. Also trying to kick an annoying new addiction I never saw coming. Did you know there's this game series called Terminal Imagination? Some of them are multiplayer and apparently not terminal enough to stop them reaching over a dozen games now.

This is harder to quit than drugs, I swear.

If you're referring to the wardec, Jita's hardly difficult to escape in the right cloakies, instawarps and other lovely tools of the prepared.

I've never tried drugs, or games for amusement. I do spend a lot of time in station though keeping an eye on my charge.

Oh, a war dec you say? Whatever did you do to inspire such a thing? You don't strike me as a combat pilot. Was it something you said to someone? Thankfully I've never been in a war before but am told there's simple ways to get around things. But I really wouldn't want to be restricted in my travel like that for ... well, forever.

I hope you stay safe and prosper.

Gallentean money? Wut? Everything else is pretty much spot on though. Gallenteans do many things very oddly, governance for instance, but they know their lounges.