EVE New Citizens Q&A

Which brings us to the second thing that eventually dawns, and on an diminishing scale now, down to the thousands. The second realization is that capsuleers can die. They are not immortal.

Many of my kind refuse to acknowledge this, but it is quite obvious. Standard capsuleer re-cloning relies on the use of mind-state transfer technology, which transfers consciousness from one highly controlled environment to another; Body A inside a capsule (an “egg”) and Body B (for Plan B) in a cloning facility.

The important phrase here is highly controlled environment. You can't say it is anything else. A scanner pores over your brain, capturing every last thought, every memory, every personality defect, and it does this why? Because your capsule was breached.

Because someone just proved how fragile that egg really is.

And that cloning facility you wake up in?

That cloning facility is surrounded by some of the most high-clearance people in the field - these invisible caretakers who oversee the rebirth of the universe's elite. They have a job with an importance like no other in our world, and with it, surveillance and monitoring you won't see anywhere else either. They are the real bodyguards. If a corporate CEO is waking up in one of these facilities, his contingent on the ground have already failed, and this, the most sacred of contingency plans, now depends on the people in the white suits. Obviously, not everyone is comfortable with that, least of all us capsuleers who won't often admit how tenuous our grip on everything really is.

Why? Because these people in white suits could make things go horribly wrong for you and me.

I think the reason we've started installing cloning vats on our largest, most powerful ships has less to do with logistics and more to do with trust issues.