Intergalactic Summit

My ... reappearance? You're saying she's behind this, um, me?

. . . .

Can you maybe please not say anything right here that'll get me shot? Infomorphs aren't allowed to leave active copies of ourselves around. It's not just bad manners.

I don't want to lose my accreditation as a human being.

... even if it is kinda provisional.

A lot of people are making a number of assumptions here that they shouldn't. I understand that when you see someone in peril, the tempting and morally correct thing to do is to jump right in and try to help. But please keep in mind that, without a firm understanding of the person or the situation in question, you can often do harm even with the best of intentions. This isn't to say "mind your own business", but... Well, be conscious of the implications of your words in the greater sense, and when in doubt, err on the side of caution, when dealing with a stranger.

To the OP: Please get in contact with me. I have some information you will probably find helpful. I would speak to you right now at length, but the cluster is inconsiderately falling apart by the minute.

It is not right.

There is no death for the identity, only for the body. Continuity of data stream and thought is conserved, like with any hardscan process.

Conventional thinking based on human perception of space time continuum can not cope with the scope of multiple identities and discontinuity of thought.

Telling that someone ceases to be that someone after a hardscan, or even a delayed cloning, is nonsensical. Technically you stop being you at the next second no matter what you do.

You don't. A copy with your memories does (or without, in this new Jenneth's case).


But as usual, capsuleers will cling to the delusion that they're immortal, and thus more special than the rest of humanity. So, forget I said anything, as it just falls on deaf ears and is drowned out by dreamers.


And Ms. Jenneth, most jump clones performed today do involve neuron-scorching flash scans. So there is certainly 'a death'.

This is important.

We do not know each other, but for what it’s worth you have my condolences on your recent trama.

You’re asking some interesting and important questions.

How did this happen to me?

Why did this happen to me?

Was it an accident?

Was it intentional?

If intentional who, or God forbid, did I do this to myself.

All important questions but in my estimation, pointless.

What really matters young lady is the now.

Who you were is unimportant, who you become depends upon your choices.

Make good ones.

Miss Kernher,

I understand your reasons, both scientific and spiritual, for having little belief in the cloning system and a continuation of a persons self. However, please do not present them as absolute fact in this very sensitive and difficult situation where your words might affect others who are vulnerable. The topic is a subject of academic debate with a number of factors involved, and not an ironclad, no-grey-area reality as you are presenting it. Please remember this reality while you are making your assertions.

Funny. I don't recall saying or implying I was immortal or that I was any more or less special than humanity.

For the record, I'm neither immortal or human. I might well appear to be one or the other or even both depending on the perspective of the observer.

If you think you're still human, you haven't been paying attention to your own recent existence. You woke up after being dead. You may not be a monster like the rest of us, but at the very least you're a post-human.

But cling to what illusions you will if they comfort you, we all need our creature comforts, the beautiful thing about the vastness of space is that it doesn't really matter if we agree or not.

Yesterday was a strange day.

It started with finally getting clearance to undock. I guess I'm not going to be shot.

That Merlin looked so huge, looming over my balcony in the station: metric tons of tritanium; blaster arrays powerful enough to slice another ship into chunks of debris; engine arrays I could have walked into. Launching ... the kick of the thrusters, the stronger push of afterburners-- it was exhilarating.

It sort of stayed ... impressive ... until I warped near the beacon at one of the "Unknown Structures."

I'm not sure my sense of scale's recovered yet.

We measured it at 196 km, antenna tip to bottom of hull, give or take a kilometer. It would ... take me a good few minutes to walk my own margin for error.

The Buzzard I switched over to to experiment with probing ... didn't seem so big anymore. Though I still feel pretty small.

The probing led to a, well, I guess "illegal" might not be the word.... A Federal Navy detention center, in Caldari space. I only saw the guard at the deadspace entry, but it was an intimidating force: Elite Navy frigates, mixed with cruisers, but the main force was a squadron of Gallente battleships, each ... I don't know how many times the size of my little cloaked frigate.

I felt very glad not to be seen.

While I was taking it all in, another pilot warped in, in an Ishtar. Chaos erupted. I thought ... I know, capsuleer, but still, he was so outnumbered, I thought ... they'd kill him for sure, but he fought his way through to the gate. The gate slung him away into the deeper reaches, and I sort of thought, how heroic, running a gauntlet like that to ... well, to rescue the prisoners, or shut the place down.

He came back a few minutes later, though, and everything just started exploding. I thought it was amazing at first, but then a companion ... reminded me what I was looking at: ships full of people bursting apart into vacuum, crews in the tens, hundreds, or thousands, dying every minute. And ... I realized, this isn't a battle. It's a massacre. He was just ... killing everyone.

I ... guess I must have sounded horrified, so my companion suggested we go save some lives. We ... headed out to the Caldari border with Amarr space, looking for stranded human cargo. Twenty minutes or so, and we didn't ... actually find anyone.

I'm told that this sort of mercy mission is looked down on, that it's not ... considered respectable work. And, cruel as it sounds, I can kind of see the point. We could have, at most, expected-- what, a few dozen? A couple hundred?

It seems as though we'd have had to get ... very lucky to save, in an hour, one percent of the numbers that Ishtar killed in five minutes. If we were trying to make a measurable difference, we failed, and we probably were always going to.

What's more, I got frustrated, and I started following the lines of reasoning so clearly laid out in my head. The discussion sort of ranged all over, but I didn't realize until near the end of it that I didn't care nearly as much about what I'd been saying as it sounded like I did.

I'd been ... following a script, assembling pieces of knowledge Aria had sort of pre-arranged for her own use.

Some of ... old Aria ... is beginning to make more sense now. At the same time, I don't want to just trust these ... "facts" that I remember.

They represent the world according to Aria.

Old Aria did believe in looking for the truth, but she was so partisan I have no way to distinguish between facts and "facts."

One thing is clear: if I want to be sure to become my own person, I need to be careful about debate. Old Aria loved debate, and most of the intact parts I have from her mind are intellectual knowledge-- debating material.

I can maybe trust its accuracy, but I can't ... trust its completeness. So, sifting what is true from what she believed is going to be sort of a process. But if I just trust her to have been right about things, I will end up thinking like her.

So ... I guess learning that is a start.

Time to start examining what I think I know.