I'm a clone, you're a clone - we're all clones
08 Mar 2021Agga Salk
Thesis: CMDRs are all clones, but we aren’t supposed to know.The question is, how after a CMDR’s ship is destroyed does one find oneself back on one’s ship, parked in a station that might be thousands or tens of thousands of ly away from their “accident”? We’re told that as it is destroyed, the CMDR is protected by an escape pod that then rapidly ferries them back to the station. But this just can’t be.
We already know that larger jump ranges need larger FSDs, so how can a tiny escape pod make any significant-sized jump, much less a jump that might be more than 200ly?
Also, how can the system be so perfect? We’re all really so lucky? Think of all those assassination missions you’ve carried out: what would be the use of an assassination where the target is virtually guaranteed survival? And have you ever seen an escape pod jettisoned from an exploding ship? No, you have not.
Some might say okay, the escape pod thing is just a fiction. We’re all actually in our ships by telepresence, just like flying an SLF. But then why do we need oxygen when the canopy breaks? No, you must be real flesh and blood. And you can’t be escaping every time in an escape pod - your ship blew up, and you are dead.
So how can it be that moments later, you wake up again?
Answer: you are a clone, a copy of the last you, based on a recording that was made the last time you docked.
We don’t realize it, but it’s standard protocol for a CMDR: each time you dock, a cellular scan is made and recorded, then locked in a blockchain whose key is there in your brain - and which can only be reproduced by building a new brain, which can only be done with the data contained in that locked recording.
The key in your brain is what is released when your ship is destroyed - that’s the “escape pod” - you hearing the words “eject, eject”, that’s the beginning of the transmission of the key, and the end of you.
That key - perhaps carrying with it a frame or two of basic information accounting for your recent travels, that can be installed as part of your memories - is transmitted across the galaxy, using whatever galactic communications medium that allows for near-instantaneous transmissions of various kinds that we are already familiar with (Galnet; contacts from engineers; etc), until it reaches that block chained data, which is then immediately used to construct a new you, which is probably one of a large stock of waiting clones with brains that can be rapidly imprinted with a recorded mind.
And there you are, you again, as though nothing had happened but a brief sleep in an “escape pod”.
If this is the case, why don’t they tell us?
The answer is that, as far as galactic civilization goes, we are not real people. CMDRs are tools used for doing space jobs - disposable people - but it’s bad for us to know it. Our condition was prefigured by several bits of early 21st century science fiction: there's the protagonist Sam in the film "Moon": he believes he’s a regular guy who happens to work on the Earth's moon, and who happens to have woken up from a bad accident; or the replicants in "Blade Runner 2049", who know they’re replicants but also are constructed with memories of real lives that they never lived. Apparently, believing that you’re a “real person” is essential to normal mental function. So they keep up the fiction for us CMDRs, thinking it keeps us sane.
In addition to keeping us sane, it keeps us from asking: Where are all the other people? Why can’t we go down planetside, check out the sights, visit with the folks back on Mars? It’s because *they* don’t want us there - we’re tools for space and we should stay in space.
“Go, stack up your credits. Do our missions, ferry our goods, collect our data, fight our battles - just stay away from us!”
That’s the attitude of humanity towards us CMDRs, or I suppose that it is.
Personally, I think they don’t know what they’re missing.
But what does it mean, that I've died and been replaced what, sixteen times now? But not that I've died - those CMDRs weren't me, they were them. I'm just a week old, after the last me did a faceplant onto a 4g world. She was vaporized, I suppose, and now I'm here. A copy of a copy of a copy sixteen times over. I wonder, was there ever a real me? Was there ever a me that really came from Earth, or is that all a fiction too? Was I born in a lab in space? I don't suppose I'd mind... I'm never going back anyways...