Ghosts
I managed to undock from the Brutor Tribe Treasury in Rens this morning in my lovely new Rupture.
But the place, the ship, it's all beside the point.
The BTT is one of those ugly big square-ish stations.
On the left, as you face it, are the chimneys from what I'm guessing is the power plant, since I believe there are no factory facilities there.
Jets of green erupt into space and, in the manner of all things in a vacuum, shift around following their own fluid and smoke dynamics. The same brownian motion that smoke follows when rising from the surface of a hot drink. But in space it's so much slower, larger, longer lasting.
As I glanced behind me, about to engage my autopilot, I saw what I thought was a face in the smoke of the rightmost chimney.
I turned and watched the gasses vent for a while.
I didn't see another face, but those green lumps, slowly dispersing are somewhat eerie if you take notice of them.
I couldn't help but wonder what happens to the mind of someone who can no longer be cloned.
When death is final.
And, something that has worried me for longer than I care to share; what happens if the clone everyone sees, is not the original person?
Cloning is such a fantastic technology, and yet I cannot help but wonder if we are destroying who we are by using it.
What is death to us now?
I am sure Death used to be important.
I am sure it shaped civilisations.
Now, civilisations shape Death.
Death hides in the shadows, striking rarely.
What happens to the ghosts of those who have truly died?
But the place, the ship, it's all beside the point.
The BTT is one of those ugly big square-ish stations.
On the left, as you face it, are the chimneys from what I'm guessing is the power plant, since I believe there are no factory facilities there.
Jets of green erupt into space and, in the manner of all things in a vacuum, shift around following their own fluid and smoke dynamics. The same brownian motion that smoke follows when rising from the surface of a hot drink. But in space it's so much slower, larger, longer lasting.
As I glanced behind me, about to engage my autopilot, I saw what I thought was a face in the smoke of the rightmost chimney.
I turned and watched the gasses vent for a while.
I didn't see another face, but those green lumps, slowly dispersing are somewhat eerie if you take notice of them.
I couldn't help but wonder what happens to the mind of someone who can no longer be cloned.
When death is final.
And, something that has worried me for longer than I care to share; what happens if the clone everyone sees, is not the original person?
Cloning is such a fantastic technology, and yet I cannot help but wonder if we are destroying who we are by using it.
What is death to us now?
I am sure Death used to be important.
I am sure it shaped civilisations.
Now, civilisations shape Death.
Death hides in the shadows, striking rarely.
What happens to the ghosts of those who have truly died?
posted by Hiro Yuki at 12:33 AM
1 Comments:
A while back, I wrote some musings on the nature of the transhumanist society we have become that lightly touched on the matter.
For those of us iwth clones, death is almost non-existant. Of course if our brains are destroyed outside of the the pod then we cannot be cloned but barring an incident like that, we have conquered death. It with have the biggest impact on our collective psyches since the invention of society but it will take a long time before the slow Empires will realise this.
Talk to the Star Fraction about it some time - they're a bit extremist but they believe that we have now evolved beyond the point of territory, Empires and suchlike now we have essentially overcome death.
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