Agent Missing?

[Jason]

The issue with the afterlife is "what are we to make of the interludes between activations when Bland finds himself in what appears to be the Vilani afterlife, interacting with other spirits both deceased and pre-born?"
Since he receives information from another spirit in this afterlife that is later proven correct in the physical world then something of the experience must be real.

Bland does split himself several times in the novel, but the splittings could support either reading of "his spirit was (temporarily) split without harm" or "it's just multiple copies of a persona without any real transfer of soul".

At one point the Bland who returns to Deyis and retrieves the embryo banks and forbidden knowledge database there sees in ship records that Stikky was made a baron 90 years earlier and went on to be father to a marquis, and he even says "I wanted to think I had something to do with that" but he doesn't remember that another version of himself arranged that. The wafers are updated and synchronized from time to time but this particular wafer must not have been updated with the memories of the wafer that intervened to reward Stikky.

Later Bland uses five of his wafers to create five hosts at once. He synchronizes himself by passing the wafers around between hosts as they return to report, which is a painful process for him but gives his primary host all the memories of all of his other avatars.

[dalthor]

One could postulate that the "universe" exists in a Quantum State, in which all things are known at all times. The ability to access that Quantum State could occur under certain [and reproducible] circumstances.

One of those circumstances could be related to the "mapping process" used to etch that chip. I'd expect that the etching systems are using a combination of physical (cell-level) mapping to build the brain-on-a-chip, and neural pathway readings to build the circuits between those modeled brain cells. During the actual mapping process, the neural to physical interface acts as the antenna to the aforementioned Quantum State.

The "afterlife" could be nothing more than the perception of the Quantum State as interpreted by the "mind" of the affected being.

[mike wightman]

Originally Posted by Jason

The issue with the afterlife is <snip of a good argument>

All of which is explainable in that the syncing process between wafers updates all the wafer copies eventually (with the exception of hosts that become permanently overwritten by Bland) and that entities that have been copied are somehow also now part of the great machine in the sky (jumpspace?)

The fact that when Bland makes several copies of himself all at the same time and that each copy is a completely independent individual from that point on also shows that there is no magical distribution of spirit or soul.

Each copy has the memories and personality it is possessed by up to the point in the memory cycle that that version of Bland's wafer is in.

The deal clincher to me is that it is only the Bland 'core' personality that appears to have these interludes, which makes me think that it is during the syncing process that the wafer technology is somehow accessing and is being accessed by the great data bank in the sky.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by dalthor

One could postulate that the "universe" exists in a Quantum State, in which all things are known at all times. The ability to access that Quantum State could occur under certain [and reproducible] circumstances.

One of those circumstances could be related to the "mapping process" used to etch that chip. I'd expect that the etching systems are using a combination of physical (cell-level) mapping to build the brain-on-a-chip, and neural pathway readings to build the circuits between those modeled brain cells. During the actual mapping process, the neural to physical interface acts as the antenna to the aforementioned Quantum State.

The "afterlife" could be nothing more than the perception of the Quantum State as interpreted by the "mind" of the affected being.

So you would say Bland got the "big picture" as it were when they were creating his chip, and then parts of what he saw resurfaced from his subconscious hundreds of years later, and he perceives it as having spoken to other spirits in the afterlife while his wafers were inactive?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by mike wightman

The fact that when Bland makes several copies of himself all at the same time and that each copy is a completely independent individual from that point on also shows that there is no magical distribution of spirit or soul.

That might indeed be evidence that there is no singular "spirit" involved, but I would not call it definitive.
Condotierre mentioned the possibility of a soul being split without loss. All of Bland's copies are temporary, even the one without a wafer that resurfaces in Rens and the one that spends 30 years moving from host to host on Reference. Once all copies are inactive Bland's spirit is no longer stretched to multiple places, right? Proponents of reincarnation believe that most people do not have conscious memories of their earlier incarnations.

The deal clincher to me is that it is only the Bland 'core' personality that appears to have these interludes, which makes me think that it is during the syncing process that the wafer technology is somehow accessing and is being accessed by the great data bank in the sky.

But again, shouldn't the wafers only be updated by other copies of the same personality? How can inactive wafers interact with other personalities that they are never hooked up to?

If theyre all just equally valid copies then there shouldn't be a "core" personality either, should there?

[Condottiere]

At this point psionics step in.

Chances are the technology itself involves many disciplines, possibly something experimental salvaged from an Ancients archaeological dig.

[mike wightman]

Originally Posted by Jason

That might indeed be evidence that there is no singular "spirit" involved, but I would not call it definitive.
Condotierre mentioned the possibility of a soul being split without loss. All of Bland's copies are temporary, even the one without a wafer that resurfaces in Rens and the one that spends 30 years moving from host to host on Reference. Once all copies are inactive Bland's spirit is no longer stretched to multiple places, right? Proponents of reincarnation believe that most people do not have conscious memories of their earlier incarnations.

At least one of Bland's wafers permanently possesses a host - in the T5 rules is this actually a feature
Unless the wafers are synced they are unaware of the events that befall the various copies that were activated - remember every major ship in the fleet has a box with all of the agent wafers in, there are tens of thousands of copies of Bland that could be active all at once. None of them would learn of what the others got up to until the capital ship returns the wafer for syncing.

But again, shouldn't the wafers only be updated by other copies of the same personality? How can inactive wafers interact with other personalities that they are never hooked up to?

My conjecture is that the great machine in the sky can interface with the wafer tech, but this is something Imperial science hasn't become aware of yet...

If theyre all just equally valid copies then there shouldn't be a "core" personality either, should there?

The 'core' is the prime copy that contains all of the synced memories of the various Bland activations, once synced they are all copies of this 'core'

[mike wightman]

Originally Posted by Condottiere

At this point psionics step in.

Chances are the technology itself involves many disciplines, possibly something experimental salvaged from an Ancients archaeological dig.

Nope and nope.
The tech is detailed in T5, and there is no mention of a psionic component.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by mike wightman

At least one of Bland's wafers permanently possesses a host - in the T5 rules is this actually a feature

The Rens "possession" is also temporary, because he dies well before the end of the book.

[mike wightman]

Originally Posted by Jason

The Rens "possession" is also temporary, because he dies well before the end of the book.

It is permanent, It lasts the lifetime of the host, in effect a copy of Bland is now alive and kicking in a real body and cut off from the wafer sync, which is why those chapters are presented from an alternative narrator.