Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => Player Driven Content => Topic started by: Katrina Oniseki on 25 Jul 2011, 13:58
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I've had some RP recently that got me thinking about what sort of unique medical issues a Capsuleer might face. They use cloned bodies which can vary wildly in quality as much as any commercial product can. Manufacturing defects in the clone can come with a host of medical issues, I'd imagine. But what kinds?
I don't mean psychological issues either. Purely physical ailments that would affect a clone body under the daily stresses of Capsuleer use.
I have some ideas.
Socket infections due to contamination.
Rogue nanites
Cancerous growths due to a poorly grown clone
Cellular degeneration of a bad clone
Any number of space borne issues could arise as well. Extreme radiation, negative effects of using jumpgates often, or the stresses of overloading modules and using boosters. You could also consider dirty or bad capsule fluid, capsule malfunctions.
In a recent RP, I played out that some inert and spent medical nanites leftover from the implantation of the five sockets into the clone body (before she activated the clone) had somehow reactivated. Maybe some electric charge gave them power, or something. Part of the RP is that she doesn't know what's done it, twice in a row.
The nanites, without any programming, have only clumped together and found themselves attracted to the active sockets while Kat uses them in flight. The (now much larger) foreign objects in the sockets caused an immune response that resembled an infection complete with swelling and irritation. So, she's had to go in to have the nanites removed from the sockets... essentially having the sockets cleaned.
thoughts?
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Mold and bacteria in Amarr wrinkles. :yar:
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Mold and bacteria in Amarr wrinkles. :yar:
And on a similar note, Thrush/yeast infections. Respiratory ailments. General gastrointestinal upset when transitioning from a liquid to a solid diet (and just how clean is that recycled water from the station reprocessor? Got anything growing on the inside of those two hundred some odd year old water pipes?). Low grade contact allergies.
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I've used the term "clonesickness" as a sort of generalized malaise in getting used to a new body.
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Why couldn't psychological issues develop from physical ailments? That could be particularly interesting, I think.
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Regarding clones, I tend to do a handwave whenever Seriphyn is podded.
If it is sudden and unexpected, the clone reanimation is violent and uncontrolled, sending Seriphyn into some primal rage that might see some medical staff (or drones, at least) at the forefront of this violence. However, if he has sufficient time to prepare for it (had my pod locked down for several seconds, not being instashot), then the reanimation is relatively peaceful.
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Regarding clones, I tend to do a handwave whenever Seriphyn is podded.
If it is sudden and unexpected, the clone reanimation is violent and uncontrolled, sending Seriphyn into some primal rage that might see some medical staff (or drones, at least) at the forefront of this violence. However, if he has sufficient time to prepare for it (had my pod locked down for several seconds, not being instashot), then the reanimation is relatively peaceful.
I'm just now getting into the meat of The Empyrean Age novel. At the beginning, it has the capsuleer encased in a clone tube vat thingy, so... I would assume that Seriphyn is possibly restrained until he calms down.
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As Dust 514 gets closer and, with any luck, Templar One tells us the (new) current state of play with cloning, we might get a better idea of the types of things we're working with.
For now I'd add to the list:
-- Either auto-immune disorders as the customer's immune system attacks the biomass (which might not even be human), or seriously damped immune responses as everything's turned off to avoid that (meaning you'd be susceptible to just about anything and the air in station might indeed be a problem).
-- Lung problems from liquid-breathing. Yes, mice can breath in perfluorocarbon, but from what I can see so far they've died afterwards from lung trauma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorocarbon#Liquid_breathing). Assume FutureScience improves this but there are still problems at the extremes. Apparently there's work to develop nanites that will "eat" the perfluorocarbon that clings to you when you de-pod, but no news yet on what they'll do with the mass or where they'll go, which could be rather important on the exchange surfaces of your lungs.
-- I'm not sure if there'd be huge emotional swings from the chemical changes of changing bodies, or if all bodies would be heavily monitored and fed a blend of psychoactive drugs that was considered appropriate (Equilibrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_%28film%29)). I do imagine there are different cultural protocols about whether a pilot has the right not to take their meds.
If osteoplastic is used for all bones, and not just the bones that are required for a body to look like the customer profile:
-- Ligament attachment problems where the biomass tears away from the osteoplastic.
-- Various blood disorders possibly requiring blood supplementation. Is there something in the "clone" that does the jobs of bone marrow, especially producing red blood cells and platelets? Which immune regime does that belong to: the customer's? Sync it with whatever acts as a spleen so old cells are cleaned away but not too quickly. Alternatively, use something artificial and have the pilot go in for a blood change periodically.
Also:
-- Why do we still use bodies at all? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have some sort of carrier for the brain matrix that doesn't have all these messy biological problems?
(Argh! I hate this idea, despite thinking it makes a lot of sense and also having fond memories of The Ship Who Sang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ship_Who_Sang).)
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I thought a meat clone is quickly turned into a copy of the original body when the DNA model is introduced, making it not very different (its barely half synthetic, remodelled yes, but still coming from biomass). This way you just can't have immune system attacking the body or the likes. Unless as you say, the clone is something totally different, a meat puppet of some kind that has nothing to do with the original body... :/
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I thought a meat clone is quickly turned into a copy of the original body when the DNA model is introduced, making it not very different (its barely half synthetic, remodelled yes, but still coming from biomass). This way you just can't have immune system attacking the body or the likes. Unless as you say, the clone is something totally different, a meat puppet of some kind that has nothing to do with the original body... :/
I'm not sure how much it's worth speculating in depth about cloning at the moment, hence my riders on my previous suggestions about podder illnesses. We've had the discussions repeatedly, the information we have -- mostly in the chronicle about Cromeaux Inc. (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Cloning_%28Chronicle%29) -- is open to various readings, and we expect that medical tech will change in the lead-up to DUST 514.
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Istvaan, are you reading this?
There's a passage in one of the hellgremlin pieces where one of your young male protagonists gets taken to (from memory) some sort of dive which happens to have an operator with the gear to do a body scan. The operator asks whether our protagonist is (again from memory) "Fresh or reconstituted?". Do you have a link for this? It's one of the scenes that -- while non-canonical -- influenced my understanding of EVE "cloning".
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Sounds like fresh means womb born human, and reconstituted means a clone grown from biomass.
-- Either auto-immune disorders as the customer's immune system attacks the biomass (which might not even be human), or seriously damped immune responses as everything's turned off to avoid that (meaning you'd be susceptible to just about anything and the air in station might indeed be a problem).
Click the button next to the CQ door and it will tell you,
"Station atmosphere not yet decontaminated for capsuleer consumption."
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Which I took as code for "osht we don't have this done yet"
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Which I took as code for "osht we don't have this done yet"
Oh, absolutely, but humans are storytelling beings, hard-wired to try to join the dots (even when the dots are random). Humour me while I suggest that this could be one more dot to join. :)
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So I suppose if capsuleers start to get out of the CQs before Incarna is released, they start to feel like sick quarrians from mass effect ? Not fun. So they can't either walk on planets and stuff with normal people without wearing suits ?
Haven't thought of that before, but now that I re-read this message from the CQs, I ARE NOT HAPPY.
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I think the general weakness of capsuleer immune systems has been mentioned before - we can just hang out in our pods, which probably have their own system for keeping us healthy, and a weak immune system minimized graft vs host issues when you're in a clone that your immune system doesn't like.
This might not be such an issue for people who spend months and months in the same clone, but we'd need to know more about how cloning works to put that together.
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I always treated the "station atmosphere not yet decontaminated" message as a tongue-in-cheek remark amounting to "c'mon guys, give us a bit of time to work" with a kernel of truth. It stands to reason that clones -- particularly new ones -- would have a weaker immune system, at least from my limited understanding, given that they've not been exposed to the various pathogens and other nasties floating about. Best I can tell, though, it also seems reasonable to assume that there'd be the opportunity for a modified or cybernetically augmented immune system to try and sidestep this; both technologies are pretty damn advanced in New Eden. Another route would be 'old-school' immunomodulation drugs, I guess, shooting them up with immunostimulants.
Could clones left in storage for extended periods of time be sequentially exposed to the more common pathogens, perhaps, to generate an immune response before use, much like a series of vaccines? It's not a field I can ever claim to know well, but it seems reasonable.
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Well, the way the human immune system works would strongly suggest that Capsuleers basically have a form of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). The reason being is that your immune system works by experiencing strains of viruses, tumors, bacteria and storing the genetic composition of those organisms in proteins and other molecules in order to quickly recognize and attack them in the future.
Without experiencing those pathogens and viruses to start with, the body has no quick way to respond and counter their spread and attack on the system.
However, you could logically argue that clones are injected with several vaccines and strains while in incubation in order to steel them against the more common viruses, bacteria and pathogens that would be faced in day-to-day life. This would allow capsuleers to operate relatively normally outside of their pod.
As for specific things to a capsuleer, molecular degeneration of poorly composed clones is a possibility. There could be issues with the DNA reconstruction process that takes place after you jump into a clone. (PF suggests that new clones do not gain your DNA until after you've jumped into them and been there for some time).
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I think that's actually the strongest argument I've seen for isolation Capsuleers from the general population. If we were permitted to mix with the local population, we'd be swapping pathogens with them, etc. We'd be exposed to stuff that our bodies have never seen before and will likely kill us - but that's the lesser concern. The real problem is the reverse: We're going to pick up the New Eden version of small pox while out in the far reaches of nullsec, bring it back to Jita 4-4, and wipe out the entire civilian population whose immune systems are completely unprepared.
Consider the degree to which we quarantine people traveling to certain countries on our planet during viral outbreaks - not expand that from an individual planet to thousands of planets, hundreds of systems, etc. Honestly, thinking about it for the first time, I think the immune and pathogen issues would explain the isolation of capsuleers from other people better than anything else. On the other hand, that same issue should make things like the release of a generation of Matari from the Empire to the Republic into a form of biological warfare.
Blasted inconsistencies.
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On the other hand, that same issue should make things like the release of a generation of Matari from the Empire to the Republic into a form of biological warfare.
Hahahahaha. Raze keeps telling people it wasn't a "savvy political maneuver" by Empress Sarum...
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Sterile Conduits (http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/item.php?type_id=2875)
Sustaining diverse populations of station inhabitants - many of whom come from different worlds with different ecologies - was a medical nightmare until the development of sterile conduits. Each length of flexible, self-repairing tube is powered by breaking down the chemical energy in the water they convey, which itself is laced with smart vaccines able to identify and destroy almost any known antigen.
I'm not sure exactly how this would apply, but it seems that society has already accounted for that situation you described, Victoria. At least to some degree.
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Bah! Foiled again by my old enemies, handwavium and :nanites:, in the shape of a massive raised middle finger to old ally science.
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Bah! Foiled again by my old enemies, handwavium and :nanites:, in the shape of a massive raised middle finger to old ally science.
"Captain! The Trollface-Class Titan CCP is charging it's doomsday device, Handwave Cannon!"
"Arm all forward cannons! I want Science and Analysis primed to full, locked and loaded! Divert all remaining power to forward defensive batteries "Logic and Rationality!"
"I don't know how much more she can take, captain! CCP is adding Nanite charges to their weapon!"
"Nanites?" *Sigh* "We've lost this one, soldiers. Full tactical retreat!"
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Problems that arise from various tubetry in various orificery.
Also pod goo related problems if all the orifices are not plugged.
There is nothing like crapping out a gallon of pod goo because you wanted to fly au naturel, also the infections that it brings.
Extended periods in the pod could lead to all the shit that the Matrix dealt with, light sensitivity of the eyes and muscle deterioration.
Not to mention all the psychological stuff, but they are pretty much moot.
Because it seems all the capsuleers are nutters.
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Podder hemorrhoids could be terrible, yes.
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On a semi-related note, how would capsuleers deal with more mundane issues. For example, a new capsuleer without jumpclone access slips in the shower and breaks an arm. Now what?
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On a semi-related note, how would capsuleers deal with more mundane issues. For example, a new capsuleer without jumpclone access slips in the shower and breaks an arm. Now what?
I imagine they'd have to do what any other person would do and visit the medical facilities to have the arm mended. (It should also be noted that the 'break' becomes coded into your DNA and will likely be reflected in future clones.)
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I imagine they'd have to do what any other person would do and visit the medical facilities to have the arm mended. (It should also be noted that the 'break' becomes coded into your DNA and will likely be reflected in future clones.)
On this we may disagree. Things which cause or are caused by genetic mutation/irregularities may carry over between clones, but simple injuries like broken bones, scars, burns, tattoos, etc, do not have any impact on DNA and shouldn't carry over between clones. Now, certain silly capsuleers may want to bring their scars and tattoos with them, but unless you ask them to break the arm on your clone before you jump to it, it won't come with you. Even an irregularity left behind by an imperfect healing process still has no impact on the DNA, should not transfer to other clones.
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DNA degenerates because of radiation.
One of the reasons that the probability of cancer gets higher as people get older.
A breach in the radiation shielding of the pod causing shorter lifetimes for capsuleers?
Greater chance of tumors anywhere in the body?
The speedy generation of tissue for the clone making the problem worse?
Superpowers?
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Shorter lifetimes for a given clone, perhaps, but most of our clones don't live long enough for that to be an issue, do they?
Also, I cannot understand why broken bones and other injuries would get coded into DNA. Does Lamarckism exist in EVE?
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/me always wondered about muscle atrophy and being hairless with new clones, but the Cromeaux article says "exact copies"
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Istvaan, are you reading this?
There's a passage in one of the hellgremlin pieces where one of your young male protagonists gets taken to (from memory) some sort of dive which happens to have an operator with the gear to do a body scan. The operator asks whether our protagonist is (again from memory) "Fresh or reconstituted?". Do you have a link for this? It's one of the scenes that -- while non-canonical -- influenced my understanding of EVE "cloning".
Yep, still got that up somewhere. Hang on.
http://eve.klaki.net/fiction/infection.html (http://eve.klaki.net/fiction/infection.html)
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Yep, still got that up somewhere. Hang on.
http://eve.klaki.net/fiction/infection.html (http://eve.klaki.net/fiction/infection.html)
Thank you.
“Now, a couple of quick questions”, Farrad cooed, tapping keys on a pad on the side of the mod-bed and waving another surgeon over to assist him. “Are you fresh squeezed, or from concentrate?” The fetishist was, of course, referring to Hamish’s clone status – the skeletal structure of clones was quite different from that of trueborn human beings. Hamish had never been cloned.
For me, this reinforced the following:
Culturing a clone takes several months, but all clone stations store generic clones that are only put to use when a client buys it. The skull, and frequently other bones as well, is replaced by osteoplastic materials – soft synthetic bone polymers that can be shaped and then hardened by gamma laser irradiation. In this way, facial features and other body marks and textures can be applied very quickly. The process is very quick and is applied as soon as the clone is purchased. A similar technique is also used to adjust skin tones and give special skin marks, such as tattoos and scars. This means that the featureless clone is quickly transformed into an identical twin of the client.
Note that that passage is specifically about generic clones, and the over-all section on clone manufacturing (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Cloning_(Chronicle)#Clone_manufacturing:) had me going "Oh, they're like this", "No, they like that", "Huh, are they talking about different types of products here, and which bits relate to what?"
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Problems that arise from various tubetry in various orificery.
Also pod goo related problems if all the orifices are not plugged.
There is nothing like crapping out a gallon of pod goo because you wanted to fly au naturel, also the infections that it brings.
I recently won a sub to EON. I've been enjoying the Knowledgebase articles EON carries, while also (sweetly, gently) raging that this info isn't available to the general audience.
There's an article in the spring 2011 EON about hydrostatic fluid (pod goo). I've quoted a few paragraphs from it before, so let me cut and paste:
As a matter of course, hydrostatic fluid is loaded with various kinds of nanotech, from bio-engineered organisms to more complex nanomachines that work to cleanse the fluid of impurities akin to an elaborate extra-corporeal immune system. Such a mix of nanites can be very complex, almost like an entire ecosystem designed to eliminate poisons and bacteria from the fluid in which the pilot is immersed, as well as material from the body that might be collected later by unscrupulous elements looking to utilize material that contains capsuleer DNA.
I've always assumed the default is that you don't wear clothes in the pod, by the way: I think there was even a comment at its launch that the black shorts on the pilot in the Incarna depodding teaser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yCcRMNT-WI) were there because of ratings. I'm aware that there's also a tradition of pod suits, but my reading of the current work on pod goo is that you'd be far better off without a suit.
(Also, what's amiss with this hypothetical pilot's sphincters? "Gallons"? Please keep such pilots away from baths, pools and jacuzzis.)
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For the goo to keep the body more resistant against G-forces I would gather that it should be pressurized. Support for the body from a flight suit could be useful as well.
If all of your muscles stop working when your mind goes away to do ship stuff, why would your sphincter be an exception?
Of course the control of the muscles that work with reflexes instead of conscious control, in addition to the uncontrollable muscles like the ones in your intestinal walls, could be still present in the 'vacant' body of the pilot therefore leaving the most embarrassing phenomena out of the picture.
Also if the pod goo is a universal immune system that destroys bacteria willy nilly, then it would wreck havoc on your digestive system if you would swallow it or have some of it slip into your colon.
Which is also one of the problems with having clones that have immune deficiencies.
A human digestive system is housing millions of different kinds of bacteria, I'm not certain, but as far as I know, it takes years for a child to have the capability to digest regular food as its body and the bacteria in their digestive system adapts to processing liquids to solids.
Which makes most of the clone stuff pretty hand wavey...
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Regarding broken bones and such from my earlier comment.
My mistake, I was misunderstanding how the body was affected during the healing process, ignore me.
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Both of my characters have biology and nanite control at four or five, which I imagine means they are as knowledgeable as any doctor and are familiar with the status of every cell in their bodies. Combined that with great wealth and I don't play them has having any illness.
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For the goo to keep the body more resistant against G-forces I would gather that it should be pressurized. Support for the body from a flight suit could be useful as well.
If all of your muscles stop working when your mind goes away to do ship stuff, why would your sphincter be an exception?
<snip>
I've always thought of it as the pod systems keep your physical body ticking over while your brain is interfaced with the ship.
There is a series of books called The Legacy of The Aldenata by John Ringo (volume 1 is "A Hymn Before Battle" and is available as a free ebook from his publisher, Baen). Some of the major characters in that fight in power armour. The decriptions of the interface there and the "biotic underlayer" that absorbs and recycyles the user's wastes and sweat are generally the way I think of pod goo.
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I vaguely remember a Celeste IGS rant about ... ah ha, found it!
Also, in the 'hormonal disruption due to jump cloning' supposition, there's an absence of clone differentiation data. How many of the sample population were organic (in original bodies or vat-grown clones) or manufactured (in clones made of biomass sculpted over plastic skeletons)? How many of the sample organic population regulated their hormonal cycles? Did they do the same for their jump clones? How many of the sample manufactured population opted to simulate their original hormonal cycles? Were these simulations erratic or regulated? Were regulated hormonal cycles, whether natural or simulated, synchronized across jump clones?
Yeah, just another one of those messy (pun intended) little bits of information we don't know about the capsuleering process. Even if female capsuleers are sterile, they could have hormonal cycles ... unless they're in permanent menopause, which could come with its own cluster of problems. Not so much osteoporosis, thank goodness, thanks to the plastic skeleton.
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I bet getting podded a lot can make you lose your mind.
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Does chronic high blood pressure count? :D
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I bet getting podded a lot can make you lose your mind.
There's gotta be a reason why the Jovians avoid knowing their manner of death post-cloning.
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I bet getting podded a lot can make you lose your mind.
There's gotta be a reason why the Jovians avoid knowing their manner of death post-cloning.
They do?
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Yup.
Theodicy.
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I always did wonder if pods have a sticker on the side from CONCORD with: "Prolonged and extended use may cause irreversible neurological damage."
Conjecture certainly, but I always thought the Jovian Disease was due to their love affair for interfacing with spaceships and transferring their brain damage to iterative generations of their clones.