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[Seriphyn]

The infomorph. Literally, an organism of information, mostly applied to the immortal pilots known as capsuleers. Though flesh-and-blood outside their omnipotent egg, the capsuleer infomorph becomes nothing more than a datastream upon pod breach. This datastream contains their hardcoded skills, perhaps their talents but, most importantly, their memories. Memories, for any human being, immortal or not, is the ultimate essence of our person. Without memories, without our history and experiences, the love and loss, the pleasure and the pain, who are we? It could thus be said that the soul of a capsuleer rests in their datastream.

A question can be asked. What if two of these datastreams collided? What if these two souls happened to share an intense love for one another? Their memories will blur, their being will be compromised; where will one begin and the other end? Is this the ultimate perfection of love? The complete union of two souls?

What happens?

Recent RP has made me think about the above, which is currently playing out. If you fluff up the chat windows as neural communication, then capsuleers can effectively speak to one another "telepathically" if science didn´t know any better. What are the extent of our implants? Some of us RP in virtual reality environments...what are the extent of these realities? What is the power of the pod?

Take Slave Heavenbound02, and their residual memories. I played it that Seriphyn would be "haunted" by the Slave, but this is merely nothing more than them chatting into an open private conversation saying "imma hunt ya down biatch" or words to that effect (I then later explored the idea of whether this was the remnants or "souls" of Rhea and Jaidon Heavenbound calling out to him, a insidious plot by Kuvakei, or a combination of the two).

If a capsuleer never leaves the pod, can they surround themselves in an augmented reality which is actually nothing like what we see in game? Perhaps they imagine themselves playing as a child, crushing ants while taking a level 4. If two capsuleers connect directly to one another, can they experience each other´s memories, or live out a VR experience together?

What is the esoteric extent of this technology?

Inspiration from Jita 4-4:

The third thing to realize is that in this moment, the capsuleer has become data. Maybe only for a second, half a second, even less in reality, but for that moment we are nothing but 0 and 1 as we fly across light years of space in between heartbeats. It's so short that almost nobody recognizes the importance of this moment, and it's something only a few of us even want to appreciate.

The idea of the informorph.

The question: What if we just stayed out there and never returned to another clone?

What if we could live out there, and build a bright and better world in that space between?

[Matariki Rain]

This topic deserves a full keyboard. I currently have only my phone, so here's my slimmed-down response.

When you're in the pod, all stimulus comes via your implants and is already enhanced with sound and such to make it easier for pilots to apprehend. I think this should mean you have enormous power to customize how you perceive things, much as we can choose which skin we apply to this forum, but much moreso. Combat as squashing ants in a playground, a cliched FPS or a game where you have to catch cartoon ponies and tickle them until they pop into rainbow-coloured bubbles are all possible. Setting your social overview to show only people you know/like. Interpreting virtual environments so you see your companions as cats, or floating eyes, or pieces of antique furniture.

I've played - briefly - in a virtual channel where one of the fun things was inventing virtual costumes or whole new avatars (ask Gottii about his God of War costume) and where one of the pranks was to set someone else's default avatar to be something quite unlike what they thought they were projecting. Much fun.

I've played that all sensation and experience is stored - or at least temporarily buffered - by the implants (think combat and chat logs, but with feeling) and those can be played back or even shared (think William Gibson's short stories and the new entertainment industries there). This got more complex, since it implies or suggests a number of things which go far enough beyond canon that they'd cause a fork in our realities. We stepped back from this after a neurological-specialist expressed admiration at our inventiveness but concern about the consequences... Which could include some of the issues you raise. (Mata and Gottii have both blogged about that, but it's probably a bit cryptic if you don't already know what they're on about.)

As for merging the datastreams directly... I think any accidental overlap - if such a thing were possible, and we're still waiting for the ruling about cloning which would tell us whether the data-squirt or quantum entangling model is "correct" - I think you'd be more likely to get nasty interference patterns and garbage. If this grows as an art and a science you might, in time, get conscious choices to "become" parts of other people, or edit your own memories (Eternal Sunshine...). Lots of potential for fiction or "performance" role-play. Frustrating as anything for participative role-play.

[Lyn Farel]

I have been working on something more or less related the last year, and have tested it for now once with another player. It went quite well and I am thinking to expand it.

[lallara zhuul]

Iain M. Banks.

The Culture, lets regurgitate that into EVE.