Part 1
A. Becoming a podderWhat makes someone suitable for the pod? How do we test for that? Given how rare pod-compatibility is meant to be, a disproportionate number of roleplayed podders have relatives who are also podders (it's one way to tie in alts or characters-played by real-life friends). Purely genetic factors seem unlikely, except perhaps to help lay down initial paths of consciousness and perception, since most capsuleers spend much of their working lives in "clones" that aren't genetic clones (and the new tutorial information states that the pilot's original body is destroyed as part of the training regime). Yet if it's some other aspect of aptitude or even personality, might there now be training regimes? Current best guess is that it's some blend of genetic predisposition shaping personality and aptitude, as well as something extra; that we haven't been screening for it for long and we're not entirely sure yet; and that our screening is still far from perfect. It'd be nice to know more than we're shown in the Jovian Wetgrave.
How long does it take to prepare and train a capsule pilot?We've had suggestions ranging from two weeks to ten years in the discussion here on
capsuleer training: check that thread for the rationales. We'll still wrap cultural and social training around that, most likely, but what's the baseline?
Consequential questions and observations which don't need direct responses but which give a sense of why this matters:-- What was it like to be tested? I have a story in draft about this, and I'm eliding parts of the description because I'm reluctant to invent too much about things that should be known facts, like what the tests were like and what sorts of things seemed to be looked for.
-- Pre-teen or early-teen podders: how likely?
-- My character's daughter has two podder parents: are her chances of being pod-compatible any higher than those of a child born to baseline parents?
-- Some anarchists pin a good part of their vision for the future on the idea that some day all people will have the freedom of the pod, or at least of consciousness transfer. It'd be good to have a better knowledge of current barriers to pod-compatibility and the likely trajectory of pod technology to help us make our own assessments of how plausible this seems.
B. Cloning and consciousness transferMore of the basics about "clones"The
article from Cromeaux Inc. makes it clear that
they don't produce true clones, but instead meat-puppets formed from biomass and osteoplastic materials which can then be doped with the client's own DNA which will eventually take over (but presumably only the bits that were biological in the first instance, so osteoplastic bones will never generate blood cells?). Is that the normal way things are done? How long does it take for the pilot's DNA to replace the original biomass lattice? What effects do we notice from living in chimera bodies? One of the concepts that's turned up both in prime fiction and in old fan fiction is that capsuleers live largely in sterile environments, possibly because their immune systems are compromised. Can you have a true clone grown? How long would it take, and would that be legally restricted in some places (using that body would involve what some of our cultures would see as murder)?
Consciousness transferFor consciousness transfer I'll just refer you to
Elsebeth Rhiannon's compilation of prime fiction on clones and mind scans, and
CCP Dropbear's response to it. This is particularly topical now because some of the theorising about things like "memetic infection" relies on one particular interpretation of how consciousness is transferred: if that's wrong, so's the theory.
Consequential stuff for background and flavour:-- Backups: If I die away from a burner, am I dead? Could I be reconstituted based on my last jump or podding? Could I be reconstituted based on a non-destructive scan? These have huge implications for how people treat things like security: there have been podders who wouldn't leave their pods because they might
die and others who've played out the backup clone line with missing time since their out-of-pod death.
-- Fertility: The fertility of podders is surprisingly important to a number of our storylines, especially for female pilots whose players have an inkling about oocytogenesis. At one end of the scale, only your own body has your own oocytes and being pod-killed while in that body means there will be no dynastic inheritors of your line. At the other, there seem to be pilots who get pregnant accidentally while wearing "cloned" meat-puppets, suggesting they're assuming all their bodies are fertile. In between are the ideas of banking eggs before or during your training for use later, or running off to a specialist genetech for a body where Future Science allows you to have a functional and ready-loaded set of ovaries commissioned in your next "clone".
-- Forever "real": I know a number of pilots who have their "real"/original bodies kept safely somewhere because they hope to have kids of their own, and one who's never jump-cloned or been podded and thinks all the rest of us who have are dead.
-- Culturally "dead" pilots: Amarrian culture -- and, as I play it, Minmatar culture -- attaches particular importance to being the original you. Clone flesh is soulless sacrilege or a type of ghost without true markings. Playing with and around this is interesting, but it does tend to distance some characters from what's going on with baseline populations: "There's the rich and varied culture out there and
you're not part of it".
Which will lead nicely into a later post I plan to make about whether capsuleers can affect what happens on planets and in non-capsuleer interstellar stuff. Can I send money home? Can I even visit? Do our wars and work make any difference to non-podders?
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Topic: Request Forwarded to RP Community from CCP Maiden Steel (Read 6643 times)