“Hey Scott,” I said. The technician was a familiar face, since I used the booths twice each day.
“Hey David,” he replied. “Chicago Six?”
“Yup.”
I walked into the booth, a room of sorts resembling an extremely small elevator, and the doors shut behind me. There was a flash of light, and I stepped out of the booth again—only to find that I was still at Scott’s station in San Francisco.
“Shucks,” said Scott. “The link went down, so the system sent you back here. So just wait a moment… oh shit. Chicago got their copy of you right before the link went down, so now there’s one of you in Chicago, too.”
“Well, uh… two heads are better than one, I guess?” I said.
“Yeah, here’s what we do in this situation,” said Scott, ignoring me. “We don’t want two copies of you running around, so generally we just destroy the unwanted copy.”
“Yeah… I guess that sounds like the way to go,” I said.
“So yeah, just get back in the booth and we’ll destroy this copy of you.”
I stepped back into the booth again, and the doors closed. There was a fla--
Meanwhile, I was still walking to my office in Chicago, unaware that anything unusual had happened.
I recently read the source book for the Eclipse Phase pen and paper RPG, and in the flavor text it has the following description, describing the criminal faction “Pax Familiae”:
PAX FAMILAE
Major Stations: Ambelina (Venus)
Though similar to the Night Cartel in that Pax Familae holds legal offices and outposts in several habitats while working underground in others, the difference between the two syndicates couldn’t be bigger. The entire Pax Familae organization goes back to one person, Claudia Ambelina, the syndicate’s founder and matriarch. Relying excessively on cloning and forking technologies, each individual member of the syndicate is a descendant or variant of Claudia. Biomorphs [any body that a mind can be put in] are cloned from Claudia’s original genetics or sexually produced offspring (thanks to sex-switching biomods), while egos [generally speaking, minds] are forks. All members are utterly loyal to Claudia (since they all are Claudia) and show their family affiliation with pride and arrogance. Individually, each remains slightly but notably different, though all are calculating and ambitious. Regular reassimilation of forks and XP updates are used to keep each variant aware of each of the other’s activities—once you’ve met one version of Claudia, the others will know you.
Needless to say, Eclipse Phase seems pretty awesome.
I suspect that if I were sufficiently uninvested in my continuing existence to be willing to terminate it on being assured that a similar-enough person lives in Chicago (which I can easily imagine being), I wouldn’t require enormous confidence in that person’s existence… a quick phone call would suffice.
“Hey Scott,” I said. The technician was a familiar face, since I used the booths twice each day.
“Hey David,” he replied. “Chicago Six?”
“Yup.”
I walked into the booth, a room of sorts resembling an extremely small elevator, and the doors shut behind me. There was a flash of light, and I stepped out of the booth again—only to find that I was still at Scott’s station in San Francisco.
“Shucks,” said Scott. “The link went down, so the system sent you back here. So just wait a moment… oh shit. Chicago got their copy of you right before the link went down, so now there’s one of you in Chicago, too.”
“Well, uh… two heads are better than one, I guess?” I said.
“Yeah, here’s what we do in this situation,” said Scott, ignoring me. “We don’t want two copies of you running around, so generally we just destroy the unwanted copy.”
“Yeah… I guess that sounds like the way to go,” I said.
“So yeah, just get back in the booth and we’ll destroy this copy of you.”
I stepped back into the booth again, and the doors closed. There was a fla--
Meanwhile, I was still walking to my office in Chicago, unaware that anything unusual had happened.
There are a lot of versions of this but very few stories that take advantage of the ability to cheaply copy someone dozens of times.
I recently read the source book for the Eclipse Phase pen and paper RPG, and in the flavor text it has the following description, describing the criminal faction “Pax Familiae”:
Needless to say, Eclipse Phase seems pretty awesome.
You should read the Oracle AI sourcebook Sandberg wrote for it.
Thanks for the tip, I probably would not have seen and been interested in reading that.
And here I thought I’d had an original idea.
My main worry would be that my copy hadn’t actually got to Chicago. I’d want to make damn sure of that before I let the original be killed.
I suspect that if I were sufficiently uninvested in my continuing existence to be willing to terminate it on being assured that a similar-enough person lives in Chicago (which I can easily imagine being), I wouldn’t require enormous confidence in that person’s existence… a quick phone call would suffice.
Strikes me as a perfectly reasonable approach, except the check would be done quickly and automatically, not leaving room for human decisions.
the implication was that this is the usual case- the only thing the connection going down did was mess up this last check.