999 CAST MEETING (TNDG DAY 2)

[keybroad]

[Lotus wakes up in the sci-fi set along with some of the others. She goes off on her own to get dressed in a Star Trek teal jumpsuit. She comes back with two cinnamon rolls. She sits on her bed and claps her hands. The bracelets on her arms jangle and should get a decent amount of attention.]

So. We should all talk as a group, I guess.

[She proceeds to begin eating the cinnamon rolls. Both are apparently for herself.]

Comments

[jinglebros]

Okay, then we ignore the made up route. [ Santa gestures a bit to indicate throwing that away. ] Then let's analyze what we have left. What do we know?

[keybroad]

[Its kind of interesting actually talking to him at length; he's intelligent and logical even if they disagree, which is actually good since they overlap]

We know we're some place that we weren't before. They must have some kind of tool that let them do this. Whether it's drugs or something really crazy like teleportation.

[jinglebros]

[ He's kind of marveling at the fact they're talking at length without killing each other in cold blood. It's a goddamn miracle, ain't it? ]

We better decide if we're ruling out the crazy shit or letting all the theories fly.

[keybroad]

Compromise? Keep it abstract. We know they transport us somehow and dozens of people weren't able to stop it. Well, technically the others could be confederates, but we trust each other, so we're agreeing the seven of us at least were all kidnapped here against our will. Even Seven. So they must be able to subdue us significantly.

By virtue of that tool alone, we should be afraid that they could kill or imprison us. Trap us in a room without food or water, that kind of thing. We don't know for sure if they will, but we should take into account that they can.

[exequte]

It's not only that they're able to get people. They can also...

[HOW FAR DOES SHE WANT TO GO WITH THIS, ANYWAY?]

They appear to have incredible healing abilities. I'm not sure if that means we actually have left where we were, and we - everyone here - aren't just copies made of already existing persons.

[unexpectedboner]

...You think we're all clones? ...I didn't think the tech for that existed yet, much less in a form some burger terrorists could run off with.

[exequte]

All I know is that I shouldn't be alive, but I am. I'm better than I used to be. That seems like it should be impossible, but it's clearly not.

[unexpectedboner]

[frrrowns but]

.........Great. Ghosts stuffed into plant people, just like that guy said. I wonder what happened to our real bodies... Knew I shouldn't have let Clover drive.

[keybroad]

You know what, this is a good point, but I think I speak for the hypothetical original me when I say that possibly clone me doesn't want to get murdered here.

Do you think we'd have an easier time escaping if their main tool is printing people? Maybe they'd just replenish their cast by printing us again... not that it would be us who are talking here.

[Ethics questions intensify]

[exequte]

True, but at that point, could you really say that it was us who would be here? If they created more copies of what they had to replace us, if we got away, then we would no longer share the same experiences, so couldn't it be argued that they would be different people, essentially being born? At that point it becomes a conundrum.

Ethically, what would be the moral thing to do, if that were the case? Would it be more right to destroy the mechanism that allowed us to be brought, or created, here - if we can even find it - or to do our best to leave?

Or, if we can't, do we do our best to escape, knowing that if we did and this is the case it could in effect be creating a potentially infinite line of slaves, all new people, all similar to us, but none quite the same? Is stifling that potential life the better thing to do, by attempting to cut it out at the source, or would it be better to allow them to live and find what happiness they can?

childbirth cw

[keybroad]

Oh, I'll admit that the clone wouldn't be us. However, if you're calling it a person who was just born, it's still a person "related to me". It's like if I'd had an identical twin sister who was excised from my mother and raised in a surrogate, as a stranger. Isn't the instinct of siblings - or parents and children - to protect one another extremely valuable as a species? Assuring a higher probability that our genes will be present in the next generation, even if we're not directly spawning children.

It's also a sort of prisoner's dilemma against myself. I have the option if I escape to try and kill my original so that I can live her life normally. She has the option of making no effort to summon me back into the realm I would find familiar, in the fear that I'd compete against her. But if we both treated each other that way, it would be awkward. So I benefit by being the type of person, before the divergence, who would act the nice way.

While killing anyone who already existed would be bad, I think we aren't obligated to preserve all mechanisms that could produce life in the future. That's like saying Nijisaki shouldn't have died because he theoretically could have gotten it up and given someone a kid.

[exequte]

That's true, but only if you assume immediate generation when someone is created, like people being 3-d printed on a molecular level. Usually any form of cloning requires significantly more time than that - development is effectively the same for a clone as it is for anything else. We know that the people organizing this have done this at least once before, which makes me wonder if we are meant to be the last group - and, if we're not, how far developed the next potential group might be. Maybe they're customization shells that can be changed to match the person who is chosen, a blank slate which can somehow be genetically altered, but even if that's the case then how should they be regarded?

[keybroad]

Uh... uh...

[She's having trouble following that, the clone part being even more new information to her.]

It's really sad and says way too much about the past 72 hours that I don't have a more detailed answer than "probably not murder them".

[exequte]

If there was anything of the kind, I'm not convinced they'd be able to survive without the mechanism that created them, at least not until "finished" - regardless of if one specific person were cloned from the start, or if there were empty shells that were waiting to be finished. Effectively in destroying whatever allowed them to be created, we'd also be sentencing them to death.

[Then just a faint smile.]

All of this is hypothetical, of course. And, on a positive note, if anything about this is true then they're unlikely to be able to quickly create new copies of us specifically if we are able to leave. Even the most cutting edge technology can't do much for how long cells take to develop.

[keybroad]

I guess the fate of an "unfinished" clone is just as doubtful as a premature baby... But we seem to be pretty "finished", we don't have IVs or anything. And we have no proof right now that "unfinished" clones do exist. So, don't worry, you didn't get me down that much.

[exequte]

No, I know. Like I said, this is all theoretical still. But it is still an interesting question.