#cephalons

The brain holds a preson’s memories, experiences, and personality. Memory creation is done through the process of neurons firing in particular patterns and in a certain order; this is also how people recall things later. Neuron firing and signal transmission is done through electrical charges, and this is part of the reason people theorize that storing human consciousness in robotic or computer forms may be possible at all.

Coincidentally, modern computer storage works in much the same way. SSDs in particular use data stored in electrical charges. But, of course, most modern SSDs are a few TB in storage at most. It would take a lot more to store a whole human mind, right?

I looked up some facts and did some calculations. The estimated storage capacity of the human brain is:

Let’s assume the high end of those estimates, 2.5 petabytes. That means that we’d need, at minimum, 2500 TB to store a human mind. And, let’s also assume for redundancy, that you’d want at least double that, to have a backup. So, 5000 TB is what we’re working with. And the current largest available SSD size is:

Let’s round that down to 30 TB. So, 5000 divided by 30 means we would need, at minumum, 167 of this SSD to store everything. That is... horrifically impractical.

But, you know what is really good at storing information? DNA. Just how good, you ask?

A quick conversion and we get:

So, multiplying it out, one cubic mm of DNA can hold about 687 TB of data (rounding down). Meaning that the total amount of DNA to cover our original 5000 TB estimate is just over 7.25 cubic mm. If you wanna convert that to volume, at a rate of 1 cubic mm = 0.001 mL, the liquid (modern DNA storage of data involves suspending it in liquid solutions) is less than 0.008 mL. That’s less than your average drop of water.

Keep in mind, this is using a method that has already been done in a lab, in the modern day. And, information was successfully copied and retrieved using this method.

But, okay, let’s assume for a second all of this is too good to be true. We need to account for efficiency, right? Nothing is ever 100% efficient. Let’s be super pessimistic, and assume that things only get copied at around 10% accuracy. Yes, modern lab methods are very accurate, but hey. If Cephalon minds are copied from dying brains, we can assume a lot of stuff will go wrong, right?

Now, recalculating with this, one cubic mm of DNA will hold approximately 65 TB (rounding down a few TB, because why not). So now we need more in the neighborhood of 80 cubic mm - you know what, let’s account for MORE errors and round up to 100.

That’s still only 0.1 mL of liquid. About 2 drops.

So, DNA can store an insane amount of information in a very small space. Even accounting for a lot of redundancy and error, you could more or less fit an entire human mind on the tip of your finger, and then some.

But, hang on, this has to be way far off in the future, I mean, there’s no way this method of storage could be practical anytime soo-

... Yes it can.

And remember. It is the far future, and the Orokin are filthy rich.

Let’s go back to Cephalons. Given that we can safely assume their creation, and the Orokin Empire, are at least centuries, but more likely millennia, away, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to human mind mapping. I mean, hey, we’ve already mapped the entire human genome, right? So let’s assume the Orokin can actually copy a digital map of a person’s mind, as a digital analog of the brain. Take that tiny bit of DNA liquid, suspend it in some substrate, give it significant protection, and you’re good to go.

This is where I’m using sci-fi magic license. But, say, because it’s the future and it’s the Orokin, they’ve figured out a way to map human minds to DNA storage, like the hard drive of a computer. I think it’s possible they’d also have invented a way to make this generic data mimic the person it came from.

You know how a computer keeps certain background tasks active in your task manager? Permanently loaded background tasks could include personality files and general outlines for following command orders. Code instructions telling the Cephalon how to behave. Memories and command executables and such are the normal storage, to be accessed as needed. And, because their memory and personality data are now mapped in a way that is accessible to to encoder, they can also be edited at will.

For example, making a violent mercenary a bit more tame...

Give it some sensors - optical, auditory, etc - and it can now also hear and see the world around it. It can, more or less, react just how Cephalons react in game. It wouldn’t exactly be hard to create a 3D holographic projection as a visual representation, either.

So. You’ve just created a computerized version of a human. You’ve just created a Cephalon.

But wait - what substrate would they suspend the DNA information in? What is the magic juice that would facilitate this and make it all happen?

That’s easy. The same liquid the Orokin used to harvest their information in the first place. The same liquid that, when Ordan was made to drink it, precipitated his conversion, likely destroying his organic brain in the process, judging by his testimony. The same liquid that, going with all of the above theories, would tear apart human brain cells to get at the DNA inside, storing it for either destruction or salvation - salvation that could come in the form of a Cephalon conversion, or... perhaps even continuity.

Kuva.

And, the most interesting thing about this? DNA holds its integrity over a LONG time. Like, thousands of years long, at least, if well-maintained. So, it would be perfect for archival storage. Just get a lot of liquid together, and you can store even more information besides just the mind in charge. You can get yourself an archival Cephalon, and one that would be more or less immortal as well. Maybe even one with enough data capacity to store information samples from other beings as well...

... Sound like anyone we know?

Granted, Simaris’s scans are imperfect copies. Nowhere near the fidelity of a true Cephalon. But, he’s doing the best with what he has. Bet his methods save pretty significantly on storage space, as well. Using DNA storage, he could probably very well synthesize most of the system and still contain it all within that relay room of his. No matter how many scans the Tenno bring him.

Suda is similar. But, due to her memory loss prior to conversion, some of her mind was irreparably damaged or lost and unable to be copied. You can’t retain what isn’t there, after all.

Ship Cephalons are more simple. They need to be mobile, after all, able to fit and be carried within an Orbiter subsystem. But, as we’ve seen, that’s easy enough, if you’re only accounting for one mind and the commands necessary to go along with it.