Snippet: a student’s report on reincarnation
Bjarki Maisilva
Mr. Jakob Nugyara
SS 22-15-09-04
26th cycle, semi sextile, 3022 AS-R
Defying the Nature of Life and Death: the founding and developmental process of reincarnation.
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Death is a natural consequence to being a living organism.
For something to have a beginning, it needs to have an ending. Any system, with enough time, will break down and eventually become something else. That is, until you take into consideration the evolutions of systems. If nothing is permanent, under the right circumstances this can circle back and be applied to death.
The process of reincarnation, or as it’s properly scientifically known as, Synthetic Cortex and Vessel Animation, achieves a break in the cycle of life and death. Founded back in The Old Locale during 543 OL-ER the concept was pitched by a team of scientists who were concerned on the rate of which the society was advancing. With a rapidly progressing ice age encasing the planet of our origins, it was predicted that the time and knowledge lost to important individuals such as researchers, scientists, engineers and leaders dying would prevent a solution to the global climate change being found in time. In order to survive the death of our species, death itself had to be surpassed and the next step in evolution had to happen now.
There’s been a few people in modern times who say we should come up with a more catchy acronym than S.C.V.A, but I am on board with the original founders being more focused on literally defying death itself opposed to coming up with a catchy name, besides that’s why we just call it reincarnation nowadays.
At its core a very simplistic and straightforward concept. It did not take the scientists at the time long to formulate theories and hypotheticals to solving the problem, even with their technology being, by comparison to today’s standards, subpar.
Using various forms of imaging technology to capture a full scan of a subject’s brain, a digital copy of all its neurological pathways and functions is created. Brains are not terribly unlike computers, in the sense that it’s electrical signals being sent from point A to point B to order to accomplish tasks and move around information.
While originally intended to be used to simply create a copy of the brain (alongside a copy of donor’s body) grown from various stem cells taken from the donor, an unknown error occurred during first trials. The new copy behaved nothing like the donor, and had no memories of the original version. Effectively, they created an identical clone of the original, which in of itself was a major breakthrough, but it wasn’t the desired results. The clone later named herself Helga and became a recognized citizen of the society.
From there it was proposed that in order to make the new version an effective copy of the original, technological impute was required. This lead to the first model of what is nowadays referred to as the Identity Chip. This chip held all the memories, personality traits, and characteristics of the original individual, the idea being the chip would teach the vessel’s brain how it was supposed to act and what it was supposed to believe.
A second clone using the same method as Helga was used, creating the clone Erla. The end results of this trial were frankly terrifying, but enlightening nonetheless. The chip could not function long term with the body’s composition, Erla’s immune system eventually recognized the chip as a foreign body, attacking it and causing severe encephalitis that later proved fatal for the subject.
Some wanted to put an end to the trials and find another way, but the trials were continued and a solution was proposed. To change the composition of the body entirely, and instead of making the chip compatible with the vessel, making the vessel compatible with the chip.
The process of creating the modern vessels is its own scientific paper, to sum it up swiftly after some trial and error and experimentation with various different components, silicon based vessels opposed to the original carbon based bodies were found to be much more stable. Alongside being more stable, being a semiconductor already used in many modern electronics, it was highly compatible with the Identity Chip.
The change of composition also supported more efficient but volatile liquids instead of iron based blood, leading to the creation of hydrargyrum theraphone, which allowed for the vessels to survive harsher conditions including lower temperatures, granting more time until the full effect of the ice age hit and extending the deadline for a solution. Silicon is every bit as abundant as carbon, as well as also being able to create the same complex chains of molecules responsible for making DNA.
Vessels proved to be fairly pricy to make, even when using widely available, sustainable and therefore cheap materials. It was therefore proposed that the vessels be brought as close as possible to perfection: erasing all complications that could cause early expiration to the vessel.
According to long since archived records and backups in the Central Database from those times, this sparked quite the debate amongst the society of what was and wasn’t a ‘complication’. After much back and forth between the two sides, a decision was made by the queen at the time after hearing a statement from one of the main scientists working on the development of S.C.V.A.
“If to be pjofur is to forever be a disease riddled suffering animal stuck as is for all eternity, doomed to die in hell freezing over, I reject being pjofur.”
Not everyone was happy with this decision, and it lead to another debate shortly afterwards. After all, to eliminate death related to diseases and disorders lead to another concern: population control. If reincarnation became available to everyone, the vessels were designed to live longer than a natural lifespan, and everyone could just continue to have children, the population would rapidly reach an unsustainable level.
This debate ended with two conclusions:
1. The right of reincarnation would be an earned right, alongside such one could have this right revoked and an individual would only be allowed to reincarnate a specific amount of times.
2. That the vessels created would be completely sterile.
Naturally, one’s immediate reaction would be to point out that if we were all in a cycle of reincarnation where it was just the same set limit of people for the next couple thousand years, the society would eventually reach a point of becoming stagnant. No new variables to lead to new discoveries and ideas, a lack of variation in new opinions dooming the society every much as the ice age will if a solution is not found.
To such, scientists revisited the experiment that resulted in the creation of Helga, the copy without memories of the donor used to create her. Helga was approached and asked if she’d like to participate in further studies to solve the most recent hurdle in the S.C.V.A experiments. After securing her consent to rejoin the scientific trials, using the process used to create Helga, but instead using DNA samples taken from two individuals in with the goal of making a successful offspring with a vessel body opposed to Helga’s precursor body.
The results were successful, producing an individual that was later named Runar, who much like Helga retained no memories of either DNA donor, but displayed genetic traits of both donors, being a successful offspring of the originals so to speak. Such all accomplished without the risky, lengthy and painful process of childbearing, alongside the fact that Runar was made without being a carrier or being affected by disorders found in the donors. As Runar grew up and could preform in physical and intellectual trials, it was found that Runar’s ability to learn and preform tasks exceeded that of non vessel pjofur and Runar exceeded expectations.
During the time period of the conclusion of Runar’s trial, as well as a few more equally as successful replications to assure that a merit of results could be reached, a method was being devised to decide who was and wasn’t eligible for reincarnation. The debates on if or if not S.C.V.A was an ethical solution to saving the society was no longer active, the trials were in too deep and too much had been accomplished to back out now. The queen was onboard, as were many of the higher officials and other members of power.
The ice age had progressed significantly as well, and I think the remaining bits of the society were finally ready to face any remaining uncertainties if it meant avoiding a certain demise.
More and more of the population traded their bodies for vessels as they reached eligibility for reincarnation. To gain such there was a certain amount of qualifications one had to meet and a couple tests that had to be completed and passed. Naturally, not everyone did meet eligibility, and a debate on when a person becomes ‘worth saving’ came and went.
Nowadays, reincarnation is simply part of the society, the process since has been polished, any old errors and mistakes in coding and vessel creation are so rare and easy to catch and fix that many have come to dub the process as flawless, and we have long since left The Old Locale behind. The cold case of Jokull Nuygara is sometimes still resurfaces now and again, some wondering how safe the process really is.
But all we can do now is keep evolving, bettering ourselves, and serving the society, none of which would’ve been possible in the first place without the success of the S.C.V.A experiments.
