Agent Missing?

[Jason]

I finally bought and read "Agent". It was a good read, with lots of nifty details about the OTU that had never been revealed before. A good first novel, Mr. Miller!

I have a few questions though:

I bought the book on DriveThruRPG, and it apparently isn't the most up-to-date fully annotated version. Will there be an update to that version sometime in the near future?

The link on Far Future's page for the Kindle version goes to a "page not found" on Amazon. The paperback version is available on Amazon still.

I rather suspect that the forthcoming Baen version might be behind the broken links and un-updated version.

And, with regards to the book itself, did anyone else find it remarkable that the book seems to say the Vilani myths of the afterlife are correct?

 

[Grav_Moped]

I've brought that up a couple of times -- also that it was the afterlife for other sophonts as well. It may be that it's the Vilani interpretation of the afterlife, and other sophonts may experience it differently. Also, it's still not known to be "real" to the general public, since the protagonist had an unusual life-path (well, life/death/life etc.) that allowed him to experience it repeatedly, and he did not pass that information on to others. (Which in retrospect seems odd... he did take it for granted and therefore it wasn't news worth repeating, but still.)

It's also noteworthy that psionics, even more than a century before the Psionics Suppressions campaign of 800-820, was popularly considered fringe science at best. Yes, in-universe it was "real" but it generally wasn't accepted as such.

 

[BRover]

I agree about the afterlife: It may well be how that person interprets the experience. Another person, of different tradition, may see something rather different.

 

[mike wightman]

Note that Bland encounters the 'afterlife' after the copying process.

It is my conjecture that the 'afterlife' is the universe storing the personality/memory imprint of the dead organism. There are several explanations of why this could be so but top of my list at the moment is that the entire OTU is an ancestor simulation and thus universe laws can be re-written by reality manipulation technology (see T5).

 

[Jason]

In chapter 14 Bland is told in the afterlife that the scrubbed Deyis II still has databanks of the Niikiik Luur and embryos of the scrubbed population stored in a vault. When Bland returns to Deyis II in chapter 24 the databanks and embryo vaults are there. So that is pretty good evidence that Bland's spirit really is interacting with other spirits and exchanging useful informstion in the afterlife.

 

[mike wightman]

Bland's 'spirit'?

You mean Bland's copied personality and memories than now exists solely in a wafer system is interacting with a 'spirit realm' data base?

I'll stick with a less paranormal explanation - once you have been digitised the super advanced alien data retrievel system can now interact with your 'copy' - and 'you' can interact with it...

 

[Condottiere]

Artificial intelligence that can act autonomously, interact with it's environment, and accumulate experience.

 

[mike wightman]

Have you read the book?

It's not artificial intelligence.

It is the 'digital' copy of a person.

 

[Jason]

Bland's 'spirit'?

You mean Bland's copied personality and memories than now exists solely in a wafer system is interacting with a 'spirit realm' data base?

I'll stick with a less paranormal explanation - once you have been digitised the super advanced alien data retrievel system can now interact with your 'copy' - and 'you' can interact with it...

How likely is it that Ansha, the person he spoke with from Deyis was another wafer recording? Consider that the procedure for creating Bland's recording involved killing him and that nothing was allowed off of Deyis after Bland was awakened to deal with the parasite crisis.

I also don't see any evidence, other than the "afterlife experiences" that the wafer personalities are active or conscious somewhere in a mainframe while they are stored, or that the five specialty personalities interact in any way with other personalities in the same network or even with each other (it would seem to make sense that there would be security barriers that would preffent this. Tamper with the wafers and you have bad agents). They are stored in a vault and there is a limited number of times they can be activated. They can be updated with new memories added, but the experience is described as waking up with new memories.

Bland encounters a few other people that it would be extremely unlikely that they were recorded personalities (like the Newt minning engineer), and he even sees pre-born individuals disappear as they are born. What is the "this is all recorded wafer personalities interacting on a network" explanation for that?

 

[Condottiere]

You've got two possible options:

1. The Azure Bonds one, in that since the soul is infinite, it can be split without loss, or

2. The Swamp Thing one, in that a plant imprinted by the persona of a dying human being thinks it is him.

The third option would be just an accumulation of data, programmed to react the same way as the original.

If you go the mystical route, it's the soul reconnecting.

Otherwise, it's an artificial intelligence recreating programmed behaviour.

 

[Jason]

The issue with the afterlife is "what are we to make of the interludes between activations when Bland finds himself in what appears to be the Vilani afterlife, interacting with other spirits both deceased and pre-born?"
Since he receives information from another spirit in this afterlife that is later proven correct in the physical world then something of the experience must be real.

Bland does split himself several times in the novel, but the splittings could support either reading of "his spirit was (temporarily) split without harm" or "it's just multiple copies of a persona without any real transfer of soul".

At one point the Bland who returns to Deyis and retrieves the embryo banks and forbidden knowledge database there sees in ship records that Stikky was made a baron 90 years earlier and went on to be father to a marquis, and he even says "I wanted to think I had something to do with that" but he doesn't remember that another version of himself arranged that. The wafers are updated and synchronized from time to time but this particular wafer must not have been updated with the memories of the wafer that intervened to reward Stikky.

Later Bland uses five of his wafers to create five hosts at once. He synchronizes himself by passing the wafers around between hosts as they return to report, which is a painful process for him but gives his primary host all the memories of all of his other avatars.

 

[dalthor]

One could postulate that the "universe" exists in a Quantum State, in which all things are known at all times. The ability to access that Quantum State could occur under certain [and reproducible] circumstances.

One of those circumstances could be related to the "mapping process" used to etch that chip. I'd expect that the etching systems are using a combination of physical (cell-level) mapping to build the brain-on-a-chip, and neural pathway readings to build the circuits between those modeled brain cells. During the actual mapping process, the neural to physical interface acts as the antenna to the aforementioned Quantum State.

The "afterlife" could be nothing more than the perception of the Quantum State as interpreted by the "mind" of the affected being.

 

[mike wightman]

The issue with the afterlife is <snip of a good argument>

All of which is explainable in that the syncing process between wafers updates all the wafer copies eventually (with the exception of hosts that become permanently overwritten by Bland) and that entities that have been copied are somehow also now part of the great machine in the sky (jumpspace?)

The fact that when Bland makes several copies of himself all at the same time and that each copy is a completely independent individual from that point on also shows that there is no magical distribution of spirit or soul.

Each copy has the memories and personality it is possessed by up to the point in the memory cycle that that version of Bland's wafer is in.

The deal clincher to me is that it is only the Bland 'core' personality that appears to have these interludes, which makes me think that it is during the syncing process that the wafer technology is somehow accessing and is being accessed by the great data bank in the sky.

 

[Jason]

One could postulate that the "universe" exists in a Quantum State, in which all things are known at all times. The ability to access that Quantum State could occur under certain [and reproducible] circumstances.

One of those circumstances could be related to the "mapping process" used to etch that chip. I'd expect that the etching systems are using a combination of physical (cell-level) mapping to build the brain-on-a-chip, and neural pathway readings to build the circuits between those modeled brain cells. During the actual mapping process, the neural to physical interface acts as the antenna to the aforementioned Quantum State.

The "afterlife" could be nothing more than the perception of the Quantum State as interpreted by the "mind" of the affected being.

So you would say Bland got the "big picture" as it were when they were creating his chip, and then parts of what he saw resurfaced from his subconscious hundreds of years later, and he perceives it as having spoken to other spirits in the afterlife while his wafers were inactive?

 

[Jason]

The fact that when Bland makes several copies of himself all at the same time and that each copy is a completely independent individual from that point on also shows that there is no magical distribution of spirit or soul.

That might indeed be evidence that there is no singular "spirit" involved, but I would not call it definitive.
Condotierre mentioned the possibility of a soul being split without loss. All of Bland's copies are temporary, even the one without a wafer that resurfaces in Rens and the one that spends 30 years moving from host to host on Reference. Once all copies are inactive Bland's spirit is no longer stretched to multiple places, right? Proponents of reincarnation believe that most people do not have conscious memories of their earlier incarnations.

The deal clincher to me is that it is only the Bland 'core' personality that appears to have these interludes, which makes me think that it is during the syncing process that the wafer technology is somehow accessing and is being accessed by the great data bank in the sky.

But again, shouldn't the wafers only be updated by other copies of the same personality? How can inactive wafers interact with other personalities that they are never hooked up to?

If theyre all just equally valid copies then there shouldn't be a "core" personality either, should there?

 

[Condottiere]

At this point psionics step in.

Chances are the technology itself involves many disciplines, possibly something experimental salvaged from an Ancients archaeological dig.

 

[mike wightman]

That might indeed be evidence that there is no singular "spirit" involved, but I would not call it definitive.
Condotierre mentioned the possibility of a soul being split without loss. All of Bland's copies are temporary, even the one without a wafer that resurfaces in Rens and the one that spends 30 years moving from host to host on Reference. Once all copies are inactive Bland's spirit is no longer stretched to multiple places, right? Proponents of reincarnation believe that most people do not have conscious memories of their earlier incarnations.

At least one of Bland's wafers permanently possesses a host - in the T5 rules is this actually a feature
Unless the wafers are synced they are unaware of the events that befall the various copies that were activated - remember every major ship in the fleet has a box with all of the agent wafers in, there are tens of thousands of copies of Bland that could be active all at once. None of them would learn of what the others got up to until the capital ship returns the wafer for syncing.

But again, shouldn't the wafers only be updated by other copies of the same personality? How can inactive wafers interact with other personalities that they are never hooked up to?

My conjecture is that the great machine in the sky can interface with the wafer tech, but this is something Imperial science hasn't become aware of yet...

If theyre all just equally valid copies then there shouldn't be a "core" personality either, should there?

The 'core' is the prime copy that contains all of the synced memories of the various Bland activations, once synced they are all copies of this 'core'

 

[mike wightman]

At this point psionics step in.

Chances are the technology itself involves many disciplines, possibly something experimental salvaged from an Ancients archaeological dig.

Nope and nope.
The tech is detailed in T5, and there is no mention of a psionic component.

 

[Jason]

At least one of Bland's wafers permanently possesses a host - in the T5 rules is this actually a feature

The Rens "possession" is also temporary, because he dies well before the end of the book.

 

[mike wightman]

The Rens "possession" is also temporary, because he dies well before the end of the book.

It is permanent, It lasts the lifetime of the host, in effect a copy of Bland is now alive and kicking in a real body and cut off from the wafer sync, which is why those chapters are presented from an alternative narrator.