You Signed Up for This (Fanfic from Boughene PbP ATU)

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Speaking as one of the audience, I'm already bothered about what's happening to Olga. I think that you are raising some important ethical questions about how people would react to clones and especially clones that appeared to have the personality and memories of the person they resembled. Initially, when Mike thought that Olga was "just" a rather simple-minded artificial interface to a few expert systems he was still outraged at the thought of her being activated to take a bullet so that Melissa could safely disappear. He treated her as a person, if a slightly strange one. However, the moment Melissa's personality appeared he forgot that "Melissa Mk 1" is still alive out there somewhere and Olga was immediately relegated to a mechanism to be used as needed and then switched off. Given that AI systems are being created that can sweep up all the information about a dead person and create an avatar that can hold a reasonably convincing conversation with their relatives, these are definitely questions worth prodding the audience into thinking about. Who knows where that may go?

"Olga" is kind of a mechanism, actually. She's (for the most part, aside from the knowledge of the peculiar drives technology) a technologically-imposed, almost airtight (she can't break character, and it's solid enough to thwart psionic snooping) alias for Melissa. That said, she wasn't supposed to be that!

The original objective (of the ANNIC NOVA AI) was to get Melissa's body on board the Pegasus as the equivalent of a "'Guest' Clone" -- installing an identity into a clone other than the prime body's original one -- a personality that is either generally compliant, modified, or completely generated from scratch. Legally, such individuals are viewed in a range from legally incompetetent to indentured servants (Remember, in the Third Imperium, slavery is illegal... except, yeah.). The problem was that the clone body already had a complete copy of the actual Melissa's identity already installed, and you can't do a permanent identity install into a body that already has an identity in it, due to limits on how the identity wafer game mechanic works.

So, as it stood then, Melissa was a "'Relict' Clone" -- essentially, a complete "spare Melissa on ice" rather than just a "spare Melissa's body on ice". Legally, a full person... except that she hadn't been logged as such, and the techs were supposed to turn the body into a guest clone technician for the Pegasus and they had a deadline to meet. Thus, they went the Personality Overlay Device route: re-mapping Melissa's memories so she was convinced she was actually Olga (and adding the peculiar variant of Engineering skill for good measure). Not particularly ethical, but it got the job done.

Now, the Annic Ai didn't really understand all these details, but had hijacked the authority/credentials that had been used to get Melissa Prime through her extraction from Feri/Regina, body mods to disguise her, and then get her onto the crew of the Silver Streak. It used them to revive the Melissa clone -- since it recognized her as a crew member -- and get her reprogrammed for use as crew for the Pegasus. (As I said, it's kind of sentimental like that).

Annic Ai thought Olga was "close enough" to being Melissa for its purposes, and didn't care otherwise. Two or so clone medical/psych techs realize that Olga is an overlay onto Melissa, but ain't going to say nothin. Everyone else (Mike, Director Kehoe, and so forth) thought it was some anonymous but powerful official, repurposing Melissa's vacant clone body as a walking decoy while the real, modified Melissa left on the Silver Streak. Mike thought Olga was "real enough" to respect as an individual (which, objectively, she was -- albeit, very un-self-aware by conditioning) and not just a meat robot.

The thing I hadn't covered, due to the limited space available in the short story format, was the reason Melissa's personality had already been installed in the clone.

 

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I want to re-attack this:

I close the motel room’s bathroom door, leaving our piled-up clothes behind, the ventilation fan running loudly. Melissa’s on the bed, looking quite serious. Her well-toned youthful figure is much more suited to our mutual nudity than mine is.

“Well, Mike,” she inquires, “shouldn’t we be getting down to business now that we’re alone?”

I wink and grin, breaking her facade – there’s her contagious laughter, and I’m doubled over as well for a minute.. “Lissa, playing this off like lovestruck teenagers was the most fun I’ve had since we did the ‘squabbling married couple’ routine to get through that border checkpoint on Feri. And I’m sorry I didn’t take a peek earlier.”

She takes a breath to compose herself. “I get that, though. You weren’t supposed to peek at the starship’s engines – when I was Olga, I was conditioned try to keep you out of the drive bay and away from the nav displays.”

And this:

It’s a day later, and I’m standing under the Oganesson Pegasus. Look up the ladder past the nosegear door to watch the hatch spin open, climb into the cozy airlock to swap Efate’s smog-choked atmosphere for sterile starship air, then step out into the central corridor. Cockpit’s off to the left, wardroom’s down the hall to the right past the living quarters. Nobody’s there. It’s quiet, but not the “too quiet” of foreboding. At least not yet.

“Olga? Olga Nixon?” I call out. It’s either going to be her, or Melissa pretending to be her – though that’s not likely, knowing the hypno-drug dosages the overlay device shot into her to turn her back into Olga. Or... something could have gone terribly wrong.

“Hello!” Olga answers cheerfully from out of sight in the wardroom. “Who are you, and where are we? I’m just curious though -- it’s not a big deal.”

Nothing’s gone wrong, but my throat tightens nonetheless. Melissa’s really gone again.

That is, I'm looking at writing up the first few minutes after Mike and Melissa (acting as if she were the Olga personality overlay) get back to the ship after the shootout and debreifings and start prepping for departure. (That's the setup for the first quote block.) Melissa's going to accidentally break character the moment she walks into the engine bay because those drives are just plain wrong WTF!? (Olga knows about the weirdness but considers it normal.) And then she'll need Mike to help recover/validate her alias -- to outside observers including the ship itself* -- in the "Olga" role by reacting as though it is her and not someone else (Melissa).

Except they won't be playing love-struck teenagers. Well, ok, Olga will be doing that, but Mike is going to be... um... conflicted. Melissa's going to milk that for all it's worth, both because their lives may depend on it and because she's got a twisted sense of humor.

Then there'll be a follow-up for Mike's second return to the ship (as per the second quote block) to demonstrate Melissa's having set up a "safe word" to let some memories from the Olga overlay pass through to Melissa's core identity (and vice versa) without breaking the whole overlay.

The rest flows into the subsequent narrative (which I'll also probably revise to provide in-narative time to characterize Annic Ai and give it a few "pet the dog" moments to motivate the PCs to defend it from the IISS when they find out who/what it is).

Comments/suggestions before I start writing?

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*They don't yet know that the ship has an anomalous AI aboard, but they have reason to be suspicious because the ship and the Olga overlay were hiding the weird drives setup from Mike and any outside observers.