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Asyncs and Merging

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Tue, 2011-09-06 22:25

Acatalepsy Acatalepsy's picture

Asyncs and Merging

One particularly interesting question that's come up for me (well, sort of). What happens if you take one instance of a person and have them exposed to the Watts-McLeod virus while one or more instances of them remain elsewhere in the solar system. They'll develop async potential, as usual. What happens if those various branches decide to merge after a relatively short time - say, a few hours to a few days? We don't really know how merging works exactly and we certainly don't know how psi is transmitted between brains, so there probably isn't a 'canon' answer, but I'm curious as to what interesting failure (or success) modes there are. What does the person experience, do their forks go crazy, is a successful merge even possible?

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Wed, 2011-09-07 00:13

Covariant

Re: Asyncs and Merging

I believe that the memory merge is an AND relation, so the resulting ego would be a superset of the component egos. It would therefore logically have the Async trait. Of course, the Async trait isn't very keen on being well defined.

Wed, 2011-09-07 01:56

sinhound

Re: Asyncs and Merging

It's my understanding that the virus is like many others that remain in your system forever, with no means to a cure. Now, we know that it infects the ego and if you back up an infected ego, any further loads from that will be infected. It stands to reason that if you merge with an infected ego that the virus, whatever strain, will begin to infect the new ego as well. In a crude way, you could see it as thus: One of a set of twins has an STD, and then there's some incest... and then they both have the STD. Savvy?

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Wed, 2011-09-07 05:46

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

Of course, it might also change the brain so much that a merge suddenly becomes impossible. Not too implausible given that the async is also mentally disturbed and has had some radically different experiences, besides the weird quantum-whatever the virus causes. That might lead to an interesting situation where a character is suddenly unwillingly split into two versions that cannot be merged. Your illicit alpha you sent off on the mission not only can use your bank account but also want to be married to your wife. Or now you have a beta fork that is not just a bit crazy, but it claims it must be the real you since it now can telepathically perceive souls, and you haven't got one according to it. Another option might be that the "clean" fork refuses to merge because it doesn't want to get polluted. Might be interesting too.

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Thu, 2011-09-08 16:28

Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

I love this idea, Arena: having Watts-McLeod (or any flavor of the virus, not that it matters) make re-merging impossible.

Sat, 2011-09-10 19:20

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

Interesting. This raised the totally off-topic thought in my head of what it would be like if Watts-MacLeod were sexually transmissible.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Sat, 2011-09-10 19:33

puke

Re: Asyncs and Merging

why wouldnt it be? it goes dormant after the initial infection, but theres no reason part of that initial infection wouldnt be rewriting the DNA that goes into gametes. Resleeving would obviously filter that, you'd take your effedup async brain and imprint it on a clean morph. But someone else could resleeve into your tainted morph, and go about having little half-sync babies. maybe they wouldnt even be insane. god, that would be even worse! you end up with an unknowinly infected morph that you got from a morph borkerage, and you end up with some crazy strain of the exurgant virus. eclipse phase, indeed.

Sun, 2011-09-11 04:17

Re-Laborat Re-Laborat's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

Delightfully messed up as that ideas is, Acatalepsy, I am sad to say that at this hour of the night the thing that will probably stick with me the longest is... "Morph borkerage". Dependable suppliers of borked morphs. ;) My players never even knew they were dealing with them.

Mon, 2011-09-12 05:11

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

While the contagious period of the virus is said to be just 24 hours, that might be individually variable too. It might last much longer, or even have occasional flare-ups under some circumstances (lots of stress?) During the Fall many people were likely infected on cramped spaceships. It is enough to get one infected onto the ship to have an outbreak that would hit practically everyone. If the virus is good at going dormant such a refugee ship might still be contagious. "Going with the Baron Caryll, are you? That ship has bad reputation. Is haunted. Used to evacuate High Tokyo during the fall, full of madness and murder. Since then people on-board have reported hearing voices and things. Also followed them home. Ship makes people strange, get me?"

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Mon, 2011-09-12 23:30

#10

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

[quote=Re-Laborat/ "Morph borkerage". Dependable suppliers of borked morphs. ;)[/quote] Yeah, this pretty much wins as far as Eclipse Phase malapropisms go.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Tue, 2011-09-13 05:00

#11

babayaga

Re: Asyncs and Merging

Actually, I think that the OP question is a special case of a much wider one. When an ego forks, and one of the two forks diverges mechanically from the other (gaining or losing traits, stress, moxie, mental disorders etc.), what happens when the fork is merged back? Mechanically, I'd say it's up to the psychosurgeon to choose which personality provides the basis (mechanically, the "numbers") for the resulting ego. On an Excellent Success, he can pick and choose aspects individually (e.g. get the moxie of one ego and the stress of the other). A Critical Failure is like an Excellent Success, except that the evil GM gets to choose instead of the player!

Tue, 2011-09-13 05:13

#12

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Asyncs and Merging

babayaga wrote:
Actually, I think that the OP question is a special case of a much wider one. When an ego forks, and one of the two forks diverges mechanically from the other (gaining or losing traits, stress, moxie, mental disorders etc.), what happens when the fork is merged back?

First, my view is that anything that makes two forks diverge appreciably in behaviour will likely make merging *much* harder. If there has been any change like above, then the merging will be harsh in any case. Second, I don't think there is a "master" fork unless one is the alpha and the other is a beta or gamma. In that case I would think the alpha would be dominant: more of its structure is used to calculate the resulting combination than the other fork, where mostly memories are transferred.

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