So The Lost Generation are fucked up, not because they were infomorphs. They're fucked up because fuzzy-gm-space-for-plot, plus never being in a physical body, and them figuring out its all fake so no actions have consequences. Which lead to casual murder and torture. Its not like I really killed Billy, by piling stacks and stacks of wet paper on him. I mean sure, for Billy it felt like hours of drowning, and being crushed to death. But look, here he is next school day, just fine. And we can also assume that the various supervisors, teachers ect... werent angles. But mostly the book argues it has to be with them being poorly socialized and never having a physical body. As for your character. If you died during the fall, then you were more then likely placed into Cold Storage. And you don't age when you're in cold storage. At least not emotionally, or biologically, mentally ect. Kids are a burden during the best of times, and well during a genocide, its way easier to care and protect you if you're compressed in .rar then being a thinking and feeling thing. So then after that, being a minor with no marketable skills, unable to care for yourself, it depends where you were reinstated. If it was in the PC, then you have a patron, or were selected for some Hypercorp program. And this program can be as benevolent or malevolent as you want. Or your family was rich, and your estate has just been recently settled and you got money for a body. If you were out in the @s, then they would get you out of cold storage, out of humanitarian reasons, the lolz, labor, or they were stoned. How well you were cared for, is as diverse as rimward is. If you were brought out of Cold Storage by the Jovians, then you would have a moral and ethical leaning toward bioconseratives and probably raised in foster care or an orphanage depending how you see Jovians. As for what body you get. Well for the PC you would probably have gotten an age appropriate biological age morph of your choice. As any of the Biomorphs can grow and age. Its just that most folks decide not to. They are also capable of begetting, but most folks choose not to. If you were in the @s, then probably some kind of synth, or any random morph at any random biological age. If you were with the Jovians, then they would get you a flat, that was your last biological age. Now when you died in the Fall as a child and for some reason werent placed in Cold Storage, then you have been living as an infomorph for some time. If this was in the PC then you would have experienced a lot of racism, oppression, and challenges if you count as a person. You would have to find work, which can be selling yourself into Indentureship which probably cant happen as children often dont have many marketable skills. If not then well, you would have to get gud at what digital life is stereotyped as good at. Infosec, programming, research. These skills are kind of true whereever you are. However, someone that spent the bulk of their life as digital can get any not physical skill high. EG, it wouldnt make sense for someone that been an infomorph for about half their life to have gud gun skills, or gud murder skills in general, or gud freefall freerunning skills. But they can be a social face character, favor/rep broker, or a medic. Or whatever. So then if you were an Infomorph in the PC you got any body you want with saving, and loans with reasonable apr. (This can be represented as the Debt.) Or your rich or someone rich liked you or you got into a Hypercorp program. Now its mostly the same out in Rimworld. Though you wouldnt need to work for a body, you would get a body when its your turn to get a body. And this can be as fast or slow as you want. Which means that if you were left as an Infomorph Rimward, you can have any skills you want. Including murder. Jovians would get you a body asap.

It's worth clearing up the difference between being an infomorph and being in cold storage. Most people who died in the fall are still of Cold Storage, which means their ego files are kept in a static archive. They're basically in mental suspended animation. Instanced Infomorphs are comparatively rare, and some exist exclusively in virtual spaces, most use the Augmented Reality capabilities of the mesh in stay in touch with meatspace. IIRC Infomorphs are full-body virtual simulations, so a decent one could probably do puberty in the simulation. (It'd be really distorted though, as the simulations don't quite get the experience "right" and being able to selectively mute that stuff would be a game changer) That said, going virtual for nearly a decade is going to effect someone, as it's a pretty different experience. As for the type of morph, any biomorph would probably be equally uncomfortable, as she's spent half her life as a virtual being.

storage is virtually unlimited, Petaflops are not. dedicated processing nodes, which you need for transhuman egos to run at ful capacity, are deliberately kept to a minimum to avoid any single node from having enough computational capacity to kickstart a seed AI problem again. the largest ego server i have heard of in settings was 500 or 30 i forget which. further the amount of infrastructure availible to run all those egos at the time of the fall did not exist. we probly lost 10% of the population du to I/O saturation. but they are slowly instancing people as infomorphs, as long as they have skills that justify their maintenance and investment also in the glory scenario, a Sub processor for a TITAN was the size of a loaf of bread. your character would feel most at home in a genetic duplicate of her previous morph, probly included as meta data in her ego, aged to the day she died. even then it is not gonna fit perfect. no old scars from when she put her hand on the burner, no stamina because the body has not been properly exorcised, hair style is going to be completely wrong... and if she died painfully 10 years or not going back to the "same" flesh and blood body and not feeling those expected pains is going to leave some mental lashes

If you are going the Infomorph route, you should consider Eidolons (morphs for infomorphs) and maybe a portable server (a server for 10 minds on wheels). You should also know that you could run on ectos (portable computer), mesh inserts, and ghost rider modules (an augment to carry an extra infomorph). Eidolons, portable servers, and other things are covered in the transhuman book.

ChaosMage wrote:

That seems like such a huge waste of resources though to not have that entire group of people as infomorphs. When I was reading, it seemed like data storage and simulation capabilities were near limitless, and having that massive of a work force just creating things simply because they have nothing else to do would be impressive. Not to mention any 'free-to-play' style games being able to use such a massive base as a reason to draw people in. It's hard to imagine there isn't some hypercorp out there that wouldn't do that on Mars, just to bring in the 'whales' as a challenge. Any free time the infomorphs had that they didn't want to spend on the game could be spent just creating things, either for the game they are in, or for simulspace in general, or even running CAD software that enables them to design things for the Real space (like furniture, or art sculptures, or what have you). Even people who aren't very creative would eventually make something worthwhile to the economy. As for my character, what I'm learning is she's either really messed up for spending 10 years as an infomorph, or she's a kid who just came out of stasis. Both could be a neat character, but the messed up version would probably be the one that is easier on the GM to incorporate.

There's a billion+ stored across multiple poorly indexed databases, which are mildly hazardous to access, thanks to any potential leftover TITAN worms. That's double the instanced population of the entire AF10 solar system, so the scale alone is massive. Beyond that, while static storage is massive, and computing power cheap, running that number of infomorphs is a *huge* project, and essentially requires the kinds of clusters which are rare post fall, mostly from a legal perspective. Now, there are infomorph-populated work servers (IIRC they're called Dream Factories), but considering most of the people in storage don't know anything about the design process you can't just plug a play them into being productive. There's also the problem of there being more than society can really make use of at any one time. And of course, groups like InDex limit access to control prices and ensure stable market prices for indenture. Buying server access is cheaper than running a refugee camp, but in terms of scale, it's like the modern day world trying to field 14 billion refugees, which would overwhelm every modern attempt. I'm not sure that messed up is the right term to use, they could be a totally well adjusted person, but would be quite inhuman in some respects, thanks to going into the digital life at such a young age.

Love those links. Thanks