I like the bit about mixing egos as well. There does need to be some solution, and yours is the most convincing so far. I disagree about biological reproduction. Creating functional reproductive organs is expensive and time-consuming, and making products that reproduce themselves for free is terrible for business. You should find heirloom biomorphs like you find heirloom seeds - rare, expensive, and never genetically modified. Anything more complex than a splicer should not be able to reproduce biologically without significant bio-industrial processes. These morphs aren't bodies grown in tummies, they're machines, designed through a complex bio-chemical and mechanical process, most of which is not even encoded in its genome.

Draconis wrote:

Some of us would prefer to create new species rather than new products.

Which is fine, but it has to be built into the morph - and that adds cost and complexity. At best, your morph genotype comes with a set of instructions for the exowomb that releases specific hormones, chemicals and adjusts environmental factors like temperature at specific stages. At worst - you're reverse engineering (or more likely, stealing) that data from the original designers. Imagine this like a cookie. The list of ingredients comes on the back of the package. That's your genome. But the precise proportions, time and temperature for baking are a second set of instructions that's kept at the factory. If you try to make a cookie without knowing how many eggs or how long to bake it, well, the results are usually pretty shoddy.

root@New Equipment for Transhuman Reproduction [hr]

rhat wrote:

Smithfield Pseudogamete: The only original research ever done by Dr. Smithfield, a Pseudogamete is a nanotech reproductive organ.

Oh gods, I love this. As for why this is the coolest thing I've seen introduced on this topic? The clanking masses can now reproduce. AGI can be born in bodies, and this brings an answer to something the Jovians have been flinging in the face of AGI claiming to be human: knowledge of the difficulties of development and growth. What does robot puberty look like? rhat r-rep++; x-rep++

One interesting tech that might have been in use for reproduction before the Fall but has probably declined since: Genetic recompilation: A zygote is created and fully sequenced (or the genome generated artificially through some method). The genome is "cleaned" of unsuitable alleles (automatically making it at least a splicer), retroviruses, functional transposomes and other self-replicating genetic elements, but most importantly, converted into a different genetic code. This new genome is synthesized and inserted into a manufactured cell with compatible translation machinery: all genes produce the same products, but the code is entirely incompatible with the rest of the biosphere. This way the body will be 100% immune to biological viruses since their genetic code does not produce any viable proteins (Unfortunately, this recompilation doesn't protect against bacteria and other parasites, or nanobioviruses that do not make use of the cells replication machinery). The recompiled are also unable to reproduce with standard transhumans (or differently recompiled people) unless done through recompilation. Recompiled morphs are probably not that uncommon: it is a simple way to make them immune to standard viruses and genetic attack vectors, as well as clearly indicate their origin. The sterility is likely viewed as incidental - who in their right mind makes a kid these days by mixing genes anyway? Backwards compatibility with flats is *so* pre-Fall! Some companies also add extras to their genetic code for special amino acids or postranscriptional treatments (hibernoids come to mind, where you might want to have "hooks" for easy reversible cross-linking during cryosuspension and hibernation), or modify it to be extra radiation tolerant. (the idea can be found in Greg Egan's short story "The Moat" and in "Distress", although I know it has been around before)

This thread has left me with the mental image of enormous, almost ship-sized exhumans slithering through the Kuiper belt. Long, robotic, and serpentine, the dim lights along their flanks and near their eyes are the only real illumination, as they feed on the volatiles in the area to power their internal reactors. Occasionally, just occasionally, these creatures meet. They couple briefly, and one carries within it the growing form of a new entity, which is birthed and then left to fend for itself, already fully intelligent (having been communicated with by its mother while in the "womb"). It slithers off into the stygian blackness, there to devour rocky bodies until its internal factories allow it to grow to equal its parents.

I could always do both. I imagine it'd be a very unique culture, living in the spacial equivalent of the Abyssal plane.

Do you mind if I use that, actually? I had ideas for predators, out there in the blackness, and was having trouble thinking of ways to include a jellyfish or lanternfish style predator; something to add a bit of conflict. A lingering monster of unknown origin, composed of these reshaping filaments, drifting amongst the debris of the system's formation and snagging any unwary abyssals.