Video Call

I: ...........Ah there we go! I think I got it working now! K: Yes, I can see you now. I: Told you it wasn’t broken! K: It would be easier to use magic, no? I: Eh, probably. Magic’s harder to set up though. And it's a bit expensive to set up cross-continental communication channels. K: As opposed to this technology? Technology that even you don’t understand, and if what you say is correct, is effectively irreplaceable? I: Well, I need to get at least some use out of it, don’t I? K: This “Video Camcorder” of yours ought to be in a museum, as opposed to in constant use. I; And what exactly am I supposed to say when i drop it off, eh? That I’m a time traveler from the distant past? K: The Hellknights have dealt with weider situations I: Hellknights? Like your order of stuck-up Fakeadins is able to take care of such artifacts? K: You will not insult my order in such a way! I: Relax. I’m joking with you, and you know it. K:........... K: Why did you contact me? I: It’s simple. Me and Emrith are about 90% done on your little request. K: Emrith? I: A half orc. I swore you met him. He’s my new assistant. K: Fair enough. I: Anywho, I was calling to tell you that the physical part of your body is all done. A perfect fleshy specimen if I ever saw one. K: What’s that supposed to mean? I: Oh come now. You asked me to sew you together something young and attractive, didn’t you? K: That is not what I requested. I asked for a body able to resist the passage of time, I said nothing about it being aesthetically pleasing. I: As it turns out, the two are intertwined. The youngest corpses I was able to retrieve were those of teenagers, and young adults. And like it or not, but, attractiveness is par for the course for most women around that age. I: Unless of course, you'd prefer me to go younger? K: What the hell is that supposed to mean? I: If you don’t want to be attractive, I should always start over with a child’s body? K:.... K: I have moral obligations against that. I: You? Moral obligations? Usually I’m the one objecting to this sort of freaky science experiment. K: Cut your words short. My current vessel is fine. I do not require the body of a child. K: To be quite honest, the act of employing a necromancer has already put me at the edge of my rope I: I am no necromancer! I practice all schools of magic, not just necromancy. I: And besides, necromantic magic was not even involved in the construction of this little Flesh Golem. It was mostly transmutation spells, as well as a splash of conjuration in order to keep everything from...spoiling. And of course, good ol’ grave robbing. K: Which is entirely illegal. I: Illegal? Don’t you go throwing that word around, girl! You specifically requested biological parts, as opposed to constructed, or magically created parts. Where else was I supposed to go for fresh meat? I: I’ll have you know, not a single living creature lost their lives due to this project, every single donor I....consulted with, was far and away done with their organs once I relieved their bodies of them! K: It still rubs me the wrong way. I:....do you want to hear what I have to say, or not? K: .........What?



I: Like I said, the physical part of your new body is all prepared. Both flesh and cable. It took a bit of mixing, but I think I was able to come up with a decent wetware solution to transfer your software side into Meatspace. K: Common, please. I: It’s really quite simple. As it turns out, the human brain is really quite similar to a hard drive crossed with a CPU. And knowing this, I’ve found out that it’s possible to encode computer code directly into the neurons of a brain, and then execute that code, entirely on the biological level! K: Meaning? I: Meaning that yes, this project is possible, in theory. K: I knew it was possible from the beginning, Issiac. That's the reason I contacted you. I: Your hardly a master of neuroscience yourself, Kartheltaxia. I needed to make sure it was possible before moving forward, to avoid wasting a lot of both of our time. K: And now that it’s done? I: I need the software side of things to start testing things. Your software. K: My what? I: You know. The software. The 1s and 0s. The .rar file. However you store it up in your head. I need your you, in essence. Purely to start my tests. K: I am not copying my mind onto a disk and sending it to you, simply so you can run some tests on it. I: Why not? So long as you keep a copy onboard your own systems, I can hardly shut you down remotely. K: That's hardly my own concern! Can you even imagine the ethical problems that come with handing you a copy of my own mind!? It’s me! I: No it wouldn't be. It'd be a copy of you. K: That believed itself to be me, and possess all of my own memories up until the moment it was copied. A digital copy that you could open up, and do all sorts of nasty things to! I: What do you mean?



K: Don’t play dumb with me, Issiac. If you had a copy of my mind on your hard drive, there's no limit to the amount of horrible things you chould do to me! You could simulate a digital body, and subject my mind to torchere, to the loss of limbs. You could access my memory banks, and learn everything I know, or even edit anything about my mind down to the individual lines of code like a text editor! I: I have no intention of torturing your mind, Kathi! K: I can't know that for sure. And if not you, perhaps someone else? Nobody’s security is foolproof. What if that Emrith of yours knows more than he’s letting on? When it comes to possibly putting my own mind in a situation that could possibly lead to eternal torment, you can never be too careful. I: But....none of that could ever possibly happen! My security is top-notch, and I intend to only run a few tests on a COPY of your software, and simply promptly delete it afterward? K; Delete it? So you have no problem with effectively killing my mind either? I: My girl, it'd only be a copy! Humans make copies all the time! It’s called biological reproduction. You know....one of the reasons we’re doing this whole project for you? So you can bear children, and start a family, like you said you wanted to do? K:........ I: And us humans may not be able to copy our minds as easily as two clicks of the mouse, but we deal with similar situations. When human mothers have children, they are protective of their babies, yes, but your children have minds of their own. And as they grow up, their experiences divulge differently from their parents. K: Human child-rearing is an entirely different prospect then copying my mind! Children are inherently different from their parents, due to biological changes, as well as differences in age. Some children end up entirely different from their parents as a result of this. I: Then allow me to use a different metaphor. Twins. K: What about twins? I: Sometimes, during reproduction, two eggs are fertilized at once, as opposed to one. This causes two entirely different children to develop inside their mother at once. When this happens, it is called “twins”. This is not what I’m talking about. I: In even rarer cases, one egg splits into two completely different eggs, shortly after fertilisation. I: As a result of this, two children are born, but both share the same genetic structure. K: But...I swore you told me, no two humans share the same genetic structure? I: Usually, yes. But Identical twins are the exception. Because right down at the generic level, or, in your case, down at the code, they are entirely identical. The exact same. K: And? What does this have to do with anything? I: Because what I’m trying to tell you is that a person's....computer code....does not have to define everything about them. It is a good starting point, yes. But it is hardly the only thing that defines how you think, and how you will react. Your environment, and the circumstances surrounding your life define your personality, far more than your code ever will. I: That's what the soul is for, Kathi. It is what differentiates you from my computer. How you can think for yourself. It’s you free will, that allows you to make decisions. So that it doesn't matter how many times you copy and paste your code....each time, you’ll come out slightly different. Like identical twins.

K: .......... K: Fine. You win. I’ll send over a portion of my code. But not my memory banks, personality, or anything that defines me. You’ll getting the raw 1s and 0s. Like you said you wanted. I: Thank you. I’ll be sure to be as....humane as possible with....your daughter. K: Daughter? I: Isn’t that what her relationship with you would be? Or possibly sister? K: No...daughter is fine terminology. Daughter code is....already an established term. It’s something that makes sense to me. K: To be honest, this entire situation is giving me a headache. I: I thought androids chouldn't get headaches. K: Shut it. I: Fair enough. I’ll see you later then? K: Yes....one more thing though! I: Oh? K: Make sure you don’t.....delete her. My...code I mean. I’ll pick it...her up, once I head over their myself. I: Alrighty. I’ll talk to you later K: Same. Goodbye