New Short Story, 2008

[Monthenor]

My reservations about modifying my body in a permanent fashion are simply that it must have a definite purpose. No ear piercings. No tattoos. No scarification.

"I like it" is a purpose. My decades-long plan to get a UV-reactive tattoo of the Triforce on my left hand inches ever closer to fruition.

[Wizard CaT]

My reservations about modifying my body in a permanent fashion are simply that it must have a definite purpose. No ear piercings. No tattoos. No scarification.

"I like it" is a purpose. My decades-long plan to get a UV-reactive tattoo of the Triforce on my left hand inches ever closer to fruition.

I heard that tattoos leave some scarring, which is normally hidden by the ink.

[Alfador]

My reservations about modifying my body in a permanent fashion are simply that it must have a definite purpose. No ear piercings. No tattoos. No scarification.

"I like it" is a purpose. My decades-long plan to get a UV-reactive tattoo of the Triforce on my left hand inches ever closer to fruition.

Hence why I want a tail. Most other art... really, I don't want it, and any instance of getting it would be likely as not bowing to peer pressure.

[draque]

It's interesting that the tattoo/piercing/body mod shops that get the most flack are the ones that do mods no one can ever see... I recently got a piercing of the personal nature and it was a shop in Cleveland that people have been trying to get shut down exactly because they do that sort of thing.

[Volair]

It's interesting that the tattoo/piercing/body mod shops that get the most flack are the ones that do mods no one can ever see... I recently got a piercing of the personal nature and it was a shop in Cleveland that people have been trying to get shut down exactly because they do that sort of thing.

One of the principle causes of suffering in this world is people unable to accept others doing things that do not affect them.

[draque]

The argument I've seen given most often is that tattoo parlors attract the criminal element in the same way that casinos do... but honestly the attitude behind it is always the same. It's the attitude of "Honestly, how can you do that with your body? It's a good thing responsible people like myself keep society from embracing anything so outlandish."

[eris]

Please forgive the forum necromancy, but since I'm doing a bit of user necromancy on myself, I figured I might as well go for gold.

Just wanted to say that Pop Bottle Empty is one of the best short stories I've read in a long time. I love that last line, especially. It puts me in mind of a really short story by Asimov, called "The Last Question", that also had a wonderful last line. (Look it up. it's a fun read.)

I've been wanting to say how much I liked this ever since I first saw this posted on the PDH site last year, but the at the time I was still on dialup and the new forum graphics were so intense that I could never get the forum to load in any reasonable time. But now I have DSL. Yay!

Eris

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Please forgive the forum necromancy, but since I'm doing a bit of user necromancy on myself, I figured I might as well go for gold.

Just wanted to say that Pop Bottle Empty is one of the best short stories I've read in a long time. I love that last line, especially. It puts me in mind of a really short story by Asimov, called "The Last Question", that also had a wonderful last line. (Look it up. it's a fun read.)

I've been wanting to say how much I liked this ever since I first saw this posted on the PDH site last year, but the at the time I was still on dialup and the new forum graphics were so intense that I could never get the forum to load in any reasonable time. But now I have DSL. Yay!

Eris

I never have a problem with forum necromancy: in my opinion an old topic is just a good friend we haven't seen in a while. It's good to look them up now and again!

Thank you very much, Eris, for nice words about my story. In the back of my head is an unwritten novel, composed of short stories connected by a common thread, about a post-Singularity earth, seen from all sides: from the view of those not part of it, from the view of those uploaded who still defiantly cling to humanity, and those who reject Singularity entirely. It would not be a dystopian book nor a utopian book. It would be everyday life under Singularity, everyone just getting on with the business of being.

Maybe someday.

[draque]

Long time no see, Eris! Welcome back. ^^

[Monocheres]

Was this story published? I could have sworn I read it in an SF mag. But maybe I read it here last year and my memory is playing tricks on me...

If it wasn't published, it ought to be!

[eris]

Published? Sure, it needs to be published. More than that, it needs to be acted. This would make a great short play, sort like a Twilight Zone episode.

[Mitsukara]

For some reason I can't place, I didn't read this until just now. I'm sorry, both for my own sake and for the impolite act of not getting around to it!

That said, I was very impressed by this story; I really like how it's told through first person perspective in such a way. The concept itself aside, it's the perfect way to express the point, and it works really well. It took me a moment before it hit me- oh, this is the backup's perspective!

My mind tends to simplify the whole debate, and I'm not sure if maybe that's a bad/dense/presumptuous thing on my part;

If you make a duplicate of a person, both have sensory experience of their own. They share some of the same past, but unless linked completely, that experience diverges after the copying.

Regardless of what their experiences include, the fact that they both have their own distinct first person perspective qualifies them as an individual, the way I see it.

But the troubling thing is, if you make a copy of Person A called Person B, but Person B is a seperate entity... even if Person B is immortal, Person A still ceases to be, and if Person A only lived through their own perspective... they're dead, and gone. That would still suck, even if literally what they were is continued, as a duplicate, in Person B.

I think Pastel Defender Heliotrope theoretically addressed this- Fuschia and Cursor started as totally seperate entities, but connected; in a way it was temporary, but the connection was still intact, although it only went one way (from Fuschia to Cursor) most of that time. Eventually, at the time of Fuschia's death (if I understand and remember right), which Cursor was actively aware of as it happened, the connection was turned on both ways (that's what the Spatchcock Horology chapter was all about). As a mental perspective, as an awareness, they were connected and working as one again, right through the death of Fuschia's flesh.

In a way, though it's hard to say how absolutely it applies, it could be said that Fuschia completely survived that, because as her body died, her perspective and awareness was still fully connected to another mind that, itself, continued to exist.

Would that work? I don't know, but short of just enabling the fleshy brain to survive forever somehow, it's the best idea I've really heard.

The simple point of how I see it is- you see what you're doing right now? See how you're feeling, the sense of being "you", of being in a place and of being something? More tactilely, the way you see through your eyes, right now? That is first person perspective. That is "you", or as you would put it, "I"- that's what a person is, I think. Each and every instance of that out there is a person. Separate or connected, it counts, and to lose it... really utterly lose it, to never be somehow saved or retrieved or restored, is the most horrifying thing I can imagine. That's what I fear in dying.

...or so I see it.

Now, something else a bit more complicated that I'd like to point out as an issue / question is the issue of moment to moment existence. That which I just described as "being you" also only seems to apply to right now. You remember the past, but it's stored memory, you aren't feeling it right now- it might be very vivid, but not all of it is. And there's constantly a new moment. Are you a different "you" now than you were just a moment ago?

Yes, of course the culmination of past experience forms the way you are right now, etc. etc., that is clear; but the perspective issue remains. The "me" I remember from a moment ago... I don't feel being that anymore. i feel right now, and by now, I don't feel the same moment I felt even when I typed that. It's very similar, and cumulative, but it's like a separate perspective in a way.

I don't really have definitive answers or understanding of any of this. I do think every moment counts for something, and is worthwhile. If what I blindly hope actually turns out to be somehow true, then every single moment that ever happened actually still exists, even if "I" don't feel like I'm there any more right now- and it would be totally awesome to have an external perspective, to see all the past as if it were right now. I hope this information, the past, is actually being maintained in some way.

Because, alternatively, there might not tangibly be anything but right now- that the "past" is gone because it changed into now, and now is going to keep changing into "later". That memory is just some kind of temporary present construct. This honestly seems a lot more likely based on what we're able to recognize, and it's a scary thought because it means information can actually be lost because it's constantly changing.

I dunno. I hope it's all backed up somehow, and the more we can try to do to maintain it, the better, just in case there is no magical unseen nature to reality.

Also, I hope I didn't just completely go off topic and sound like a rambly crazy person. If so, I apologize ^^'

[Monocheres]

Also, I hope I didn't just completely go off topic and sound like a rambly crazy person. If so, I apologize ^^'

Well maybe the you of then did, but not the you of now. So don't worry about it.

[Plasman]

Look at it this way. Assuming that the past is in fact intact (ie. it isn't destroyed when Now happens), then everyone who has ever existed still does, just not... Now.
And since you can't change the past (or so we think!), they will always exist.
Besides, we always leave an imprint on our world, even if we try not to. Our presence is marked by things like a worn path in a lawn, fingerprints on a wall, a dent in the rear fender - (oops, how did that happen? )

If the past doesn't exist any longer, so what? We're only a bunch of recycled atoms; remember, the parts that make us were once the food you ate, air you breathed, molecules you absorbed, etc. etc. Your molecules were probably once part of a horse, a tree, a rock, or the ocean - or perhaps even an ancient human being, contemplating their very own existence...
Of course, that only applies to our physical presence. Buggered if I know what'll happen to my "soul" once I die, but then again, I'll probably live to find out .

An interesting question: Are we worth preserving? If so, why not also one of the many others in the past who have died?

...Heh heh. First we have a thread being brought back from the dead, and now we're cross breeding them!

[Plasman]

Re-reading that last thread I linked to made me remember two things:

1) I'd forgotten that Jennifer had died in that awful accident. How's the afterlife treating you?

2) I wonder what's up with ol' OtakuMan? This forum ain't the same without him...

[Shivers]

Nice story.