(IC) Lost in Dreams (Julian)

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Her parents grew her in an exowomb like everyone else. What third option?"

"I dunno. You said she studied up on it which made it sound kind of unusual..."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Natural Birth?"

"Does that not happen anymore?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Its old material. stuff published before the war."

"How long before the war?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"The Loyalist government probably doesn't look anti-cloning to you -- they're Panagoans being pressured by the Concordance. The <Bleep> concordance has been trying to destroy cloning here for a while. Its a little bit of destroying a rival, and a little bit of honest hate."

I recall something Orgel said. "Doesn't the Concordance isolate most communities that do cloning, with Panagos being an exception? If they hated cloning that much surely they wouldn't be engaging with Panagos."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"You're right, you need life-long human connection. You just don't need that from someone with your own genes. That probably is more important to you than the money we're offering."

That's surprising! "I... I didn't realize that is what is being offered here."

Originally Posted by ericthered

So he doesn't say that out loud, and thus doesn't go down that conversation path.

Yeah, some things are better left unsaid.

Originally Posted by ericthered

"You can't catch them all. You can't control every single exo-womb. And you still have to figure out what to do when you find 40 babies all cloned from the same parents in some monster's laboratory."

"I dunno, that feels like a," I scratch my head, "perfect solution fallacy. Just because there's some problems doesn't mean it's not a solution worth exploring. Do other worlds have to deal with mad cloners occasionally?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"The war, obviously. When you tell people their mode of life is immoral and try to stop it you get violent reactions."

"Yeah, that's probably not the way to do things. Maybe there could be a more 'softly softly' approach."

"Or maybe we should all be a bit more live and let live. You want to be cloned, and have clones raised in creches, that's fine. I don't want to be cloned without thinking about it first, and that's also fine."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Population. It takes millions and millions of people to maintain all this infrastructure. Without cloning, we'd be like all the other worlds, stuck with about 100 million at best."

"Would it really backslide that fast? Sure, it may have been needed before, but is it needed now? And is the population just going to keep growing like crazy forever? Won't you run out of room?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Now all those worlds serve the whims of the tyrants of the concordance."

"Because they're the only people with FTL, right? Does that really make them tyrants? Maybe they're just strongly opinionated. Like if Panagos had FTL land in their laps instead of the concordance, would they not be pushing their opinions about cloning on everyone else?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"I'm not sure. I know when these sorts of exceptions are sought, it often makes the news. Seems like they're always trying to show off the quality of the creche picked."

"Hm. Could I look up those news stories?"

Originally Posted by ericthered

"What is 'catch-22'? But yeah, you have it right."

"It's a rule from a novel. Basically, you could only get out of going on bombing runs if you were crazy, but wanting to get out of bombing runs was evidence you weren't crazy. Thus nobody got out of bombing runs."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Is it? Combinatorics is pretty wild, but 8 million combinations from two parents is pretty impressive."

"Actually I think it might be closer to,", I think for a moment, "64 trillion. Chromosomes from both parents, yeah. And then anomalies."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Ok, you may be more unique than I thought. But is that combination really yours? wouldn't it belong to the people* who made you?"

The words "the people" fill me with the same kind of dread that I felt when I thought Riask for "big people" meant owners.

"Well it's not just mine, and it's not just theirs either. It's shared, but it's not also the man down the street's."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"Because they did the work of gathering your hair? I don't really want your hair on my computer, but maybe I collect it and analyze who uses my computer. Maybe I'm an an academic or collector of hair-types."

"OK, well sure, use it to figure out who's using your computer. You could also use fingerprints or a camera. But don't just take it for crass material gain."

Originally Posted by ericthered

"I suppose if you believe you have an absolute duty to anyone who shares your genetics that could make you worry... But isn't that an argument against that belief?"

"Well, if you treat all beliefs as malleable. But given that there's a war on Panagos, I don't think that beliefs can really be changed just because it's convenient either."

Originally Posted by ericthered

AFTER CONVERSATION:
Conversation with Clone
Reading "official material"

And if all goes to plan, Julian will see Monday the 17th by next July. Not that I'm complaining.