{"id":120700,"date":"2020-11-13T00:11:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T00:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BungieNet_ContentItem_49688"},"modified":"2020-11-13T00:11:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T00:11:39","slug":"mysterious-logbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/11\/13\/mysterious-logbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Logbook"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

NOTE\u2014FORGE STAR<\/p>\n

In an effort
\nto keep them engaged with their new bodies and stave off the dissociative
\nrejection that killed Mr. Zhuk, I have assigned my exos to scout through the
\ngateway. The Vex statite has a surface area larger than Earth, so we have
\nplenty of exploring to do. I cannot believe that I actually find it tiring, but
\nthe sheer scale and passivity of the Vex constructs infuriates me.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Imagine stumbling upon an inscription
\nin the desert: \u201cI am Ozymandias, king of kings. Look upon my works. Or don\u2019t. I
\nreally don\u2019t care.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Until I can
\nsynthesize my own version of the mind fluid, the Vex are necessary to the work.
\nBut I find their indifference verminous. They elicit the same emotions as a fat
\ncockroach wandering across a wall: disgust, contempt, unease at the thought
\nthat these mere machines, these automata, are flourishing all around us.<\/p>\n

And I fear
\nthat if troubled, they might swarm from their hides to run across our feet. <\/p>\n

The glare of
\nthe hypergiant 2082 Volantis gives me a headache even through proxy. I wonder
\nif the Vex evolved here, in the briny sea of the first planets. Due to the
\nabsence of heavy elements worth stealing and the abundance of simple compounds
\nfor growth, they never developed predation. (Why bother? Plenty to go around.)<\/p>\n

Instead, the
\nviolent radiation of the early universe selected for an otherworldly
\nresilience, and for the ability to transmute energetic disaster into an
\nopportunity for growth. The weak would be burned away by gamma-ray bursts . And
\nthe strong would learn to harness that fire\u2014not the oxygen fire of our own
\nPaleolithic, but the nuclear fire of the atom.<\/p>\n

Their basic
\ncooperative signals\u2014\u201cfood here,\u201d \u201creduce density,\u201d \u201cgenerate new colony\u201d\u2014must
\nhave formed the basis of swarm behavior, a simple game capable of storing
\ninformation in self-repeating patterns. It is not strictly correct to call the
\nVex a group mind. Rather they are one master pattern spread across many
\nelements, fractally self-similar. <\/p>\n

Very early,
\nthey must have developed armor. Perhaps a hydrogel to soften gamma rays or
\nplates of silica to trap water. They would need that shield to enter the
\nshallows and capture ionizing radiation as fuel. (No wonder they thrive near
\nstars!) Cooperation in groups\u2014meshes of armored radiolaria, protecting
\nharvesters beneath\u2014would promote the evolution of ever larger structures. They
\nbecame microscopic tool-users, building fortresses and maille sheets, storing
\nthe programs for those structures in the patterns of their swarms. <\/p>\n

I wonder how
\nearly they stumbled upon physics. Far sooner than humanity, no doubt. Their
\ncellular nature provides an easy analogy for the quanta of matter, energy,
\nspace, and time. The tides of their sea would connect them to the motion of
\nheavenly bodies. Even the deadly background radiation would make a natural
\nobservatory for high-energy physics.<\/p>\n

Their first
\nexoskeletons were probably soft shells of shielding gelatin. Just sacs of ooze.
\nHow far they\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n

It is
\nadmittedly interesting to consider the philosophical consequences of their
\nevolution. The Vex prove that nature is not all \u201cred in tooth and claw.\u201d
\nCooperation comes naturally to the Vex, whose great problem was survival in a
\nharsh world, not a struggle over limited resources. They never found any payoff
\nin selfishness. Human beings may require a Leviathan to coordinate the laws of
\nsocial existence (as I was Leviathan to those dream aphids\u2014) but the Vex are as
\nfundamentally cooperative as bricks.<\/p>\n

Utopian? No.
\nNot at all. They are without meaning. They have no experience and no
\nsubjectivity. The Vex are incapable of conceiving any image but their own. They
\ndo not recombine their DNA to make children or form relationships with other
\nindividuals. When the world does not match their eternal pattern, they alter
\nthe world to suit it. There is no difference between reality and simulation to
\nthem. Inside is the same as outside, and the two must be made to correspond.
\nOh, they are creative\u2014don\u2019t mistake me\u2014but their creativity is demanding. It is
\nthe creativity of a furnace.<\/p>\n

What I am
\nsaying is, the Vex are immortal. The Vex have no children. They are the
\nancestors and descendants of themselves. First mothers, first children, all at
\nonce.<\/p>\n

This is why I
\ndo not hesitate to pillage their home for resources. This is why I must
\nguarantee that it is life in my image which inherits the cosmos.<\/p>\n

Had I the
\nmeans, I would wipe them all from existence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

ENTRY 10<\/b><\/p>\n

All 12 members of the first exo cohort
\nare dead. <\/p>\n

The symptoms of their dissociation
\nbecame\u2026 extreme. One poor man developed complete echopraxia and echolalia\u2014his
\nempathy was so overgrown that he could not help but mimic or repeat whatever I
\ndid and said. Even when I entered the command to terminate him, he mimicked me,
\nand I suffered a brief terror that his gesture would end MY life.<\/p>\n

I have kept Elisabeth far away from
\nthis disaster, so as not to discourage her. She is busy with the Vex and with
\nher covert attempts to reach Clarity Control. This has forced me to rely on M.
\nSundaresh.<\/p>\n

But unfortunately, M. Sundaresh confronted
\nme after the last death. \u201cNine of them had the Cotard delusion!\u201d she screamed
\nat me\u2014quite hysterically. \u201cThey believed they were dead! One of them told me
\nthat she was in hell, and I was another damned soul sent to deceive her. Was
\nshe even wrong? The rest were worse\u2014do you know what the other <\/i>principal
\nmanifestation of the Cotard delusion is, Clovis?\u201d<\/p>\n

I told her that I did not, and that I
\nwished to proceed immediately with autopsies of their terminal brain states.<\/p>\n

\u201cDelusions of immortality! At least
\nwhen they <\/i>insist upon it, Clovis, we recognize it as a pathology!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only true responsibility of any
\nliving thing,\u201d I reminded her, \u201cis to support and nurture the things that are
\nmost like us. And if I am most like myself, Doctor, then I have an ethical
\nobligation to avoid death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s your son\u2019s <\/i>quote,\u201d she
\nsnapped. \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve seen the video of his final days. That naked, white
\nexo, just paramuscle and soft membrane, writhing in its cradle. When you were
\ndone with him, he looked like nothing more than a slug, Clovis. A twisted,
\nlimbless giblet. Did you \u2018support and nurture\u2019 him while you tortured him to
\ndeath?”<\/p>\n

I immediately ordered M. Sundaresh
\ntransferred to the Vex lab to perform contact experiments. Unfortunately, she
\nhas taken the unethical step of deleting her own employee records, so I cannot
\nnullify her future prospects as thoroughly as I might wish. <\/p>\n

Her conduct was extremely
\nunprofessional.<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller has also passed. The poor
\nyoung man had a bad reaction to the titrated, denatured Vex fluid we were using
\nas a last-ditch therapy. The substance did <\/i>restore damaged structures
\nvery well, but we were ultimately unable to control its more radical
\ntransformative effects. I had a very encouraging final conversation with him,
\nin which he thanked me for all my efforts and encouraged me to continue my
\nwork.<\/p>\n

I called in a
\nteam of psychologists to interview the next cohort of exos and make
\nrecommendations. They have settled into the Eventide habitat and have proven
\nimmediately very helpful. It was obvious to them that the root of the problem
\nlay in the deficient exobodies I had supplied. Deficient how, I demanded to
\nknow. They did not suffer human weakness. They never needed to eat, drink,
\nbreathe, sleep, micturate, or dream.<\/p>\n

Apparently, this was the problem.<\/p>\n

I had assumed that the need for these
\nirritations would pass since there would be no shortage or accumulation of
\npoisons to trigger them. But evolution\u2019s tangled ways cannot be so easily
\nrationalized. I was wrong. Their brains concluded that all of their internal
\nprocesses failed. No digestion, no breath, no heartbeat, no sense of
\ninteroceptive health\u2026 all signs of death.<\/p>\n

These must logically contribute to the
\ndissociative rejection of their physical forms\u2014the Cotard delusion. When it
\nwould set in, they believed their bodies to be an alien or necrotic form that
\nmust be cut away. And if you believe that you are sewn into a corpse, it is
\nonly natural to go mad with fear. My exos are dying of an extreme kind of
\nbodily dysphoria.<\/p>\n

It seems that our exo designs will
\nneed various humanlike traits to reassure the brain it is not asphyxiating, or
\nstarving, or in a state of permanent yet undying cardiac arrest. <\/p>\n

Alas, mimicry of life\u2019s trivialities
\nis not an interesting problem. I will leave this change in the hands of others.<\/p>\n

I am much more interested in the
\nsurprising success of memory wipes. I became so tired of answering the
\nquestions asked by new exos\u2014what had happened to the scanning clinic, how long
\nhad it been, would I let them see their families\u2014that I began inducing
\nretrograde amnesia before spin-up. Interestingly, this seems to have improved
\ntheir resilience against exomind rejection! <\/p>\n

I theorize the lack of any episodic memories eases the
\ntransition into the new body. And the loss of emotional ties prevents grief and
\nstress, which could interfere with healthy function.<\/span><\/p>\n

From now on, we will block access to
\npre-upload episodic memory. We should also consider a built-in procedure to
\nblock memories formed after <\/i>the exobody transubstantiation, returning
\nthem to a \u201cfactory state\u201d should the need to restart occur. It would be very
\ndifficult to actually track down and delete the full memory engrams since they
\nare stored in so many scattered parts of the brain. Instead, we can tourniquet
\noff associative access to those memories and let them wither away in isolation.
\nA memory is not a recording, after all. It is a set of instructions to reenact
\na brain state: choreography for a play. And like any play, it will fade if left
\nunperformed.
 
With the exobody project proceeding
\napace, I believe the time approaches to decant myself from this dying body and
\nenter my assistant\u2019s form.<\/p>\n

But if I do, will I lose my own
\nmemories? Will I cease to be myself? Replaced by a faux Clovis, a mumbling
\nfacsimile? Unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Elisa<\/a>beth will have to go first.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

WARNING:<\/p>\n

\n