It’s been days and I’m still angry about how much I enjoyed Altered Carbon (the tv version). Like, the more I end up thinking about it, the more complex everything was, and the more I’m dying to know more about it. I want to know everything about when humans found the Elder civilization. Where was it? Obviously the Elders were gone by the time we got there, but why? Did they die out? Was it because of the tech humans picked up from their ruins? Did humanity doom itself trying to follow in their footsteps? What the heck was Elder society like?? They had wings?? Did they fly? What was their architecture like if so? If they had altered carbon tech where they could go from one body to the next, how could they possibly have all died out? So… did they leave? If so, are there still Elders out there somewhere? Will humans survive long enough to meet them in living time?
How did Quell get her paws on the altered carbon in the first place? What was she before the downfall of humanity? She said she wanted to be an explorer, but if she was in a new place finding new tech and a new species, wasn’t she already exploring? How did that first transfer go? Did she do it to herself first, like was she the first one to put her mind into a stack? If not, did she experiment on someone else first? Did they survive it? How many people did it take before someone survived the experiment? And really, the ultimate question here… we see her as Quell, and we know she was at least 1 other person before Quell, but… was she always? Was she always human? If the Elders had the tech…. if they did…. and she brought the tech to the humans… and we are told outright that someone (even though it was Rei and we can’t be CERTAIN she actually did it, I suspect she actually did it) put a human consciousness into a snake body… couldn’t an Elder have been put into a human body?
What happened to the AIs? I want to know at what point they switched from loving humans to hating us, to talking about us over virtual poker like we’re cockroaches they’d rather extinguish than hang out with. We programmed the hotels to want visitors, to protect their guests, to be friendly. Which one of us turned our back first? Is Poe the only one? We only saw a handful of AIs but we know that they can get to The Array, which is ostensibly connected to all other technology. Did AI make the places like that poker room? Do humans know that kind of thing even exists? Could humans get there in VR or affect its coding from outside, or do the AI have complete control over that? Poe had to be the one to take Rawling into the poker game area, so does that mean they couldn’t have delivered it from the outside?
I am deeply concerned about 653. I’m not religious and I wouldn’t have any problem being spun back up to come after my killer if someone murdered me, but what if someone isn’t like that? what if they truly believe that they will not be allowed into whatever good side of the afterlife exists if they are brought back? Is it more moral it to catch their killer than to respect their wishes to live only once? Does being spun up in VR only count, since it means they don’t technically have a body? Where will they draw the line? Can you put in a clause in your coding to say don’t bring me back- unless I was murdered, then you can bring me back in VR only? I understand that if someone has killed, people that are still alive would want to catch that person to keep others safe; isn’t it more important to protect the living from dying than to possibly protect the dead from a possible damnation that no one even knows if it’s real or not? But what if it’s real and eternal?
Do people put their pets into stacks? If I could put my pet’s mind into a stack, you can bet I would. I would in a heartbeat! Are you telling me people could keep their beloved pets forever? It’s not mentioned at all, but we see people with pets. We see at least a cat and a snake, we have to assume there are other pets. What happens if you spin a pet mind up in a human body? We are told what happens when you spin a human up into a reptile body; they lose their mind and degrade into snake-like behaviors. Would a pet’s mind, with the capacity of a human brain now, become more human or experience personality frag and enough dysphoria to lose themselves?
Which is another thing! If everyone can just body swap and bodies mean nothing anymore, do trans people exist anymore? Or can you just pop into a sleeve that suits you and no one worries about it anymore? What about NB people? Lizzy spun up into a synth and changed it to be what she wanted, are there people that do that for real? Just, like, spin up in a synth without sex? you could make any kind of body you wanted. God, the grey area of sexuality has got to be off the charts in this world if you can mix and match souls and bodies. How does one define sexuality and attraction when anyone could be anything? When it can change? Bancroft says Kovacs has no idea what it’s like to love someone for centuries but what does that even MEAN for an average person? If you manage to get the scratch to keep slipping into a new sleeve every time yours wears out, and so does your partner, but the sleeves vary by so much and you’re honestly in love with the person inside, I mean, Bancroft may be onto something right? I mean, HE always goes into his own clone, but Elliot and Lizzy recognize Ava in her new sleeve, and even though she gets her original one back, I don’t think they would have had a problem if she’d kept the new one. Surely there are others like that all over. Does personality frag still happen if the switches are spread out and only happen once in a lifetime, but through multiple lifetimes? What does mundane immortality look like? What did Quell think it would look like, when she first gave it to humans?
And if bodies don’t matter, are there places where humans get spun up in bodies that aren’t even human shaped? If humans can be put into synth bodies, have we made non-human synth bodies? Dragons? Is there somewhere one could go to be spun up as a dragon? I’m asking for a friend. What about just, like, a vacation planet where you can be synths of various types? Spend a weekend as an eagle soaring over sculpted sea cliffs on a picturesque getaway planet. Take a holiday to the deep abyss of an ocean’s bottom as some kind of cetacean. Field research would be completely changed if you could slip into a synth and go among animals in their natural environments.
And as long as we’re on the subject, what about permanent VR? Are there people who choose not to have a body but also not to die? Are there places where someone could go to retire their sleeve and take up permanent residence in a VR environment? Are there VR communities? A VR planet of some kind where viable stacks get retired to for a price? We hear about “the black” but what if I don’t want to get retired to a void? What if I want to live on in VR with all my friends who are just too tired to keep up with this corporeal business? What would the AIs think of that? Could someone retire their consciousness to run a hotel like an AI? What is an AI except a person in digital? What differentiates them from a human in VR? Where is the line drawn and under what circumstances can it be crossed or moved? If you can give a human stack a virus like Rawling, can you give it AI elements in order to integrate it into a hotel or something else?
Listen, this whole world is just fucking fascinating from top to bottom and everything in between. I have so many questions. I’ve got the book downloaded to see if there are any more answers but somehow I doubt it. Somehow I think I’m just going to end up with even more questions. Someone please come and cry about all of this with me.
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