Chapter 423: Refuge's Beaches and Some of the Options With Copies

Friday, July 25, 2008 (Continued)

I teleported us to one of the beaches that was part of Refuge.

"I must admit that I showed you the aliens mainly because I find them fascinating. I'm having a huge amount of fun learning about them and watching them in action. They've got some very different perspectives on life and have made some amazing scientific breakthroughs in areas no human has ever considered. If you want to, Julia, we could have the largest, most profitable company in the world in a few years, just by my copying useful inventions from around the Universe. Heck, just from the closest hundred or so galaxies. I probably should have shown you one of the very advanced civilizations, but we'll do that some other day." [Other Marks giving their families this Tour but running slightly later corrected that omission.]

"I've still got three years left in my BBA. I'm not ready to run a big business yet."

"There's no hurry. You can carry on getting ready the way you already are: by doing your BBA assignments with an invention development and commercialization company in mind. Our previous concept is still roughly correct, but the amount of scientific research I'll be doing will be much less than we thought and the range of inventions that are possible is MUCH wider. We've got lots of choice, so it's really just a matter of what we want to do. We can discuss that later, and we can always change our minds anyway. You don't even need to have a company at all, because I can link you with another Julia who has, as often as the two of you want, and you can share in the thrill of her work while you do something else that she'll enjoy as a change from high-pressure business."

Mom asked, "Mark, what happened to, umm, the Donna that came with us before?"

"At the moment she's getting on one of the pegasi mares to play with the original Donna, but the time will come when one of them gets canceled, Mom."

Vanessa queried, "You said, 'one of them.' Doesn't it matter which?"

"They've got identical bodies, minds and their memories are so similar there's no meaningful difference. There's no medical, psychological or any other type of test that could tell them apart. It truly doesn't matter which of them goes.

^-- "It'll stop seeming like a death to you after a while. The morality you've been brought up with equates the loss of a body with death, but that's not true in these cases. It's all about minds, and they're easy to duplicate. There are two Donna's with identical minds, so it doesn't matter which one is considered surplus. You can't tell whether I'm the original mind for this dimension, you don't know how many times I've been copied, and how many times those copies have canceled themselves. It doesn't make any difference to you and it doesn't to me either. I've also got many billions of my minds trotting around doing various things without bodies because it's easier for them that way. And when they finish whatever they're doing, they cancel themselves because the loss of a mind doesn't matter since their memories are retained."

Vanessa asked, "Doesn't a person - or 'the mind', if that's a better way of wording it - feel frightened about their imminent cancellation?"

"They do until they've made the mental adjustment I've talked about. Being canceled is painless of course - they exist one instant and don't exist the next - but knowing that instant is coming is scary the first few times. It doesn't take long for the person to learn that their identity carries on undisturbed when copies are made and canceled. It soon becomes far less disturbing than falling asleep and you're not the least concerned about the loss of consciousness during that. If you have a file on your computer and you copy it to a new folder and then delete the original, you don't mourn the loss of the original. If it was your last version of it you might, but not when you've got identical copies elsewhere. I'll give you a demonstration."

I created four copies of myself, each dressed in different clothes and carrying a sign saying, "Copy #1" through to "Copy #4". Then I (the original) surprised my families by disappearing. [Did you know that the human body contains ten times as many bacterial cells as human ones? I was surprised by many of the things I learned when I became capable of operating at this level. There's a great deal of variation in bacteria types among people and they seem to have quite significant effects on their hosts' lives, so researching them is one of my many projects, with the goal of improving my families' lives by making changes to their bacterial colonies. Included in my research toolkit are some unusual techniques, such as being able to create a body with my mind in it, and populate it with modified bacteria to feel the effects.]

Copy#1 said, "The Mark who was talking to you just canceled himself..."

Copy#2 said, " ... to prove the point that we don't care about that process..."

Copy#3 said, " ... We want you to pick one of us, Vanessa..."

Copy #4 said, " ... and the other three will cancel themselves too."

"It truly doesn't matter?" checked Vanessa.

"Not..."

" ... the..."

" ... slightest..."

" ... bit."

Vanessa hesitated for a couple of seconds, then said, "It feels wrong to prefer one of you."

Copy#1 answered, "It's not as if we're going to take it personally."

Copy#2 added, "You could play Eeny, meeny, miny, moe."

Copy#3 suggested, "Or we could ask Julia to pick the snappiest dresser."

Copy#4 said, "To make it even more obscure, the four of us just swapped our minds around."

"You make a convincing case. Very well, I'll pick #1 then."

Copy#1 said, "Good choice, going for the best looking one. Bye guys."

Numbers 2, 3 and 4 waved goodbye and disappeared.

I asked, "Would you feel comfortable making that choice among four copies of yourself, Vanessa?"

"Ahh, no. Not really."

"Imagine how useful it'd be to be able to create another Vanessa or two to help with the paperwork and decisions you have to make. The same for the rest of you too. I was able to do so much studying because I had multiple minds on the job. They were all operating out of a single body but that wasn't significant. You could accelerate your productivities by several multiples as soon as you get over your reluctance about canceling the duplicates when they're no longer needed. I'll give you another example of how useful the duplication process is."

Beside us on the beach, I created duplicates of the two Donnas, each dressed the way their original is, so they looked to be those girls. They immediately rushed to me, excitedly raving and thanking me for their fantastic new pets.

When I got a chance, I said, "Hugs are very nice, but I think the two of you could thank me better by taking me to bed for some wild sex this evening."

"Both of us?" x2. One of them adding, "At the same time?"

"Absolutely. It'll be INCREDIBLY sexy!"

"Touching each other, and everything?"

I answered the Donna that asked that question by causally pointing at the other while saying, "She's VERY good at sex. Wait till you try her."

"{Giggle}." | "Wow. It's going to be WEIRD!"

I bent down and whispered in the ear of the one I was talking to.

She giggled again, then told her 'twin', "He says you've got great tits too, {giggle}. I'm game if you are. What do you think?"

Donna#2 answered, "I think it'll be great. Can we have more than one Mark, Mark?"

"I was afraid you'd think of that. Yes we can but that's going to weird me out. Can we start with just the three of us and see how that goes for a while first please?"

"Sure. I think that'll be fun."

"It should be a GREAT deal of fun, especially because I can link your minds so you feel everything that the other you feels. You'll both feel whatever I'm doing to both of you, what the other you is doing to you, and what you're doing to the other you. So if you're sucking her nipple, you'll feel that she's sucking yours. You'll not only be getting twice as much sensation, but you'll know exactly what feels best to the other Donna, so you'll be superb at stimulating each other."

I created four more Marks, placing them in front of Carol, Julia, Ava and Nevaeh. Each Mark took his girl's hand and simultaneously requested, "May I have the pleasure of a threesome with you and you this evening please?"

"Hell yeah!" agreed Ava, to her Mark. | "Yes please!" agreed Nevaeh to hers. | "I want to try it too," said Carol, not overly enthusiastically to hers. | "You're INCREDIBLE, but I don't know which one to hug," puzzled Julia, looking between her Mark and me.

Carol added, "What's going to happen to the second me afterward?"

I canceled the four Marks, then said, "Julia, all of me know what all of the rest of me are doing, so you can hug any Mark you want.

^-- "Carol, let me answer your question this way." The two Donna's disappeared, and I explained to Carol, "Those two Donnas I just canceled were duplicates of the two that are still riding their pets, one of which is a duplicate of the original, as you know. I was linking each of the two duplicates that were here back to the two riders, and I'll bring those two Donnas here so you can hear what they think about having their duplicates canceled while linked."

Both Donnas and their steeds appeared in the air just above us. The pegasi quickly landed on the sand in front of us and started kneeling. The girls didn't wait, immediately leaping off their rides so they could rush over and thank me again. Amid their repeated thanks and expressions of excitement, were some references like, "We're going to give you the BEST sex tonight! We're so excited and happy. Thank you VERY much, Mark."

The other Donna excitedly asked, "You said we can bring our friends here, didn't you?"

"Yep. Get into one of the elevators at home and say that you want to come to whatever part of Refuge you want. I'll be making your friends forget that you said anything about Refuge and I'll be dialing their astonishment down a long way when they arrive so they don't freak out or feel they have to take photos or call their friends to tell them about it.

^-- "You can do anything you want with them here: riding, swimming, having meals or anything else. What I'll be doing is taking a snapshot of their minds when they arrive, and when they leave I'll be changing them back to that snapshot and adding some very creative false memories of their playing around at our Corvallis home in similar ways to what they did here. So if they went for a swim here, they'll remember having a swim in one of our pools at home. If they rode here, they'll remember riding at home. I'll let them keep any memories of innocuous conversations they had while they were here too, but nothing about your pets or anything weird like that. They'll still remember their emotions though, so if they had a great time then they'll want to visit our home again, or if they had an argument, they'll remember that too. It'll be real life, just made to look different.

^-- "When you're talking to your friends back in Corvallis, don't mention Refuge to them because they won't remember that name or any of the details. If you want them to visit here, just invite them to our home, then bring them here when you get in an elevator. Each time they return here, I'll give them back their full memories of all their earlier visits so you won't have to explain every time.

^-- "In the future we might be able to be open about having access to another planet, but that requires some preparation first. In the meanwhile, outsiders who come here will have to have their memories tweaked, their cellphone contents adjusted if they take any photos, or other little measures like that."

"Can they stay overnight?"

"They can stay as long as you want. We can either do it the way I just described, with their parents thinking they're staying at our Corvallis home and the girls getting memories of that when they leave here. Or another way is to kind of kidnap them. I'd duplicate you and your friends, and you could spend as much time here as you want, while the originals would be doing their usual stuff in Corvallis. When the visit is finished, I'd just cancel everyone. The originals of your friends wouldn't know anything about it, but I'd either link your and your duplicate's minds so you'd get both sets of memories, or I'd transfer the memories to you when it was over or from time to time during the visit.

^-- "There are other options too, although several of them are more intrusive than I like. We can talk about them later. The reason I jumped you here was because Carol and the others are concerned about what it's like to have a duplicate canceled. Would you tell them what that's like please."

"Umm, it's not painful or anything. It's strange seeing other things going on at the same time, but I know which is me and which is the others. When you cancel them, it's like I was watching TV and you turned it off in the middle of the program; it just goes blank. That's not quite right because there's no blank left afterward. 'It just goes away, ' is a better description. It's like you quickly take the TV away."

I said to Carol, but really to all of them, "I deliberately make it feel like the input from the other you is slightly indirect to avoid your getting confused with what you're doing. So it's like watching TV, which we've all had years of practice at splitting our attention with.

Prof asked, "From what I understand of your previous explanation, your mind wasn't anything special to start with; you just had the luck of dying during déjà vu. Right?"

"Yep. I was a very average boy initially."

"So how can you handle the billions of simultaneous inputs you're getting?"

"Only a few hours ago I couldn't have handled live inputs from many more than two Marks either. I managed multiple sight blob inputs only because each of them went to its own consciousness. But since then I've learned a great deal about how minds work, and I've rebuilt mine so it's highly adaptive and expandable. When you do a lot of heavy lifting, your muscles get stronger. In the case of my mind, its capacity instantly adjusts to handle the demands put on it.

^-- "I offered to repair all the damage to your bodies earlier. That extends to improving you in various ways too. Making it possible for you to network with more than one simultaneous copy of yourself, improve your memory, your concentration, your powers of observation - it's quite remarkable how poor human brains are at noticing things you're already looking at - and whatever else you might want improved. Rather than my immediately giving you enormous mental capabilities, I'm going to increase them slowly as you practice with and get used to them. You'll start by being able to easily link with one of your duplicates at a time, then when you're ready you can try two duplicates, etc. It'll be an incremental process that will depend mostly on which of your new abilities you try to improve and how much effort you put into them.