Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2002 11:12 am
First off, do the memories always fade <i>completely</i>? We don't know yet. If not, or if they fade piecemeal and residues remain, it could be a serious problem for RUmy and Rikk. But they said that in the story. <P>Beyond that, the FIB is going to be <I>all over</I> this Palimpsest Projector thingie. Oh, they would have been if it were a mind switcher, too, but think about it: in some ways, it is a more useful tool. First off, it can be used for some very subtle espionage stuff, in more ways than the mind-switch idea would. Need an inside agent? Grab one of the Other People's guys, copy his psyche, overlay your agent onto him, and then overlay the orignal on that with a slightly weaker charge... He'll go back, thinking he'd escaped, and get back to his base... and then the copied agent gets fifteen minutes or so to do what he want. When it's done, and everyone will think that the victim was a traitor, including himself.<P>Or, with some tweaking, it could be used as a memory <I>transfer</I> device. Very useful for quick training and indoctrination. Even better as an alternative to interrogation. See any of a dozen Larry Niven stories from around 1975 to get an idea of what I mean, with particualr note of <I>A World out of Time</I>, "Flare Time", and "The Fourth Profession". <P>Or it could even be used to perpetuate a psyche after the death of the original body. Anyone remember <I>Lord of Light</I>?<P>It might also be used to project an intelligence into a computer. We <I>know</I> that is possible; it was Thackerabilitus' trademark. This may be a way to do it without any physical connection to the original body. Think Gibson, think Heechee Ancient Ancestors, think <I>The Matrix</I> and <I>Lawnmower Man</I>, whatever; there are more possible things that could be done with it than any single person could think of. <P>The FIB (like ARM, the Technocratic Union, and many of the other shadow government types it is based on) would see super tech as an even greater threat than superbeings. A unique human or very rare creature can be contained, but once word of a new technology gets out, it'll be everywhere in short order. Worse, while you can suppress it for a long time, sooner or later it will get out - the laws of physics, even in a rather malleable world like this one, are awfully hard to hide from persistent researchers. <P>Thye're going to bury this so deep it will never see the light of day - except in the hands of FIB agents. And Rikk and Co. will have no reasonable arguments against it, since it really <I>is</I> a Menace to Humanity, despite it's potential benefits. I'm sure they suppressed a lot of things - nuclear fission, for example, the theory for which was publically available in the 1920s - on such justification until forced to let it go by the overwhelming number of people studying it. The same with the laser; while the stimulated emission effect was derived from Einstein's 1905 photoelectric effect paper and Bohr's early work on electron orbitals, they probably only let it go n 1960 because they could hide it anymore. <P>What else do they have in their 'Warehouse 23'? Tesla's death ray? Gravity generators? Cold fusion? I know this is a basic part of the series idea, but the point has to be made - there's a <I>lot</I> of things that the FIB are hiding 'for the good of humanity' that would be better set free. <P>I wonder if this is related to to the upcoming storyline.<p>[This message has been edited by Schol-R-LEA (edited 01-07-2002).]