By Methusalah Treatment I mean a process that significantly extends a humans lifespan weither this be by drugs, cyber, nano, or magic. If cloning, artificial ageing and bio-engineering are commonplace then genome technology must also be very good. With an abundant source of subject matter (elves) that have 4 to infinity times longer lifespan, which is biologically compatible with humans, what options are there for extending lifespan?

I remember a decker transfering his personality to the Matrix a while back, can this be done in reverse in a similar manner to personafixing to create an immortal intellect that can be backed-up and restored to full-body clones of themselves?

Well, there's the Leonization therapy that is supposed to "turn back the clock" and extend your life...

as for a Matrix transfer, i'd say no - except in novels or for powerful NPCs that have access to a vast computer storage network. and there is always the chance that you would end up having Mick Jagger working for you... (reference to Freejack, where this is exactly what they do)

another thing an "evil" NPC might do would be maybe if you could conduct some sort of magical ritual that would allow you to go astral just before your meat body dies, and then use the Possession spirit power to possess a younger body or clone...you then just have to worry about the original personality forcing itself through from time to time - maybe you could keep it down with some sort of drugs or such...and you'd have to probably avoid wards, etc...

Sounds like Being John Malkovitch

i pretty much was refering to taking over someone else's body...suppressing the consciousness in it...that is pretty much considered "evil" by most people...

With cloning of fully functional human organs and body parts, (A canon part of SR) one can extend thier lifespan as long as thier brain holds out. This is easily done (by those with sufficient funds) by having your genetic profile stored in your prime, (say 25 yrs old) and then every few decades or so, having your body parts replaced wholesale with cloned parts that would be the equivalent of 25 yrs old. Of course, the only part you would not be able to replace would be the brain, so the limitation on your lifespan would be 2 things:

1) Your continued financial ability to maintain this situation.
2) Your brains health, if it goes, your a gonner.

So see, it can, (and most liekly is) already be done in SR.

To your health!

Leonization takes a long, subtle toll. But if you've got the money, it's great.

Technically speaking, barring major illness, genetic defect, disease, or injury; then an individual with sufficient funds could use cloned body parts, cyberware, bioware, nanoware, and periodic genetic treatments to maintain themselves at a reasonable level for a long time...possibly centuries.

Now, this isn't guaranteed: you could still die from an accident, or some new bug, or just the cumulative stress of dealing with all those implants.

The big key is your brain; with a healthy body and careful monitoring, no recreational drugs, etc. it could probably last a century without too much hassle. As early as 50 (or younger for Orks and Trolls), you have to deal with senility and the like, which might mean implants to increase memory, cognitive functions, etc.

See Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix and Larry Niven's FLatlander for ideas.

Magicians, natch, have it a bit worse, since implants royally screw with their abilities. But if your magician lives for over a century, odds are they're either Burned Out or a Powerful anyway, and have learned enough tricks or wisdom to get by with a geas on a magic point or two.

That's assuming that they can't learn how the brain maps information and use nanotech to imprint all of your old memories on a new brain.
Since unmodified cloned organs don't cause bioindex such a treatment should work prety well.

Y'know, my wife was kicking around this idea about long-lived/immortal elves, and she came up with an interesting twist:

What if it's all (kind of) a lie?

What if they aren't immortal, just clones?

We batted around the idea of personality transfers via magic or technology, etc, to account for the continuous memory.

The next question was - why would they keep this a secret? And what would they do to protect that secret?

It seemed appropriate for this thread, so there you go.

Considering the only people who really know about them are the Immortal Elves and Great Dragons themselves, it's not a very solid theory.

A veriation of possession that allows one to rip out someone's spirit and permanently replace it with their own might allow immortality. However, it would require some really wicked blood magics to repattern the new body, or else the resulting magic loss would be astronomical.
Being in a body with a mismatched pattern would probably be the equivilent of having subzero essence.

I was basing it on SR-current available tech; while theoretically possible, you can't reliably transfer a consciousness yet.

What would happen if Bob the mage were to make an exact clone of his body, force age it along a little, then astrally project and try and enter the new body? I mean technically it is his body in a way.

One of my campaigns featured heavily on exploring different concepts of immortality in SR. Here's what I came up with:

A) Magical Metamorphosis. Character with high enough Magic rating, access to enough spiritual essence (usually by taking it from others -- in this case, an NPC with an interesting Pact with a blood spirit), and a genius bordering on insanity can super-infuse their astral form and make it self-sustaining. They become a free-spirit. Since this involves obliterating the essence (arguably the soul) of quite a few people in the process, probably not a nice one.

B) Clinical Immortality. Brain in a jar approach.

C) Physical Immortality. Isolating the "immortality gene" and creating a treatment, or extremely advanced research in arresting the genetic clock. Result is someone who is ageless but otherwise mortal.

D) Angsty Immortality. HMHVV infection.

E) Social Immortality. The individual does not matter. By embracing a group and giving it your heart and soul to it, you will live forever through the endurance of the group.

People have said that the brain is the part that fails where the rest of the body can be cloned. I take this to mean that they know the brain does not heal or regenerate, but the brain does carry spare capacity that is exploited by people who have suffered brain damage to re-establish the function of those parts of the brain that have been damage.

This is also effected by Elves, with their canonical long life something must be happening to prolong the lifespan of their brains. Being at least 99.999% gentically identical to humans it must be relatively easy to establish the reason from genome mapping comparisons.

The next thing that occurs to me is, why wouldn't a person using full body cloning exercise the nuts of their new body before implantation. It is their body, but it could have spent a few years being put through a rigourous training regime. So after transplantation they could have maximum physical attributes with no need to train or expend karma. Surely mages could also use the techinque to reset their magic/essense to 6 as it is their brand spanking new undamaged body, obviously a magic loss test whould have to be done, decapitation is surely a D wound.

FYI - After 30 years of research we currently know which chromasone contains the aging retardation gene/s in mice. Research the Mouse Genome Project it is interesting stuff.

I could never understand why people view things like:

1. Transferring your consciousness to the matrix

2. Remapping your consciousness to a different brain

as ways of attaining immortality. Both of these operations kill you and than replace you with an identical copy. The copy might think it's you, but you're dead.

I always viewed Star Trek transporters with a "you gotta be fucking kidding me" attitide for the same reason - in every episode, we see multiple people commit suicide. Yay.

The only solution is to either stop your brain from decaying, progressively re-build it using technology, or use magic to actually transfer your soul to some other vessel.

Exactly how I feel about them. To accept that it is the same person is to accept the existence of a soul and the ability to transfer it, which is a lot more than I'm prepared to do on both counts.

~J

Well, if you can actually transfer/remap your consciousness, it's immortality. But mostly what those solutions describe is transferring memories, which is not the same thing. That, as you correctly point out, simply results in a being that remembers being you, but isn't. Your friends might not be able to tell the difference, but, sorry, you are dead.

Not only would your friends be unable to tell the difference, the copy wouldn't either. The original, however, would be quite aware of it.

~J

In days gone by, men thought of their children as their own form of immortality. With a clone ala 6th Day, how much moreso?

Insofar as it's possible to be aware of being dead, yes.

In days gone by, men were stupid.

Come to think of it, that hasn't changed.

John Campbell: all these little details

~J

From what I have read, no one has found what gene causes someone to become awakened.

Secondly, with the advances in tech (even with the slight loss due to the crash and the plague) I would say that someone (considering vanity ect) has come up with a process to allow the brain to create new cells thus pro-longing life. In RL currently, scientist are already figuring out the areas of the brain that hold memory, so the question becomes, what really gives life and if we are only a sum of our memories, then what dictates morality...

I believe however that someone mentioned the concept of a "soul" earlier. I would have to say that from a game standpoint, considering the revival of religion in the 30 's - 40's (SR Timeline) this is why this was never largely published.

Sounds to me like an excellent campaign idea with the church vs big corps with someone having to take the fall. (IE some government)

One point for those who may have been confused about the religious overtones of my earlier post: I use "soul" and "portable consciousness" interchangeably.

~J

He found a gene that made him into a Troll. That's far from "the magic gene", and also unless he managed to do it on anyone else is not proof that that is the only one involved. Maybe all other conditions were just right.

~J

The metahuman genes were pretty easily identified from what I understand (the phenotype alteration genetech in SOTA:2063 might even allow you to change metatypes; I don't have it handy to read over it again, though, so I'm probably mistaking). It's the one that allows people to use magic that remains elusive, which is what most people mean when they say "awakened" even though it technically includes UGE, goblinization, SURGE, and other similar events.

My point is that he did that in the early 2050s (I want to say 2053), so why wouldn't that research have been duplicated by labs that had better facilities (he was doing it on his own) and more researchers, and fine tuned over a decade...I would think they might have isolated genes for all the various meta-variants and possibly a magic gene as well?

Besides - in the book the cure for being a troll was to suppress the magic gene for him to revert (as it was magic that caused him to become a troll), not revert a troll gene. I had to reread the book, so I know this to be true, at least as far as the novel went.

Who says they haven't? The crap you find in the novels is worth jack-all. They may be official and they may influence canon on occasion, but in practice (as opposed to what "they" say), they're not canon.

The metahuman genes had been discussed in sourcebooks as far back as Shadowtech if memory serves, and possibly even further back.

Yeah, here's a quote from Shadowtech (a 1st Edition sourcebook, just for your information)...

p. 69, The Metagene: "Elves are homo sapiens whose genomes contain the correct sequence of astral shallows to bestow the nobilis traits. Trolls are homo sapiens who carry the sequence of astral shallows that code for the ingentis traits, and so on."

According to page 10 of SOTA:2063 (which I now have my hands on), the metagenes were finally puzzled together in the 2040s.

But what about deconstrutcing the metatype by suppressing the metagene? Is that covered anywhere but in the novels? I don't have SOTA63 so I can't look it up, and I started with 3rd ed so I don't have any of the old material.

Also, so the topic can sorta get back to the original thread - is there a Methusalah gene that can be activated/suppressed? Why are elves longer-lived - is it in the nobilis gene or somewhere else?

That's basically what the Leonization process does; it goes in, halts, and reverses the aging process for its clients. They probably could permanently halt the aging process altogether, but where's the profit in that?

As for metahumans, there's basically tons of different genes that are linked to what they call "astral shallows." You have to have both to become a metahuman. There's really a ton of information on it and it's not easily summarized (since they're already summarizing it). It would just be easier to snag either of the books (Shadowtech or SOTA:2063) and read over it yourself.

Interesting, I havent read all of the novels as of yet.

I still think that a solid answer to "wheres the profit" actually lies in the fact that "most" folks in the world would crucify a company that claimed to do these things on the religious pretext. Still could make for an interesting series of runs.

**Ill let yall know how it goes....

"That, as you correctly point out, simply results in a being that remembers being you, but isn't. Your friends might not be able to tell the difference, but, sorry, you are dead."

The only problem I can see is that there is no direct continuation of consciousness. There is no direct continuation of consciousness between me going to sleep last night and waking this morning, but no one has a problem with that.

A thought experiment, imagine if every night, whilst asleep, every human being was replaced with an exact copy with absolutely up to date memories. The original is surreptitiously removed and destroyed everyday. This process was perfect so no one would ever see it happen.

What would be the difference between the thought experiment world and the real world? As far as I can see, none.

You are partly correct in that there is no way to verify continuation of consciousness.

I, however, see that as no reason to invite a clear noncontinuation of consciousness.

~J

But conciousness is not a continual process, in fact, it is fatal to have continual conciousness. Keep any animal awake and concious 24/7 and it will die if you can actually interact with the subject mind after catatonia, phychosis, persistant vegitative state, etc inflicted by continual conciousness.

Everytime you sleep your conciousness is interupted, it is only the possible existance of a "soul", a non-corporeal entity, that would be an issue.

What about a gestalt mind? Say an advanced form VCR or Datajack combined allows one conciousness to exist simultaniously in the original meat body a several quantum computer based androids running brain emulation software. All of these androids and the original meat brain are part of a single network that thinks the thoughts of the original. If one android is destroyed the network adapts and a replacement can be added. If the meat body is destroyed, the mind remains intact as it is not limited to a single body.

"As for the difference between going to sleep and waking up and going to sleep and being killed and replaced with a copy - do you also think there's no difference between going to sleep and waking up, and getting your brains blown out by someone with a large handgun?"

There is big difference here, your aware of being killed.

The point of the scenario above is that there is no difference between having a dreamless nights sleep and being killed and replaced with a copy as far as the being that wakes in the morning is aware of.

It could have happened to you last night and the you reading my post now would not be aware of it.

Something you regard as the end of your life could be happening all the time without 'you' knowing.

Also, cells are constantly dying and being replaced. By some estimates, a human body will replace all of its cells in seven years. Whoever, no one considers an individual to be a different person after completly replacing their body through this slow and natural process.
Every cell in a person's body is important to their individuality. At the same time, paradoxically, all are expendable.
The self is not static, it is ever changing. New information is learned, new thoughts and thought, we are quite litterally not the same people we were a second ago. Yet, we are simply because it is easier to think of ourselves as continual static entities. In reality, it is not the cells that matter but how those cells function together. Brain damage can cause radical changes in personality, to the point where the individual can be said to be a different entity from the undamaged original. Yet, we still legaly consider the two to be the same person, just because it is easier to recognize a person as a static entity within a single body than it is to consider the implications of the fact that all we are is information and the interaction of our cells.

"But the me that it happened to would still be dead. That I've gained his memories isn't meaningful as far as he's concerned. And if it happens to me tonight, I'll be dead, and while my friends might be comforted by the creation of a duplicate that looks and acts like me, that's no help to me."

Until someone shows you that it's happening, what's the difference? A being is aware all the time that has a single continuous consciousness.

"Think about this one: If someone creates a perfect clone of you, gives it your memories, and doesn't kill you, where are you?"

Legally you'd be still you in this case, but only legally.

How would this work in application. You've been through as much rejuvenation treatment as you can take, now death is inevitable. There is one more option, a cloning and memory transfer. You sign some legal documentation stating that at the moment of the memory transfer the clone gains you citizenship and you become 'meat'. The clone is awakened and carries on living your life.

There is an obvious difference between my original scenario and the one above, you are aware of the change and if want the 'single continuous consciousness' so will the clone be. However I would argue that this is far less of a mental adjustment than, for example Thomas Roxburgh has undergone, beginning life as a human and ending up as a blob of cancerous cells in a jar.

The influance of experience on a person is undeniable. The two clones are functionally the same person until one has an experience independant of their shared memories, at which poit they are defiently seperate individuals.
By the same token, I am functionally a different person not than I was when I began writing this post. Since a personality is a product of experience and brain chemestry, the personality changes the instant it experiences anything and thus the static continutity of the individual is simply an illusion produced by the fact that we exist is limited physical bodies.


To put it another way, if you make a clone of me and have us live apart for years then erase our memories and replace them with the memories of the other which one is which? Is the original with the memories of the clone the original or the clone? Is the clone with the memories of the original the clone or is it the original? Certainly they are different entities, but how do you assign identity to them?