(urth) Shaving Clones

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 6/24/05, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I was about to playfully suggest as a universal rule that one should not
> postulate clones beyond necessity. (And it still seems like something of a
> good idea, I must admit).
> 
> But then it occurred to me that maybe a proliferation of clones actually
> *reduces* the number of entities (by making some people the same as others),
> so maybe Occam would approve. On that note I devised the following theory:
> everyone on Urth is genetically Severian, including Typhon.
> 
> We know that Severian, as Conciliator, weaves back and forth through time
> and leads a number of lives (Apu Punchau, etc), sometimes going quite a ways
> back in history. This being the case, all things being equal his genes would
> so dominate the gene pool that it would lead to hopelessly inbred children
> and the degeneration of the human race. To prevent this the Hierogrammates
> implemented a plan which replaced natural reproduction with technology
> similar to that used to resurrect Severian, but with a twist: it creates an
> *embryonic Severian* already in place in the womb. The embryo (and
> subsequent human) is then manipulated through hormones to generate a variety
> of appearances as necessary, including development of male or female
> reproductive organs as needed. And this, by the way, is the capping point
> that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this theory is correct: people
> on Urth *have* to be clones because they are *incapable* of reproducing
> naturally - despite appearances they are all genetically male!
> 
> This also explains how there's always a new Severian-body around for the
> Conciliator to pop into when he dies, no matter what place and time it
> happens to be.
> 
> This explains trivially why there are so many clones on the Whorl. All of
> the original passengers were clones of Severian. It's not that we have
> identified too many clones, it is that we have noticed too few.

But of course!  That ties in with Platonism brilliantly! Since you
have the Ideal New Sun, and everybody is an inferior reflection of
that pure essence, striving to return to the Realm of the Ideal/God. 
The Hs are merely a little closer to that perfection, but not at or
past (else why would they need the New Sun to usher in Ushas, hmm?).
This also explains easily how 'minds' could be shared in the New Sun
(or Long Sun), an otherwise utterly ludicrous proposition- if
everybody starts from the same basic Severian-mind, sharing a mind is
like moving a program from one Linux computer to another Linux
computer; nothing needs to be changed or ported (unlike say going from
Linux to Mac or Windows). Ditto for scanning- instead of discovering a
custom-mental-model for each and every distinct person who needs to be
scanned, you can simply build that mental model once, and only scan
what's new.

~Maru
Somewhere, Popper is rolling over in his grave.