10 KiB
[R!Animorphs] Ways to resurrect dead characters.
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Author: u/MugaSofer *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4i3vgr/ranimorphs_ways_to_resurrect_dead_characters/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2016-05-06T05:55:51
Post:
Spoilers for /u/TK17Studios excellent work, obviously.
I've been prompted to think about all the ways the Animorphs might theoretically bring back a certain dead somebody - or create a disposable Animorph who could morph into her, which amounts to the same thing. Here are my thoughts:
The only piece of tech we've seen that can record mindstates, or violate conservation of mass, is the morphing tech. Since this is well-understood by Andalites (unlike in canon), we can infer that Andalites almost certainly have other tech that uses the same principles as morphing, probably capable of cloning someone - but it's likely unavailable to the protagonists, unless Ax happens to have it.
Do the human morphs "contain" their original morphing tech, complete with patterns for previous morphs? I think they do. Jake still has his, and he's a jailbroken morph.
Theoretically, you might be able to re-summon someone in a "lost" subspace bubble by morphing into a copy of their most recent morph before the bubble collapses. We know some of the equipment from a morph remains when it's copied as a pattern, because that's the explanation for the interference. However, I think the author has referenced wormholes, which might suggest that a morph contains irreplaceable physical resources required for retrieving the contents of it's subspace bubble, which aren't copied over.
FTL travel exists, which should theoretically imply time travel (and there's time travel in canon, including some that involved the FTL mechanic) - they might be able to hijack a ship, then go back in time through relativistic shenanigans and copy her before she dies. However, nobody else has done this, so it's probably impossible for some unknown reason. Also, I don't have a firm grasp on the math behind relativistic-FTL time travel or how you do it.
You can "include" someone as equipment when you morph. This suggests that you might be able to create a morph that includes another person, letting you "spawn them off" (and the clones could be made permanent by having them morph themselves.)
But morphing appears to try and target only a single genetically-distinct individual when acquiring new patterns - I think. I'm not sure if clothes were mentioned WRT human morphs.
Two copies of the same person - easily created through morphing - might count as a single organism for the purposes of being "acquired" as a morph, if acquired at the same time (while touching.) This would allow you to duplicate people, and one of the duplicates could easily sacrifice themself to become Cassie (among other applications.) I think this is the best bet for the Animorphs resurrecting Cassie - it's plausible, indeed likely given the explanations we've been given for morphing mechanics.
Yeerks can control at least some animals, and it's probably possible to give animals the morphing power. This doesn't require the death of a human, but it does require you to somehow persuade a Yeerk to sacrifice themselves - or trick them; a Controller, once morphed, could probably be stunned and thus tricked into remaining in morph past the limit - and this is still almost as ethically dubious as getting a human to do it anyway. Still, possible.
On the other hand, given that an Animorph's brain is located in a subspace pocket, it's possible that they're completely unaffected by brain trauma to the morph. This suggests that it might be possible to cut out the portions of a morph you care about without compromising it's viability as a morph, or even - disturbingly - reassemble an entire human from spare parts lost during a morph.
Brain and head transplants are totally possible and have been performed experimentally, although they result in near-total paralysis, for obvious reasons. Even someone with locked-in syndrome can easily morph into a healthy version of themself, if you have one already stored (although I'm not sure how Cassie would deal with the ethical dilemma - is it worth killing the near-comatose original, or new versions created whenever she wants to interact with the world? Morphing is kind of inherently immoral.) Even this might be unnecessary - given that the "connection" appears to be in the cloned Yeerk tissue, that might remain a viable morph all on it's own, allowing the now-free "host" to live on.
But for all we know, lost tissue evaporates when a morph ends.
I am 100% out of ideas, but I bet you guys have some other ones.
Comments:
u/granker [+5] (4 hours later)
(You might want to rename this thread it's a little spoilery) I'm not sure Cassie would want to return in the first place, having died honorably and doing what she felt was right.
Regardless.
If Cassie's mind is still running in the Z-Space yeerk tissue, that body can be displaced through a wormhole and she could potentially survive in a Chee host.
When you start to introduce time travel, especially in stories originally written for an ten year old demographic, the rules get strange. Travelling through Sario Rips and using the Time Matrix are the methods through which canon time travel can occur.
If you go back in time with a Sario Rip you have a limited period to save Cassie. If your split timeline catches up to the period in which the rip occurs and there are multiple copies of an individual existing at the same time, they're both erased from reality.
Although this doesn't happen in the novels when all the Others were simply killed. Corpses still exist. This may suggest that Ax's explanation was Andalite folklore that has no basis in truth. If that's so, you can simply go through a rip, acquire and spawn off a copy of Cassie and then return.
Meanwhile, there's this absolutely broken technology which should not exist in a Rational!Animorphs story
The Time Matrix is a spherical device created by the Ellimist, which allows the user to travel through time and space. In addition, the user can alter reality itself even without time travel, making people remember things that did not happen. Should the user request something entirely detached from reality, it has the power to send the user to a new universe specifically created for them.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (9 hours later)
The Time Matrix is amusing, but I was actually thinking of the book where they're picked up by a ship in z-space; they have an entire adventure on an alien planet, but no time passes on Earth.
If you could pull that off in both directions, you have easy, effective time travel. All you'd need is some kind of z-space beacon.
u/confettibin [+3] (10 hours later)
not sure Cassie would want to return in the first place
An earlier, less jaded version of Cassie might feel differently. I'm pretty sure they still have access to every iteration they've acquired so far.
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (9 hours later)
A couple of ideas. Also keep in mind we aren't 100% sure Cassie is dead yet.
Cassies body is still in Z-space right? In canon, the Animorphs' bodies once got picked up by a passing Andalite ship in Z-space... this was noted as rare in canon and its probably even more improbable in this rational AU, but with the Ellimist and Crayak manipulating things, it is still possible. Also, afterwards there were somehow transported back with another undocumented side effect of the interaction of z-space and morphing. (Book 18, thanks to the wikia because I couldn't remember the details and I might have missed this one anyway since there were so many and the library never had them all at once)
In canon an "allergy" to a morph (literally how Ax described it in canon, although in this rational AU "allergy" might be more a metaphor) caused Rachael to have problem morphing and eventually caused her to eject an entire copy of the morph in question - an alligator- from her body. If they could trigger that artificially and they have a morph copy of Cassie, problem solved.
Finally, there is the narratively unsatisfying, but possible given canon, option that the Ellimist has created this as a dream/illusion in order to teach the Animorphs some kind of useful lesson.
u/CitrusJ [+3] (10 hours later)
It's quite possible that this was engineered by the Ellimist, but on purpose too.
He called her one of the "Key Pieces" before. It might be her death in this situation that helps spur the rest of the "Key Pieces" towards the eventual victory he forsees, where her not being there or not dying there does not cause that
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (12 hours later)
There's three basic possibilities:
- Cassie's death is part of the entity's plan.
- The entity is not the same one that inscribed the message with the names of the key players (compatible with possibility #1).
- The entity was mistaken or mislead about Cassie's chance of survival.
u/gbear605 [+2] history’s greatest story (13 hours later)
Just curious, how did you get your flair?
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (13 hours later)
Winning 5 of the biweekly writing challenges on this subreddit. The current challenge is Romance, which you can find stickied on the /r/rational front page.
u/CoolGuy54 [+2] (30 days later)
This would allow you to duplicate people, and one of the duplicates could easily sacrifice themself to become Cassie (among other applications.)
That last one is the understatement of the century. I think this would be OP, there'd be no way to avoid the conclusion that they have to make clone armies of themselves, and then that power takes over the story.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (30 days later)
Heh, yeah. It should work, though, unless the morphing device was specifically engineered to prevent it.
It's not as if the story hasn't already made innovations like that into a big deal, with the ability for morphs to read people's minds and the thought-speak weapon taking out the entire Yeerk pool.
u/lsparrish [+1] (12 hours later)
My idea is that the Yeerk pool attack thus far has been a simulation. The entity will deliver memories of the simulation to the "real" individuals before it happens and thus give them the chance to make a more optimal decision.