Our Ultimate Corporeal Forms...
If you think young people look bizarre now, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...
(latest update April 1, 1998)
by J.R. Mooneyham
(HEY! What happened to S.C. Summers, et al? Find out here.)
One common vision of our future is that someday our technology transforms us all
into Kryptonians (i.e., a race of supermen and superwomen, invulnerable to harm and
capable of casual space flight through hard vacuum, dressed only in our undies).
But those of us more familiar with hard science know this particular Kryptonian vision to
be laughable. Not because of the super powers aspect; that's plenty feasible in theory.
No, where the Kryptonian fantasy breaks down in the main is the part where we're
still prancing around in bodies that look a lot like what we have now. That's balderdash
of the most outrageous kind. In the comic books we might do this-- but in real life,
no way.
Why not? For one thing our present biological forms are simply too fragile, too
limited, and too difficult and costly to repair or upgrade. Stick'em into 99.9999%
of all the possible physical locations in this Universe (the hard vacuum of space,
and other inhospitable climes), and they turn themselves inside out within seconds-- if they
don't freeze solid or vanish in a puff of flame first. Cut off only their oxygen,
and they die in minutes. Punch a large enough hole in the skin bag that surrounds
it, and there too you have a useless sack of meat within minutes. But even if all these
factors were somehow dealt with, there'd still be the matters of extremely short
lifespan (there's turtles and trees that outlast us by 100% to 1000%), high vulnerability
to disease, and dismal information processing capacities (compared to what's theoretically
possible).
Tally it all up, and there's really only a few reasons anyone might keep the same
physical form we've suffered with for millions of years now, if there were other
alternatives available: insanity, masochism, emotional/hormonal attachments, and
tradition.
As there's not much of an argument we can give to folks claiming reasons of insanity
or masochism for wanting their old bodies, we won't address those motivations here.
But what about emotional/hormonal attachments? No one can deny that these help
define the very essence of present day humanity. And it could take quite some time
to emulate these things in software-- much longer than recreating the basic logic
and processing circuits of the brain in silicon might require.
But emulate them we will, sooner or later. So eventually the addiction most of
us have to these natural drug-induced states could be taken with us to new, synthetic
forms. Of course, in the emulations we'll likely prune away the more self-destructive
and violent tendencies of our hormonal patterns, in order to better perfect our future
behavior and capacities.
But still this leaves the combination of ancestral memory and the hormonal/emotional
response to appearance and other facets of physical perception, that we depend on
so much today. Let us take the single hormonal trigger of physical appearance for
a test case here. In this instance, females might not be as affected by this as males;
so females might make this transition from old fashioned human appearances to new
fangled inhuman looks, with less aid from software writers and other engineering
specialities. But there remains the men. Males-- especially males clinging to the old hormonal
surges and traditional appearances-- won't take kindly or easily to transference
of their sexual responses from the familiar female form of old to something resembling
a high tech octopus. Successfully engineering such a transition would be a formidable
task for even the most brilliant of minds.
But will sexual responses even be a part of our ultimate future? It would seem
unlikely, as they will no longer be necessary for reproduction or sensual gratification;
and as there'll be absolutely no 'natural' reason for one person's body to be weaker than another's in the new format (as human females vis a vis men have been on average,
over the millennia). The traditional physical dominance of men over women (and its
sexual implications), would seem largely irrelevant as well.
No, there'll be little or no good reason for clinging to traditional human sexuality
in the far future-- but many reasons for casting it aside.
Once the benefits of reproduction and pleasure are removed from our heterosexual
nature, what's left, if you insist on keeping it a part of society? Potential for
discrimination, and not much else.
So our ultimate corporeal forms will probably be asexual (sexless), rather than
heterosexual, as today.
Of course, considering the strong attachment that at least the male side of our
species has for the current state of affairs, we can expect some rough going in making
this particular change to ourselves. On the flip side, the female of the species
might be expected to more readily embrace the new paradigm; all of which may point the
way to a serious rift between the sexes when the time comes to make this transition.
The Ultimate Configuration
Imagine a complex mass of slender tendrils, with five major branchings, and many
levels of sub-branchings off each of these.
Close inspection of each major tendril with the naked eye would reveal the same one
into two finger design repeated over and over again in the pattern of sub-branchings,
resulting in a total of hundreds or thousands of finger-like extensions of varying
sizes along each major manipulative organ.
With the use of a magnifying glass it would become apparent that the number and
scale of fingerthings extend into the very small, and even microscopic scales, giving
a total of manipulative extensions ranging easily into the millions or even billions
of useful digits. The very smallest of the forms may be small and versatile enough to
manipulate individual atoms...yes, we're speaking of readily available nanotechnology
in realtime here, literally at our fingertips.
When completely unfurled and open, the entire body would be shaped much like an
ocean star fish, spanning maybe nine feet in diameter.
The advantages of unfurled tendrils would include:
*faster energy absorption or dissipation (depending on the surrounding environment)
*faster large scale physical action
*finer resolution of physical manipulation of the environment
*finer resolution of sensing of the environment
The disadvantages of unfurled tendrils would include:
*relatively slower thinking
*relatively more vulnerability to damage
When withdrawn and loosely closed, the mass would resemble a large rough surfaced
spheroid, around the diameter of a medicine ball.
When tightly closed, the form might be smaller than a softball.
The advantages of curled up balls would include:
*energy conservation
*minimal energy absorption or dissipation
*faster processing/thinking
*faster self-repair
*faster small-scale physical action
The disadvantages of curled up balls would include:
*reduced interaction with environment, both for sensory or manipulative purposes--
it'd be easier for the entity to be unaware of approaching dangers, and more difficult
for it to respond in any physical manner to same
Energy
Logically, such a being as is described in this piece would require a substantial
onboard energy source under certain circumstances. What could it be?
Possibly a miniature matter/antimatter reactor, in some cases. The being would be as near
to 100% efficient as the laws of physics (and its basically human impulses) would
allow-- so it wouldn't require nearly as much raw energy to perform the feats described
below as would be required by us today endeavoring to match the acts.
But dependence on a ready supply of costly antimatter could greatly hobble our star fish form for decades or even centuries to come. So might there be other alternatives?
Yes! A suitably small Pacop-Hostel star reactor, as described elsewhere in the Signposts Document, could provide a nearly ideal power source for our star fish form. P-H reactors are scalable power sources (nearly as large or as small as desired), yet capable of prodigious energy output. Based on "Q-balls" (single atom-like structures of varying sizes), bombardment with protons provides an energy yield as good or better than an efficient nuclear fusion reactor. Thus, a P-H reactor equipped star fish could perhaps enjoy a power store similar to that of a good-sized 20th century city-- usually much more energy than the star fish could actually use during most circumstances.
The P-H reactor would require some periodic maintenance by the star fish, but this would usually entail nothing more complex than feeding it some raw mass occasionally to replace that used, according to an efficiency rate likely not much different from Einstein's E=mc squared. I.e., a star fish might be capable of tossing asteroids around by burning the mass of a single stale doughnut.
The Ultimate at Work and Play
Our Kryptonian selves will be capable of astonishing feats, from today's perspective.
They will possess enormous speed of thought and action, making it near impossible
for natural causes or accidents to do them significant harm. Herein will lie their
invulnerability.
Their extensive use of synthetic single molecule construction in their forms will
make them incredibly strong and resiliant-- which will be essential for the degree
of physical stress they will often undergo in their high speed movements. This will
also contribute much to their amazing strength: one of these beings might possess the
strength to fell a skyscraper like a man today might do to a garden weed. Of course,
it wouldn't need to do this by force (though it could)-- it could acheive the same
end by simply taking the building apart, molecule by molecule, at super speed.
Their healing powers too will be formidable-- though it may be rare that they need
them. These entities will be able to grow entire replacements for major limbs within
minutes, and possibly recombine the whole from a million scattered remnants in not
much longer time.
Talk about brilliance! Our Kryptonian selves will perhaps be as smart as Einstein
equipped with a Cray supercomputer-- at their worst moments-- such as after severe
brain damage from a collision with an asteroid at high speed. Under more normal circumstances, each U.C.F. will easily possess an intelligence greater than the networked
might of all our greatest geniuses and Nobel Prize winners alive in the world today (1990s)
could muster.
And they'll be able to use all this brain power at near instantaneous speeds. The
intellectual accomplishments of such beings will be awesome-- even where they are
allowed only thousandths of a second to ponder a problem.
Gravitic manipulation and the Buffer Field
Of course, we'll also enjoy other capacities, possibly including effective control
over gravity in our immediate vicinity, in order to maintain desired levels of inertia
amid movements and transport, reduce the time required for accelerations of various sorts, and help in the reshaping of our environments on a wide scale.
How could we possibly achieve this? Actually, this will be merely an extension
of technologies in use long before we're capable of transitioning to our ultimate
corporeal forms. Basically the technique will be based on vast clouds of nanotechnology
spawned 'dust-mites', to use a handy analogy from our current circumstances. These huge
clouds of high tech dust mites will always surround each being in all directions,
extending perhaps for tens or even hundreds of miles (the greater the maximum diameter
of the cloud, the more generally useful it can be). Another term for this concept might
be "Buffer Field".
These dust mites will at times individually be so small as to be undetectable to anything
but an electron microscope. Their physical construction will be fairly simple, with
a very basic processing center and minimal memory serving to network it with its
local fellows. Some mites will possess 'claws' or 'legs', while others have 'wings' or 'fins',
and still others have completely different propulsion or environmental manipulatory
tools. Essentially a typical dust-mite of the type we're discussing here will greatly resemble a living insect of today's world-- with the primary differences being size
and the materials of construction.
How could anything this small and limited be of any value at all-- much less provide
effective control of gravity itself to its master?
By its numbers. The clouds surrounding our ultimate corporeal forms will consist
of untold trillions upon trillions of these synthetic organisms. These dust-mites
will be cable of forming all sorts of improvised structures within mere fractions
of a second which will serve their host being in an almost unlimited variety of ways.
One of the means by which these synthetic mites will leverage their individual
limitations into earth-shaking powers will be their ant-like or bee-like communal
'brain'. Each individual unit will be networked to its closest dozen or so companions,
forming a slightly smarter unit overall than any one dust mite. Perhaps a dozen of these
family groups will form a larger 'block' group, that is smarter still. A handful
of block groups will network to form a 'neighborhood', with yet a higher I.Q. This
hierarchy continues upward until an overall intelligence for the entire cloud is achieved--
an intelligence possibly much more powerful than a single one of our super computers
is today (1990s).
Our ultimate corporeal self will usually give orders to the cloud, and the cloud
itself will determine how best to carry out those orders. But the cloud will also
be itself able to pass information to the host-- and perhaps certain kinds of commands
of its own, as well-- in limited cases where the safety of the host may be in question,
and similar matters.
The buffer field will serve the host as its primary sensory array too, with many
types of dust-mites designed especially to collect data about the surrounding environment,
and communicate it expeditiously to the host entity.
The huge cloud will be capable of condensing rapidly to become an impervious, super
hard shell encasing its host, when such protection is required.
Lower densities of the cloud could provide a tough but elastic skin fitting its
host like a superb glove, as a level of protection less impervious than the hard shell above,
but still capable of protection against most harm.
In still lower densities the cloud may act as customized extensions to the being's
actual limbs, much as we use various specialty hand tools today (1990s) for peering into
otherwise inaccessible places, or retrieving fallen fasteners from small cracks and
crevices.
Even lower densities of the cloud matter might serve as cushions against impacts
or projectiles, protecting the host and/or other items at the host's behest.
The cloud could also help meter the penetration of things like radiation, dust,
and other foreign elements into the host being's sheltered space.
But what of the major benefit originally listed? Gravity manipulation? How would
this be accomplished?
Firstly, the cloud's capacity to create ad hoc virtual structures for reasons of
energy absorption and dissipation (among others) would allow it to act in some instances
with a 'hydraulic' nature-- efficiently leveraging smaller forces into larger ones, and thereby amplifying the effective strength of the host itself-- which essentially
would manifest as an advantage over the more typical physical restraints of a region,
including gravity.
Furthermore, the cloud would be able to control and transfer forces within its
body so easily as to greatly mitigate the normal effects of acceleration and deceleration
upon the host at the central nexus of the dust mite mantle. In essence, this would
allow the host to control to some substantial degree the inertia it experienced, and
thereby lessen the impact of local gravity conditions and total momentum upon its
actions. This would all contribute greatly to the creature's top speeds, manueverability, and many other capacities.
In sum, by varying the size, shape, internal virtual structure, and attenuation
of its surrounding cloud, the host could tune its own personal nebula of dust mites
to counteract, exploit, or otherwise manipulate the external forces of gravity and
like physical elements with which it came into contact.
Oh, and by the way, due to the highly expendable and energetic nature of these
dust mites, some of you might be wondering what happens when a U.C.F. (Utlimate Corporeal
Form) loses a sizable portion of its mite collection-- and how these things are energized, anyway.
Dust mites will be able to reproduce themselves using almost any form of matter
available in the vicinity, so long as there's a minimum 'critical mass' number and
configuration of the mites to perform the task (it could be you'd need several mites
of a handful of different species to do the job correctly). In cases where the local materials
somehow were unsuitable for mite construction, the immense creative powers of the
host U.C.F. could be brought into play, to transform the raw materials available into that
required by the mites.
All this, of course, could take place in a few thousandths of a second.
Now as to the energy source of the mites...there'd likely be several alternatives
available, and the mites might switch from one to another, depending on the circumstances.
Many mites could be so simple in design that plain old heat would force their mechanisms
to function-- indeed, the 'computers' themselves in some mites might be of the mechanical
rather than electrical variety-- enabling large numbers of mites to work so long as they are in sunlight, or otherwise heated by the host or environment. There's
many ways such heat could be generated, stored, or sources found, which I will leave
to your imagination.
Dust mite clouds will often be large enough and capable of exploitative structures
suitable for utilizing gravity tides and/or natural magnetic fields for energy production. Numerous works expounding
on the production of energy via gravity tides and magnetic fields of planets and black holes have been and continue to be
published, so we won't repeat those designs here. Suitable magnetic fields could be artificially generated by a U.C.F. or other device to drive a cloud, or exploited from natural sources like some planets, asteroids, and moons. Gravity tides sufficient to drive
a dust mite cloud could be found around virtually any body of mass larger than a
house. So dinner might never be very far away for a dust mite cloud.
Web slinging
Adding the capability to produce a variety of spider web like extrusions would
greatly enhance the U.C.F. A suitably fluttery and long extrusion could conceiveably
allow a curled up form to glide on planetary winds much as an immature spider does. Make the extrusion an "electrodynamic tether", and the U.C.F. can exploit interplanetary magnetic fields and the Solar wind for movement as well as energy generation.
Web filaments could be arrayed to collect or dissipate energy much more efficiently than
the star fish shape itself. Data collection and/or transmission might also be enhanced
by suitable web-like constructions, under certain circumstances. Filaments could
be used to extend physical reach and mobility, as ropes and related equipment do us today (1990s).
They could also be used as hastily improvised defenses and barriers against other
physical elements-- insulation against energy transfer (extreme heat and cold), threatening organisms (protection against physical or microscopic assault by other entities
in the vicinity), or as theraputic refuges (protective cocoons for periods of healing
or rest).
Note that the use of web filaments would in some ways overlap with the possible
ways the dust mite cloud could be utilized. However, weaving a web for such things
would provide more permanent and possibly closer to ideal solutions for some problems,
than utilizing the dust mites for all purposes.
When might the human race actually achieve this Ultimate Corporeal Form?
I can give no precise dates for the transformation of our species into this ultimate
physical manifesation-- indeed, the conversion will almost certainly be piecemeal
and gradual, taking place over centuries, at the least.
But were I to hazard a guess, I'd estimate that the majority of beings originating
from our present 20th century humanity would, by the year 2660 A.D (27th century),
be a lot like what I've described here. There might still be 5-25 billion human
beings roughly something like we are now (1990s), on Earth and elsewhere-- but there'll be far
more of us who've made the leap to these Ultimate Corporeal Forms (or something inbetween
U.C.F. and 20th century human) by then-- perhaps many times more. And the difference in capabilities between a human being such as we are now, and these U.C.F.'s, will
be so enormous as to make it analogous to that between ants and man today...
What Comes After?
Nothing lasts forever. Though the physical form described here will be nearly as
perfect as anything can be in this universe (for its purpose), and may well serve
us adequately for thousands of years, it too shall someday be obsolete. Eventually
the Ultimate Corporeal Form will make way for the next stage in our development: an entirely
non-physical entity, likely of even greater power and capabilities than the being
described in this piece.
But that's an entirely different subject...
The above article(s) come from and make references to a collection copyright © 1993,
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by J.R. Mooneyham (except where otherwise noted in the text). Text here explicitly authored by J.R. Mooneyham may be freely copied and
distributed for non-commercial purposes in paper and electronic form without charge if this copyright
paragraph and link to the timeline (http://www.jrmooneyham.com/spint.html) are included.
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