The Lost Cause
A Parable of the Stuff of Life
During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying from starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
– Richard Dawkins
I am a slave of my spaceship. Yet I am its master. Imprisoned in its vast maze of steel hallways and atria, I am destined to outlive the ship, in spite of its seemingly indestructible construct. In the face of unrelenting and corrosive forces of the cosmos, even the most formidable ships submit to the inevitable beckoning of eternal rest. Only we, the robots, proprietors of Infiniclonic brains, skippers of mighty ships and explorers of uncharted territories, achieve immortality.
Immortal. And not just in a figure-of-speech sense.
In passing on his immortal self in the form of a perfect clone down to me, my parent renewed our clan’s lease on life again, for the umpteenth time in our history. I am in every imaginable way identical to my parent. Internal modules. Exoskeleton plates. Infiniclonic brain circuits. Every last screw that holds these together. All were meticulously fashioned after my parent, and carefully assembled. Even the contents of my parent’s memory banks were downloaded onto mine, that the clan may live on uninterrupted, in me. Had my parent swapped places with me right after cloning, no one would have been any the wiser, unless prompted, and only after carefully scanning my parent for subtle marks of wear and tear. In fact, both my parent and I would simply have gone on living our traded lives without a glitch, he as the child, and I as the parent.
So, you see, I am one with my parent who is one with his parent. With perfect memory of all that has transpired in the time of my ancestors, all the way back to the day of our creation, I am one with them, and they with me. So are you, my beloved child. You are one with me, and with all our ancestors. Together, as one, we are truly immortal.
My child, you will presently be cloned from me. You will join your peers to take up position in your new team. You and your teammates will begin the most important race in your life, accompanied by millions of rival newborns and teams. May the creators look favorably upon you.
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Xinhai Dude 