Dreams of Alter Egos

Dearest Rachel –

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream worth telling you about (and had both the time to write it down before it dissipated and no real topic to discuss with you that might supersede it). The problem is, while it may have answered a long-known problem of science fiction while I was in the dreamscape, the fact that it was running on dream logic meant that whatever it was that solved the question disappeared – or was never really there in the first place, but just made perfect sense in the dream.

Anyway, the question at hand had to do with what might be referred to as ‘the teleporter problem.’ You know, because the teleporter basically digitizes the atoms that make up a person and reconstitutes them at the destination coordinates; is that rebuilt version of you still you, or is it someone (or something) else? And what’s become of the original you? Is this teleported version actually you, or have you been effectively ‘killed’ and replaced by the teleported version, complete with all of your old memories, so this new version just thinks it’s you?

It’s more than enough to give Dr. McCoy nightmares, and he lived (will live?) in a time and place where and when that was a commonplace thing.

Anyway, my dream’s answer to this was that this other version was, in fact, a whole separate person, with all the same looks and maybe all of the same memories (it didn’t cross my mind to ask), but definitely not me anymore. The reason I could say this with such certainty is simplicity itself; I was still left over from the original readout, and my data simply built a new version of myself the place I was trying to travel to. Essentially, a version of me got to go where I was intending to, but I knew nothing about it, since I hadn’t made it over there myself.

Now why I was trying to do this, I’ve no idea. The particularly strange thing was that I was apparently trying to get myself aboard a ship that had already left port, and onto a cruise that I’d basically already been on, that being the Los Angeles-to-Brisbane leg of my trip from early last year. This is the spot where I’m left shrugging and muttering something about dream logic, and move on. Maybe it was going to stop at a few different destinations en route, and I wanted to get footage of myself experiencing those places.

Anyway, in the dream, I did actually get something from my new self about the originally intended stop in Maui (that was replaced by Hilo, Hawai’i in real life – and even then, started off in the middle of a cloudburst that, admittedly, tapered off by the end of the day, but still…), but as I was reviewing it, I realized that I was just watching someone else’s memories. It didn’t matter that this guy started off as a version of myself; whatever he was experiencing, wherever he was, he wasn’t me anymore, and I wasn’t him, any more than I was anybody else on earth. Once he was created, whatever memories he was making were his own, and not mine.

Obvious, right? Well, how many people have thought about it up until now?

Anyway, with that having been learned, I didn’t give the matter much further thought. After all, we’d just been through the Thanksgiving holiday season and the preparations leading up to it; I couldn’t be bothered with what this simulacrum that looked like me was doing with himself, especially since I wasn’t experiencing a moment of what he was. But at some point, it occurred to me to check the ship’s itinerary, and I realized that several ports had gone by without him making any posts about his visits to them – which seemed out of character for the ‘me’ that I had sent over there. Of course, I had already discovered that ‘he’ wasn’t really ‘me’ – although you’d think that, with all the memories and everything else that made up my character, he’d be close enough – so he couldn’t necessarily be relied upon to act exactly how I would in any given situation.

Now, how I managed to get on the ship myself and track him down, I don’t know. We’re back to dream logic at this point, I think. In any event, he was in one of the pubs aboard the ship, chatting up a fairly pretty young woman (and by young, I’d guess somewhere between the mid-thirties to low forties; compared to me, that’s young. Remember, I’m looking for someone who looks and acts young, like you used to; but it’s almost easier to start with someone who actually is young, assuming she’s willing to talk with me. Somehow, this version of me seems to be better at this than I am, which makes me rather jealous, to be honest).

Now, on a wholly unrelated subject, I’d also discovered in my dream an easy way to animate a character rig; just hold down the F7 key while using a joystick to control the character, all while recording the action. Mind you, I’ve no idea if that would work in any real-life program; I assume that, if it were really that simple, it would a.) be common knowledge, and b.) more animators would be putting stuff like that out on YouTube and the like, rather than the single-panel animatics that are much more common these days (not that there’s anything wrong with that; art is art, and should be encouraged regardless).

Thus armed with a topic that I figured ‘I’ would be interested in, combined with more than a tinge of envy at his apparent success with this young lady, I approached him/myself to tell him/me about this latest discovery on the animation front. Bored at being suddenly ignored, the woman picked up her drink and walked off. I was profusely apologetic to my irritated alter ego at having caused that, but even I could tell how insincere I sounded. For what it was worth, he did seem interested in what I had to say, which was really what prompted the girl to drift away – and it wasn’t an immediate “oh, you’re going to talk to your doppelganger rather than me? Well, hmph!” type of storming off, either. More of a “huh, well, this conversation’s going to go on for a while yet, huh?” before wandering off for greener and more attentive pastures.

Oddly enough, I was going to wait on sending this to you until I could animate this, presumably using the F7-key method my dream explained to me. However, upon waking and committing this to virtual paper, that’s clearly not an option, even if I did have another topic in the works to write you about this morning. However, maybe this is something I ought to consider working on, with the help of Sora or one of those other AI video-creating programs; take all of these dreamscapes I’ve told you about and make animations of the lot of them, complete with a self-and-therapist (who might or might not look a lot like you) interplay to serve as a connecting device between them all.

Then again, it may take a while before I get to the point where I can actually implement this process, especially if I want to try and do this in-house. The video our church did featuring the pastors on Thanksgiving Eve was pretty impressive, but the Sora watermark was a little intrusive, and the voices didn’t always sound like them; I want to believe I could do better than that, so I need to study up before I actually try to pull this off.

Anyway, until then, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it still.