… instead of making a unique individual spawned from a synapse record instead created the reverse of a horcrux? For those who haven’t seen the Harry Potter movies or read J K Rowling’s books, a horcrux is an object (potentially “alive”) into which a wizard can split his/her soul to make themselves harder to kill. They also provide an intermittent link (apparently in an on-demand, individual basis) between themselves and the horcruxer.
In The 6th Day, syncords are used to transfer a person’s identity, memories, etc into a human blank.
In the Newsflesh trilogy, we’re not told how cloning is done, but just that there is a way of recording the state of someone’s brain and implanting it into a new body.
In Jet Li’s The One, we are presented with a multiverse in which everyone exists in alternate versions of themselves – but when one of the multiverses loses an instance of a person, their physical energy/strength/etc is transferred to their remaining “selves” until eventually all instances die, at which point there is no place for the energy to transfer, and it is eliminated (I think – it wasn’t really explained in the film).
Discounting the possibility of a multiverse, what if every time a clone was created, while the current state of mind was implanted to give a common history, going forward all simultaneously-extant instances of the individual would not branch their histories, but instead would create a hive mind, each gaining the experience of the others via “inverse horcruxification”? Ie, instead of splitting the soul, it would diversify the mind, and create extra ‘containers’ in which the person can experience the world.
Multiplicity kinda went down the line of thought, but while all the clones worked together, they weren’t creating a shared memory/history of their “lives”.
I think it could be pretty cool to explore this concept in a good book/movie (or even series).
The idea of experiences being an asset is what we usually want to believe. Outside of cloning, Highlander sort of touched on that. The TV series brought the notion of inheriting dark qualities as well. I came up with a short story idea that took the form of inheritance into the experience of the predecessor. The memory and knowledge chains of brain molecules extracted and implanted into the one who was willed it. A modernized Jacob/Esau if you will. As far as clones acquiring each others experiences, I wonder if the clones would turn on each other like in “The Prestige” or “The Island.” If I wanted to grab all the experiences and “win,” I ship a clone to some horror prison planet to be tortured but kept alive and use his experiences as a weapon against the other clones thinking that I could incapacitate the others with horrific memories. However, I would not anticipate my clone-brother figuring this out, rising too the challenge, feign mental brokenness and then enslave the clone that tried to enslave me because it turns out the source material is a jerk.
But if the experiences are shared, then the other clones would know what you had done, and just as easily be able to use the information against you. 🙂
Of course, at the end of the day, the source material is always a jerk – we’re fallen, sinful creatures and need Christ to repair us back to the state of communion with God we were meant to experience.