This can just be words, it doesn't have to go anywhere, right
The tall, lanky figure stood a moment in front of the drop box, extending a spidery hand halfway to the terminal. Options scrolled across the screen, and finally the hand completed its motion, highlighting a number of routines and releasing the appropriate addresses from its personal box. Once the transaction was completed, the body known as Jorge Hendricks turned toward the subway depot at the other end of the block. The appointment for intake into the experiment was in less than two hours, and the institute was far across town. The expansion of release of his dataself to eight new contacts was scheduled to initiate tomorrow morning at dawn, unless he put in a stop order before then. That allowed for him to decline the experiment and retain his dataself within its current smaller circle, should the parameters, upon further reflection, appear disagreeable.
The experiment sought to discover the effects of a newly synthesized chemical originally to counteract the effects of cadmium poisoning, but with unknown side effects. Application of TBCA-40 to various tissues and membranes, different doses of ingestion, and direct entry into the bloodstream were to be tested, along with joint cadmium-TBCA-40 exposure trials. Jorge was briefed on the entire study, although his part in it would be restricted to one arena. The known structure of TBCA-40 and the process of its synthesis were downloaded to his system for his own edification. And, although it was a rarity these days for any person to exhibit the old pain-attachment at all, let alone for such a person to volunteer for a study, it was still routine procedure for participants to enter into an attachment-release course for the duration of the study. There had been such cases, particularly in the transitional decades when the releasing, as it was commonly referred to, had been most prominently underway. It was still unsettled among historians and scholars the full explanation for this phenomenon. Most agreed that cultural factors played a vital role, but there were some who felt this was merely the refuge of a people whose understanding of the biology and genetics of complex systems, despite the great advances made, was still largely incomplete. Whatever the full explanation, the peculiar relationship with the notion of a personal self that had arose and flourished for some three thousand years had evaporated over the course of a human lifetime or two. Individuals still had internal experiences, but the arbitrary division of that individual into a singular, discrete unit somehow functioning independently of the entire rest of the universe of which it was a part had gone out of mode. With the availability of increasingly intimate access to increasingly expansive types and volumes of personal data, people had begun to hold less tightly to their boundaries and feel less controlled by their own experiences and need for personal continuity. Recordings approaching the fidelity of personal memory were exchanged, biological and physiological data and insights could be passed from person to person, and the rudimentary beginnings of technologies such as cloning and brain reconstruction eroded the foundation of the old ideas.
But the momentary experience of pain was a more difficult thing to release, and so training in separation of felt experience while maintaining awareness (in order to report accurately) was provided for all experimental volunteers. There was strong data suggesting that population growth was leveling off, perhaps even as a result of the releasing, but the number of living beings, counted by individual bodies, was still quite large, and growing. The research and development into space travel, off-earth habitation, and celestial mining received the most volunteers, due to the obvious and pressing need for them. Psychological experiments drew quite a lot of attention and resources as well, out of natural curiosity more than direct necessity, but they were quite difficult and intricate to arrange. To this day, a workable structure of nature versus nurture studies had not been satisfactorily developed, since it would be difficult to prevent, without having already done the studies, the atavistic development in young subjects of notions of self, endangering the safety of the experiment. But work on the materials and processes needed for everyday life as it currently stood was still needed, and medicinal and pharmaceutical testing was far more effective when employed on the same species and in the same situations in which the substance was expected to act, which also had the added benefit of the test subjects freely choosing to enter into the study, being free to terminate at any time, and having the ability to separate unpleasant results from suffering that other species lacked.
Most likely, Jorge would delay his expansion order, which would upload the inner circle of his experiential dataself to the systems of some of his chosen connects. Most of his experiences and data were available to the public, and the majority of what was left he shared with other family members and friends; but it was customary to retain a core of the first-person insight records until death of the body threatened. This custom may fade in time, but the post-releasing culture was still new and adjusting. Jorge himself had deep memories of people who had given their life to the development of leukemia treatments, high-speed transportation belts, and insights into genetic aspects of deep vein thrombosis. But many more of his shared experiences came from others who had grown up in a controlled environment, spent years of their lives in experimental but ultimately successful orbital vehicles, or, like him, merely undergone inconsequential discomfort and small to moderate risk for some months, tossing his one instantiation of the human species into the great pool of data that eventually, gradually, enabled the instantiation of the whole.
The experiment sought to discover the effects of a newly synthesized chemical originally to counteract the effects of cadmium poisoning, but with unknown side effects. Application of TBCA-40 to various tissues and membranes, different doses of ingestion, and direct entry into the bloodstream were to be tested, along with joint cadmium-TBCA-40 exposure trials. Jorge was briefed on the entire study, although his part in it would be restricted to one arena. The known structure of TBCA-40 and the process of its synthesis were downloaded to his system for his own edification. And, although it was a rarity these days for any person to exhibit the old pain-attachment at all, let alone for such a person to volunteer for a study, it was still routine procedure for participants to enter into an attachment-release course for the duration of the study. There had been such cases, particularly in the transitional decades when the releasing, as it was commonly referred to, had been most prominently underway. It was still unsettled among historians and scholars the full explanation for this phenomenon. Most agreed that cultural factors played a vital role, but there were some who felt this was merely the refuge of a people whose understanding of the biology and genetics of complex systems, despite the great advances made, was still largely incomplete. Whatever the full explanation, the peculiar relationship with the notion of a personal self that had arose and flourished for some three thousand years had evaporated over the course of a human lifetime or two. Individuals still had internal experiences, but the arbitrary division of that individual into a singular, discrete unit somehow functioning independently of the entire rest of the universe of which it was a part had gone out of mode. With the availability of increasingly intimate access to increasingly expansive types and volumes of personal data, people had begun to hold less tightly to their boundaries and feel less controlled by their own experiences and need for personal continuity. Recordings approaching the fidelity of personal memory were exchanged, biological and physiological data and insights could be passed from person to person, and the rudimentary beginnings of technologies such as cloning and brain reconstruction eroded the foundation of the old ideas.
But the momentary experience of pain was a more difficult thing to release, and so training in separation of felt experience while maintaining awareness (in order to report accurately) was provided for all experimental volunteers. There was strong data suggesting that population growth was leveling off, perhaps even as a result of the releasing, but the number of living beings, counted by individual bodies, was still quite large, and growing. The research and development into space travel, off-earth habitation, and celestial mining received the most volunteers, due to the obvious and pressing need for them. Psychological experiments drew quite a lot of attention and resources as well, out of natural curiosity more than direct necessity, but they were quite difficult and intricate to arrange. To this day, a workable structure of nature versus nurture studies had not been satisfactorily developed, since it would be difficult to prevent, without having already done the studies, the atavistic development in young subjects of notions of self, endangering the safety of the experiment. But work on the materials and processes needed for everyday life as it currently stood was still needed, and medicinal and pharmaceutical testing was far more effective when employed on the same species and in the same situations in which the substance was expected to act, which also had the added benefit of the test subjects freely choosing to enter into the study, being free to terminate at any time, and having the ability to separate unpleasant results from suffering that other species lacked.
Most likely, Jorge would delay his expansion order, which would upload the inner circle of his experiential dataself to the systems of some of his chosen connects. Most of his experiences and data were available to the public, and the majority of what was left he shared with other family members and friends; but it was customary to retain a core of the first-person insight records until death of the body threatened. This custom may fade in time, but the post-releasing culture was still new and adjusting. Jorge himself had deep memories of people who had given their life to the development of leukemia treatments, high-speed transportation belts, and insights into genetic aspects of deep vein thrombosis. But many more of his shared experiences came from others who had grown up in a controlled environment, spent years of their lives in experimental but ultimately successful orbital vehicles, or, like him, merely undergone inconsequential discomfort and small to moderate risk for some months, tossing his one instantiation of the human species into the great pool of data that eventually, gradually, enabled the instantiation of the whole.