I thought I'd post a recent line of thinking I had about the memory catacombs of Brunnis.
Basically, why would the Brunnen-G go in for such a pointless and
horrifying death process? What purpose
did the catacombs of memory serve, if any, and why
didn't it go to Brunnis 2?
I don't know that I can fully answer those questions.
But I have a theory.
Essentially, I'm thinking that the Brunnen-G were trying
to replicate, with their technology, the soul or essence transmitting
abilities of the insects. They were only
partly successful, but built a cult around an immature
technology.
The Insects, Mantrid tells us, had the ability to pass their essence
from one individual to another. Both the Insect and Mantrid, in that
episode, tell us that the Insect essence is their soul, their life
force, and equivalent to the human soul.
The Insect, in its flashback in Mantrid, tells us that it passed its
essence into humans. We know that it was able to pass its essence from
one human to another, although imperfectly - it's observed in IWHS, GigaShadow and
Mantrid.
In IWHS we see His Shadow kill Kai and steal his memories,
or his soul from his body, at the moment of his death.
When this happens we see a milky stream of images flow from one to the
other. This phenomena, this milky stream or flow, happens clearly
only a couple of other times. Two of these occasions are
when Kai destroys a predecessor.
We know from the Predecessors, that they've killed and stolen the
memories of thousands. It is a skill or ability particular to them
alone, that we know of. I would suggest
it is part of the Insects abilities, and is related to or the same
ability that it uses to pass its essence from host to host.
However, the most similar time is when the Brunnen-G 'burst of life'
machine, cuts Kai in half. We see the same sort of thing. In this
case, the life essence, or soul, or memory stream is drawn into and
stored on a compact disk.
The Burst of Life machine is apparently designed to kill
a person in the most horrifying and terrifying way, and at
the moment of death, to capture their 'lives' at the point
of the extreme emotions of their death, on CD's, which are
then stored, along with a template or map of their bodies.
I note that Kai doesn't revive until the light from the Blue
Star strikes his CD and apparently releases his memories/life
essence/soul back to his body.
The similarity of effect suggests that the Brunnen-G were trying to
imitate, or reproduce, technologically, the Insects ability to capture
or take souls.
However, Mantrid states that while the Insects had the
ability to transfer their essence, souls, from one body to
another, it was 'not something we humans have ever been
able to master.'
Obviously, Mantrid has no direct knowledge of the Insects.
His knowledge must come from the ancient records. Possibly
even old Brunnen-G records. His phrasing suggests that at some time in
the past, there was an effort to duplicate this insect ability in
humans. An effort that never succeeded.
Interestingly, Mantrid has built a machine to capture his soul, or
memories, or life essence, at the moment of death.
This part of it appears to be similar in intention to
the Brunnen-G burst of life technique.
But it seems inadequate, since Mantrid requires the Insect
transduction organ to make it work.
Of course, the Brunnen-G technique seems to require a sudden and
horrifying death after a period of terror, so their technique may have
required an emotional 'burst' to raise
the life energy to the point where it could be recorded.
The big difference between Mantrid's machine, and the Brunnen-G, is that
the Brunnen-G were simply stored. Mantrid's machine's purpose is to
allow his mind to function, to 'live' in the machine.
What if the Brunnen-G were after Immortality?
What if one of their avenues of research was to try to
duplicate the insect technique for passing their souls/memories/life
forces into new bodies? If they could
do that, they need never fear death again. Instead, they
could live forever in a succession of healthy young bodies.
They could even switch genders. Be tall or short, slim or powerful,
white or black. Physical perfection and freedom awaited them.
I think we can almost guarantee that they tried for it.
Certainly from Mantrid's old records, we can assume that someone was
doing research along those lines.
We also know from Brigadoom that the Brunnen-G did seek immortality and
find it after they left Brunnis. This suggests that they may also have
searched for it before
they left Brunnis.
Their Burst of Life Machine is very very suggestive, as I've observed
before. And we know from the memory record, that the technique or
technology dates back at least to the Insect Wars, because Stan
encounters a record from that time.
We do know for sure that the Brunnen-G were up to their elbows in the
Insect Wars. And from Kai's stinger ship,
that they were involved in trying to use or adapt insect
technology, or perhaps adapt insects to their technology.
And we also know, from Mantrid, that whoever was looking
for this ability, did not succeed.
Assume that the Brunnen-G were after immortality. That they tried to
master the insect technique for transferring souls, and that they were
only partly successful. They could remove and store souls. But they
weren't able to 'download' them into new bodies...
All this is speculation, but I think its reasonable speculations.
Assuming they got this far. What would they do?
I think we have a modern equivalent. Cryogenics.
Currently, we can freeze people, but we can't revive them.
Perhaps we may never be able to do it. But, or so modern
folklore goes, there are people right now having their
bodies frozen after or at the time of death, in the hopes
that they can be revived at some time in the future when technology
catches up to them.
So perhaps the Brunnen-G were doing the same thing.
They'd half mastered a technology that would give them godlike
immortality.
Perhaps all those CD's were the Brunnen-G taking a chance
that in the near/far future, they'd master the technology
to download into a new body, and they could be reborn, immortal.
It seems a much better bet than Cryogenic freezing.
They'd already seen it worked for the Insects. And they'd
already mastered half the process. Perhaps, to the Brunnen-G, it just
seemed like it would only be a matter of time.
Inevitable.
If there was a good prospect of rebirth and immortality thereafter, then
suddenly the whole burst of life thing begins to make a whole lot of
sense.
Of course, the process was never fully mastered. The Brunnen-G were
never reborn. I can imagine a social craze
slowly dying down as the breakthrough never comes.
But I suspect that neither the research, nor the burst of life process
ever goes completely away. The people who participated in the burst of
life probably also put away trusts to make sure that the research
continued, to guarantee that they would be reborn. As well, the people
who went through the process probably put away annuities or
trusts to make sure they were well cared for or well heeled
when they were reborn.
In short, its likely that if the Burst of Life caught on in any
significant way, it would be almost inevitably become
a long term social institution. The whole point of a Burst of Life and
eventual rebirth would be that you wanted a long term infrastructure in
place. So substantial resources were probably committed and stayed.
In addition, the continuing, if diminished prospect of long eventual
immortality probably meant that the Burst of Life kept receiving a small
but steady stream of clients, even
after the initial enthusiasm passed.
After all, hope for the Burst of Life process may have become remote.
But just about every modern religion does
great business by promising immortality on much slenderer
threads of hope.
But the status of all those CD's might become legally tricky. For
instance, if this CD was a Brunnen-G waiting
to be reborn, what was its legal status? Person in
waiting? Person on holiday? What would happen if you
destroyed one of those? Would that be murder? Manslaughter?
What if one was tampered with? Partially erased? Stored somewhere
unsafe? Taken offworld? Misfiled? Lost?
The Brunnen-G or some of them were serious about this, so whatever
financial, legal, or civil rights or powers these individuals were able
to exert in life, they'd want to use to ensure their safety until their
rebirth.
In short, once this sort of thing started up, I think it
might become legally impossible to dismantle, even if they decided it
wasn't feasible. Any scientific argument that
it couldn't happen, would always run up against the legal argument that
some day, new, currently unknown technology would win the day. You
couldn't touch it. It would self perpetuate, legally and socially and
as an institution, long after all reasonable hope was gone.
It's entirely possible that the Catacombs of Memory weren't taken away
to Brunnis 2 because the legal structure of the Burst of Life was so
impenetrable and ironclad that there was no legal way to remove them
from the planet.
Or possibly the Brunnen-G took copies with them. Who knows.
Or possibly by the time of the departure, the whole Burst of
Life thing had turned into an embarrassing but unremoveable social
wart. A loony cult leftover from the past, that they
were glad to leave behind. Poet Man certainly has unkind
things to say about it, and seems to have set it up as a trap. This
suggests that it was largely discredited in his eyes, and possibly in
the eyes of the Brunnen-G of his time.
In any event, the Brunnen-G left Brunnis and some time after discovered
immortality through another method. If there
was any interest left in Burst of Life by that time, it
probably was negligible after that. This is probably why Kai has
trouble recognising it when he encounters it. By his time, the Burst of
Life was forgotten, it was a minor footnote, an embarrassing dead end in
the quest for immortality.
Mantrid and Brizon, in their own search for immortality,
shifted their attention from trying to download the
captured memories/soul/essence and focused instead on
designing an environment within the machine which would
allow them to have a sort of life, or at least experience
a continuing analogue of consciousness or existence.
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