View source for AEHU/Plot/Esoterica Part II

==Part II: Categories of Life and Bekkler's Dilemma==

"Bekkler's Dilemma" refers to an effort made by Guru of Life Emeritus Norstein Bekkler to create human life from scratch, an offshoot of his research into the secrets behind Elemental energy channelling. Throughout the course of Bekkler's bioengineering effort, not a single subject exhibited the kind of awareness necessary to channel Elemental energies. At first Guru Bekkler suspected flaws in the reverse-engineered Creation Fibre, but as accuracy improved it became clear that some unknown culprit was to blame. In truth, what Guru Bekkler's team lacked until the very latest stages of the project was a proper understanding of the categories of life. In short, Guru Bekkler had succeeded in creating life, but he did not create the type of life he had been aiming for.

Thus, resolving Bekkler's Dilemma requires us to examine various forms of life that can be described within the logical framework established in Part I. Life forms can be categorized according to their Body/Soul/Spirit composition...

<u>Body</u>: A form of life composed of bioactive matter, but which does not exhibit conscious thought. This is difficult to determine at times, but some safe guesses include plant life and single-celled organisms. 

<u>Soul</u>: Such a life form would be completely onobservable by definition. Also, it would be unable to interact with the physical realm. Its experience would be confined completely to the Shadow Realm.

<u>Spirit</u>: Within the logical framework, a being composed solely of "Spirit" cannot exist whatsoever; the very "Spirit," or "Aura," is associated with conscious thought processes, which must take place in the physical brain. It is also possible that processes not yet fully understood are able to emulate Astral Induction in rare cases of "Body + Soul" lifeform composition. 

However, it is apparently possible to isolate and store the Aura by means of specially-treated Dreamstone instruments commonly known as "Astral Capsules." The modified chemical composition of these Astral Capsules - discovered purely by chance during engineering studies - is able to capture and preserve the Aura, and also to prevent the Soul from connecting to it. Since electrochemical signals are not present in the Astral Capsule following Aura capture, it can only be hypothesized that some other property capable of Astral Induction is at work. 

<u>Body + Soul</u>: An utterly impossible lifeform within the logical framework. Without Spirit, there can be no Soul. Only Spirit can create a connection between Body and Soul; in the absence of Spirit, Body and Soul remain on their side of the physical world/Shadow Realm divide.

<u>Body + Spirit</u>: For reasons discussed later in the fantastically hypothetical Part IV of this document, it is possible that no such lifeform could exist. However, advances in Robotics may one day prove this supposition wrong. A true Artificial Intelligence, being capable of conscious thought on par with animals or humanity itself, could potentially generate a measurable Aura even if its body be composed of nonbioactive metals. Part IV will suggest that a Soul would be injected into the being at the moment of first conscious thought, but if some aspect prevents a Soul from finding its way into the robotic lifeform - perhaps because its inception occurred through abiological processes - the Artificial Intelligence may exist for a time lacking a Soul.

<u>Soul + Spirit</u>: Within the logical framework, this combination furnishes an adequate explanation for phenomena fancifully termed "ghosts." The Aura, having impressed upon the Soul all of a person's identity up to that point in his or her life, may remain connected to the Soul even after physical death and allow the wandering Soul to interact with the physical world. Indeed, changes in air temperature that typically accompany these disturbing lifeforms indicate that some type of energy may directly manipulate air molecules when they wish to be observed by the naked eye.

The logical framework has some difficulty describing how Astral Induction could be achieved within these lifeforms. As explained previously in this document, electrochemical currents associated with conscious thought typically give rise to the Aura through Astral Induction. It is possible that some unobservable process is capable of emulating Astral Induction within the Shadow Realm. What is known is that these lifeforms definitely possess thriving Auras even though the source of their Auras remains undetected.

Given that beings composed only of Soul and Spirit are impervious to traditional weaponry, their military application has been considered at least once during our Enlightened Kingdom's history according to records furnished by Guru of Time Gaspar. The outcome of these trials remains lost to the sands of time, and such experiments would certainly be barred by religious proclamation at the time of this writing.

<u>Body + Soul + Spirit</u>: Conscious biological beings certainly fit within this category; we can call such beings "trichotomous". Humanity would be the prime example, <s>but various creatures of the Earth might also exhibit this basic composition.</s>
*<b>B NOTE:</b> The version of the document you are reading is restored compared to the version that had worked its way through royal censors. Melchior's last clause here would have offended prevailing sensibilities at the time.

Let us return at last to Bekkler's Dilemma. Due to political and social pressure on Guru of Life Emeritus Bekkler's ambitious work, it became impossible for him to proceed with Earthbound test subjects. Attempting to produce within the Earthbound Elemental channeling capability was no doubt difficult enough, but having to produce humans artificially from raw adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine burdened the effort a thousandfold. The later homunculi, despite approximating the human genome to an estimated 96% accuracy, lacked conscious thought -- a fact easily proven by their complete lack of Auras. Without a doubt, Bekkler's Dilemma might have persisted even had he secured a genetic sample of a Zealian citizen and simply cloned it. 

Extrapolating from this document's trichotomous framework, the explanation became simple: Bekkler had produced biological life composed only of Body, and these homunculi were little more than vegetation shaped into human form. Some process hidden to the life sciences is apparently responsible for sparking conscious thought; no scientific mechanism yet known to us is able to emulate that process. Part IV presents a guess as to what the process may be, but it is still completely within the realm of fantastic theory.

Luckily we found a shortcut. Having obtained necessary permissions, we managed to observe the process of physical death from every conceivable scientific angle, and basically found that what we call "death" in the full trichotomous being is simply the dissolution of the Body, Soul, and Spirit. In 99.7% of our observations the perishing subject's Aura persisted for several milliseconds after brain death, and proved to be "capturable" by Astral Capsules moved into the spatial vicinity. In the remaining .3% of cases the Aura persisted far longer, spatially moving out of detection range. It is unknown why some Auras persist intact well beyond death, but judging from the theoretical framework this rare outcome may very well give rise to "ghost" phenomena.

The solution to Bekkler's Dilemma became clear after we successfully employed Astral Capsules to "capture" Auras separated from recently deceased individuals. Smashing an Astral Capsule with various geometric considerations in mind expelled the trapped Aura into the brain of a nearby test homunculus, and the Aura managed to sustain itself within the homunculus. Presumably Souls may have inhabited the thought-capable homunculus. As of this report all successfully-implanted homunculi have remained in stasis, and long observation assures us that they experience dreams.

In a rather strange note, the reason why all implanted homunculi had to be restrained in fortified stasis tubes is that they exhibited militant behavior at first. The initial attitudes of the homunculi subsided over time. What is curious is that the Auras we managed to obtain all came from members of our Enlightened Kingdom's armed forces; it is almost as if the implanted homunculi defaulted to a personality suggested by the Aura they received, but developed as unique individuals from their limited life experiences whilst in stasis.


*<b>B NOTE:</b> I chose the placement of the last section below. Consider it a small addendum recovered from notes penned by Melchior in the year 1000AG.

<u>The Dream Daemon</u>: We have discovered a strange new lifeform! Here's how it happened: an Aura, or rather a fraction of an Aura representing one facet of a living individual's identity, fissioned off from the wider Aura due to psychological stress. A Soul apparently fissioned off from the Entity to match it, and a Dream Daemon came into being. Unlike "ghosts," Dream Daemons do not possess a full personality. Rather, being based on a small fraction of an individual's total Aura, all their actions are extrapolated from that one tiny facet of the individual's identity! The Dream Daemons observed so far have been based on memories, but it is perfectly conceivable that they can arise from dreams or even raw emotions. The individual of origin appears to lose the facet of their identity given up to the Dream Daemon; for example, the memory-based Dream Daemons erupted at a point in time at which the supposed host individual suffered amnesia. The Dream Daemons seemed to embody the very memories the individual had lost!
*<b>B NOTE:</b> This "Entity" of which Melchior speaks is described in great depth in Part IV.

Dream Daemons are technically of the same composition as "ghosts," Spirit + Soul. However, the properties of the Dream Daemon are unique enough to distinguish them as an entirely new class of life. As mentioned previously, the Dream Daemon's entire personality derives from the Aura sample of which they were born. While they possess awareness of current events and memory previous events that have occurred since their birth, they seem incapable of real "character development." 

Furthermore, Dream Daemons can change their composition from "Spirit + Soul" to "Body + Spirit + Soul" at will, taking their physical form from the matter around them. They do not require brain capacity, but rather shape bioactive and nonbioactive material into a body should they wish to do so for any reason. They may also inhabit inanimate objects such as Dreamstone, possibly giving rise to animist legends among the Earthbound should Dream Daemons have come into being long before we began observed them scientifically. This kind of phase shifting must expend huge amounts of energy, but it may confer a long-run survival benefit unknown to us at present.

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