04-14-2016, 10:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-15-2016, 02:18 AM by stevebowers.)
Success and survival are two different things. Only a fraction of sophonts who attempt to ascend will do so successfully (I'm not sure how large that fraction is).
But in the Current Era almost all of those who fail to ascend can be retrieved in some form or another. Some of these will be absorbed/subsumed by the transapient who is supervising the process, or by some other entity; a smaller fraction of the failures will be returned to their normal state.
Quite a few sophonts who attempt this process will transcend rather than ascend - that is to say they will attain transapient status, but the end result will be so different to the original that they will be considered new individuals. We don't want ascension to be considered too easy, otherwise most modosophonts might want to do it. Having said that it seems likely that Keter or the TRHN would be very good at achieving a safe ascension for a large fraction of sophonts.
But in the Current Era almost all of those who fail to ascend can be retrieved in some form or another. Some of these will be absorbed/subsumed by the transapient who is supervising the process, or by some other entity; a smaller fraction of the failures will be returned to their normal state.
Quite a few sophonts who attempt this process will transcend rather than ascend - that is to say they will attain transapient status, but the end result will be so different to the original that they will be considered new individuals. We don't want ascension to be considered too easy, otherwise most modosophonts might want to do it. Having said that it seems likely that Keter or the TRHN would be very good at achieving a safe ascension for a large fraction of sophonts.