The Suit

[Cray]

How far will your thicksuit go to keep you alive and get you home?
Short comic: The Suit

[Rynn]

Very creepy! We had a conversation exactly along these lines a few years ago on the discord. The scenario was a hypothetical of a terragen biont crash landing on an alien megastructure (somehow the crash destroys all equipment but not the sophont). Rather than a suit we were mostly talking about how the medisystem might start cannibalising tissues and limbs to keep the main body alive, even going so far as to insert mods that would help in the race against starvation.

[Drashner1]

Yup - very creepy!

Todd

[Cray]

Yup - very creepy!

Todd

This is the point where you reassure me that an Orion's Arm suit would be able to extract all sorts of energy from the environment and would never have to do that. ;

In Rynn's scenario, wouldn't most sophonts be able to backup their memories rather than resort to auto-cannibalism?

[Rynn]

This is the point where you reassure me that an Orion's Arm suit would be able to extract all sorts of energy from the environment and would never have to do that. ;

In Rynn's scenario, wouldn't most sophonts be able to backup their memories rather than resort to auto-cannibalism?

They can do both. The scenario we were discussing in the discord was, admittedly, quite contrived. It was a suggestion of Radtech's concerning a hypothetical crash on Rak Mesba in the middle of a vast desert. The sophonts could have just euthanised themselves to await rescue, but the question was "could they survive a long walk and if so how?"

Of course you have to assume that no automation survived, and therefore no autorepair on their craft. But all castaway hypotheticals require a contrivance in OA.

[stevebowers]

It has to be said that a biont body would probably be the best source of energy on a cold, dark airless moon, although mining combustible ices might work as well.

Curiously enough, Iain M. Banks included a very similar story (Descendant) in his work The State of the Art..

[Drashner1]

This is the point where you reassure me that an Orion's Arm suit would be able to extract all sorts of energy from the environment and would never have to do that. ;

I can assure you that an Orion's Arm suit (and the expectations of its wearer) would operate quite differently. Whether you find the OA version RE-assuring I'm afraid I must leave as an exercise for the reader.

To wit:

An OA suit would be coated with a programmable quantum dot array (PQDA), which it could configure to act as a solar collector, so would be able to recharge itself to one degree or another. It would also be able to extract a certain amount of energy from the movement of the wearer and the impact of their feet hitting the ground, although this seems likely to merely add efficiency rather than qualify as a true additional energy source since the energy ultimately comes from the wearer and the wearer is being sustained by the suit.

The suit likely includes some amount of Forge Integrated Technology (FIT) and could use such to either consume energy and mass from the local environment ('eating' plants, small animals, or energy containing compounds) if such is available or to build additional solar energy collectors (a solar cell parasol or maybe 'wings') or perhaps even synsect based neumanns which could replicate and - in time - produce additional resources or even a vehicle to help the user get where they want to be. To save on time/energy/resources the suit might just have such devices stored in pockets or a utility belt or the like.

Having said all that, let us assume a more limited/worse case scenario in which the suit and user are in a situation where such options don't exist and things are such where the suit has to consume the user to get them to destination. In that case:

a) The suit or the user's internal medisystem will make the consumption of their biomass painless and the suit itself seamlessly take over the functions of the missing limibs/organs. The only way the user will know of the loss is because they will be able to access systems reports showing it happened.

b) The suit would not do that kind of thing without consulting with the user and getting their permission to do so. The exception would be if the user was unconscious or otherwise incapacitated.

c) OA spacesuits (and probably envirosuits) incorporate a crashcache and emergency upload systems. This in addition to the user's internal Backup system, assuming they have one. As such, the user can essentially go to sleep, be destructively uploaded, and either kept in stasis in the crashcache or start running their mind from within it and continue on their way in the suit while their biomass is consumed to keep things going. Of course, once they get back to civilization, a new body can be engenerated up and downloaded into in a couple of days or less, depending on specifics.

Note that in some scenarios, the suit could rebuild itself as a high power transmitter after the user is uploaded and essentially 'beam' their mind-state back to base, a ship, or wherever if it is reasonably close by.

Note also, that if we assume the user and suit are going to a specific destination, that place itself is probably possessed of considerable resource and at least vot level intelligence and would likely be actively looking for the user and so might meet them well away from itself.

Finally, it should be noted that all of the above is considered 'standard operating procedure' for spacesuits and such by most OA sophonts. So they would be fully expecting and prepared for the above situations and so likely be less bothered by it. And if not, they could activate their emergency psychoware overlay which will make them be perfectly comfortable making such decisions, at least until they turn it off.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Cray]

Thank you, Todd, that was an informative Orion's Arm extrapolation of the situation.

[Worldtree]

really fantastic! The other comics by Scott base are pretty great too!
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[stevebowers]

I just found this spoof SF novel cover that seems to cover the same ground, so to speak.