Cedars Falling On Snow

So, here I am again.  And wow, if you only knew where I'd been in the last 12 hours!

Like I say, I don't know much.  I make up the difference between knowledge and intuition by staying in touch with you.

But who are you?

Are you the little elderly lady at the end of the street who has seen less than me but knows more?

Are you the E3, "yes sir," Army soldier just starting your career in the military?

Are you the surgeon who's winding up a career serving on hospital boards throughout the world?

In this case, you're the group of scientists who have figured out how to transfer a person's "personality" from one body to another.  You might call it the ultimate mind trip.

How they do those things they do.  What if your name was Khan?  What if your name was Chow?  What if your name was Linda?  And then what if you had all those names in a span of a few hours?

I'm a writer, right?  Isn't that what I think I am?  Or Who I Was Supposed To Be?

Could I have ever believed my dreams of that childhood story about Merlin transforming Arthur into various animal bodies would come true in the form of changing from one person's body to another?

Honestly, no.  Always hopefully, yes.

And now I understand why some engineers and scientists, friends of mine, have been telling me not to get excited about sending people into space exploration.  Why?  Because we're justthisclose to transferring people's personalities into machines that can safely travel through solar wind and cosmic radiation.

The past few hours were amazing.  <== such a bland sentence, I know, but let me enjoy the memories for a while before I describe them.

It started with a series of brain scans.  Then it led to understanding how to read individual sets of synapses.  From that, experiments were successfully completed in showing one animal's memory set - its personality, if you will - could be "programmed" into the brain/body of a cloned version.  From cloned bodies to twins and then from twins to different species and finally to person-to-person.

To have yourself and that of another person in your thoughts at the same time!  Absolutely incredible!  To carry your thoughts, and those of others with you into another body.  Why, we're justthismuchcloser to having one social body, aren't we?  Get everyone used to the Internet and then BAM! move on to "mind melds," to borrow from science fiction.

You need not be assimilated.  It's already done, some say.  Well, they're right and they're wrong.  Social integration is NOTHING like thought integration.  To have Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin playing referee in your thoughts while your synaptic simulations of Yao Ming and Shaq play ping-pong against Peyton Manning and Margaret Thatcher.  Now that's entertainment!

I never knew that bodies felt skin itches in different ways.  Curious...