Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[Mikey_R]

Gra'ha: "All men eventually die. If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough aether to sustain them. You but prolong the inevitable." <- Speaking as if Endless are not dead or AI since he's using the word prolong.

I have a bit of an issue with your assessment of G'raha's statement here as I interpreted it differently.

You seem to assume the word 'prolong' implies it is related to life, however, that isn't the case. You can prolong anything as it's definition is 'extend the duration of'.

So, from the start, 'All Men die.' Easy to see what he means there. 'If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough Aether to sustain them.' This then goes into killing the natural cycle of life and death. We are taking Aether out of the cycle and storing it unnaturally. Do note that G'Raha is neither saying they are alive, but he is also not explicitly stating they are dead. It is a neutral statement on the topic of alive or dead.

The last thing, 'You but prolong the inevitable', is talking about the fact that the Endless are every growing and will need an ever growing supply of Aether, one that eventually, no matter how much you try, is going to have a requirement greater than what you can supply, leading to it being shut down. The prolonging of the inevitable here is the fact, at some point, whether it is us or just nature, Sphene's hopes and dreams for her people are going to fall apart. Her idealistic vision is not going to work, no matter what.

All G'Raha has done is look at the facts and said the plan is unsustainable, that is all. There is no precedent set for whether the Endless are alive or not.

[VoidsentStatus]

I have a bit of an issue with your assessment of G'raha's statement here as I interpreted it differently.

You seem to assume the word 'prolong' implies it is related to life, however, that isn't the case. You can prolong anything as it's definition is 'extend the duration of'.

So, from the start, 'All Men die.' Easy to see what he means there. 'If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough Aether to sustain them.' This then goes into killing the natural cycle of life and death. We are taking Aether out of the cycle and storing it unnaturally. Do note that G'Raha is neither saying they are alive, but he is also not explicitly stating they are dead. It is a neutral statement on the topic of alive or dead.

The last thing, 'You but prolong the inevitable', is talking about the fact that the Endless are every growing and will need an ever growing supply of Aether, one that eventually, no matter how much you try, is going to have a requirement greater than what you can supply, leading to it being shut down. The prolonging of the inevitable here is the fact, at some point, whether it is us or just nature, Sphene's hopes and dreams for her people are going to fall apart. Her idealistic vision is not going to work, no matter what.

All G'Raha has done is look at the facts and said the plan is unsustainable, that is all. There is no precedent set for whether the Endless are alive or not.

I think you're confusing your grammar as "the inevitable" is the shut down. That is death/dying which is stated at the beginning. There is no point in "the inevitable" referring to the aether shortage problem because the grammar format is supposed to link back to All men die. not All men have limited resources. or All men multiply. As for prolong, he states what is being prolonged, literally, the inevitable. Which is death. Your response does not define an alternative to what is being prolonged that would also fall under inevitable without it being death. If I was to take it that prolong is a reference to "needing endless resources", that would imply doing something to work in the opposite effect of that. Ex: Eating healthy to prolong death. The death is being prolonged by eating. Endless are not created as a means to avoid/prolong needing endless resources. They are not motive related. You also stated "taking aether out of the cycle" as if someone would go from life to some other arbitary wording that is not death. We have things that are living and things that are not living. Things that are not living do not have emotion, cognitive functionality, etc. That is what it what it means to be immortal by definition, is to be in a life only situation. Not to mention that they still die after a set point, so they haven't actuallly been removed from the cycle, they've simply hit the pause and reset button.