Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[Steelpapercranes]

If you ask me WHICH version of the Endless presentation I prefer, than Mechanical Otis is far superior than the zone 6 Endless. But like I said, his existence kinda just invalidate all the sentimental strings that zone 6 tried to pull. It would also a real condominium for us because it's much easier to make the argument that mechanical Otis is a actual life form and not just a memory.

This is my personal theory as to why mecha-Otis was killed so suddenly and so pointlessly. If we had 'living' Otis exist at the same time as 'Endless' Otis (well, they DID exist at the same time for like 400 years but I guess they want us to think about it), it would kind of make it unacceptably clear how what they're going for emotionally in living memory is NOT what's happening lol. They had to make sure he wasn't around in the hopes that we just wouldn't think that hard about it.

[Cach]

Another thing about Otis is that he's a superior alternative for becoming "endless" than the unsustainable one the super advanced civilization end up going for.

Over time, they could even evolved the quality of the robot bodies to be more human-like. Or have spares, or even using clones.
If the memories are indeed digitized, why not live in a matrix-style simulation instead? Etc... etc...

I know its just contrivances to manufacture drama, but it really bothers me.

[LilimoLimomo]

Also, the regulators are extracting memories, so that sounds more like they are removing memory aether, rather than just copying memories.

We actually know that memory data does get copied/duplicated, because that's what happens constantly with Regulators; a person's memories are uploaded to the cloud as a backup, while the person still retains all their memories. Then when a person dies and needs to be revived by using one of their souls, the uploaded memories are pasted back onto the actual person to prevent soul corruption or whatever.

However, we are also told that the Endless are made from memory aether

From what I recall, the Endless are simulations based on memories, but not actually entirely comprised of memories. For example, their bodies are made of living aether. Living Memory has a shortage of this living aether relative to the number of simulations it stores, which is why only a subset of the simulations can have physical bodies at any one time, with lengthy waiting periods for simulations that aren't currently manifested.

And in fact, remember that they're not just comprised of the memories from the dead person, but also the memories of the dead person from those who knew them. Keep that in mind!

They shouldn't require lifeforce to exist if they are just digital copies of memories and not memory aether.

They aren't just digital copies, though; Living Memory gives the computer simulations physical form by providing living aether to constitute physical bodies for these simulations.

As for why robots require actual life-force to exist...yeah, they don't provide a reasonable explanation for that.

If it's the latter, then we dissipated the one and only version of these people that exists, so they won't get the slower disintegration in the aetherial sea that allows them to watch over friends and family and wait for them, so why would Erenville expect to see his mother there?

It sounds like you are somehow interpreting the concept of "dissipating" as "being deleted"; it's an understandable mistake to make, so let's illustrate with an example. A crowd can dissipate. And what this means is that the people that make up the crowd spread out and go their separate ways. Everything that comprised the crowd still exists, it's just not consolidated as a "crowd" anymore. Aether (which is just the FF14 word for "energy") is similar. It cannot be destroyed, it can only change form and move.

So regardless of what kind of aether the simulations in Living Memory were comprised of, it's all still in play. When it dissipates because it is no longer being forced into a certain form by Living Memory's systems, it will once again be subject to natural forces.

Edit: Re-reading this, I think I misunderstood what you were saying the first time. On re-read, it sounds like you're saying that his mom's memories have long-since been separated from their associated soul, and hence when the soul returns to the aetherial sea it will have already been cleansed of memories, thus not allowing for the brief window when souls would be in the aetherial sea as some semblance of their former selves. And if I have you right this time, then I 100% agree with you.


To be clear, it's entirely valid that you're confused by all of this, because you seem to not simply be trying to understand the mechanics of Living Memory, but trying to understand them in a way that makes sense. And Living Memory simply doesn't make sense.

It's a place where soulless computer simulations of dead people are given bodies made of living aether, where these simulations convincingly mimic the dead until the end of time. And they're very convincing replicas, as your party members repeatedly tell you after interacting with them. But like...there's no purpose to doing that.

It's like making robots that act like your dead grandparents and locking them in a room together for all eternity, and then never entering that room again. And you might think, "Yeah, that's odd, but grief is weird, and we do weird things to try to process grief." And yeah, we do...but there's no grief here. Regulators ensure that you can't remember your dead loved ones, thus removing grief from the equation. So now you've got 2 roombas in a shed pretending to be your grandparents where you'll never witness it, and you don't even remember that you ever had grandparents....so what purpose is there to the roombas in the shed? Living Memory is an absolute nonsense system that doesn't help anyone, and it does so at the cost of requiring an unsustainable amount of energy.

I hope that this helps!

[Havenchild]

It was fairly directly stated that Endless are solely the severed memories of someone's soul that can "live on" with autonomy within the system preserving their essence.
The aetherial sea, where "souls" go, seems to encompass all memory and soul combined as evidenced by Fandaniel (all forms), Emet and Hythlodaeus. So by what we have seen atm, Endless specifically do not go to the aetherial sea. They solely live as data within some super tech powered by Electrope. Their manifestations within this technology require cleansed souls to sustain. Erenville is just being hopeful here but he also wasn't present during our convos with Sphene or Otis. While Erenville said that, I also think he is aware of the consequences Cahciua is facing right now.

That is NOT to say however that at the time of corporeal death, there isn't a record that goes to the aetherial sea and one that can get extracted to be an endless also. We never actually see the process of what "going to the cloud" looks like at time of corporeal death but MAYBE we can get some inference from the attack on Tural when the soldier targets someone as they died and 2 orbs get absorbed, an orange one, and a blue white one. When we see it in Origenics, the blue white one is separated into a pure white and yellow looking one. So maybe there is something else at play there still.

As for Otis, he was an experiment that lead the way to create the Endless. He also confirmed to living a full life till he was gray, so the Endless we see in Living Memory should contain all memories up til he became Robo. Which only points to that he was probably one of the first if not the first successful Endless.

They clearly also made a copy of his soul and tested what options were available to them. The copy that got experimented on (before Queen Sphene's) become the endless Otis, written off of the memories up to that point and the other copy was either tossed away into the Robot, or they were trying to come up with a way of creating artificial bodies to supplement the corporeal form post death.

This is, imo, where Sphene's Crown comes in which allows her to body hop the Robo's in full Endless imagery compared to Robo-Otis. Robo-Otis is their attempt in merging the soul with an inanimate object which while successful is only early stage to their ultimate goal of bringing back Sphene in all her pre-death glory from long long ago. I wouldn't be surprised at this point if the crown itself maintains a copy of Sphene's soul / memory separate from the overall system.

[Nitelancer]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

[LilimoLimomo]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

With respect, you're making quite a few assumptions here. We don't know anything about the material requirements for Pupu's cloning, nor do we even know if the clones have souls.

What we do know is that there is something materially different between the original and the clones, as Pupu's saucer has a function that "deletes" clones but not originals. All in all, I don't think we have enough information to determine anything based on Pupu's extraterrestrial technology.

Just to add, there are two other instances of cloning in the game that I can think of:
- the Allagans did lots of cloning; Unei, Doga, Amon, etc
- Emperor Solus had a batch of cloned bodies (though presumably they lacked souls)

[Vyrerus]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

Can actually just assume that Pupu's cloning cloned their souls too. It's not really explained 100% and Hildibrand often does ridiculous things that most Lore experts will shy away from. I think Anonymoose, one of the pre-eminent Lore Heads, always liked to claim that Hildibrand exists in a bubble of exaggeration and not of FFXIV's reality.

(which I don't agree with, but hey whatever floats folks' boats)

[ConantSivrha]

Regarding Erenville believing he’ll meet Cahciua in the Aetherial Sea:

On the surface, there appear to be two problems with this. Firstly, because the memories of Cahciua’s original soul were extracted and sent to Living Memory, and we deleted everyone in Living Memory, Cahciua presumably wouldn’t remember Erenville even if they did meet in the Aetherial Sea. Second, because the souls of the dead are extracted and turned into soul cells for use by other people, Cahciua’s original soul might not be in the Aetherial Sea in the first place.

The first problem might already have an answer. In Endwalker, when we meet Emet Selch and Hythlodaeus again in Ultima Thule, they remember their erased memories of the events that took place in Elpis. If the reason why was ever directly and explicitly confirmed, I don’t remember it, but I thought the implication was that the Aetherial Sea actually restores artificially erased memories, before it erases all of them itself…for whatever reason.

The second problem is more mysterious to me. Did we ever find out whether souls are infinitely “reusable” for the Alexandrians’ purposes?

As in: an Alexandrian who has never “died” before gets into an accident and “dies”. Their original soul leaves their body, goes to Origenics for processing, and is replaced with a new one from a soul cell. At some later point, this Alexandrian dies for real (perhaps of old age or illness, or perhaps in an accident when they have no extra soul cells). Does their current soul also get reprocessed into a new soul cell? Does it continue like this in perpetuity?

If it does, this would imply that the number of soul cells in circulation just keeps growing forever. Soul cells seem to be scarce to some extent, however, since they’re only given to those who are considered useful…but it also seems like people have grown accustomed to always having soul cells to ensure their continued existence. I assumed, at one point, that souls can only be turned into soul cells one time each, and “using” them would result in the soul being destroyed or returned to the Aetherial Sea, but I don’t think there’s direct evidence to support this.

Was the scarcity and rationing system of soul cells introduced with Zoraal Ja? Has their population just grown so much that the number of current living people is close to the total number of people who died after the introduction of regulators and soul cells?

[Bunyon]

I feel like living memory would have been a great plot thread to explore in the patches instead of rushing the MSQ through it. It really did feel like they did it just for some cheap emotional moments, and I felt like they were so rushed that they did not land for me at all.

Erenville's mom even says that you don't have to deactivate them right away, but you should because it will take away Sphene's motivation to go after other worlds. BUT THEN SPHENE DOESN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL. She's already a emotionless robot by then and doesn't even mention that all the endless have been deactivated. You end a whole civilization of a different dimension over the whim of a bunny girl without any moral considerations or discussion at all. They wanted to do everything at once, have their big ending. Y'shtola doesn't even get to be a part of it, because it is decided that 80% of the most experienced veterans of dealing with this kind of thing should be left guarding the gate.

I also see so many people that talk about how the story is about "letting go", but I feel like that was only introduced in the last zone?? The rest of the story was about war and peace and memory?? Erenville gets lied about his mom being dead and then finds it out at the last minute and then gets dragged along the last zone before being told to get over it and have one last good memory before having to fucking turn her off. And everyone is just like yeah okay. Jesus, I feel like Erenville got fucked over so bad. I don't even know how people found this emotional. Having to essentially kill what is left of your mom after she lies to you and you basically don't even have a moment to yourselves to talk about it, and mom just being like "Why can't you be happy for me, I want to die already".

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant.

[aTanpopo]

I also see so many people that talk about how the story is about "letting go", but I feel like that was only introduced in the last zone?? The rest of the story was about war and peace and memory?? Erenville gets lied about his mom being dead and then finds it out at the last minute and then gets dragged along the last zone before being told to get over it and have one last good memory before having to fucking turn her off. And everyone is just like yeah okay. Jesus, I feel like Erenville got fucked over so bad. I don't even know how people found this emotional. Having to essentially kill what is left of your mom after she lies to you and you basically don't even have a moment to yourselves to talk about it, and mom just being like "Why can't you be happy for me, I want to die already".

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant.

I found it emotional even though it was rushed just because of the overall storyline between them. She's seemingly rarely around for much of his childhood, grows up lonely and shunning the company of other people, but Cahcuia fills him with this hope that he can go with her one day if he just finds the golden city. He can't find it and gives up, thinking its just some fairy tale she told him to get him to go touch grass. He's left feeling she never takes into account how he feels, just goes off an enjoys herself and leaves him behind time and time again.

Cut to DT, he finds the City is real, finally finds it and right when he's about to actually go home and maybe get to go on that adventure with his mum that he's always wanted, she dies. And then before he can even process that, there she is standing in front of him as an endless and telling him that he has to delete her. He gets to spend time with her like he wanted to as a child, but only for a moment, because once again she's made all the decisions for him- she'll have fun going on this last little adventure then she'll leave him behind, and this time she's not coming back.

Yeah it was rushed and i wish there was more time spent actually exploring all of the implied tension between the two of them. I think the very quick turn around on being angry at her to deciding to take on her dying wish was a bit too quick, but the overall idea of this relationship really broke my heart tbh and I couldn't help but get emotional.