self-fusion

Trope-a-Day: Me’s A Crowd

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Me’s A Crowd: This sort of thing works a lot better when all the copies know that they’re going to either merge back together, or sync, in the future, so that technically everyone has experienced everything and no-one got stuck with nothing but the chores.  (Your copy, after all, is you, and is otherwise likely to suggest that you stay home and work while he goes out to play.)

Or, at the very least, if the copies you make for the tedious mundane work aren’t full forks but rather idiot-savant non-sophont copies based on trimmed forks grafted onto an AI logos-replacement, which therefore don’t chafe at being your minions by virtue of not being the free-willed you.

Or, of course, if you’re a Self-Fusion, but then technically there’s only one of you even if you are in many bodies, so that really doesn’t count.

Trope-a-Day: Hive Mind

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Hive Mind: The Transcend is not a traditional Hive Mind, it’s a collective consciousness, or group intellect.  The difference, as it will point out to you at some considerable length, is that all of the members retain their individual personalities and perspectives as well as contributing to the whole, that while knowledge is shared, individual memories aren’t (at least until one is poured into the soul-ocean on permadeath), and that the true hive-mindedness is that of the Transcendent soul-shard that’s grafted into your personal consciousness (see Touched By Vorlons), but which does not constitute all of it.  And that the Transcend has a (very large) metamind of its own (see Deus Est Machina), over and above and simultaneously within the collective aspect.

There are also, of course, genuine Hive Minds which do abolish individual identity, which are called Fusions, but since (a) resistance is not futile, because they only take volunteers, and (b) by far the most common type of Fusion is the Self-Fusion, made up of multiple instances of the same mind, they’re not anything to worry about.

(Okay, yes, in civilized space.  Hegemonizing swarms with a degree of intelligence are not unknown outside it, even to the extent of things like the Leviathan Consciousness, and the less said about things like the Calphrast Hordes the better, but still…)

The temporary kind (see the Mental Fusion trope) are known as confluxes, often used for tactical military purposes and in other situations where close teamwork is required.

Trope-a-Day: Mental Fusion

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Mental Fusion: See Hive Mind for the permanent version (Fusions and Self-Fusions).

The temporary version, called a conflux, is a standard part of the arsenal for a variety of situations – merged fireteams for greater military efficiency and coordination (and, y’know, battlefield omniscience, when done really right), guard webs that share knowledge and raise the alarm simultaneously, research teams thinking in perfect coordination in which the brainpower of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and so on and so forth.  It takes a lot of attention paid to mental discipline and interpersonal relations to build a team that can do it well, but when it works, it really works.