You left out the twist?! Are we supposed to make up our own reason for their actions? I can think of some regarding alignment or other existential threats. Selfish reasons would be interesting too. But yours is probably better. What about your twist in spoilers in the comments?
Yeah, in my mind it is some existential risk such as the AI safety problem, and absorbing the skills of a bunch of really skilled people seems necessary to solve the problems. The thing that initially interested me here was the idea of a memory thief becoming a different person every time they absorbed someone’s memories, but somehow continuing to do it anyway. I wrote this quickly (first draft in about one hour), and wasn’t sure what the ending would be as I was writing. My initial idea was to try and write a plausible emotional arc where she started out angry at the memory thief, but as she faced the identity confusion of the situation, plausible individual steps took her to anger with her original-body-self who still had the life new-self remembered working so hard for. However, the mysterious twist ending seemed better. I wasn’t really sure if it “landed” well but two test readers said it worked for them & was better as a mystery.
You left out the twist?! Are we supposed to make up our own reason for their actions? I can think of some regarding alignment or other existential threats. Selfish reasons would be interesting too. But yours is probably better. What about your twist in spoilers in the comments?
Yeah, in my mind it is some existential risk such as the AI safety problem, and absorbing the skills of a bunch of really skilled people seems necessary to solve the problems. The thing that initially interested me here was the idea of a memory thief becoming a different person every time they absorbed someone’s memories, but somehow continuing to do it anyway. I wrote this quickly (first draft in about one hour), and wasn’t sure what the ending would be as I was writing. My initial idea was to try and write a plausible emotional arc where she started out angry at the memory thief, but as she faced the identity confusion of the situation, plausible individual steps took her to anger with her original-body-self who still had the life new-self remembered working so hard for. However, the mysterious twist ending seemed better. I wasn’t really sure if it “landed” well but two test readers said it worked for them & was better as a mystery.
No this is great, I wish there was more.