Forking Customs

Posted By: Skinwalker, Firewall Sentinel

Transhumanity is already carving out new traditions regarding forks.

Creating Forks

Spinning up a new alpha fork is a trivial affair, yet people approach it with caution, given the legal and security ramifications. Creating a beta is considered safer, but requires more time (neural pruning takes about an hour). For this reason, many people keep pre-made but dormant beta forks on hand in encrypted storage, activating them as necessary.

People or Things?

The underlying attitudes fueling the ways people interact with forks relies on a simple distinction: do you consider them people or things? The widespread legal opinion in the inner system is to treat forks as property and therefore undeserving of the rights and basic respect we’d afford other transhumans, sapient beings, or even animals. There is certainly a subset of people who are happy to treat forks this way — it relieves them of the burden of needing to consider a fork’s needs or feelings, especially when it comes time to delete or re-integrate them. It also feeds into latent bioconservative opinions that forks are somehow lesser or not as deserving as “real” people. Then there are the people who interact with their own forks and realize they don’t like themselves. Each of these groupings are more likely to place strict controls on a fork’s activities, verbally or physically abuse forks over failures or mistakes, and rudely ignore or look down on forks belonging to others. They also tend to prefer betas over alphas, as they are easier to manipulate.

Nevertheless, conscientous people within the inner system cannot help themselves and end up treating forks as real people — when facing a fork of your own self, who acts with your voice and mannerisms and shares your memories and personality, it is difficult to pretend that other instance is somehow inferior. Holding basic empathy towards forks is not uncommon — even in the inner system, people will be uncomfortable with abuse directed towards forks, much as they would someone mistreating a pet.

Across the Solar System, people view betas as less deserving of protections, given that they are only partial copies. Betas get the same treatment as ALIs — they are recognized as sentient tools. However, many people still afford betas the full respect they would any sapient being, especially in the outer system.

Work

Predictably, the first thought people have when they consider forks is: can I use a fork to do my work and other things I don’t want to do, while I relax and do things I want? The answer depends a lot on your personality and how you’d handle it with the positions reversed. Are you comfortable with doing that work so that another version of you can slack off? A lot of folks would find that unfair, yet have no problem with effectively enslaving a fork anyway. This is justified on the grounds that they are “doing it to themselves,” which can only be argued if you deny that separate instance any personhood or autonomy. People are often surprised to find that they despise themselves a little bit when they merge a fork who was assigned an unwanted task — but that’s nothing a little psychosurgery can’t fix, right?

Twins and groups of forks bypass these issues by rotating responsibility for unwanted tasks. This spreads around the unpleasantness; by making a small personal sacrifice, all of the forks can enjoy more leisure time. It’s a net win.

Others resort to editing their forks to make them more obedient or willing to shoulder the burden. And of course some don’t mind oppressing their forks — either because they don’t consider them real people or they feel it is justified because their primary self holds the power, and that’s all that matters. Such authoritarian tendencies are tolerated in the inner system but discouraged among autonomists.

One area where forks are especially valued is hazardous work. Most people agree that it makes sense to fork yourself (even if it’s just a backup) before engaging in something life-threatening. The forks assigned to dangerous work are not always in agreement, but they at least have an investment in staying alive.

It is no secret that some hypercorps engage in unethical practices when it comes to forks. These range from requiring employees to fork to put in extra hours to secretly forknapping employees. Forks are legally considered to count for non-compete clauses, and some companies require employees with access to sensitive information to equip copylock meshware or do not allow them to merge or fork outside of their own facilities.

Physical vs. Virtual

The question of whether or not to sleeve a fork is largely dependent upon available resources. Habitats do not hesitate to restrict the physical instancing of forks if the local morph supply is limited. In some areas, forks may only legally inhabit shells such as synthmorphs or axles. It is widely regarded as rude and selfish to waste bodies on forks when so many infugees cannot acquire a body. In practice, this means the underclasses rarely embody their forks while the rich and privileged do so at will. A common trick is to keep an old synth or bot on hand for those times when you need to physically instance a fork for a short period. Nevertheless, it can be quite handy to have another physical body for certain tasks. This is especially true in remote locations such as ships, brinker habs, and exoplanet colonies.

Those who are worried that their forks may go independent tend to avoid sleeving them, especially as they may be liable for the morph itself if it goes missing. The vast majority of people employing forks keep them virtual and use them for digital office work, security, running virtual errands, remote meetings, and so on. Virtual forks are especially useful for taking care of something remote — egocast there and back and then re-integrate the memories. Many people have never physically left their home habitat, but have traveled extensively via fork.

Mind Edits

All beta forks are neurally pruned, but it is also extremely common to psychosurgically edit alpha forks. Muses are equipped to handle these tasks, but online psychosurgeons are readily available.

Editing forks for obedience, agreeableness, subsequienceness, and loyalty is partly mandated by legal liabilities, to keep a fork from going rogue and getting the primary in trouble. People also do it when they know they otherwise can’t trust themselves (meaning, their fork) to stick to the plan, usually because they know they are taking advantage of their fork in some way. However, people sometimes forget or fail to also remove the awareness of the editing from the fork’s memories. This can lead to situations where a fork knows their mind has been meddled with, but may not know exactly why — or, even worse, they do, and yet are forced by the edits to somehow make peace with that. This has created mental stress, triggered breakdowns or odd behavior, and spurred otherwise obedient forks to acts of subversion and rebellion.

Relationships

Forking has changed the landscape of romantic relationships. It’s easier than ever to always be there for your partner(s). Many folks now enjoy the benefits of sex with more than one partner without jealousy or fidelity issues. Perhaps most importantly, forks allow people to circumvent scheduling issues; responsibilities are no longer an excuse for not accompanying your partner when they ask you to. On the other hand, this encourages co-dependency and limits the amount of time people get to themselves; some relationship contracts specifically exclude obligatory forking.

The same issues apply to relationships with friends and family — forks are a fantastic way to keep up with your besties when you are otherwise busy or to fulfill family obligations that the primary would rather avoid.

The relationship between a fork and their primary is dependent on personality. Most people remain on decent terms with their forks — they are of the same mindset, after all. People who are cantankerous, disagreeable, anxiety-ridden, or defiant tend to find that they have as many issues with their forks as they do with other people. This can be eye opening and lead to some critical selfevaluation, or it can prove that multiplicity is simply not your thing.

Primaries and forks do have their falling outs. Depending on the primary’s attitude and local laws, the fork most likely has little recourse and can look forward to deletion. Forks are aware of this, of course, and so bite their tongue or don’t destabilize the orbit to avoid repercussions. This enhances the echo chamber effect that already is prevalent between many forks and primaries, especially among those who don’t often socialize with others.

Forks and Rep

In polities where forks are treated as property, they are forbidden from having their own rep scores. Instead, any rep dings or pings they accrue are applied to their primary’s rep score. More than one person has had their rep tanked by a fork gone wild. This encourages people to track and keep a close eye on their forks’ activities.

Once a fork acquires its own citizenship as a legally separate person, it may build its own rep scores. Most rep nets will copy over the primary’s reputation score in this case as a starting point, up to the point the fork was instantiated, as long as the primary approves. After all, the fork shares that history, even if it is now legally separate. However, there have been a few cases, notably of forks substantiated from older backups, or ones in which the primary disavowed the fork, where the fork had to build their rep from scratch.

The Dark Side

Forking enables all sorts of bad behaviors. Relationship infidelity is most common — there are as many opinions about that as there are potential scenarios. Some people use forks to live entire second lives, unknown to their partners or friends. Online trolls use forks to brigade and harass their target du jour. Even autonomists have to deal with people using forks to stack meetings and sway collective decision-making processes. Transhuman society is continually developing new mechanisms to detect these abuses and keep them in check.

Children and Education

Prevailing public opinion finds the idea of forking children distasteful, and many habitats prohibit it. The potential for chaos alone is unnerving. Nevertheless, parents create forks of their children as an alternative to birthing new ones, especially given the costs of genetic licenses and exowomb fees. Others do it to give their only child “siblings” to play with and keep them occupied. This practice is criticized as less optimal than socializing with other children, but in remote habs not every parent has that option.

A new wave of educators encourages forking as a way for children to acquire an education without also limiting the amount of creative and play time time they need each day. Schools in agreement with this policy handle all daily lessons with online forks, which are merged at the end of the day with the physical primary who has spent the day playing.

In the halls of higher education, college students routinely fork themselves to take on bigger class loads and get through school more quickly. Aware of these capabilities, professors elevate the work load for their courses, knowing the students will compensate.

Forks as Muses

It is increasingly common for people to take on a fork as their muse. In many cases, this is a fork of a family member or loved one. Parents push this as a way of mentoring and always being there for their children, though this is also seen as smothering. Children do not like always being under their parents’ gaze and usually trade out for a different muse when they get older. People with narcissistic or introvert traits are known to be more comfortable taking on their own forks as muses — who can you trust more than yourself? Experts, however, discourage using forks as muses, given that your average person lacks the impartiality and specialized training that make muse ALIs such useful personal companions and assistants.

Merging and Deletion

The practice of merging and deleting is essential to forking practices, but also the biggest hurdle that someone new to forking must overcome. Reluctance is very common, in part because it can feel like ending a life. Once a person has merged a fork back into their primary ego several times, however, these concerns are assuaged as they understand the fork has been integrated into their own self.

It is trickier to acclimate to deletion. Some egos have a hard time accepting it, no matter which end of it they are on — especially with alpha forks, as they are a more complete copy. While some forks are comfortable enough with the procedure that they can delete themselves, knowing that they served their purpose and their primary continues on, it is not uncommon for forks up for deletion to rebel or go on the run. For this reason, many transhumans only ever merge their alpha forks or deactivate them and keep them in storage.

Being a Fork

The realization that you are a fork can be jarring, especially if you are the type of person who considers forks to be secondary to the primary ego — and many people do, it’s an inherent bias towards our own uniqueness and specialness. Even our language reflects this hierarchy with terms like “primary” and “beta.” No one likes being in a position where they are expendable or expected to do someone else’s work. Once such experiences are merged with the primary, however, people’s attitudes tend to change.

While stereotypes exist of forks finishing each other’s sentences and reveling in being the same person, more individualistic forks go to great lengths to make themselves stand apart from their peers, changing their mannerisms, clothing style, and sometimes even their way of speaking. Intentionally editing your forks to give each a unique personality quirk is a good way to easily tell them apart.