On the nature of the Reapers:
In the trilogy, we get two pieces of information about the nature of the Reapers:
(1) Legion in ME2: "Transcended flesh. Billions of organic minds, uploaded and conjoined within immortal machine bodies. "Each a nation".
(2) The Catalyst in ME3: "We helped them ascend, so that they could make way for new life, storing the old life in Reaper form."
What came to me first when hearing this again is the insight that the Reapers are physically synthetic, not bio-synthetic (EDI's speculation at the Collector Base was wrong).The processing of organics isn't used to build the structure, but to re-encode their idenities into a new form. All that is left is information, and the genetic material is only used to extract information about the physical forms. Could they have done that without destroying the host? Of course they could have, but as we all now know, the purpose was as much to destroy the old form as to create the new one.
But the more interesting question that comes up is this: If everything those species had been - their identities, the memories of their material culture, their ideas, memories of their lives - are preserved within a Reaper, then why the hell are they doing all this? Why do they serve the cycle and do to others what has been done to them? Without fail, without any drop-outs? For if those billions of uploaded minds were mangled beyond recognition, like the Collectors were, beyond all saving as we know from Mordin, insane by the standards of their old identities, their minds lost, then they could not be the "old life preserved in Reaper form", they would be something else.
The plausible, almost obvious answer is: they're mind-controlled by the Catalyst.
On the nature of mind control:
To understand where I'm coming from, it is important to see that all those instances of "mind control" we see in the games aren't in fact mind control. Anderson? His mind is free, his body is controlled. The same with Shepard when he shoots Anderson. Grayson? His mind was in the process of being conquered and destroyed, not controlled. Because true mind control is something you will not notice! If you are truly mind-controlled, if your will is subverted, you will do what you want - and it will be what your master wants. You will not just be "not allowed to think or act differently", you simply will not think or act differently. There is no fight, no resistance, your actions will feel as natural to you as they would were you not mind controlled. THAT is mind control.
To get back to the Reapers, this kind of mind control is what it takes to get the Reapers to act like they do,without fail every single time one is created, and still feel and act like individual Reapers, even to themselves. And all it takes is to maintain a single "truth" in the conjoined minds: "The cycle is necessary. It is inevitable. What was done to you was necessary and inevitable. Your form is what it was always meant to be."
How does the Catalyst control the Reapers:
Remember what the Catalyst says about itself: "The Citadel is part of me". This implies that there are other parts and raises the question "what are the other parts"? Now I'm going to speculate a bit and postulate that the other parts are in the Reaper bodies, and that the Catalyst's consciousness is distributed between the Citadel as the primary seat and parts of the Reapers. Multiple-body super-intelligent beings have been ossasionally used in SF literature since...hmm...I think it started 1988 with "Neverness" (corrections welcome), so this is not an exotic concept. The parts external to the Citadel allow the Catalyst to maintain its mind control.
I will conclude, thus, that the Reapers' fate, beyond "they are not a threat anymore" which applies to all endings, is not inconsequential for the final choice. From the moral angle, destroying them is multiple genocide, and controlling them keeps them enslaved. From the practical angle, the knowledge of countless cycles will be destroyed if you destroy them. Thus, let's have another look the choice that avoids that:
How the Synthesis relates to the Reapers:
There is this term that comes up in association with the Reapers and Synthesis both: "pinnacle of evolution/final evolution of life". Legion associates "Unity. Understanding. Transcendence" with the state of the Reapers. Now obviously the "final evolution" is hyperbole, for there can't be such a thing and even if there was, the Reapers wouldn't be it, or we wouldn't be able to destroy them.
And even if the process weren't so horrific and the result so butt-ugly,
we are not ready for the Reaper's kind of ascension, that "Unity". We want to remain individuals physically and mentally, thank you very much. But "understanding" and "transcendence" would figure prominently in any description of advanced life which has taken a step, or several steps, forward on some scale of artificial evolution.
Synthesis - a selective transcendence:
So what does the Synthesis achieve? Rather obviously, it doesn't conjoin any minds and implant them into a machine body. Nor does it turn anyone into a giant cuttlefish, a tentacled monster or any other disgust-evoking lifeform (just watch the ending sequence). Nor is any interpretation that lessens minds in the spirit of the Synthesis. But if the terms used to describe it have any meaning within the themes touched by the story, then post-Synthesis intelligent life will have the tools to transcend fundamental limitations of its previous condition and gain an understanding of the universe on par with the Reapers (with post-Synthesis life having inherited the potential for self-improvement from pre-Synthesis synthetics, as I have described in my Synthesis thread). In addition to that, the remnants of the species of past cycles will all be preserved along with all their knowledge and experience, and freed from the Catalyst's mind control, we can expect any future interaction to be less hostile that it has been. No, things will not be perfect - as long as there is life, there will be conflict - but the cycle has stolen millions of years of potential advancement from the intelligent life of the galaxy. I would even postulate that had the cycle not happened and organic and synthetic life survived against all odds, then there would be a symbiosis of synthetic and organic life at this point in time. Synthesis will give part of that lost potential back.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 01 juin 2012 - 09:18 .
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