>>5828528“We THINK we do!” you corrected. “We have an IDEA of how to do it… But only by trial and error, and even THAT much might upset the gods. The GODS, Izzy!”
“Well f-fuck the gods, then!” she shouted, and then clapped her hands over her mouth, looking apologetic.
You frowned, slowing down and stopping before her, with arms crossed.
“It’s just…” she began. “Imagine it! A world we could make from scratch, without any of the… The bad people, or the bad aspects of this world. In bodies made just how we want them to be made, with only and nobody can… Can trap us, or hurt us, or make us feel like we don’t belong. And we can bring whoever we want!”
“Izzy, even if I create these… Elemental doppelgangers, they won’t really be us,” you said gently. “We could MAYBE create souls for them… Maybe make the souls a lot like ours… But we’d sill be here, in our original bodies. They’d just be… Copies. Maybe copies with sous, but then more like… Like twins. They’d be able to go there, but we wouldn’t.”
“I know that,” Izirina mumbled, looking down and balling her hands. “But… There’s a way around that.”
You waited, dreading what you might next hear.
“The way that the Archmage can tether a familiar to a mage so one can see through the eyes of another… She does that for her spies, you know? It’s partly how she… She knows where you and Zith-Zi go. If we did the same with our clones…”
The dread didn’t dissipate. Could you really do something like that: create a clone of yourself, a sort of soulless double animated by elemental forces, and PROJECT your senses and consciousness into it? Maybe… Maybe that wouldn’t break the divine ‘bargain’, since it would have no volition, autonomy, or ingrained purpose of its own, no real ‘soul’ to speak of. But… Was it RIGHT? Was it SAFE?
Could it be done? SHOULD it be done?
