NIETZSCHE; DEAD PHILOSOPHERS' INBOX

[explosivecombat]

[TEXT; LOCKED TO doitrockapella]

The offer for conversation is always open, should you desire to take me up on it; I can't guarantee that I'll respond immediately, nor will it necessarily be the response you want, but I'll always respond in some way.

In the name of enlightened discourse.

Comments

[doitrockapella]

And it had something to do with the legend behind the Burned Tower in Ecruteak City, didn't it?

[explosivecombat]

I couldn't tell you. I'm not very familiar with the legends of this place; that's more my superior officer's area of interest, not mine.

[doitrockapella]

Let me clarify, then. It had something to do with Entei, Raikou, and Suicune?

[explosivecombat]

I don't know for sure. It's possible.

[doitrockapella]

I'll settle for "it's likely", if you're dodging the question on a basis of certainty.

[explosivecombat]

If that's what you would like.

I told you when we started this that I wouldn't be able to provide specifics sometimes, because I don't know. I'll amend the statement to it's possible, but I don't understand how it would be possible.

[doitrockapella]

How what would be possible?

[explosivecombat]

I don't understand how the effects of that virus would have been created in the first place. Say that it had something to do with the legend of the tower, as you're saying; that would imply that the virus was specifically created to that end, wouldn't it?

[doitrockapella]

And who would have the technological resources to do the engineering necessary, you mean?

I imagine it's a fairly short list.

[explosivecombat]

I don't know what you're talking about.

That isn't an attempt to dodge the question or its implications; the year is still 1915 where I came from, mind you. I don't know what would be necessary.

[doitrockapella]

...Indulge me a moment of blasphemy, then. People have attempted to use alchemy to create living creatures, haven't they? Animals and people?

[explosivecombat]

They have, yes, and in some cases it wasn't an "attempt."

[doitrockapella]

Someone succeeded in engineering a human being from scratch? With alchemy?

[explosivecombat]

Well, I didn't say that - however, there have been living beings that were...ah, not so much created as they were "enhanced."

We call them chimeras; for some time after I arrived here, I thought the Pokémon might be an example of that, actually.

[doitrockapella]

And I'm assuming that involved, if you'll pardon the hyperbolic simplicity, effectively taking an existing human and the "enhancement" and smashing them together somehow with alchemy. Correct?

[explosivecombat]

That's probably the least elegant way you could have worded that, but yes, something along those lines.

[doitrockapella]

Has anyone ever been born a chimera?

[explosivecombat]

Of course not.

[doitrockapella]

But that's what making a chimera effectively does, isn't it? Taking one living being and overwriting some given set of their traits to be like a separate being's, instead.

Say your chimera is a human being with a lion's claws. If you can use alchemy to modify his body into developing claws, is it that much of a stretch to think of making that kind of alteration before birth, such that he'd be born with the propensity to develop claws in the first place?

[explosivecombat]

[woman is this some sort of trick question]

Yes, it is - in the case of alchemical alterations, you already have a fully-developed human being to work with.

[doitrockapella]

[BUCKLE UP IT'S SCIENCE]

True. But in theory, humans and lions are made up of roughly the same materials — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. So what is it that makes humans develop fingers, but lions develop claws?

[explosivecombat]

[Do we have to discuss lions, Locke.]

They're species-specific traits, clearly.

[doitrockapella]

[Why, is there something wrong with lions? >:3]

So we could say, then, that assuming there were such thing as a "blueprint" for forming a human, the human blueprint would call for the trait of fingers but not claws, and the one for lions would call for claws but not fingers. Is that fair?

[explosivecombat]

[ >B( ]

I suppose. I don't see why not.

[doitrockapella]

There is such a thing as a blueprint for forming a human — and for all living creatures, as a matter of fact. It looks like this.