Room 307, Saturday Morning

[dollpocalypse]

Topher woke up to find his roommate missing and to find himself the proud owner of a killer headache that he suspected had something to do with the coconut-bra antics that had transpired last night. Well, great. He dug one of his laptops out from where he had been storing it under his pillow (shut up) and pulled up some Minecraft.

That would take care of the headache, yes.

The fact that he looked different today? Totally lost on him.

[[door and post are open]]

Comments

[dollpocalypse]

Medicine. Gross.

"Yeah, sure," Topher said, going along with it for the sake of their evil-teenage-boy friendship. "That'd definitely work. Like if someone was dying but he was in the middle of an important project or whatever, he could have his brain transferred into someone else to finish the job."

[lockestheway]

"Yeah," Peter said, somewhat distractedly. "Like that. Though you'd have to go looking around for volunteers..."

[dollpocalypse]

"You could offer a reward," Topher said excitedly, like this was a fun brainstorming session. Because really, it kind of was. "Like, donate your body to someone else for a few years and you get... I don't know. Free stuff."

[lockestheway]

"But would the person whose imprint gets moved to the next body give it up so easily again?" Peter said. "And it's a pretty hard-to-sell idea if you're thinking about the general public."

[dollpocalypse]

"Unless," Topher theorized, "you did it to people who couldn't say no." This was getting into the sketchy mind-rape category, yes. "Like... people in jail, or something."

[lockestheway]

"And wind up in trouble with about a hundred human rights groups," Peter argued. ... Yeah, the argument you were looking for was 'but that isn't moral', Peter. "You'd have to be cleverer than that. Go for people off the grid who really need it - but you'd have to build it up slowly, and be able to guarantee that whatever they put in a contract gets held up."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher nodded thoughtfully. It was strange -- when this theoretical facility did get set up, it wouldn't be Topher behind the logistics, but he and Peter seemed to have a scarily accurate perception of how it should work.

"Or," he said, holding up a hand, "we keep it quiet, and only let people know it exists if we're sure they want a piece of it."

[lockestheway]

Of course Peter had a good idea of how it should be set-up. He was Peter Wiggin, thank you very much, and while the IF might not have thought he was special enough to go to Battle School, he was still cleverer than just about anyone.

... Peter's fragile ego was firmly at the wheel here, folks.

"Sure, that might work for a couple of years," Peter said, "But one expose - or one good hacker - and you're dealing with a PR nightmare."

[dollpocalypse]

"Given," Topher said with the wrong icon, "that anyone believed it."

That was important.