The Christian Brannock Uploads II

Each self-aware upload of the long dead Christian Brannock is sustained by a system, an advanced neural network, that reproduces the informational matrix scanned from Brannock's still living body. The matrix can be copied to other systems; each system can be housed in different bodies.

Thus, when Brannock sets out to request uploading into Intelligence Prime, he marks the solemnity of this occasion by flying to that intelligence's island base in a specially chosen winged body instead of "...merely communicating his intent..." (Genesis, p. 86) While flying, he feels, hears, tastes, scans horizons, magnifies perception to see the smallest organisms far below and savors each experience because, unless he is emulated, he will not exist in this mode again. His eagerness for oneness with a greater consciousness is mainly intellectual like the feelings of an ancient mathematician discovering a new theorem.

When I set out to summarize the contents of some of Poul Anderson's works, I did not realize how much information there would be to summarize. In many of Anderson's works, human beings traverse interstellar distances. In this work, post-human consciousness goes there and further.