That far in the future and they forget the "Cut" and "Paste" commands

[Striker]

So with a hypothetical Pathos II running on dual active servers, you could theoretically have multiple "persons" with a shared experience? For example, when Simon 3 is activated, you have a split-off. But if they were to remain connected to the database the personalities were pulled from, they would have both a singular and separate experience, but also be aware of the duplicate's consciousness. They would essentially be together and apart at the same time.

Yep! That's exactly how it would work. You could even still take a the traditional "snapshot" of the storage at a point in time, and break it off on its own (like in the game -- Simon 3) the only caveat being, once you make a snapshot, the snapshot can no longer be merged with the "hive".

But the other copies that are still tied to the WAU are still synching up data, whether live, or even in a "batch mode", (like their data synchronization deltas get uploaded while they "sleep".)

That argument is the crux of Many-Worlds vs. Many-Minds, every time you "die" (or in this case get copied), do you become a distinct offshoot, with no connection back to original, or do you become aware of all copies? I am not so sure the two ideas are mutually exclusive. I tend to favor the hive-mind idea to an extent, that certain copies have more abilities to sync back with the others more than others. (More on that below).

The research on the subject is still very new, only within the last 20-30 years.

So you could have the following scenarios:

1 ---> Backup or snapshot (Copy of master is point in time).
- Changes recorded on the copy cannot be merged back to the master once it is restored to new node
- What we saw in Simon 3
1 <---> Many (Master-slave), reads and writes both ways, but Master is the central controller
1 -----> Many (Master-slave), Master takes changes and replicates to slaves
- Possibly what we saw with the various bodies laying around that were connected into machinery through structure gel, who died once removed from the WAU life support
1 <----> 1 (Active - Active), Reads and writes always in sync
Many <----> Many (Peer to Peer), The hive mind, all nodes can read and write to all other nodes, with no central point of control or failure
- The Borg would fall in this category

You could even replicate subsets of data, like just the version of you at 21, or the version of you at 50, as well. I need to find the recent story that scanned brains and found they all had time stamps based on circadian rhythms, that just came out today, but that is getting a bit too granular.

In game, this could actually be canonically possible, since the WAU seems to store all data within itself. Once a machine or human is plugged in, you share yourself with the entirety of the "hive mind". It could even explain the WAU's chaotic behavior and seemingly throwing ideas at the wall. As it scans people, it's taking in those personalities. The WAU could be, at points, firing off several conflicting commands, all at the same time. The WAU actually lacks a strong mind of its own, reacting only on input. New theory. The WAU isn't forcing anyone into machines. It's the people's scan stored inside doing it themselves, as they collectively "pilot" the WAU. The human mind can only comprehend so much of a "shared" mind, so most or all of your memory of being in the WAU is lost when you separate physically. That or several other variables. Since everything is stored as data, the machine or organism that branches off will only represent the sum of the amount loaded on to its brain/chip/ect.

I love your idea. I've often tossed around the idea that certain copies may have different levels of ability, some greater than others. Like think Neo in the Matrix, or Ross in the game, Jesus or Buddha in religion. They had metaphysical abilities to tie back to the Master (or collective conscious/hive), greater than most people (nodes) do, so they were able to do supernatural things.

I think you are right when you say the WAU wasn't really sure what it was doing, it was still learning, and it wasn't able to handle so much input, from so many different scans (nodes), or even interpret them correctly, its software was probably still evolving, or just too limited.

Either it, or Ross (or a collaboration), finally got Simon 2 as a workable model, with everything before that failing. Perhaps Ross himself (or Cat) were able to find the final piece of the puzzle to get a working Simon going, and got the WAU to carry out their instructions.

I can imagine Ross and Cat hacking each other inside and outside of the WAU, battling for supremacy sort of like God vs. Devil competition lol.

I heard WAU runs on Python so I'm sure some of you guys can script an upgrade and install Hadoop or something for Pathos 3 LOL