A copy, as the name suggests, is another version, as a backup. What will our world be like when humans no longer have to face death?
In the future 300 years from now, people can save their own memories, or souls. Once the body dies due to aging, a new body can be obtained and continue to live. It sounds good, but it's not up to people to decide what kind of body they get. The government will assign a prosthesis to each deceased person, and what kind of prosthetic body gets depends on luck. An eight-year-old girl died in a car accident, and the prosthesis may be a fifty-year-old woman.
But, for enough money, you can specify the prosthesis you want. Whether you want to become a sexy beauty, or a muscular man, just drop the money.
But the result of immortality is that those who have accumulated a certain amount of wealth become richer and richer, while others live worse and worse. It is conceivable that when this technology is invented and can be popularized, those with certain financial resources and power at that time will be given priority to use it. So they can find better prosthetics for themselves, or even clone one or more of their own bodies.
The advantage of immortality is that one's wealth can be accumulated all the time, and there is no such thing as being inherited by children due to death and sharing the wealth. Because there is a certain experience in earning and accumulating wealth, this experience can help you gain more wealth. When everyone else is experiencing birth, aging, sickness and death, this group of particularly wealthy classes are getting richer and richer because of their immortality.
When this technology is gradually popularized, this group of wealthy classes will inevitably have a sense of crisis. Everyone does not need to face the threat of death. People's learning and work experience are a positive accumulation process, and they will naturally start to earn more wealth. That means sharing the benefits of those who benefit first from undead technology.
Ecologist Garrett Hardin likens the ugly humanity in the grabbing of social resources to Tragedy of the Commons . If everyone uses resources in moderation, whether it is water, air, food on our planet, or in the film The prosthetic body, then the consumption and regeneration of resources are proportional, and everyone can live in a benign environment. However, once the resources they have obtained are plundered uncontrollably because they fear that they will be usurped by others, there will be a public tragedy.
The reconstruction of the prosthesis requires time and money. The wealthy class firmly controls this part of the resources in their own hands. For them, they avoid being divided up by the public and ensure their own interests. But for the society as a whole, it is catastrophic. Because more people can only wait for the distribution, even if they get a prosthetic body that is very different from their previous body, they need to adapt to the new body. To make matters worse, the wealthy still haven't stopped accumulating finances and even plundering more resources.
Death is the most equal. It does not come with any additional conditions, does not need to be defined by any authority, and comes to everyone without exception. Once humanity has overcome the ultimate proposition of death, society begins to become seriously polarized.
So in the era when the film begins, the social structure has undergone earth-shaking changes. Those wealthy classes evolved into "Maas", a social class more aristocratic than aristocrats. They built their living area in the high air with fresh air, and made many cloned bodies for themselves. In order to prevent accidental damage to their memory, they could also save their souls in cloud disks by blinking an eye.
There is no threat of death, and the people at the top of these powers start to do whatever they want. I like to beat prostitutes. If I kill them, I just promise to buy them a more beautiful prosthesis, and no one will report them. I also like to watch couples fight, and if they are killed or disabled, they will buy better prosthetics for them and pay a sum of money. It is also possible to obtain the memory of a criminal from the government, put him in the body of a snake, and treat the snake as a pet. Rules, ethics, and humanity have been crushed by the omnipotence of the Maas.
They are a group of human beings who have conquered God!
How do other people live? They work diligently every day, and the wealth they earn may not be enough to see a doctor. Even if you don't die, it doesn't mean you can have a good life. There is no death but birth, and the living environment becomes crowded. Already overpopulated, and artificial intelligence people, robbing more job opportunities. As a result, the crime rate remains high, and the police are busy dealing with various crimes.
It was at this time that our protagonist appeared. The Space Marines were once dissatisfied with such a social system and prepared to revolt. But various reasons were suppressed, and the Space Marine's memory was frozen. In order to find out the truth about his own murder, Bancroft, the head of the Maas, hired one of the Space Marines, Kovacs, and put his memory into a strong body. If you help Bancroft find out the truth, you can get a lot of money and freedom, and Kovacs agrees to the deal.
But in the course of the investigation, the evil deeds of the Maas were gradually revealed. Mahatma Gandhi mentioned in his seven deadly sins that pleasures against conscience are also one of the seven deadly sins. And the way of enjoyment of the Maas, who surpassed life and death and owns the vast majority of wealth and resources on earth, is no longer just a violation of conscience. In a severely polarized society, various conflicts and contradictions are prominent, and no one can live and work in peace and contentment here.
Ortega's income as a state public servant, a police officer, is barely scraping by. In the event of an accident, even a prosthetic limb cannot be bought. If injured, they may face the fate of dismissal, from subsistence to the point of begging. Prescott is a lawyer who hopes that through his own efforts, he can one day become a member of the Majesty and get out of the muddy life at the bottom. And Bancroft took advantage of her desire to climb up and made her do a lot of shameful things for herself, and finally got the fate of an abandoned child. From the beginning, Bancroft knew that it would never be possible to make these low-level "maggots" a majesty.
Kovacs sister Kawahara is also a member of the Space Marines, but she betrayed the organization and became the only character in the film to break the solidified class barriers and become Maas by betraying her companions. She also wanted to live a good life, but she could see the essence of that world better than Prescott. To become a maas and abandon their conscience is just the foundation, don't see them as a special class superior to others, try to use their desires to manipulate them, and finally drain the wealth of the maas is the purpose of Kawahara.
This is not the kind of life that Kovacs want. Manipulating others and extracting their wealth is no different from this group of Maas. When he was wandering between the lives of the Maas and the lower classes due to the need to investigate the case, he knew that the current state of peace was nothing but a superficial calm under tension and fragility. A former Space Marine, Kovacs learned more than just fighting skills from Falconer, but a spirit. Immortality that breaks the laws of nature may be the greatest curse of mankind. Although social conflicts will not disappear because this spell is gone, breaking this spell may be the beginning of change.
So, let's look forward to the arrival of the second season, and hope that the gradually determined Kovacs can take on the original mission of Space Marines and complete it.
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