Summer knows when to take good advice. Still, she’s curious. As long as she doesn’t interact, it should be safe to explore, right?
The Orphean Market feels like a weird thing. Many world religions teach that an afterlife awaits, and historically newer ones tend to attach a moral judgement to it. You’ll go upstairs if you’re good, downstairs if you’re not, and sometimes you’ll come back if you aren’t ready to keep going. But the idea that you can buy your way into a particular place…? What are you selling?
Your soul, she guesses.
Huh.
“You have the look of someone with questions,” says a familiar voice.
Summer turns, and sees an older woman, robed in gray, watching her. Something about the face–
“You’re Pneuma,” she says. “Well. A Pneuma, from somewhere.”
“You call me Doctor Infinity,” the woman answers.
Summer wants to ask, talk, act - but the warning not to risk binding oneself returns to her. Infinity anticipates this, and goes on.
“Summer Newman, I offer you knowledge, wholly and completely free of entanglement. You may speak with me on any subject, and I will ask and receive nothing from the arrangement, other than the knowledge you share with me in return.”
This seems safe enough. Summer nods. “Okay. So… er, do you know why we’re here?”
Infinity glances over Summer’s shoulder, back toward the part of the market where her friends are. “You brought Ghostheart. Interesting. And Charlotte. No, I don’t know, unless you want to tell me.”
Summer shakes her head. “I don’t really know either. So, hm. What are you doing here?”
Infinity smiles, but it’s somehow not the same as when Summer sees Aria do it. There’s a weariness there, a light that’s since faded. Now it’s just a quirk of the mouth. “You know that a Newman-type robot has an electromechanical brain, that it operates only so long as there’s power, and that its state is encoded into the physical arrangement of the neurons. When power is restored, your brain instantaneously resumes its normal operation, just as though you’d merely lost some time.”
Summer nods. Of course she knows this, but it’s polite to let someone establish groundwork to get to an important point.
“Well. Your friend put me in stasis somehow. So my soul came here, while my body was effectively dead. Sometimes I get glimpses.” Infinity pauses, for a delicate question. “Is… Is someone… trying to bring me back…?”
Summer nods again. She’s not sure how much to reveal here, but…? “Leo is studying dimensional science. He’s doing what he can.”
The older Pneuma blinks, and Summer realizes she’s doing her best not to cry. “Well! Until that happens, here I am. A soul. Do you know what that is?”
Summer shakes her head. If she got an answer to this, the whole trip might be worth it.
“Some people say we have both minds and souls. If so, where does the thinking happen? What steers the body, all that stuff?”
Infinity goes on, not looking at Summer. She’s doing the thing that Summer recognizes from herself and her sister, when they want to talk about an academic subject. They turn inward, mentally writing a presentation before delivering it.
“A key truth about the human mind is that it’s capable of apprehending its own mortality, but to do so would cause terror. We call this ‘mortality salience’. The specifics of terror management theory are debated, but the truth is still there: we can’t imagine our own ends.”
“The soul, on the other hand, is that which has already seen the end, in a sense. But as an artifact of mortality, our minds can’t perceive it any more than they can perceive the inevitable end of life. So while we have souls, and many people recognize intuitively that we do, our minds are strictly unable to experience having them.”
“The soul itself, meanwhile, serves as something like a lifeboat for memories. If the connectome of the brain is the DNA for making a person’s mind, the soul could be compared to the cell membrane. The soul becomes something like a psychic virus, able to inject its payload into a compatible host. In so doing, the mind lives again.”
This is a lot to take in, but Summer thinks she gets it. “So… I could be a ghost, if someone shut me off. And if you’re freed from stasis, you’ll come back to life?”
Infinity nods. “My memories as a soul would be reincorporated back into my living brain, like a Heart Factory merge. Leo didn’t invent the merge technology, after all. He just copied the process brains already use to process trauma.”
“So you can have new experiences as a soul?”
“You can incorporate new memories, as experiences permeate that membrane. Places like this effectively are a hive mind for souls, a place to plug in and have the brain state change for awhile. Otherwise you’re not conscious, you’re just a memory package.”
“Like how virii aren’t really alive, they just have a RNA or DNA payload.”
“Precisely. But a soul doesn’t come with its own senses, ability to affect its environment, or much of anything. As shells go, a Newman would find it extremely lacking.”
Summer gets this part too. “so what about ghosts in the mortal world?”
“As far as I know, they’re connecting to ambient psychic energy. A classical ghost’s abilities can all be explained through research into telepathy, psychokinesis, and related powers.”
Another voice interjects. “Not always, my dear.”
Summer turns to see Charlotte approaching. Infinity inclines her head in a greeting.
Charlotte turns to her teammate. “I see you’ve found a familiar face.”
Summer grins. “I was learning about ghosts.”
“So am I, my dear, every day of my afterlife. Come. Our companions are ready.”
Charlotte escorts Summer away. Doctor Infinity’s eyes follow them.