Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
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Alter-Egos are not allowed to vote in speculation polls alluding to the validity of a suspected Alter-Ego being a real person
The Enterprise intercepts the alien cloud, survives its initial assault, and journeys inside the cloud, finding a vast alien vessel, which draws the starship inside. An alien probe appears on the bridge and abducts navigator Lieutenant Ilia, who is replaced by a robotic probe that reveals that she/it has been sent to study the "carbon units" (humans) by something called V'ger. Decker is distraught over the loss of Ilia, with whom he had a romantic history, and is troubled to be assigned to get information from the mechnical doppelganger, which he discovers has Ilia's memories and feelings buried within. Meanwhile, Spock takes a spacewalk into the alien vessel, and attempts to telepathically mind meld with it. In doing so, he learns that the vessel is V'ger itself; a living machine. He also comes to terms with his emotions, realizing that the pure logic V'ger represents is "barren...cold."[1]
The ship gradually journeys to the center of V'ger, where V'ger is revealed to be the unmanned scientific probe Voyager 6, which was part of the Voyager program, and (fictitiously) launched in the "twentieth century". The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that interpreted its programming as instructions from God to "learn all that is learnable" and return that information to its creator. These machines made V'ger into something capable of fulfilling that mission, and "on its journey back it gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness itself!" However, Spock realizes that what V'ger lacks is the ability to give itself a purpose other than its original mission. Having learned all that is learnable on its journey home, which took V'ger across the Universe, V'ger finds itself empty and without a purpose. Only through the creator can V’ger begin to explore illogical things, such as God, other dimensions, or higher planes of being. In the climax of the film, V'ger (in the person of the Ilia probe) merges with Commander Decker and then vanishes into a higher realm of being, and thus Earth is saved by the crew of the Enterprise.
yea, heh, I also found out the hard way that so is taraswizard....heh... 
still confused on the dreamcatcher reference?At this point you're so aware of your awareness that you have no idea you're just a sequence of numbers that simulate the chemical synapses for reading/taste/etc. Heck, you're lucky--getting to live forever inside someone's supercomputer.Waddley Hasselhoff wrote:So... I have to learn everything there is to be learned, eh?
Can't I just read some books and eat good food?
If you ever went to Ahira's Hangar you'd know that my best moderator was, indeed, a man (I think). Ready to run away if taraswizard sees this thread! ....he was definitely gracious about it, tho.... 
)Same way most women do, lots of noise and flashy lights?dANdeLION wrote:So, how did your ex-gf take it?
(dAN? Really? )