Stuck On: Biolock (Part 2)
The ability to quickly clone yourself raises an important question:
When cloning, mind transference, simulated personalities, and shape-shifting creatures are the norm, how do you prove you’re you?
(The question gets even more complicated on worlds where identity theft is a respected profession, where Body Swapping Day is a planetary holiday, or where asexual reproduction yields hundreds of genetically identical offspring.)
Luckily, by 2713, the question has been definitively answered: The Biolock.
Biolock is the generic name for any number of technologies designed to perfectly distinguish between individuals.
It’s a combination lie detector, personality assessor, and biometric scanner that analyzes a being’s biosignature – the sum total of all that being’s identifiable mental and physical characteristics.
A biolock can tell the difference between
- Person X and Person Y.
- Person X and the Identical Twin of Person X.
- Person X and a Clone of Person X.
- Person X (alive) and Person X (dead).
- Person X and a Mek Programmed with a Copy of Person X’s Brainwave Patterns.
- Person X and a Creature that can Mimic Person X’s Appearance.
- Person X and a Jar of Person X’s Spit.
So, with the biolock, the owner of the corner store doesn’t bat an antennae when you lease a clone, a Mek duplicate, and an Aye that does funny impressions of you.
He gives you a quick scan, and it tells him you're the original.
Anyway, the Afterthought’s main systems have a biolock – cobbled together from seven or eight popular models – that only recognizes Daniel Wei.
In other words, both of these Stuck Ons were a long way of saying, "Rachel-7 can’t open Daniel’s ship without him."
oh i thought the punchline would be that Jeska had actually made a clone of herself though that could be hinted here too.