: Have you seen "The Sixth Day"? I imagine it would be something like
: that type of effect. In fact pattern buffers could easily be used for
: quick and easy human cloning, or replication whatever the hell you damn
: well please.
I haven't seen the 6th day, but I do recall a Star Trek TNG episode where Riker was cloned in a transporter accident, which is probably a similar sort of phenomenon. In any case, we could go on and on about the description of what pattern buffers do in the game and the reality of what restoring a saved game actually does. I agree that pattern buffers would not be ubiquitous on the Marathon or on other ships unless they served a greater purpose than allowing a cyborg to download their future memories - in fact, our own existence as a cyborg was kept even from us, let alone the rest of the Marathon crew. If I were designing such a device myself, it would truly store my pattern so that I could be restored in the event that I die. This would be a form of cloning and my memories of events after using a pattern buffer would be lost. Reconciling this with what happens in the game is impossible.
Since comm terminals, teleporters and pattern buffers share so much in common throughout the Marathon games, it probably wouldn't be much a stretch to consider these to all employ similar technologies. Comm terminals transfer information from one entity to you, transporters deconstruct you into an information stream and reconstruct you in another location at the same point in time and pattern buffers form some sort of link with you (a quantum link?) that allows them to transfer your memory engrams at the moment of death back in time to your brain at the time of access. In this sense, they probably don't require Jjaro implants after all. But then if everyone were to use them couldn't that really muck up the timeline? Since the Marathon Universe allows multiple timelines, it certainly could - we could get involved in infinite loops where we and our enemies try to undo each other's acctions. Suffice it to say, if we want to make sense out of this, there have to be limits in their use. I think that any society - even the Pfhor - would quickly recognize the danger that such devices could pose and would restrict access to them. Further, these devices probalby have limits in terms of capacity, and perhaps there are even physical limits in the Universe on the number of patterns that can be linked in a single space and time. That issue poses some very interesting plot possibilities in terms of your enemies trying to disrupt these links, but I digress . . .
: This is how I've always explained the Marine's ability to carry something
: like the SPNKR around without it being obviously on his back (aside from
: just "engine limitations"): he has in his suit or his
: cybernetics somewhere a portable pattern buffer that stores his entire
: inventory, which is managed (put away/retrieve) via a neurally-controlled
: display in his helmet interface.
Interesting thought, but the marine would likely still need to carry around the weight of all these things, even if they're stored as patterns in their HUD. Yes, this is sci-fi, but I'm only willing to suspend physical laws by so much. If the marine doesn't actually carry these items, why would they need to be beamed down to him for him to find them - why not just download them as needed and when needed? More likely is that the marine may store each device as a pattern, but that they still need to carry the weight (even that much energy, if it could be stored, has some mass).
: Maybe the WSTE-M5s enigmatic reloading mechanism uses something similar...
: just beam the ammo into the chamber. An interesting extension of that for
: a weapon might be something that just beams, say, a toxin, straight into
: your enemy; or more lowtech, beams a rock into his chest. Of course any
: kind of energy shield would probably deflect against this type of attack.
There was a Star Trek DS9 episode in which a vulcan developed a conventional weapon with a transporter on the end, so that he could beam a speeding bullet to anyone, anywhere. Cool concept, but there still is the slight matter of the energy requirements of doing so.
