Note: Regarding this particular part of Bob’s story I had better clarify something before we go any further. Amongst the seemingly infinite number of civilizations and populations that make up the Confederation it is commonly known, recognized and understood that a life unit (in our terms – spiritual being or what is commonly referred to as ‘the soul’) is an eternal entity that is aware of being aware and is potentially capable of maintaining a knowing, fully conscious existence and operating independently of any kind of physical form. However, that being said, the Confederation has, from its inception, mandated that every life unit must associate with and animate a body form and must do so from a location inside the form. Also, with the exception of specific highly classified positions (usually military) or working at extremely hazardous jobs, the body forms must be living organisms that are subservient to the life units. Why? Well, a life unit that is wired (for lack of a better phrase) into a living organism form is much easier to control and keep track of. The organism becomes the recognizable identity of the life unit. Once a life unit has been “wired in” if it so much as flitters outside of the organism the alarms go off. Knowingly or unknowingly moving outside your organism is an offense of magnitude and is not taken lightly by the Dept. of Conformity. If one’s organism (body) is injured it can be easily repaired. In fact, an entire body can be remade and assembled a piece at a time to look and act just like the original without being the original. When a body is destroyed, as is a frequent occurrence in the Confederation, the life unit is immediately located and taken to one of the abundant reassignment facilities. The life unit waits in one of these facilities to be assigned and wired into a new body form. By the way, all the bodies are factory made with new designs and features coming out constantly. Of course, the body form, type and model assigned to a life unit are in strict accordance with and appropriate to the particular region where the life unit will be functioning. In other words, it might be an amphibian form, a beetle form, a human form or one of trillions of other lower life forms (all organisms are considered to be lower life forms) used by life units throughout the empire of the Confederation.
As a little side note regarding life units; life units are not equal in dimension or quantity. Each life unit is of the exact same make-up (essence) but from one life unit to another, there is not an equal endowment of that essence. In other words we’re talking about a quantitative factor here i.e., order of magnitude. To get a visual on this discrepancy of size in life units I’m going to use familiar animals as representations (now this comparison to animals is to overall “life essence” size only – not brain size or disposition). So we have life units that would be blue whales (the largest animal on earth) all the way down to being a tiny little mouse. Again, the essence of life is the exact same from life unit to life unit but the order of magnitude of that essence can vary greatly. The Confederation has only a spattering of blue whales within its entire population. The predominate life unit in the Confederation would be along the line of being somewhere between a polar bear and a squirrel.
The Confederation contains myriad hierarchies of distinctions enforced upon its populations. Some of these distinctions are in social class, species, race, economics, and region then there are numerous subdivisions in any class. Those individuals belonging to specific higher classes at least have some choices when it comes time to get a new body form. The lists of choices are quite limited but for example; one choice might regard the gender of the new body. The lower classes, which make up over eighty percent of the Confederation’s populations, have no choice when it comes to being assigned a new body. The bodies manufactured for the lowest classes are without gender and have no reproductive capabilities but some do have sexual capabilities. The fact is that there are no bodies manufactured that have reproductive capabilities. Long, long ago the state saw that it was much to their advantage to take over all reproduction activities and management of living organisms. The state contracts through private genetic corporations that own and operate the body farms to keep the Confederation in ample stock of any required or desired lower life form.
I almost neglected mentioning that an important element in the manufacturing of bodies was the documentation of the ongoing genetic relationships between body units. These relationships by way of genetic lines were known as family connections. The life units maintaining a pretense that these bodies were members of a continuing genetically connected family unit were, for some reason, critical to the Confederation. Therefore, life units animating lower life organisms (bodies) pretended to be part of a family system that included the immediate family of parent(s) and siblings then an extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and so on. The Confederation felt that maintaining the pretense of these family units was a helpful tracking and control factor. The ongoing genetic relationship between bodies manufactured at different times is a reality but, as bodies are not inherent to a life unit, the illusion of being a body that’s part of a family unit and an extended family unit by a life unit was long ago originated by the Confederation. Many life units within the populations of the Confederation were so ingrained with this pretense of being a body and part of a genetic line of bodies that they viewed the illusion as a truth and viewed the idea of there being independent life units as a lie. And they created all manner of social, cultural and religious systems and structures to support and validate their unique views. The Confederation, of course, just loved this as it made it just that much easier to keep control over its populations. But also know that when a life unit’s organism died and the life unit was reassigned to a new organism, that new organism was not necessarily of the same genetic line as the previous organism animated by the life unit.
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