I don't really trust myself with writing decent fluff in English, but here's a couple of ideas and considerations regarding genetics:
Since:
1) Nobody in their right mind would gleefully inject themselves with mutagenic shots with unknown consequences, even if it's pretty much required in game to perform research in a reasonable timeframe.
2) While roleplaying figuring out mutations is fun, having to roleplay the discovery of a humanity changing breakthrough each round gets old really fast, and the crew hardly ever plays along, or plain asks for powers they probably shouldn't know about.
NT and the general public already know -something- about the four enhancements as result of previous studies, and the objective of the genetic research performed on the station is to have them manifest reliably, not their outright discovery.
The geneticists are working on that specific project, analyzing the isolated genome sequence that is already known to hold the key to the expression of the beneficial mutations, pretty much refining the results of documented research with a relatively safe and reversible method.
This could make the required human testing and self-testing a smidgen more plausible, even within the scope of the absurd magic genetics we have to work with, while still leaving some leeway for roleplaying figuring out what the powers do (to which extent NT knows about the powers would be up to the player) if one wishes to do so.
It could also explain the relative marginality of genetic research compared to the importance given to plasma research (if that is still part of our canon), more of a side project that would be nice to complete but it's not the main focus, and that happens to be possible to carry out in the same station.
As for cloning... One moment you're minding your own business. The next you're a naked, trembling, babbling mess in some medbay room, why it is so cold, what is this doctor* even talking about, what's that syringe, someone kill that light and oh god this means I died. If that's not traumatizing I don't know what that is.
*[If you're lucky. If the station is in shambles more often than not you'd wake up alone next to your corpse, and have to undress it yourself.]
It's silly to have to pretend it never happens. That is something that could be a temporary measure to not traumatize further someone right out of the pod, but they would realize soon, if not immediately, what happened.
Cloning is also something way too often shrugged off as a minor inconvenience, when it should be as harrowing as suffering from the equivalent of Phantom Limb Syndrome involving the whole body (Phantom Body Syndrome?), at least for someone not used to it, and even more serious depersonalization and deterioration should afflict those that had to be cloned twice (or more!) in the same day.
Everything seems to suggest the clone pod works like an incredibly sophisticated 3D printer that saves an image of the individual down to the chemistry of their latest engram, and reproduces it on a body grown from stem cells (with far from perfect results, even worse since the last update, but still within acceptable range).
As many said, it is reasonable to assume that if you are cloned from your corpse you'd remember up to twenty minutes before your demise (for obvious gameplay reasons), and that if you are cloned from a genetic backup you should remember up to the moment of the last scanning.
The main crux would be the authenticity of one's self. The transference of consciousness seems almost a given since there can be only one clone alive at a time, since ghosts are a thing (no idea what canon we have about them, if we do), and ties nicely with the headcanon some players have about clones still feeling some effects of their death upon revival (e.g. you have been strangled to death, your newborn cloned self would feel a suffocating sensation for a while), which would be difficult for reductionists to explain.
And that brings up all sorts of intriguing questions: are we just a template in a terminal? Are we a series of incredibly complicated instructions, but still fundamentally instructions, that can be quantified and replicated? Is that a good or a bad thing? Is there a soul, and does it coincide with consciousness? Can consciousness be explained entirely by science? And so on..
I can see NT assuming a conveniently commercial, non-committal stance regarding to cloning, reframing it as a 'simple' body transplant, granting automatically full legal personhood to the cloned, not pronouncing itself on the existential ramifications, leaving chaplains and therapists to deal with them for those who care about those things (they're still customers, right?); the kind of outlook that, as long as they're loyal and functional, employees are assets and have to be propped up and sent back out, regardless of 'who' they really are.. (yikes.).
It would be nice for the genuineness of consciousness to remain an ethical and philosophical dilemma, with different schools of thought on the matter, not strictly faction-tied but some more popular and more endorsed within certain organizations and so on.
Now onto explaining monkey cubes and humanized monkeys...
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On a more practical note, a small suggestion regarding the genetic research room: monkey pen moved to the lower right corner, to leave the way to medbay inner maintenance clear, for a more private path to lead the freshly cloned to cryogenics, instead of having them walk through respectively a public lobby, the monkey pen, or the morgue.
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Topic: Space Station 13: Urist McStation (Read 2157325 times)