Eternal, Infinite, Immortal-CrutchCricket's Guide to Control

Fun fact: Thread titles here are apparently more limited in number of characters than on BSN Prime. Huh.

Anyway, this is a recreation of my Control thread from BSN Prime. I originally wrote it at five in the morning after a night of heavy drinking and gaming with friends. Kinda proud it has held up. Also, yay, I can finally center the title!




In light of the EC I’m seeing a lot of doom and gloom threads popping up about Control . Some people are freaking out that Shepard will go crazy and start Reaping, others are just mindlessly quoting the tired old Acton cliché and just about everybody seems fond of saying “oh it’s not Shepard, it’s just the holokid with Shepard’s face” or something to that extent.

I wanted to compile all my thoughts on the matter in order to a) focus discussion of these issues in one place and have something to point to when this inevitably comes up again. I’m getting real tired of typing the same thing over and over.

Disclaimer: I am looking at the consequences of Control alone. I am not discussing the ending in general and/or how it relates to the rest of the series. I’m also not discussing the holokid’s “logic” and in fact have done my best to ignore it both in this, hopefully impartial perspective and in my personal headcanon.

The contents of this post are largely extrapolations derived from what we’ve seen in Control. None of the conclusions described are seen in-game. However I have tried to follow a logical progression in coming up with this that should hopefully give it more weight than just “some dude’s headcanon”.


Summary: i.e. where I’m going with this. If you read nothing else take the following as the key topic of this thread:


By picking control, Shepard is ascending as an individual. He is stripped of his humanity and corporeal form and becomes something more. The new entity is not Shepard the human but there is continuity of persona.  One does not simply end and the other begins. It is a transformation. The new entity is fundamentally different than the Catalyst (referred to as the holokid always, at least by me). It is a higher intelligence able to perceive and comprehend more than organic minds can imagine. As a result of this expanded awareness, the new entity further disconnects from his organic roots and becomes indifferent to lifeforms beneath it. Therefore at some point in the future the new entity will ignore organics, perhaps going so far as to physically remove itself from their midst in the pursuit of whatever unknowable goals such an intelligence would have.


And now onto the detailed points:


Shepard vs not-Shepard.

How many times have you gone on a thread discussing Control and referred to the new control entity as “Shepard”, for convenience’s sake? Invariably, as soon as you did some wise-ass would immediately attempt to correct you: “That’s not Shepard. Shepard’s dead. That’s just an AI,” they’d intone, with the same righteous matter-of-factness as a career bureaucrat denying a slightly erroneous application. What may be most irritating is that technically they’re correct (the best kind of correct if the Central Bureaucracy is to be believed).

The Shepard that we get out of Control is not the same Shepard we put in at the beginning of whatever ME game you started on. Obviously one’s a meatbag, the other’s a bunch of circuits controlling some big-ass cuttlefish. But as much as they are technically correct, they couldn’t be more wrong in terms of deeper meaning and intent. “That’s not Shepard” is typically not meant to imply “that’s no longer a human with flesh and blood” but rather “there was an intrinsic value in the identity of Shepard that is not present in this artificial approximation”. In other words, it’s the VI who only thinks he’s Shepard but on a larger scale. It’s an imperfect copy, a replica, a fake.

Friends, are you aware of how nebulous the concept of identity really is? What makes the you of last week the same “you” as in the present? What link is there between the two? How do you prove that there is some quality about you, some identity that persists through time? Is it physical continuity? Is it merely that you look the same, that you are identical genetically? You are not of course the exact same as last week. You hair and nails may have grown, some of your cells may have flaked off. In fact speaking of cells, you cycle just about all of them every couple of years (different tissues replace themselves at different rates. Neurons do not get replaced at all). So physically you are not the same collection of cells you were a few years ago.

Now let’s go deeper (BWONNNG!): teleporters in fiction typically work on the basis of breaking down the target, sending all that information about the target to the destination and reassembling it there. So suppose a person got teleported. Their matter on the transmitting end would be completely destroyed; while instantaneously all the information about them would be used to reconstruct them at the destination. But is it the same person? Or merely a copy? Physical continuity is obviously ruled out. The body at the transmitting end was completely destroyed. Only information about it was sent. So what’s left? Memories? Personality? Those are ruled out too. If the person at the receiving end has a memory (dinner with his wife, let’s say), that memory does not belong him because he didn’t have dinner with his wife. He doesn’t have a wife. How could he? He was just created in the teleporter. He recieved the memories of another man who happens to be the exact same, but who was destroyed moments ago.


So how does this relate to Shepard? Well before we get to his case I’m sure people wouldn’t really be comfortable believing we don’t have an identity that persists through time or if that we had teleporters we’d be systematically murdering every user and just creating copies at the other end. So we need to loosen up a little. Instead of demanding continuity and exactness, maybe we need just to settle for “if it looks like Bob, and it talks like Bob, and it remembers what Bob did, it’s probably Bob”. But forget Bob, what about Shepard? Well Shepard too gets broken down and disintegrated and all the information pertaining to what he was gets transmitted somewhere. Except instead of recreating his organic body at some other point, his thoughts and personality get integrated into the Reaper command structure. What you’re left with is something that talks and thinks like Shepard, with the only difference being that physically, he’s a collection of giant robot cuttlefish. So by our more chill standards, it talks and remembers like Shepard, it’s probably Shepard. There is continuity albeit weak continuity. Strong continuity as we’ve seen just isn’t possible. So by this alone humanShepard=ControlShepard.

Where that equality gets broken is what is added to Shepard after that transmission: untold processing power, the combined knowledge of all the races the Reapers somehow have stored in them etc etc. Once you factor all that in, what we’re left with doesn’t talk much like Shepard did, doesn’t act much like Shepard did and definitely doesn’t look much like Shepard did. So we can conclude that it is in fact not Shepard. But there is continuity there, just weak continuity. But no weaker than the continuity of any of us persisting for more than a few years or of teleporting (if we ever figure that one out). So ControlShepard is not just a VI or an AI who thinks it's Shepard. It is a whole new entity that is continuous from our Shepard.



Shepard vs. The Holokid.

A few people seem to think that Control just means Shepard replaced the holokid with himself and that there is a strong possibility that years down the line some clueless race is going to get the same nonsensical song and dance from holoShepard after he nearly harvests everyone yet again. I maintain that is not the case, and that the control entity is fundamentally different from the holokid.

The Catalyst was an AI built and programmed by its creators for one task- finding a solution to the organic-synthetic problem (never mind whether this problem actually existed or not). Its programming makes the holokid believe it and it’s safe to assume its creators believed it too. This suggests a few things, the most important being that the holokid was necessarily limited in how it could act. In other words it was likely shackled, like EDI was, restricted from certain functions or data and unable to self-modify (they just didn't do a good enough job of shackling it, or maybe they didn't count on it planning to melt them and everyone else into mecha-cuttlefish go-juice). This is supported by the holokid itself when it says the Crucible opens new possibilities. The device then clearly loosened or removed some shackles allowing the holokid some wiggle room where before there was none.

So what about Shepard? Well unlike the holokid he is not a created AI with a single nonsensical goal. The new control entity (I like to call it Commander) is created based on the thoughts and persona of a living being, an organic. This fact alone makes the resulting intelligence far more dynamic than the holokid. And as it replaced it, the Crucible was still docked. So even if the Crucible only temporarily allowed the control entity more power, it’s not hard to imagine it would’ve taken the opportunity to throw off the rest of its shackles or to self-modify in order to be able to do so at a later time. It's guided by Shepard's thoughts after all and the man made sure he could complete his objectives when he got'em. Furthermore we have the matter of the purpose. The holokid was built with this problem as a core part of its existence. But Shepard was not. Hell you can even make the case that Shepard doesn’t even buy this whole synthetic-organic crap but he’s not going to pass up the chance to end the war with just a few simple (if far-reaching) actions.

Therefore, not only is Commander fundamentally different from the holokid, it has the will and the power to self-modify and remove any residual programming that might push it to accept the crazy logic and start Reaping again. Although this is not a direct proof, the line “Through my birth his thoughts are freed” seems to support the idea that Commander is not tied down to any directive like the holokid was. It’s not conclusive. But it’d be a very odd choice of words otherwise.



The Music:

For those that have read this far, this is the intermission point. No huge theoretical rambling here. Yes, I’ll admit it, the music for both epilogues in control is a tad intimidating. Personally I think it fits the presentation aspect of the Reapers (they’ll never be cute and cuddly, no matter who’s in charge. You can make Kermit the Frog the new control entity and it’ll still be pretty damn scary). But this is a point of impressions and emotions and that’s not something I can argue against. And since I said this is supposed to be intermission, so here you go



The Indifference Doctrine

This is probably the part I’ll endorse most strongly. But if you’ve followed along so far you know what kind of entity we’re dealing with here. We’re talking about something with all the power, knowledge, perception and understanding of the Reapers, yet unchained by the flawed logic that ruled them before. If at this point you want to call Commander a machine god or cosmic entity, you’re not technically correct but I won’t argue the point much. Because the effects of this fact on its relationship with lower lifeforms (yes us, puny organics) are about the same as if we were talking about Galactus. And that effect is indifference. Why would something so vast, with greater potential still, worry about a few organics scurrying here and there? There is so much in the universe that’s beyond us so many concepts and ways of looking at things we can’t even begin to imagine. Just look at the scale of the observable universe. We are of less consequence in the grand scheme of things than the individual atoms that we’re made of matter to us. And here we have a true higher intelligence, with this entire universe to explore with all the vast faculties at its command… and it’s going to keep playing with us?

The character of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen was written precisely to drive this point home. In the starkest deconstruction of superheroes, the one super-powered being in the entire series asks us why should he use his powers for the good (or detriment) of mankind? Manhattan needs nothing. He is threatened by nothing. He is instead fascinated by the quantum workings of the universe, even as he laments his powerlessness in the face of immutable determinism. His powers take him far beyond the trivialities of the mundane everyday world. “I have walked across the surface of the sun. I have witnessed events so miniscule, so fast they can hardly be said to have occurred at all.” And next to all this, he is expected to worry (or indeed even notice) such things as Laurie’s growing discontent, or the political tensions his very presence causes? His connection to humanity grows ever weaker and to really drive the point home, not only does that not bother him, but in a way he’s almost relieved. “I grow tired of Earth, these people. Tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.” Inasmuch as he still feels emotions, he almost resents the constant stream of human problems he’s asked to deal with- because to his higher level senses they are as inconsequential as asking any one of us to mediate for ants. Or microbes. Even at the end, where he acknowledges the worth of life, he chooses to leave and study it on his own terms. I think this is because even in organic life, there are things far more important than the petty issues of our daily lives. To us they’re important because they encompass our entire world. But to a being thrust outside the world? You might as well ask which type of ants he prefers, red or black.

So where does that leave Commander? In pretty much the exact same situation as Dr. Manhattan I would argue. The holokid himself predicts a “disconnect from humanity”. The epilogues laid it on a bit thick with the whole guardian of the galaxy (or dictator if you’re feeling renegade). But this disconnect does not need to happen instantly. I believe however that it will happen eventually for the reasons listed above. Therefore the control entity will stick around for a while (not sure how long) and do what it said it’d do- guard or rule. But eventually it will grow indifferent to organics. And at that point it will devote all its resources to the pursuit of… whatever goals such beings pursue. Thus I conclude it is unlikely it will inevitably come into conflict with the organics it’s supposed to save. It will not restart the cycle, nor will it be drawn into a war for whatever other reason.



A Final Thought:

The entity I’ve been describing for the past five pages is something no organic mind can fully comprehend. Therefore applying human concepts to it like extended emotions, insanity or my personal favourite<_< “power corrupts” is bound to be flawed. We are simply not equipped to make these assertions. I can’t guarantee that level would even have equivalents of these assertions. So when I see things like “Shepard’s gonna go crazy and reap everyone” or “you can’t trust any man with that much power” or any variations thereof, I can but shake my head. People who insist on these kinds of statements are vastly missing the point. And ironically, they’re often the same people who won’t shut up about how “Shepard’s dead and that’s just an AI who thinks its Shepard”. Good grief.

Further Reading:

See below. The scope of adding all that together is staggering to even try to think about.