Are the Swampman and the dead man the same person?

Zhou Chen was lost in thought.

The first thing that came to his mind was Forbidden Object C-011: Emotional Outburst, which he had contained. It could summon a manifested Emotion Avatar identical to himself. But the Emotion Avatar was controlled by the main body’s consciousness; it wasn’t a "copy." This was vastly different from the Swampman problem and couldn’t be used as a reference.

The Swampman is a "copy" with an independent consciousness. In fact, you could hardly even call it a copy, because it is identical to the dead man from the inside out. It has the same genes, the same memories, the same emotions, the same personality and values. Subjectively, it even believes itself to be the dead man.

In this situation, you could say there’s no difference between the Swampman and the original person. His family, relatives, colleagues, and even his dog wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

But to the dead man, no matter how similar the Swampman is, he would still feel that this thing is not him, but a copy. The fundamental reason for this is the difference in their "individual consciousness."

It’s like two identical computers running the same program with the same configuration to get the same result. They are still two separate computers.

No matter how perfectly the Swampman is replicated, it is not the man "himself." Rather, it is someone else who is completely identical to the man, because their individual consciousnesses are independent of each other.

The simplest example is this: what would happen if the Swampman slept with the man’s girlfriend?

From the girlfriend’s perspective, there’s no difference between the Swampman and the man. But from the man’s perspective, no matter how much the Swampman resembled him, he would still have been cuckolded. He would undoubtedly want to kill the other man, even if that other man was his perfect double.

The solution to the problem is actually quite simple. You would just need to connect the consciousness of the Swampman and the man, merging their two separate individual consciousnesses into a single, shared one. In that case, although there would still be two bodies, there would only be one consciousness. The Swampman and the man would become the same person. There would no longer be any talk of copies or Clones; they would both be the original.

Moreover, since the Swampman and the man are completely identical in terms of memories, emotions, and so on, the fusion of their individual consciousnesses would actually be surprisingly smooth.

Zhou Chen summed it up: ’On a personal level, the man is dead, and the Swampman is not the man. But on a social level—that is, to his girlfriend, family, friends, colleagues, and all strangers—the man is still alive, and the Swampman is the man.’

He shared his thoughts with Wang Miao, who listened attentively and nodded. "That’s an excellent idea within the context of the Swampman thought experiment.

"Hmm... You should have a clear idea about the Resurrectionists’ situation now."

"So they’re exactly like the Swampman?" Zhou Chen said.

"No, no, no." Wang Miao shook his head, clarifying, "They’re exactly like the Swampman in the *thought experiment*.

"But the Swamp People incident mentioned in the report was an actual Extraordinary case that happened in reality."

He explained, "In the year 89 of the New Calendar, a group of hikers in Yingzhou went on a trip into the mountains. One of them accidentally fell into a swamp and quickly sank within a minute. Just as his companions were frantic with worry, he climbed out of the swamp by himself, unharmed except for being covered in mud.

Afterward, they hastily ended their trip, returned to the city, and went back to their respective lives.

It wasn’t until his company’s year-end physical that the hiker who had sunk into the swamp was found to have an abnormality. His blood looked like blood, but it was actually composed of mud. The matter was quickly taken over by the Star Association. Investigators came to his door, arrested the hiker, and took him back to a lab for study. They discovered that he didn’t possess a Soul and that his body, which appeared to be made of flesh and blood, was in essence just a lump of sludge.

That’s right. The hiker had died when he sank into the swamp. What climbed out was a Swampman made of mud.

"Besides him, the Star Association subsequently found a total of 1,756 Swamp People, as well as countless swamp creatures in the forest."

"That many?" Zhou Chen was stunned. ’That shouldn’t be possible,’ he thought. ’That dangerous swamp was in a remote, uninhabited area. There aren’t many hikers to begin with, and even fewer who are reckless enough to get into that kind of trouble. How could so many people have sunk and turned into Swamp People?’

Wang Miao continued, "On the surface, all the Swamp People were no different from their former selves. However, they would unconsciously spread a contamination, slowly transforming and assimilating those around them into Swamp People. Once a normal person was assimilated, they too would become a new source of transmission, spreading it rapidly like a plague.

"If it wasn’t stopped, hundreds of thousands of people would have been assimilated by the Swamp People in less than a month. The situation in the wild was even more terrifying, as animals were also being assimilated.

The Star Association sealed off the swamp to conduct an in-depth investigation and discovered that the swamp was actually a regional Forbidden Object. It was later designated B-019: Swamp in the Woods.

"The Ability of B-019: Swamp in the Woods is to copy any creature that falls into it, generating a sludge duplicate. Just like in the Swampman thought experiment I mentioned, these replicated Swamp People are completely identical to their originals. The reasons we could be certain they were not the real people were, one, their bodies were made of mud, and two, they did not possess Souls.

"In the end, the Star Association contained B-019: Swamp in the Woods by freezing it. They then eliminated all the Swamp People and conducted a ’great cleansing’ of the surrounding forest to completely eradicate the swamp creatures.

"In some ways, the Swamp People from this incident are very similar to Resurrectionists. For example, they lack a Soul and are perfect copies of the original, able to fully replicate even non-human objects implanted in the body. However, the Swamp People failed to replicate genes and cells; their bodies were made entirely of sludge."