Sandbox:Cladists phys-side

Leading up to the 2500s, there had been much resistance to downloading. The reasoning was mostly a fear of precisely what happened: that cladists who download would become cogs in a capitalist machine, beholden to all its horrors. That said, views on this steadily began to loosen over time as FTL and bluespace tech became more common and humanity began to reach out to the stars once more. Those sys-side wanted to participate in Earth's second space age, too.

Starting in about 2535, committees began to congeal and working groups formed. The Odists being who they are, many were included in this process. May Then My Name was at the forefront of one such group focused on recovering corrupted core dumps via downloading. Once it became clear that this might actually be possible, she became one of the loudest proponents of the project. Her public reasons were the selfless recovery of those lost in the Century Attack, but the selfish one was that, given her role in essentially killing the last vestige of True Name as she was, she wanted to simply have her down-tree back.

The first successful download happened in 2546, thanks to research funded in part by Nanotrasen. Expensive as it is to produce biological bodies that can house positronic brains, downloads are still limited by 2550. Many remained around Earth, with True Name and an instance of Jonas working for TerraGov. It was A Finger Pointing who first took a contract with Nanotrasen, eventually bringing her partner, Beholden, and another skunk, Warmth In Fire. Nanotrasen encouraged this as a way to recoup their investment in the project.

Cladists who remain sys-side (so, everyone except True Name, Zacharias, and In The Wind) can reconcile with their counterparts, essentially re-uploading and merging with their down-trees, but this has led to some strife as they learn more about life phys-side. For instance, Motes essentially dropped all command roles because she felt they were making her grow up, and Lleuad diverged from her down-tree on sys-side, Lloer to such an extent that she has become her own person and no longer uploads.

Uploading is still a thing, of course, though the rate at which people upload in the 2500s has decreased.