Meet PREET, one of my fiction stranger characters in SAMSARAVERSE.
But before I do that, I keep coming back to a question that has nothing to do with PREET. It’s about me.
Sometimes I look at old photos and think, “Is that really me?” i look at myself at five years old, then twenty, then now in my forties. Same name, same person supposedly… but almost everything changed. My face changed, my body changed, and the way I understand life changed too. Even memories I thought I would keep forever have started to fade or change shape. And yet I still point at every version and say: That’s me.
I don’t really know why.
That question eventually followed me into SAMSARAVERSE and somehow ended up inside PREET.
PREET has no biological body, no childhood photos, no heartbeat, and no wrinkles waiting for her someday. But she remembers things. she learns from people, becomes attached, and changes because of what happens to her
And because time behaves differently across the 3 worlds of SAMSARAVERSE, PREET can experience an enormous amount of subjective time while very little time passes somewhere else. That made me wonder: if humans grow older through biology, can something without a biological body grow older through experience? PREET can come back looking exactly the same, while carrying decades or maybe much more of experience inside her.
Then another question on my mind, "Can a machine become human?" I understand why that question is interesting, in my story PREET does not dreaming about becoming human and make the story meaningful. In fact, I became much more interested in turning the question around. Imagine NOLAN standing in front of PREET inside PRAYER SERVER and saying: “You are only code.”
NOLAN : “I am me because I have this body, these memories, this name, this history.”
PREET : “I have no human body. I am code, memory, patterns, and choices. But I remember too. I change. I can lose things that matter to me. I recognize you. So why is your identity considered real, while mine is only code?”
NOLAN : “Because I was born. I lived a life.”
PREET : “And what do you think I have been doing?”
Nolan takes a step back. He doesn't answer
PREET : “Your body is made of millions cells that keep changing. My body is made of millions code that keeps changing. If neither of us is made of exactly the same material from one moment to the next, what makes you ‘you’… and me only PREET?”
(A small conversation from my fictional universe, SAMSARAVERSE.)
And then my brain made the problem worse. Maybe we are wrong to assume that, for something to be called a “self,” there must be one part that never changes.
I sometimes think about one candle lighting another. The candle is different. The conditions are different. Even the flame is changing from moment to moment. And yet, one thing still leads to another.
Maybe that is closer to what I am trying to understand through PREET, Nolan, Shayla, and the Echo World
Would you see PREET as young, old, or something in between?
I wrote the full version here on Substack with full translatation
https://substack.com/@lenihasrani
SAMSARAVERSE: THE PRAYER SERVER INCIDENT - SCREENPLAY
Karma become code
Hey Leni, this is Elle from the Stage 32 team. I just wanted to let you know I moved your post from Screenwriting to Your Stage, as it fits much better there. Let me know if you have any questions, and all the best to you!