trope search: a person with multiple bodies (multiple 'people' with one mind?)

[cimorene]

There's a character in this new show who is incredibly cool. They're such an amazing and intriguing idea that they blow the rest of the show out of the water.

The Rook is a Starz tv show from 2019 based on a modern fantasy book about a secret UK government agency staffed by people with superhuman abilities (all the reviewers on GoodReads want to call this characteristic 'X-Men'). The opening conceit is that a woman wakes up on a bridge, on the ground, in the rain, with total amnesia and surrounded by dead bodies, and goes on the run, which is undeniably a dynamite beginning.

But apart from this beginning, most of the concept and plot of the story is just pretty good. Parts of it were rather exciting, parts of it were cool, the execution was mostly fine but one could easily find things to criticize... but there's a supporting character called Gestalt who is a set of quadruplets who share one mind.

Gestalt isn't quadruplets who are telepathically linked; they're one person with four bodies. They have the ability to multitask - that is, for all four of their bodies to do different things - but they have one consciousness unaffected by physical distance. We learn that in infancy their four bodies did everything in unison, but in a secret government facility they were trained to simulate four distinct personalities for subterfuge, and they are now the top field agent for this fictional MI-X-Men agency. (In the presence of coworkers and friends who know their true nature, they sometimes say 'we' and sometimes 'I'.)

They deserve another season, or a whole other show, or really just for this concept to be a trope that is explored through other literature and media. But we don't know of anywhere where it is!

I mentioned this on Twitter and jacquez mentioned More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, but having read a bunch of the reviews here, it sounds like the concept leans more towards Sense8: these characters are strangers who have separate existences until they meet each other.

A friend says they've encountered a similar idea in fanfiction and that the story named Mass Effect (video game) and Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice as influences. I haven't read the latter, although it's on my list, but looking through reviews and Wikipedia, it seems that 1. there are way more bodies involved in each consciousness and 2. the execution involves artificial intelligence. Given that it seems likely these beings aren't born, or created, that way, but I guess I'll find out specifics when I read it.

Also, someone in the reviews claimed that the gestalt entity in More Than Human is "just a Voltron", but based on Wikipedia it sounds like a Voltron is just like when the Power Rangers combine their robots into one big robot? There's no mention in the summaries of even a telepathic contact - which I guess could upgrade it to more of a Pacific Rim or Sense8 scenario. It seems there is a gestalt consciousness character named "Legion" in Mass Effect, which is referred to as "he" although it is a robot animated by more than one thousand AIs, and that there are other gestalt consciousnesses in this universe? Maybe? It's a video game so I already know I'm not going to encounter it directly, so I didn't spend too much time reading wikis.

Any other leads, anybody?

Comments

[hebethen]

There's a character in the Tiffany Aching books who has two bodies -- she's pretty explicit and specific about that being her natural situation, and she's not AI. That's the first thing that came to mind for me.

[cimorene]

I have no memory of this character so I guess I should reread that book...

[which_chick]

I think the Tiffany Aching character is Agnes Nitt, witch? She has a "thin person inside" who talks.

And I've seen "one mind, multiple bodies" before in... Spider Robinson's... Callahan books. Quite possibly the book in question was The Callahan Touch but don't quote me on that. Character was named Arethusa (probably correct spelling), identical twins with one mind operating both of them.

[cimorene]

Ah, I remember that vaguely now. vass mentioned a Spider Robinson instance, but their content warnings made me disinclined to investigate.

[which_chick]

Yeah, the Spider Robinson example isn't ... good even for the era in which it was written.

[yvannairie]

.... you know what, this actually makes me think of combiners in Transformers. They're 2-6 member teams that can combine into a bigger single entity with their own consciousness, and while in some combiners the members are clearly delineated with their own personalities and the combined consciousness is more vestigial, some combiners are decidedly more in the "what software security"/"one person stretched across multible bodies" end, especially Constructicons/Devastator who's most commonly the very first combiner. Also, Reflector and movie!Arcee work this way, having a consciousness spread across three independent bodies.

Also technically all the geth in Mass Effect are a gestalt consciousness spread across multiple bodies. Every other geth body is interchangeable, Legion is just the only independent "collective". There's also EMIYA from Fate.... sort of. That's more of a "same person from different points in time existing at the same time".

Also I'm guessing the trope of "person who gets split into parts representing aspects of their personality" a la Starscream clones in Animated or the Tiger Medallion from Jackie Chan's adventure aren't quite what you're looking for but. Those also came to mind.

[cimorene]

Nah, a person who gets divided up into multiple people isn't really the same thing, but if there was a character who gets split into multiple bodies but who remains just one mind, that would be close enough to maybe deserve being mentioned in the same category.

I suppose artificial intelligences controlling robots or androids could be compared to this idea when they happen to match up by circumstance of an ai being specifically situated in multiple devices..., but there's still a definite dividing line since the ability to do that is not particularly unusual in the realm of robot and ai tropes.

[yvannairie]

Honestly in a TF context where each of the robots has a discrete soul/sentience black box, it's defininitely a little bit freaky in-universe when it happens. Movie!Arcee is pretty much exactly what you're describing above. Not so much for my other examples, though.

[niqaeli]

Just the top of my head, there’s: the aforementioned character from the second Tiffany Aching book, and she IS a pretty major character in that; a minor character in The Witches of Karres; Spookybot/Yay in Questionable Content is... maybe one mind in many bodies or maybe many minds having blended *into* one, it’s not actually been made totally clear.

I’m not recalling anything that specifically that delves deeply into a gestalt character with multiple bodies but I’m very confident there is some out there in SFF. I’ll see what I can turn up!

[princessofgeeks]

I can't wait for your review of Ancillary Justice. I think it does fascinating things with the shared consciousness idea, and yes, there is an AI element.

I read the book of Rook and was underwhelmed but it might make a much better show than book. In the book I was continually brought up short by the author's inability to write a plausible female lead.

What your post made me think of was the various symbiotic shared minds and/or bodies in SF, like the Trill in Star Trek, and the Tokra or the Goauld in the Stargate shows.

Scalzi's Old Man's War universe has an element of cloned or reused bodies, with the concerns over what happens to the original consciousness if it is replaced by another.

And of course if you can stand the datedness, there is always Heinlein's Time Enough for Love. I loved it in the 70s but I am afraid to read it again.

[cimorene]

I have gotten an impression that is nothing but bad of the book, really, from the reviews... some of which were actually entertainingly scathing. It is a debut novel from a guy with sexism problems who is terrible at writing women, I have gathered. I also got the impression he's terrible at action and pacing, fond of infodumps, and has no idea of character voice, which he replaces with a universal low level of 'snark' and 'sassiness' like a bad ripoff of Buffy TVS dialogue which is typically not actually funny. Apparently he thinks he's very clever and this high opinion is usually about things that aren't clever at all, according to multiple reviews. Also it sounded like Gestalt was more foregrounded in the show.

Multiple entities sharing one mind temporarily or permanently is of course an obvious connection to make and is a MUCH more common trope, an old and nearly ubiquitous one in fact. This sort of idea is almost an inversion of it, in a way.

I have never read any Heinlein because my mom is still angry about a sexist book by him she read in college - mad enough that if you get her on the subject she'll get angry enough to start ranting, which of course has something to say about her personality, but still, I have been guided by her in this... my dad agrees with her that it's there, even though he's read more of Heinlein's works voluntarily. I've always figured I had plenty of other things to read.

[cimorene]

There's definitely a few Trek episodes with sets of identical clones, and with androids that are all controlled by a central computer, and these tropes might be closer, except... I'm pretty sure the only one with the central computer controlling all the androids is a TOS ep, and it's the computer that is defeated by causing it to overheat by the bridge crew putting on an "illogical" little skit of random surreal dialogue and fighting that "does not compute" and makes smoke come out its ears. So not exactly a modern look at the idea...

[vass]

The Imperial Radch trilogy (of which Ancillary Justice is the first book) is one of my favourite series ever.

There are actually two implementations of that concept in the same book. One of them uses AI (spaceships with human bodies) and the other doesn't (the leader of the empire achieved immortality by cloning herself thousands of times and networking the clones from (or before?) birth and so they're all her and always have been. Then the problems of untrammeled expansion and network lag start setting in.) Also everyone is non-binary and uses (for the purpose of the book in English) the pronouns she/her, except for the AIs, who are not considered to be people and therefore are referred to as it/its. Also music.

Apart from that, another example of the trope: Spider Robinson's Lady Slings the Booze. Note: I'm not saying it's a good book. Or non-racist, non-sexist, non-rapey, or any other kind of non-problematic. But it does have that trope. Arethusa, a sex worker at the brothel that is the novel's setting, was born as twins to a couple who experimentally raised her as one person, giving her the same name and addressing both of her bodies as if they were the same person and shared the same knowledge. Consequently she developed telepathy with herself, because telepathy is Spider Robinson's number one bulletproof trope.

[cimorene]

Ah yes, I got an inkling of the emperor thing from the reviews... and also of the pronoun thing. It all sounds interesting and related but not analogous to the small group gestalt situation.

It's good to add this to a hypothetical list, I guess, but given your remarks I'm pretty sure I don't want to read that one.

[devon]

Wow, that sounds so awesome that I might actually commit to reading a full-length novel!

Rook is the chosen name of a dear friend who died about a month ago. She had gone as Rook online for years, and there's a good chance that she was inspired by this character. She was a transwoman, but she never got to transition IRL - only online with her roleplaying friends. She finally reached a point where she told her mom, me, and a couple of other IRL friends, but then she ended up in the hospital only 3 weeks later. It's so tragic, and I'm seriously broken up in a lot of weird ways. If this book can help me understand her better, I definitely want to read it.

[cimorene]

The Rook was initially published in 2012. Gestalt isn't the titular rook; the protagonist, Myfanwy, is. But it's a rank they both hold in an organization that uses chess pieces as code names and ranks, so it could still be used to refer to Gestalt, too. I gather, though, that their role is perhaps lesser in the book. The Goodreads reviews didn't make me want to read it, but the impression I got was that at worst it should still be readable (er, by my fanfiction standards, I mean)!

[templemarker]

That show sounds fascinating -- thanks for the tip to check it out.

What you're describing for Gestalt does sound most similar to me to Ancillary Justice, apart from the born/made distinction.

Voltron isn't like the Power Rangers, or Transformer Decepticons like the Constructicons, where several individual Decepticons come together to network and form Devastator.

Voltron was a singular entity who was divided into five bodies, the "lions", who then form cybernetic/semipsychic pair bonds with individual Paladins that sort of direct/pilot the "lions"; but the lions are separate entities who are all parts of the same sentient robotic creature that is Voltrons. (This is true of Voltron: Legendary Defender, the most recent iteration of the title, and what most folkd mean when they say Voltron these days.)

So in that sense Voltron is rather more like your description of Gestalt than some of the other examples -- Voltron is one singular consciousness, split into five units, who each have certain characteristics of Voltron's sentience/personality; they are independent but not really individual because they were originally only Voltron and re-combine into Voltron at the will of the Paladins.

Scifi is always so fun and weird and awkward to explain!

Hitting back on the X-Men, though, Gestalt bears some resemblance to Multiple Man, James Madrox, who creates "duplicates" of himself that can go operate independently and then be reabsorbed into Madrox again. The duplicates operate independently, as client consciousnesses of Madrox, but Madrox as the original is the overarching consciousness. The act of reabsorption brings to Madrox all their memories and experiences. However, they aren't consciousnesses shared in real-time -- the duplicates go out independently without direction or telepathy from Madrox, and it's only when they're reabsorbed that the consciousnesses merge.

The other thing that comes to mind are the Precogs from Minority Report -- they are a hive mind/shared consciousness/gestalt intelligence, three bodies but one mind. While there were three disctinct bodies, the names they had were less about their individuation but what the scientists and caretakers used to refer to them as bodies. There's not a lot of detail about how exactly the three surviving Precogs became a collective in the first place, but it has something to do with birth-onset Renning's Syndrome (fictional), and the individual bodies surviving into puberty.

Of course the Precogs aren't identical, like Gestalt is in your description, but the aspects of shared consciousness, simultaneous consciousness in separate physical bodies, and co-operative functionality.

[cimorene]

I remember Minority Report only fuzzily but this sounds plausible enough. In the movie they didn't get a big enough role to have done anything really interesting with the presmise, plus of course it wasn't even the main part of their premise.

Gestalt isn't identical - they're a set of two identical twins and two fraternal twins born at the same time. (The identical ones are played by one guy.)

I feel like I've seen mention of Multiple Man in fanfiction but nothing substantive... and I can see that there are similar/overlapping possibilities with that character.

I take it you mean that each bit of the Voltron sentience, when split, is a part of the personality with some qualitative difference, like the trope where a character temporarily splits into his good half and his indifferent half (or whatever), or the emotion characters in the Pixar movie Inside Out, or possibly some other personality traits. So they split into non-identical copies who then simply operate independently and without sharing their consciousnesses until they are reunited... which would make the comparison to More Than Human a bit more enlightening, but is still markedly off-base for the interesting features of this Gestalt I think.

[templemarker]

My notes on Voltron were more for clarification of what it is and how it operates -- with the clarification, I think it's more like Gestalt than some other examples, but definitely not a direct correlation!