Dear Readers,
One of you asked me why it is that death is still inconvenient for us even when we have made it a more or less temporary condition. I gave my simplest answer, but now I am motivated to flesh it out a little more for you.
I find it somewhat difficult to put this into precise words (and despite Provost Notaras's claims, I do have my limits on what I am willing to tell you). You may consider that essentially, we have found an energetically cheap and easy way to copy people, or at least the information contained within a person. This technology is one of a few that is a prerequisite for a University of our type.
We also have the ability to build physical people from these copies, but it is not a fast process. My colleague George Sphrantzes, who nobly defended my Twitter uplink during the recent conflict, and fell in the process, is still being reconstituted and so his classes are suspended. His graduate students, most of whom survived, should be all right without him for the next week or so, but I have offered my services just in case.
The slow nature of the reconstitution process means that when one dies, a lot of productivity is lost, and so we try to minimize that. There are reasons that we rush to do our work, but I do not yet feel comfortable enough to reveal these.
Some may wonder why there are not constant reprisals and conflicts among the faculty here, if the consequences of death are lost time and a lot of pain. Primarily it is because of who we are; people who are willing to admit when we have been justly defeated. The other side of it is that the winner of each conflict typically minimizes the chances of a reprisal when the defeated side returns. In our interminable history, we have yet to find a conflict that needs to be fought a second time, and all of the augury indicates that we never will.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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