DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

I was only a little surprised (and not at all disturbed) at the revelation that George and Shaun had had a sexual relationship. Those two were each other's *universe*, and they were not related by blood. Emotionally there might be a whiff of incest, but biologically there's not a thing wrong with it.

I wondered about it in Feed, but since George never overtly copped to it, I considered the question still open. Not anymore, obviously. And I felt kind of glad that they'd had the chance to experience sexual love, even if much of society would raise eyebrows at who it was with (even though, again, NOT biologically incest, and the biological repercussions are the reason for the taboo to exist at all).

More startling, of course, is the big reveal at the end. I feel a little jerked around, having grieved so hard for her at the end of Feed. But I am happy for Shaun's sake that she's alive...or a duplicate of her is alive. Does that distinction matter? Will it to Shaun?

My working theory is that when George wakes up in CDC custody in Feed, they have already done some kind of neural recording of her and gathered whatever samples they needed to make the clone.

...Poor Shaun. And poor clone!George, but jesus, poor Shaun.

Does she have a reservoir condition?

Er.. wait, you can't answer that until 2012.

(She = the clone Georgia)

I dunno, I'm still wondering how the hell she has Original George's memories down to the last minute on this copy thing.

"My working theory is that when George wakes up in CDC custody in Feed, they have already done some kind of neural recording of her and gathered whatever samples they needed to make the clone."

Except the clone has memories from after the CDC visit.

Hmm, yes, but we can't rule out some kind of implant or somesuch that's been transmitting updates...or a neural connection between clone and original...or even that the virus is conveying information from one to the other somehow, as seen with the pack behavior of the zombies. Who knows? I'm sure Seanan will give us a plausible explanation. But if any of these possibilities *are* true, it raises some obvious follow-up questions about that voice in Shaun's head...

The one thing that seems clear is that this is not Original George.

The CDC handled George's cremation; presumably they could have taken the memories then.
They could even have taken DNA samples earlier and started growing the clone before George's death.
Which would imply that someone at the CDC was involved with Tate and whomever shot Georgia in the first place, and knew they'd want a replacement.

The CDC handled George's cremation; presumably they could have taken the memories then.

Now that makes sense.

I'm slightly tempted by another theory, which involves the people who created Georgia Prime being completely surprised by her having enough wit to speak. On the other hand, I can create WAGs all day. I'm probably better off practicing patience; I'll find out in a year or so.

That was my assumption as well - they had her body long enough to do extensive research on her blood. And if you are working from the theory that memory causes minute physical changes in brain tissue( even the parts that had to be scraped off the wall) then you could get a fair amount of recorded data, if you're good enough, from that. From what we see in the preview, they are a little surprised by how much "personality" the clone is showing.