Spark vs Brain Module

[Verno]

Wow, how have I missed this in-depth discussion up until now?! I love me some TF theorising.

I'm not well-versed in citing Canon from the varying sources we have, but all my reading of articles on the TFWiki over the years has allowed me to form something of a rough guide for my own take on the issue.

I could try and explain it all and link it all together but it might be better if I simply provide links to my own Wiki-esk pages for the Transversal Continuity. They're quite brief, so have no fear.

Sparks - The physical embodiment of a shard of Primus himself which gives life to a Cybertronian.

Core Consciousness - Akin to the Brain Module postulated in the IDW-verse.

Laser Core - The linkage mechanism between Spark and Core Consciousness, but also acts as a protective housing for the Spark.

Shell Program - An over-ride of a Transformers Core Consciousness.

Basically, the relationship between Spark and Core Consciousness (Brain Module) is key to a Transformers' existence.

The relationship between the two nurtures a Transformers' personality in the early years after their creation, as a Spark that has just arrived from the Allspark is essentially blank.

The Core Consciousness would hold some basic programming (things like faction, a set of skills etc) much like we Humans have basic programming/instincts when we are born -- instincts like fight or flight that have been driven into our very DNA since even before our ancestors crawled out of the water and onto land all those millions of years ago.

The one thing we mustn't forget about a Spark is that it is a piece of Primus. Primus sent 13 shards of his essence forth and created The 13 to fight Unicron. After that battle, he populated Cybertron with more of these shards, Sparks, in order for them to grow as individuals and in time go forth into the universe and explore (on Primus' behalf) and upon their passing, their Sparks would return to the Allspark and bring with them all they had learned during their lives.

This means that the purpose of a Spark is two-fold: Not only to give sentience to a Transformer, but for Primus to experience the Physical plane of existence.

I think I'm getting a little off-track here...

Again, these are only my take on the issues involved and I've hardly done justice to the concepts floating around in my head. Maybe I should give it another looking at later when I'm not running out the door to go to work

[Verno]

OK, right, let's have another look at this.

Yes, the role of Spark and Brain Module do seem to cross paths on what they are actually for, but I believe this is by design.

When a Spark first leaves the Allspark and comes into this reality, it is -- for all intents and purposes -- blank, without any memory or scope to form an individual personality.

The Spark enters a body and integrates with the Laser Core, thus forming its first link to the Brain Module (Core Consciousness).

The Brain Module has within it basic programming, which guides the young Transformer in their early years. The Transformer grows as it experiences the world, and these memories and experiences and interpreted and stored by the Core Consciousness (forming individuality and personality) and are also absorbed by the Spark.

When the Transformer dies, all memories and experiences are already in the Spark, which travels back to the Allspark and adds to the combined knowledge of a billion Transformers that have come before.

The Transformer's body could then be thought of as a hard-drive. If you hooked their body up to a machine, you could browse their Brain Module for information.

I think this is closer to what I'm trying to say, but still haven't put it forward eloquently enough.

[Hursticon]

Everything you've come up with works completely soundly to me Verno; the concept/discussion of Cybertronian biology is very intriguing indeed , although I don't quite think I'm sold on TF: Prime's Cyber-Nucleic Acid yet.

[Geminii]

I'd add that in order to clear up any physical/metaphorical inconsistencies with the spark, it could be stated to be a self-sustaining artificial multidimensional knot in spacetime, able to store a significant amount of Cybertronian ego-data (datatrax). They'd have the following characteristics:

- Option to be multidimensionally linked to the Allspark. Sparks created by Vector Sigma and the Oracle, as well as those pulled back from the Allspark, and most of those created by Primus have this link. However, the link is not usually fully open and active, due to it having a priority over merely material input - a spark with a fully open Allspark link, unless it had greater than normal processing capability or bolt-on extensions, would be effectively blind to the real world. Allspark links can be occasionally opened briefly (either partially or fully) by those tuned to them and extremely familiar with their own mind's functioning. They are also often opened when a spark's housing is destroyed and a replacement is not likely. In this circumstance, they can be used to back up a spark's datatrax and the spark can then unravel. They can also be opened in order to search for information in the Allspark, but the link is two-way, and not all corners of the Allspark are friendly...

- Option to be linked directly to Primus. This is a rarer link, and usually only found in sparks created directly by Primus himself. Primus can also forge a link to an existing unlinked spark.

- Option to be linked directly to Unicron. This is generally only found in Unicronians. Unicron links are not usually added to sparks with an existing Allspark or Primus link, due to the potential for cross-link hacking, but an existing spark may have its links severed and a single Unicron link added in its place.

- Ability to be held and shielded by a laser core. A laser core would provide a physical, field-effect, and dimensional shelter for a spark, and could sustain it near-indefinitely, although it does not itself provide environmental data.

- Instead of a physical laser core, a subspace wrapper with one or more portals can be used to provide a similar "home" for the spark, allowing it to link to and receive condensed feedback from multiple physical brain modules in realspace. While the brain modules run local copies of the datatrax, the spark assimilates experiences from all of them, combines them, and updates the brain modules via the GT portals. A weakness of this system is that although the spark is protected from realspace attacks, it is actually more vulnerable to subspace interference due to the prototypical nature of the GT wrapper - although a subspace attacker would need to be able to locate or stumble across its multidimensional location first.

- Ability to link to a brain module. The brain module would download a copy of the spark's datatrax, run it internally, provide filters and translation modules such as body-interpretation, environmental translation, and conceptual mapping, as well as both short-term and long-term memory. The resulting filtered and combined network weightings would be fed back to the spark, resulting in an accumulation of extracted data interpretable more as wisdom than raw sensor data. Brain modules can be affected by shell programs.

- More advanced sparks, or simply those with more capacity or more efficient storage mechanisms, would be able to retain and recall more detail after being separated from a brain module. They might retain specific memories or data, or even (in extreme circumstances) cognitive and interactive functions (including anomalous physical functions such as speech, directed movement, and being able to affect nearby matter). Such additional complexity, though, may inhibit compatibility with self-preservation functions usually carried out by the brain module, leading to behaviours such as extreme risk-taking, willingness to endure massive physical damage, appearing to have a death-wish, and/or repeated self-sacrifice. Individuals with this incompatibility are likely to have a history of "miraculous" recoveries from apparently-fatal damage, returning after having been declared dead, and an increased incidence of spark-transfer into new bodyshells. Such sparks, when extinguished, are also more likely to retain coherence, individuality, and personality quirks when their datatrax are encountered in the Allspark.

[drahsrebu]

My brain module hurts after that Geminii.

[Hursticon]

My brain module hurts after that Geminii.

Hehe, extremely meticulous and well thought out huh? - It's quite stunning too in how it unifies quite a few theories, I very much like the last paragraph's description of Starscream's "mutated" spark.

Bloody-well done Geminii, an awesomely thought provoking read indeed.

[GoktimusPrime]

- More advanced sparks, or simply those with more capacity or more efficient storage mechanisms, would be able to retain and recall more detail after being separated from a brain module. They might retain specific memories or data, or even (in extreme circumstances) cognitive and interactive functions (including anomalous physical functions such as speech, directed movement, and being able to affect nearby matter). Such additional complexity, though, may inhibit compatibility with self-preservation functions usually carried out by the brain module, leading to behaviours such as extreme risk-taking, willingness to endure massive physical damage, appearing to have a death-wish, and/or repeated self-sacrifice. Individuals with this incompatibility are likely to have a history of "miraculous" recoveries from apparently-fatal damage, returning after having been declared dead, and an increased incidence of spark-transfer into new bodyshells. Such sparks, when extinguished, are also more likely to retain coherence, individuality, and personality quirks when their datatrax are encountered in the Allspark.

i.e. Because Hasbro doesn't want any more angry letters from parents.

[Geminii]

i.e. Because Hasbro doesn't want any more angry letters from parents.

And, when it comes to dramatic deaths or ongoing adventures of popular characters, wants to have its cake and eat it too.

[Geminii]

Hehe, extremely meticulous and well thought out huh?

Made up on the spot, mostly! (Probably influenced by a decade or more of the same topic being repeatedly beaten to death on the internet, though.) Gather and file the serial numbers off enough of the more collaborative arguments which get put through the meat grinder, and we get a mess I can reassemble into something resembling a coherent narrative.

Besides, it's pretty much how my brain works with such things. I did government and tech work for over fifteen years, and a lot of that is listening to (and testing for) a bunch of symptoms or situations, and then figuring out what single cause would fit the data. The result is that I can do much the same thing with random picks of established tropes, like the way that dozens of different writers have approached the issue of death and afterlife as it relates to Transformers. I just find the smallest intersection point that appears to cover everything (or nearly everything).

Plus I like subspace. The wiki entry on GT systems gave me a foot in the door there, and tossing in some higher-dimensional chaos math (because it's fun) let me link most of the rest of everything.


Interesting side-effect: non-mutant sparks would need to be sustained by their bodies or the Allspark (or via an Allspark connection) in order to maintain sentience - outside their bodies, or disconnected from an energy source, they'd have to cannibalize their own negative entropy in order to speak, move, or even think. Doing so would simplify and weaken the strange attractor paths which constituted their spark. However, if they stopped doing this, they'd freeze. Meaning that sparks in overly damaged bodies have the choice of going into a kind of "stasis lock", or continuing to operate at the cost of spark-destruction. A spark may be physically present after this destruction (if it hasn't completely unraveled), but parts or all of the personality it held will be gone, burnt for entropic fuel.

And that, in turn, makes me start wondering about the properties of Energon itself - it strikes me that perhaps it's not so much a physical substance as any one of a number of items capable of storing raw negative entropy, much as it's possible to store electricity in batteries made of many different materials. This theory would itself have some interesting side effects, such as Energon not being limited to one form or type, and planets with living beings and civilizations being more 'nutritious' for a planet-eater than raw asteroids. It might also explain why Energon in some forms glows where it touches reality, as raw possibility is converted to Cherenkov-Pauli emissions at the unstable interface. Only the surface of an Energon product would glow, it would only start glowing when exposed, and it'd be possible to make types of Energon which soaked up power from (ie performed an entropy exchange with) the environment.