Originium’s Purpose, and a Philosophical Debate
**Massive, massive spoilers for Chapters 14 and 15.**
There’s a very well-worn philosophical debate about how much of your "self" is made up of memories. If another being possessed exactly the same memories as you, would they be exactly the same as you? Would they *be* you?
This seems to be where Priestess and Oracle differ in their debates, and their mutually incompatible ideas for Originium. Kal’tsit, with her restrictions lifted, explains that Originium has “two futures” ([15-17 Before](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/15-17/Story#Before_operation)):
>**Kal'tsit**: Originium points to two futures for this land... Oracle hoped to leave Originium as a gift for future civilizations, to guide them forward...
>**Kal'tsit**: To help them enter the next stage of civilization.
>**Kal'tsit**: Over the past ten thousand years, Originium has helped civilization on Terra to develop, but also unexpectedly brought suffering to the land via Oripathy.
>**Kal'tsit**: You were indeed tormented by this before.
Oracle wanted Originium to be a marker that future civilizations can learn from, to maybe overcome the “rainbow light” that they could not. Seeing Terra's nascent civilization assimilated by Originium is *horrifying* to Oracle.
On the other hand, Priestess sees Originium as an end itself. Being stored as memories/information within Originium *is* the best alternative for civilizations, which are otherwise doomed to leave nothing behind after the “rainbow light” wipes them out. Being stored in Originium isn’t death, but is also to be “without a future”. In her own words in[ 15-12 Before](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/15-12/Story#Before_operation):
>**Priestess**: But material destruction is not true death. Information is not so easily erased, and your information was stored in Originium.
>**Hierda**: B-But I can think. I felt I was living when I was on the ship. All this vivid—
>**Priestess**: A stream of data repeated over and over.
>**Priestess**: I intentionally left behind fragments of history in order to observe our past lives.
>**Hierda**: So this is like a dream?
>**Priestess**: 'Dream' is vague and subjective. Do not allow language to lead you to meaningless self-doubt, before you have touched its fundamental nature.
>**Priestess**: You may understand this as a snapshot from the past that I have recorded in the form of information.
>**Priestess**: But it's nothing more than a still frame. There is no future for it.
This all lines up with past information. If we go back to[ BB-6 After](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/BB-6/Story#After_operation), we can now better understand what Theresa sees when she reads the Doctor’s mind:
>Originium.
>The first light before the Big Bang.
>She said that only by covering every inch of the land in Originium, only by returning matter and time, tide and wonder, light and wailing, to the vast ocean of information...
>Only then will we find change and advancement, and avert the fate that is the end.
>Even though...
><Background fades to black>
>**It is not a transformation, but a death.**
><Background fades to white>
>**It is not an extinction, but a continuation.**
With our new knowledge, the scene seems to be a debate between Oracle and Priestess, with the last two lines being their conflicting viewpoints on what it means to be assimilated by Originium. Neither statement seems untrue, and the disagreement is philosophical, on whether the information stored in the Assimilated Universe is truly *alive*.
# Opinion Ahead, I guess
In the real world, this question can't be answered. Even ethics aside, we don't have the technology to copy someone exactly or implant memories, so it can’t possibly be tested and answered.
But Arknights seems to really like exploring this idea, and I think even has an opinion on it. I’d go as far as to say that the writing sides with Oracle on this debate.
Civilight Eterna and Mon3tr inherit memories yet are emphatically *not* the person whose memories they have. Nightingale has *no* memories yet the Followers’ story arc firmly establishes her personhood. There is continuity of the Doctor’s “true self” pre- and post-amnesia, they are the same compassionate person which they were before.
In contrast, the “false” Ascalon in [15-2 Before](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/15-2/Story#Before_operation) seems to recognize immediately that something is off about herself:
>**'Ascalon'**: Master, I've just seen a great many images flash by.
>**'Ascalon'**: They were all images of me, but why do I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience? Why do I feel like I'm so far away?
>**Theresis**: That's just my memory of you.
>**'Ascalon'**: Of me?
>**Theresis**: You aren't a false phantasm, but you're not the real Ascalon either.
As I see it, the protagonists and “good guys” seem to all fall on one side of this debate. Does this reflect the writers’ own beliefs? If so, is this intentional? I don’t have a way to know. And I completely recognize this can all be blown up by revelations in the future.
**So can you be “un-zipped” from Originium?** Your memories or "information" can, as a fact. But I think something would be lost in the process. The “you” who comes from Originium, despite having the same memories, would still be a different person. "You" will have died. I think that the writing so far supports this. Except for...
# Hierda
Who the hell even knows what’s going on with Hierda. She is “saved” as she is dying to Oripathy, and Priestess states outright that she *has* truly died ([15-12 Before](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/15-12/Story#Before_operation)):
>**Priestess**: And, strictly speaking, I did not save you.
>**Hierda**: ——?!
>**Priestess**: Your death has already occurred. I did not intervene in the process of matter being converted to information.
Yet, unlike the others on the ship, she does not “reset”. She seems to be able to keep her memories, unlike the other inhabitants who are merely snapshots with, again, “no future” ([15-16](https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/15-16)):
>There is no future in the fragments of time reconstructed from information.
>Her best friends soon forget her existence entirely.
>She can know all there it is to them, but she will never truly be part of life here.
>'I'm just a traveler lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the distant past.'