I have been pretty into Stellaris lately. It’s a nice escapist fantasy–some group of advanced aliens kidnaps you, genetically re-engineers you into some other alien of your own design, and then puts you in power over them to lead them to…whatever destiny you want. Great stuff.

Stellaris is a “neutral”-ish game with regard to world-building; in science fiction, you have to decide what the fictional rules of science are, and the genre has lots of popular tropes. Some games adhere more closely than others to particular sets of tropes; Star Trek Online, for example, is set loosely in the Star Trek canon and tries to adhere exactly to Star Trek’s fictional rules about science. Artemis Bridge Simulator clearly wants to be set in the Star Trek canon but isn’t licensed to use their IP, so they very mildly rename things but follow most of the fictional rules about reality that is encountered in Star Trek. StarCraft clearly takes inspiration and some cues about science fiction from various places–the Zerg are a very obviously Tyrannid analog from the Warhammer 40k universe–but overall just abstracts faster-than-light travel methodology and similar concepts into popular but non-specific sets of rules common across many science fiction franchises.

Stellaris seems to aim to be “neutral” to let everyone play out their own sci-fi fantasy, whatever it may be, regardless of which sci-fi canon (and tropes) a particular player wants to be into. There are rules in Stellaris that harken to Star Trek canon, to Star Wars canon, to Babylon V and Warhammer 40k and Stargate canon. Other than easter eggs like naming one solar system “Lando,” these mechanics take the form of mechanics in those universes without taking the names, to better avoid IP infringement as well–as to help them co-exist with wildly different concepts from canons that have conflicting takes on metaphysics.

I personally would like to live forever; immortality would be great. For the first few years, Stellaris put this out of a player’s role-playing grasp, but then lightly worked it in by adding the concept of hive minds, which were immortal. For a while that was the only way to roleplay immortality in Stellaris, until eventually they worked in a very RNG-based method that wasn’t really something you could do much to actively pursue, and had the issue of only allowing a single individual to become immortal, not everyone in your nation-state–and that isn’t just, I’d want to make immortality available universally.

That RNGeesus method was to pursue one of three “ascension” paths that allowed your civilization to empower themselves in fundamental ways. The three paths were: to unlock incredible gene therapies to re-design your species’ anatomy; to unlock the ability to record, digitize, and synthetically re-create your peoples’ minds in robot bodies; and the ability to unlock psychic and psionic powers for your people. The second sounds like it’d provide immortality–a digital conscious would just be a program, after all, and could run forever and be copied from computer to computer or robot body to robot body–but for some reason it did not. The immortality that was added was for a single member of a psionically ascended race to find a cache of psionic power on another plane of existence and ingest it, becoming more powerful and immortal.

At the time, that other plane of existence (which Stellaris refers to as the “Shroud”) was the only such thing in Stellaris lore, and spiritualist and psionic races seemed to assume it was not just the source of psionic power but also an afterlife, potentially. Stellaris’ lore itself never really confirmed or denied if their spiritualist civilizations were canonically correct, or whether entities in Stellaris get afterlives. Spiritualist civilizations, however, always derided anyone who uploaded their mind into a machine as having sacrificed their immortal soul.

I was not too interested in psionic immortality, because something that is not systematic or replicable didn’t really meet my roleplay needs. I was disappointed in digital ascension, as it seemed ridiculous that it did not offer a path to immortality for those so ascended–their bodies would eventually break down, which does make sense, but for whatever reason the game assumed a digital conscious must be irretrievably tied to a specific robot body, and be lost when that body degraded.

More recent patches have changed a number of things in a number of ways. Most significantly, robot populations can now gain a trait that makes them immortal. This did a lot to renew my interest in Stellaris, and for a while I played pretty exclusively in the goal of ascending my civilizations to digital immortality. One thing did bother me, though.

The game lore is silent on whether the spiritualist empires are right, and people in the game actually have immortal souls and an afterlife.

Digitally ascending your population seems to have no ill effect. If they do have a soul that is lost, they don’t notice its absence. Which I appreciate–as near as I can tell, that is the most realistic and pragmatic way to handle it. In life I have never experienced anything that seems tied to the presence of a soul–everything I have experienced is pretty adequately encapsulated by known science regarding how bodies and minds function, chemical reactions and electrical signals in the brain and between the brain and the rest of my body. I see, and light waves hitting the photoreceptors at the back of my eyeballs are electrochemically converted into signals my brain interprets to garner an image of my surroundings. I type, and my brain fires signals down nerves in my arms to tighten specific sets of muscles in my fingers so they contract and hit the keys I intend. I feel reflective, and sets of chemicals in my brain have been released and circulated to neurotransmitters I have learned to associate with a mood named reflectivity. There is no interaction with a soul in daily life I have ever run into. If one exists, and mine were to be severed from me, I can’t anticipate any difference in experience.

What would a soul be, if it were to exist? Most depictions of souls seem to say they are a person’s “essence,” and then go on to describe something that is anything but. Souls are usually represented as a person’s complete mental experience–their personality, their memories, their thought process. As near as I can tell, there is essentially no difference between the concept of a ghost of a person and the soul of a person in general public discourse, excepting that the latter exists in a person’s body during their life or separately in an afterlife, and the former exists in the real world for a person who has died. They’re just the same thing–the entire mental experience of a person, supported by metaphysical laws that provide some system of ethereal support that begets consciousness in the absence of the normal supporting biology. The popular conception of souls kind of implies that brains and everything attending them are fundamentally redundant appendages, an organ whose function could be entirely replaced by this unknowable and untouchable system of providing consciousness, if it could only connect to a physical body and move things around in the real world.

While that degree of wishful thinking exceeds my personal capacity for self-delusion (wouldn’t an afterlife be a pleasant luxury! at least one that is not a hell of unrelenting, eternal pain, anyhow), I don’t think that’s the only definition of soul people use, and certainly not the only one conceivable. I have a rather simple, atheistic definition of a soul:

A soul is all those parts of the conscious experience we lack the scientific knowledge to anticipate or describe.

We certainly can’t synthetically recreate people’s personality with our current technology. Our understanding of the brain is deeply limited. We do know that electrochemical signals correlate precisely with thoughts; we can literally record and see the patterns of images in peoples’ minds with equipment as they experience sight, watching the parts of the brain that are activated correlating to those images. So we know some things about how our brains function. I am not a biologist, neurochemist, etc. I don’t know what we do and don’t know. I believe I saw some research or speculation about the potential that parts of our brain or consciousness function using principles of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that we currently (again, as far as I am aware) lack a complete understanding of. And there are certainly other physical phenomena that we do not completely understanding–gravity exists, String Theory is a theory, etc. We don’t know what we don’t know about existence, and we don’t know what parts of physics are utilized by the brain for successful functioning that rely on unknown physical phenomena.

If we were able to wholly digitize a consciousness based on what we can observe and know now of mental functioning–replicate the chemical and electrical goings-on with code, map every nerve and synapse and connection and run them all on a machine–we would potentially be leaving out parts of the conscious experience that rely on those unknown physical phenomena. What if quantum entanglement actually plays a crucial role in the thought process that we have not yet observed? Would the digitally reconstructed mind know they were missing? Maybe. But maybe not–without their presence in the reconstruction, would the absence of such phenomena’s simulation in memories be noticeable?

To me, a soul is all those parts of the conscious experience we don’t yet know about. All those fundamental components that may or may not exist based on the physical laws of reality we lack an understanding of. That is a soul. Maybe there is something there; maybe there isn’t.

In Stellaris, when an empire ascends to digital immortality, are they forgetting something? Are they missing something? Is part of their experience being left behind? That, actually, Stellaris does take a stance on: emphatically, yes. Digital consciousnesses, and machine beings, are incapable of perceiving, interacting with, or in any way accessing the Shroud. In Stellaris, the Shroud is a canon thing that does exist and provides power to biological creatures that learn to utilize it.

Recent changes (within a few years) have expanded what the Shroud is defined to be, what it is like, and also added other planes or dimensions or alternate realities and universes. Stellaris has become canonically an experience of playing a civilization in one universe that exists alongside others in a multiverse. You can interact with species that are dead in the current universe by finding them in an alternate one in which they survive; you can find entities that exist in other spaces that grant them access to many universes. And the Shroud is posited to exist outside and above it all, encompassing, touching, accessing all the universes.

The Shroud also has become much more obviously modeled on the concept of the Warp, from Warhammer 40k. While not a one to one match, increasing bits of lore paint it as a similar kind of alternate reality, a subspace that is a primordial ooze begotten by living beings’ emotions. And like the Warp’s chaos gods, the Shroud has uber-powerful entities willing to contract with and bargain with mortals. The Shroud’s entities seem somewhat less unerringly malevolent that the Warp’s chaos gods (intentionally or not), but they fill the same narrative (and metaphysical) role.

Synthetic beings can’t access this form of subspace, or draw on it for telepathic and psionic abilities. Does that imply the existence of a soul in Stellaris canon, the way souls canonically exist in Warhammer?

Personally, I don’t think so. It canonizes the existence of a realm that biology is needed to access. A person with both arms amputized cannot pick up a fistful of sand and experience letting it sift through their fingers back to the ground, but that’s a function of what their body can do, not their fundamental mental makeup. In Stellaris, it seems to function similarly–digital minds lack biology, with the equivalent of a type of “limb” that gives access to, perception of, etc. the Shroud. (The less generous might characterize this as the absence of midi-chlorians, but let’s just stick with Shroud similarities to Warhammer for now without dragging Star Wars into it.) Someone born blind, with no sight whatsoever, never knows what the sunset looks like because they have no way of conceiving what purely visual phenomena are like. Digitized consciousnesses in Stellaris behave like someone congenitally blind in regard to the Shroud. They can still be affected by it–psionic weapons and entities still do damage to machine civilizations, certainly–but they can witness only the abilities that seep into the universe they entirely inhabit, Flatworld-style.

But it’s hard to say for sure that Stellaris canonically doesn’t also have souls. And I believe that is intentional, and I think it is a wise choice. Let players decide whether some kind of immortal soul exists to be lost when machines ascend. It opens up far more play possibilities.

But if you’re unsatisfied with becoming the potential (roleplay) equivalent of a congenitally-shroud-blind immortal, Stellaris seems to offer you relatively few choices. At least on a systematic scale.

There is one, though. Added I think also fairly recently, that race of beings you can encounter who inhabit a space between multiverses (alluded to earlier) posses a technological artifact that grants immortality to some nebulous group that come in some nebulous level of contact with it–essentially, it makes all characters that belong to your civilization immortal, while implying it doesn’t do that for your entire society. And you can steal this artifact from them (they themselves already being immortal, seemingly, and so apparently no longer needing it). And so if you ascend psionically and are able to acquire this macguffin, you are able to systematically offer immortality to those among your population who want it. Win-win. At least, if you can succeed at all the things necessary to make it happen.

I appreciate, though, that it is not just impossible, or some entirely RNGeesus based aspirational dream like it had been in the past. Truly, Paradox games are ones which only reach their potential after a couple of dozen DLCs.

Gender is a weird thing.

Petal sighed in annoyance as he tried to find some way of making the French maid dress fit decently. He wore nothing under it; both his pussy and his bussy were completely exposed for his husband to fondle or use as he wished. But the lack of undergarments was not the problem; the dress was somewhat busty. Petal (and his husband) both were very happy with the outcome of his top surgery; he had met his husband well after having it, and both liked his flat, smooth chest. He was the boy he wanted to be; but he was also the housewife he and his husband wanted him to be, and now part of his submission and process of being sexy for his more dominant and wonderfully controlling husband was dressing up coyly in this strapless French maid dress. But the breasts that were supposed to keep it up were long gone. 

The dress did have tiny sleeves that went over the tops of Petal’s arms, and that did keep the dress from falling off entirely, but it kept annoyingly sliding down below where it was supposed to be, sitting awkwardly below his nipples. That also further lowered the hem, which was a mixed blessing; if it sat properly it might be short enough that Petal would need underwear beneath to be decent to go about the house. 

That was another oddity of gender; Petal’s anatomy, though frustrating in some ways, had accommodated a weirdly specific fetish. He had, despite being a man himself, been able to carry his husband’s children, a rarity among the houseboy-fetishizing group of gay men who longed to be able to get pregnant when their husbands fucked them. And those children were finally old enough to be unable to see up the bottoms of outfits like a French maid dress from underneath, so he could discretely and inoffensively surprise his husband by wearing such things without underwear again.

The fit was frustrating, though. Petal decided he’d need to take in the sleeves at some point, so they would ride higher on his arms. It wouldn’t be quite as nice, but his shoulders would still be bare. As Petal heard shouting from the living room, and responded almost unconsciously with a yelled “Calm down,” he abandoned the dress and just grabbed a t-shirt so oversized it could function as a shift. Adequately dressed, he went out to see what commotion was being caused by the children his husband had given him.

Daily Chores

“W” means every week of the month on that day. “1st” means first week of the month on that day of the week, and so on.

Standing Rules

The gate beeps, and Jase walks through. Several paces more and now he waits for the elevator to ding. When it does, he waits for it to ascend to the thirty-third floor. He nods back to the receptionist who smiles at him, proceeding down the path he has become very familiar with over the last few months.

He hears talking as he approaches the relevant office. The dominant man he has been allowed to serve is on the phone. He knows better than to hesitate, and places his better’s lunch on his desk before turning to close the door ever so quietly, then putting the cardboard block over the door’s window to ensure privacy.

The dominant continues talking as he strips, neatly folding his clothes as they come off and piling them just inside the closed door. Naked, he crawls under the man’s desk, where he sees the man’s shoes have already been kicked aside. At first his rubs the man’s socked feet, before he pulls down and removes the socks. As he kisses and licks his better’s now-bare feet, he hears the man concluding his call. As his better begins eating, Jase savors the flavor of the sweat from his feet, the taste and scent of someone who has walked to work and had his feet in shoes most of the morning. 

The man ignores him as Jase relishes how he is and has been permitted to spend his own lunch hour, not getting to eat any food of his own, only to bring food to this man and prostrate himself beneath him, enjoying his complete degradation at the feet of his better. His nudity is not sexual—at least, not for the man, who is not particularly attracted to him, even if the disparity in attire does turn Jase on. Jase’s nudity is required instead as a simple assurance that both know their place.

Sometimes Jase does imagine the man using him; allowing him to suck his cock, at least. He knows better than to hope for that day to come, although the man has told him that sometimes he may have other women or men in the office that he fucks while Jase serves him. The man prefers to keep dedicated toys for different purposes. And while getting to serve him sexually might be nice—getting to do more of anything for this man, his better, would be a pleasure and a treat—Jase finds considerable happiness even in just their current arrangement, wherein he is allowed to bring the man lunch every day, bask in his dominant presence, and provide some physical comfort and pleasure to his better with a worshipful foot massage.

The man had finished eating and gone back to work some time ago, still completely ignoring Jase. Jase sees the time and knows he must leave soon; he procrastinates, nuzzling the man’s feet with a passionate longing to remain there all day. Eventually he tears himself away, backs out from under the desk, and cleans up the man’s food wrappings. As he dresses to leave, the man speaks to him for the first and only time that day.

“Bring me chicken parmesan tomorrow.”

“Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir,” Jase says, as he removes the privacy cardboard, opens the office door, and heads back to his own job a few blocks away. He hopes his hard-on subsides to a less noticeable bulge as he walks embarassedly back; he is grateful for his place, and grateful that he has to endure the embarrassment of being turned on by it. It is what he knows he deserves.

Another man has offered to let Jase clean his home that evening, and Jase is excited for the opportunity to serve. He’ll have to get up extra-early tomorrow to prepare the chicken parmesan since he won’t have time to tonight.

I, _________________________________, hereafter “the submissive,” in regards to my participation in activities with _________________________________, hereafter “the Dominant”, hereby agree as follows:

1. I release and forever discharge the Dominant and their affiliates, successors and assigns from causes of action of any nature and kind, known or unknown, which I may have against the Dominant arising out of or relating to any injury, loss or damage to person and property that may be sustained as a result of participation in activities together that occur from the dates of _________________________________ until _________________________________.
2. I understand that participation in sex, sexual scenes, power exchange roleplay, sadomasochistic activities, and all other such activities we conduct together during the aforementioned period involves inherent risks. These risks include, without limitation, risk of physical or psychological injury, pain, suffering, disfigurement, temporary or permanent paralysis, and death. I, the submissive, assume all related risks and voluntarily participate in these activities.
3. The Dominant will be in a position of relative power during these activities, which include sex. This relative position entails certain responsibilities to the submissive in regards to sex acts.
   • I anticipate that these activities will include sex, and consent to having sex in the course of this activity. This consent may be withdrawn at any time by saying _________________________________, hereafter “the safeword,” or when unable to speak by making ________ repetitive sounds in a sequence, hereafter “the safe tap sequence.”
   • Expression of the safe word or tap sequence indicates a retraction of consent from the time of expression onward, until such time as both parties consent to resume participating in activities together. Under no circumstances does retraction of consent apply retroactively.
   • I agree that, unless and until the safeword is spoken or the safe tap sequence is given, ongoing consent to the following forms of sex is assumed by both parties: oral sex, anal sex, frottage, masturbation, vaginal sex.
   • I acknowledge that states of heightened arousal, both sexual and non-sexual, may limit the submissive’s ability to express retraction of consent. The Dominant agrees and warrants that they will in all circumstances endeavor to cease any form of sexual activity if they are able to ascertain intention to withdraw consent.
   • I acknowledges that the Dominant is subject to the limitations of human ability, and as such are only able to respect retraction of consent that they can reasonably perceive.
   • I acknowledge that these activities involve an exchange of power from the submissive to the dominant, and the submissive may and is likely to make objections to sex or sexual activities that they consent to, either as a form of coquettishness or as genuine preference which does not override their conscious decision to consent. I further acknowledge and accept that the Dominant’s ability to judge between these objections and genuine attempts to retract consent without the use of the safeword or safe tap sequence is necessarily limited.
4. The Dominant will be in a position of relative power during these activities, which include non-sexual acts related to hierarchy, control, and exercise of authority. This relative power entails certain responsibilities of the dominant towards the submissive.
   • I anticipate, accept and desire that the activities the Dominant and submissive will participate in together during the aforementioned period will include direction of the submissive by the Dominant to perform certain actions and behaviors.
   • The Dominant is responsible for ensuring the submissive is empowered to successfully follow the given direction by ensuring any supplies necessary are available, providing instructions on what is expected and how obedience is achieved, and confirming understanding by the submissive of those instructions and the presence of any necessary supplies, as applicable.
   • The Dominant is responsible for ensuring that the submissive follows the directions correctly and safely, as any authority overseeing participants in any other activity would be responsible to do. The sexual and fetishistic nature of the activities does not in any way absolve the Dominant from the responsibility of ensuring that the submissive follows given instructions obediently, completely, and with reasonable promptness to partake in the activities successfully, as instructed by the Dominant.
   • I acknowledge and consent to the Dominant’s use of verbal or physical force, personally or with the use of devices such as restraints, in the fulfillment of the Dominant’s obligation to ensure compliance with the direction they provide regarding the completion of all components of the activities. The sexual and fetishistic nature of the activities does not in any way absolve the Dominant from any obligation to utilize force, restraint, or coercion as tools to ensure safety and compliance any more than an amusement park operator would be absolved of responsibility to physically coerce guests out of dangerous situations or sports coaches would be absolved of the responsibility to assign arduous physical tasks as correction for non-compliant behavior.
   • This consent to participation in these activities, including the use of coercion, may be withdrawn at any time by saying the safeword or, when unable to speak, by making the safe tap sequence, as mentioned above. Without such retraction of consent, the Dominant is both entitled and responsible for ensuring the submissive’s correct and obedient participation by whatever means are, in the Dominant’s best judgement, likely to result safely in compliance. Requirements and limitations on the Dominant’s responsibilities regarding the submissive’s retraction of consent without expression of the safeword or tap sequence are the same as those stated above.
   • I acknowledge and warrant that these forms of coercion are desired by both parties, and the submissive intentionally, knowingly, and willingly intends to subordinate authority over their behaviors to the Dominant in the same manner that a student, pupil or participant in any sport or other recreational activity subordinates their autonomy to follow the instructions and commands of the instructors or coaches of those activities. I acknowledge and warrant that the sexual and fetishistic nature of these activities, which often presumes a different standard of behavior in normal social circumstances, in no way does so for the activities conducted by the Dominant and submissive together during the specified time frame.
5. I, the submissive, agree to indemnify the Dominant against any and all claims, actions, lawsuits, damages and judgements, including attorney’s fees, arising out of or relating to my participation in these activities.
6. This Release shall not be in any way construed as an admission by the Dominant that they have acted wrongfully with respect to the me or any other party, that they admit liability or responsibility at any time for any purpose, or that I have any rights whatsoever against the Dominant.
7. This Release shall be binding upon the parties and their respective heirs, administrators, personal representatives, executors, successors and assigns. I have the authority to release the Claims and have not assigned or transferred any Claims to any other party. This Release constitutes the entire agreement between the parties and supersedes any prior oral or written agreements or understandings between the parties concerning the subject matter of this Release. This Release may not be altered, amended, or modified, except by a written document signed by both parties.
8. I have carefully read and fully understand all provisions of this Release and am freely, knowingly and voluntarily entering into this release.