Escafil Device

[bizarrocarlos]

well how about painless morphing? do the nanites go and block pain signals from reaching the brain? they only block pain when they are morphing and not when they are demorphed. otherwise the animorphs couldn't feel pain at all.
then there's the helmacron thing when they were shrunk. acquiring new dna made them morph normal size. wouldn't the dna inside the nanites be unaffected by shrinkage?  

[Galladerotom]

Forgive me if this has already been said but, the morphs are mostly created via DNA for example in the experiment when Ax morphs a steer he still becomes a bull because being neutered dosen't change with DNA. So morphing would prevent you from acuiring those nifty blue bands you mentioned earlier.

Also an easier question if the nanites need a power source where do they get it and why would it run out in Z-Space and not in our reality.

[BaronConall]

well how about painless morphing? do the nanites go and block pain signals from reaching the brain?

This was addressed fairly early into the topic. The nanites disable key points in the nervous system in order to prevent the pin of morphing.

So morphing would prevent you from acuiring those nifty blue bands you mentioned earlier.

Also an easier question if the nanites need a power source where do they get it and why would it run out in Z-Space and not in our reality.

As I stated in that post, you aren't actually acquiring the bands, you are converting your own mass and tissue into the material, sacrificing a small amout of mass to create a blue band or morph suit from your own genetic material.

The question of power was also addressed, since the nanites fuel themselves on the enzymes, skin cells and organic matter withing your body. For example, if you eat an apple, some of it goes towards fueling the nanites.

The nanites are essentially a new form of white blood cell, maintaining a set number within the body, forming a symbiosis in order to function.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

I'm still not a huge fan of the "converting your mass into the morphing suit" thing, but yeah, what he said.

[bizarrocarlos]

wait if the nanites are powered by your body or if you eat shouldn't there be no time limit?
yea you could argue the ones that stay with your mass in z-space are on limited power, but couldn't they use that mass as power? atleast for a couple more minutes.

[BaronConall]

Because if the nanites consumed the mass stored in Z-Space, the would not be able to return the mass from Z-Space. They would once again need to borrow mass from Z-Space in order to sustain the host form, which would, in turn, result in a burn-out. The nanites would become confused, thinking that they were in a larger morph and glitch, leaving the host as a nothlit... Of the host.

You're right, nanites are powered by your body. And thanks to Aluminator, I can explain/ret-con this a little better.

In a smaller morph, the nanites are stored in Z-Space, as we well know. Now: We have previously mentioned Z-Space Tethering, yes?
While in Z-Space, the nanites are able to tether to the host form by locking onto a unique energy signature. Morph Energy. It's the trail of bread crumbs that they follow home.

After 2 hours in any given morph, the energy signature dissapates, and the nanites in Z-Space can't find a host to return to.
Because the nanites are being stored in Z-Space, time also has a different rate of flow. 2 hours for the host may be instantaneous for the nanites, in very much the same way that several hundered thousand light years is a mere half an hour for an Andalite ship.

This would mean that the nanites don't particualrly run any risk of losing power, more that they risk losing the location of when to return to. Morph Energy gives them a clear location, in our perception of time, of when/where to return to.

I hope this explains things a little better.

[aareavis]

I've been trying to figure out how consciousness is stored during the morphing process.  You can't fit a human consciousness in a flea brain.  You just can't.  Would these nanites also be involved in brain mapping to keep our consciousness intact?

It all started when I got to thinking about thought-speak while in morph.  Why should that be the case?  At first, I thought maybe the nanites preserve a little bit of Andalite biology, the centers of the brain involved in thought speak.  However, I now wonder if there isn't some sort of mapping going on as well as the nanites being able to send and receive thought-speak messages.

Poor Tobias.  Everything he is would be mapped to little computer chips in his little bird brain.  How does that work when he is in human morph?  There would be two Tobias' in there.  The regular one and the primitive mind that comes with the morph.

[BaronConall]

Oooooohhhhhh...

Good question!

It's 5:47am here right now, so give me a chance to sleep and dream up a theory and I'll get back to you!

[bizarrocarlos]

makes me wonder too. i think the conciousness is converted into data, divided and put into numerous of the remaining nanites left when you morph small. cause the nanites are micro-micro-scopic and there could be millions on 1 flea.
then when they thought speak it just transmits a message to the other nanites with concious data inside them. either to 1 or many at a time. like private chat.
kinda how the ellimist divided his conciousness and put into various ships.(ellimist chronicles)

[Aluminator (Kit)]

That's probably the best theory. The consciousness obviously can't be stored in Z-space, or Tobias would have just been a hawk with no human thought after his 2 hours were up. These have got to be some pretty impressive nanites, probably with quantum-state information storage or better, but considering the two strongest areas of Andalite technology seem to be Z-space and computers, I think that actually makes a lot of sense.

[aareavis]

I'm thinking that the nanites involved in storing consciousness would stay in real space.  I would think the nanites would be constantly mapping the mind of the morpher.

I wonder if the nanites aren't differentiated somehow.  Some map the brain, some are thought-speak transceivers, some call mass from z-space, some send mass to z-space, some focus on holding the DNA patterns.  I don't think any single nanite would be doing all these things or else...  well, it's just ridiculous...

[Aluminator (Kit)]

That's a good point. With as small as these things would have to be, it's probably more reasonable to assume there are several different varieties floating around in the bloodstream...

[aareavis]

Ax proved me wrong.

From #21:
<The extra mass is extruded into Zero-space. Our own minds and brains are pushed into Zero-space and maintain contact with the morph by means of a ->

"What is he talking about?" David asked.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

I SO want to call BS on that one... if the mind in Z-space maintains contact with the body, why doesn't the mass? That one's tough to reconcile... though I suppose it's possible that the mind in Z-space continues to experience time at the rate of the body in normal space, while the morphed mass does not... because, if the mind is in Z-space, you wouldn't want any sort of temporal disconnect between it and the body. If that's the case, it doesn't seem like it'd be too much work for the Andalites to make some changes and eliminate the 2-hour time limit altogether, though in book 18, they didn't seem totally sure how the morphing technology worked, so there's that to consider. Maybe the mind itself is not physically contained in Z-space, somehow, but rather exists as nothing more than the mentality within Z-space itself, keeping it from being tethered to the Z-space timeline... Haha... oh, that's starting to sound like really bad sci-fi at that point, though...

Hey, Baron, how do we justify a Yeerk being able to morph a previously-morph-capable host body without injuring itself, such as in Visser 3's case?

[BaronConall]

Oh god...
Here it comes... The "Time is relative" discussion where time is tethered to the self, not the form, and how time is self-healing, allowing any temporal disruption/delay to be ignored by temporal continuity...

*head a'splodes*

As for Esplin 9466 being able to morph while using Alloran as a host... I've pondered this too, recently.

When the chips were implanted in their head during the Hammerhead escapade, they couldn't morph flies, so I can't say that Esplin 9466 was temporarily accepted as an extension of the host form without making an allowance for the chips.
Unless I take into account that he is biological mass instead of artifical. Which negates morph suits.

...Unless the chips were encoded with a beta program of the Anti-Morphing Ray, negating any Morph commands in order to lessen the chance of Andalite infiltration?
Considering how long it would take to progress from beta-testing to field-testing of the Anti-Morphing signal, this isn't to hard to believe... But for my sake, let's say it IS...

The only real explanation I can give is: "When has a Yeerk morphed anything smaller than a bird?" The Visser has really been the sublte infiltration type, and Yeerks mould their bodies to suit the brain...

BUT... Hole in theory... Shark brains weren't large enough and Horse brains were hardly better...

So...

I don't know?