Biobed

The "Shanti Essentials" biobed is a ruggedized scanner/fabricator for human bodies.

Despite the power of modern scanners and computers, it's impossible to image and record every molecule in a human body as digital data. The biobed uses quantum imaging to store a 'ghost' of the patient in its optical lattice. This ghost can be printed back into matter by precise fabrication. When paired with a blackbox implant (which transmits the last brainstate before death back to its paired biobed on a phase channel), a biobed can detect a colonist's death and reprint them with no loss of memory or subjective experience.

—Does not require power or raw material (automatically collected from seawater) —When synced with a biobed, colonists will be fabricated in a new body (a "print") if killed —Blackbox implant allows transfer of final memories, but not all possessions —Biobed quartz memory is stable into geological time —Used to store Cicada colonists during long interstellar flight

Because the ghost is not digital data, it cannot be edited or duplicated. However, a biobed can record many ghosts during a single session and store them in quantum superposition. In theory, a single biobed could produce many duplicates of many people—populating an entire colony with clonal strains of a few initial colonists. This process is illegal under Trans-System Federation Law, and blocked at the software level in all legal biobeds.