Imitating the double body aspect of quantum entanglement with other tech…

Question

I’m working on a scenario where one person can be at two places at the same time, kind of like a mirror version of themselves where the original person controls both bodies even though the two bodies are separated by great distances. His/her original body (body A) would remain at the sending location, and his/her duplicated body (body B) could be anywhere else. Let me explain…

At first this sounds like quantum entanglement, but upon looking into that I found some issues. Quantum entanglement doesn’t allow for faster than light communication, or quantum teleportation, and entangled particles become un-entangled the moment one of them is observed/measured. So that wouldn’t work when applied to matter larger than anything quantum sized(?)

So, what if some futuristic tech comes into play where they try to mimic the concept of quantum entanglement using other methods? Here’s what I have so far…

In this future tech there exist teleportation devices that work like the ones in Star Trek: A person/matter, can be teleported from one place to another. But in this case, instead of teleporting the original body A to another location, a second body, body B, is created at the receiving location, and body A retains control over body B. They will share one mind. If body A runs to the right so will body B, if body A jumps up and down so will body B, even though they are nowhere near one another. They would be able to share knowledge and experiences in real time; they may even be able to share the sensations of their five senses.

In this way I intend for a character sharing the two bodies to experience being able to explore hostile locations that would damage body B without damaging body A. What would it be like to walk on the surface of the sun? Send body B there and find out without damaging your actual original body. They might even be able to supply organ transplants. Note that I am limiting their experience to “living moments”. Body A’s connection to body B is cut off when body B dies. No exploration of the afterlife (which brings up the question... if body A dies instead, does that make body B the new original?)

The ethics of this are horrible to be sure, but the story will deal with that.

And here’s a related wrinkle I want to explore… Since body B is created by the teleportation device it can be anything the device makes it to be. Here’s how I see it working: The teleportation device makes a digital/quantum (?) copy of body A and sends that information to the receiving location recreating the body there (without having transported or destroyed body A). But, if the teleporter device is given additional information and programmed to add matter to body B then it can be altered. For example: Have you always wanted to be the Incredible Hulk? Have your body B altered to have the additional mass and you will control your own original body at the sending location and control a Hulk sized and powered Body B at the receiving location! Want to fly? Have your body B be a bird! Want to be a tank? Have your body B be a tank!

EDIT for clarification: Body A will be able to experience what body B's senses experience. But that is not the only input body A will get from location B. Body A will be in a place that is like the holo-deck on the Enterprise of Star Trek the Next Generation; a virtual reality supplied by remote camera drones and satellites that are actually observing body B at location B. If body A sees a virtual object that he/she wants to pick up he/she will make the movement and body B at the real location will pick up the actual real object. An interesting weakness that could be explored would be if the remotes were destroyed then body A's input would be hampered.

Second clarification- Movement: The "device" that creates the link between bodies would be programmed to translate the functional needs. Like when actor Benedict Cumberbatch played the dragon Smaug in the Hobbit movies, the program that created the CGI was manipulated to have Smaug understand the actors arms as its wings.

Here’s where we are: We’ve got the transporter device, which basically copies you to the tee, and sends a copy of you to wherever, with potentially altered information that can make the sent body anything it was programmed to be… What I want help with is how would the one mind retain control over both bodies and share sensational experience?

EDIT- This could be helpful: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep01319

Thank you...

Answer 1

Depending on your world's ability to digitally interpret, store, and mimic physical sensations, remote-controlled androids and other synthetic organisms could accomplish what you want. The created body is this not an actual, 100% copy of the original body: rather it is a remote controlled organic husk that the original person can connect to.

This world has 'teleportation' to create bodies and remote controlled virtual reality cameras to follow them, so why not combine the two concepts? The original person(Body A) hops into the body-making machine to produce a duplicate(Body B). Body B has fully working senses(sight, touch, etc.) which, instead of being processed in Body B's brain, are sent to Body A's brain using whatever communications method the observing cameras and satellites you mentioned are using. In place of a brain in Body B, it can basically be a hardrive and transmitter in order to send the data back to Body A.

Body A's brain is able to process this disembodied stream of information without going crazy due to the holodeck-esque virtual reality room you mentioned. It basically just needs to be a sensory deprivation room in order to prevent Body A from perceiving any 'real' stimuli and instead focusing entirely on stimuli coming in from Body B. Kinematic sensors on Body A's body can be used to send movement information to Body B in order for it to follow Body A's movements.

Unfortunately, since information cannot travel instantly there will always be some amount of lag between the two bodies. Lag is a source of problems for real-world virtual reality, however if every sense is experience the same amount of lag the brain might actually be able to adapt to such unnatural stimuli.

Answer 2

If what you want to accomplish is a form of quantum entanglement, one way you could accomplish this is if the transporter clones the subject. I believe this actually happened in an episode of Star Trek, that the transporter duplicated the subject rather than transported it. A key feature of entanglement is superposition which means that the entangled particles exist in multiple states, collapsing into a single state when one is observed. In the case of perfect clones, mind A is essentially controlling body B because their minds are identical, so they would make identical decisions based on the same stimuli. Like superposition, they will remain effectively the same person until an experience differentiates them. If your culture is capable of mentally transmitting sensory information like you propose, they could transmit the sensory information from body B as a package, rather than in real time, summarizing the exploration of the sun. This would accomplish the same goal as body A controlling body B for exploration because the same decision-making process is taking place in an identical brain.