Hoister
Family Eighth Generation aka Senior Generation aka Family ProperHoister
Family Eighth Generation aka Senior Generation aka Family ProperThe Eighth Generation of the Hoister Family Genetic Program, consisting of nine groups of four clones each (2 male, 2 female). Members of a clone group share minds; while each individual has his/her own distinct personality and consciousness, thoughts, emotions, and memories are freely shared between clones. A clone group has been described as "one mind in four bodies." (Members of a clone group can, temporarily, switch personalities between bodies; likewise, if one body is killed, the individual's personality can survive in the other three. In extreme cases, one living body has sustained all four minds. ) This mind-link appears to have no spatial limitations, and seems to be instantaneous regardless of distance.
Numerous failed attempts to replicate the Hoister clone-group mind-link have shown that it is not a property of the clone group as such; apparently, it derives as much from the unique circumstances of the Eighth Generation's upbringing and heredity as from the clone phenomenon. (Some researchers have suggested a correlation to so-called "telepathy" reported between some pairs of identical twins; this phenomenon is still far from understood.) The mind-link is most emphatically not telepathy; psi-screens that shield telepathy are ineffective on the mind-link. Telepaths are unable to intercept or "listen in on" the private mind-link. (The case of the Za Personality shows us how poorly understood the Hoister clone-group mind-link really is.)
A tenth clone group, actually eleventh-generation, was engineered
by Telena Hoister in the New Continuum, with Levine Family genes
added to the mix:
The Z-Group gained a fifth member about 14,270 H.E.: ZA (formally "the Za Personality"). The Za was spontaneously generated within the Z-Group mind-link, and lived for a considerable number of centuries without a body, existing only in the shared minds of its siblings. The Za has no fixed gender, and alternates male and female bodies in reincarnation.
Although the A-Group and the Za Personality are not strictly of the Hoister Eighth Generation, they are considered part of the Family Proper and/or the Senior Generation.
The Eighth Generation was raised on Helox by Brynhilde, who is considered part of the Family Proper. She is the only authority figure (besides themselves) that members of the Eighth Generation respond to.
Members of the Family Proper address one another affectionately as "cugino mia" (singular) or "cugini mia" (plural).
The ritual greeting gesture between members of the Family Proper involves raising the hand (right or left) to the forehead, palm out, for a moment.
After their first century or so, the Family Proper began to communicate in a verbal and body-language high-context shorthand, in which a casual movement, a facial expression, a single word says more than thousands of words between strangers.
Following 18,133 H.E., when the U-Group was missing and presumed dead, the Family Proper left four seats empty at all gatherings.
Members of the Family Proper wear signet rings embossed with the Family Seal. Beginning with their time in the New Continuum, these rings contained sophisticated psi-devices which screened a five-meter radius from clairvoyant observation. The screen was activated by thought.
At age four (2472 CE), the X-Group authored a short verse that all the clone groups adopted as their own; it soon became an internal chant, with each member of the group taking a segment:
Mind and body / heart and soul / space and time / to death and beyond, we are one.
A common expletive among the Family Proper is "Gods of the Three Moons," derived from the three moons of Helox.