EASY STEPS TO POSTHUMANITY

By William King

Lie down on the surgeon`s table. Don`t be nervous when he says: “This won`t hurt a bit.” Try to nod your head. Realise that you cannot because he had disconnected your brain from your motor functions. Watch your aperture of vision slowly shrink until all you can see is blackness. Wake. Realise that the world looks different. Let it slowly dawn on you that colours are stronger, that the outlines of the world are sharper, that you cannot smell anything.            Get out of the bed. Look at your white cubicle. Walk to the mirror. See that you have cameras instead of eyes, that tubes run from your chest to a socket in the wall. Try to tug them out. Realise that you are too weak. Laugh wildly as the red alarm lights flicker. Don`t panic as the orderlies rush in. Giggle as they inject you with sedative. Wake again. Look up at the kindly face of the doctor. Listen to his words come to you as if from a great distance away. Try to nod, realise that you cannot because they have cut off your brain from your motor functions again. Try to pay attention to how you got there. Sleep. Inspect the beautiful decor of the visitors` centre. Admire the print of the Peninsula landscape on the wall. Look at the trees beside the lake. Up the magnification of your new eyes until the picture becomes a series of dots. Watch your ex-lover sit in the comfortable chair. Watch her cross her legs carefully. Watch her swallow nervously as she looks into your camera eyes. Shake your head when when she asks you to sit. Explain that you prefer to stand, that they replaced your spine with metal and super-conductors. Watch her begin to cry. Lay your hand on her shoulder when she tells you that you didn`t have to do this to make your point. Tell her this wasn`t about making points. Lie. Tell her you would have volunteered anyway if she hadn`t left you. Ask yourself why you are moved so little by the little drops of salty water dripping down her face.             Drift in the pod of saline fluid. Look at your reflection in the walls of the glass bubble. See that you have no limbs. Notice that you have only jack sockets where arms and legs once were. Try to breathe. Realise that you cannot. Don`t panic. Tell yourself that they are pumping oxygen directly into your lungs, preparing you for the time when you will not breathe ever again. Move the remote arm. Feel a small surge of triumph when you realise that the brick you just grabbed is ten miles away and that the picture that you`re seeing is being bounced off a satellite in geo-stationary orbit. Move your metal legs. Laugh because you know that the faster you think you`re walking, the quicker your metal tracks carry you across the desert landscape. Watch as they wheel you into the surgery once more. Look down on the meat as they strip away your flesh. Ask yourself why you don`t feel nervous as they come to the most difficult part of the operation. Feel a faint flutter of fear as they switch over all your bodily functions to life support machines. Watch as teams of surgeons replace your heart with a pump and your lungs with recycling systems. Keep them in view as they inject you with nanomachines that will maintain you forever. Observe with interest as they replace your skin with layers of silicon and nano-circuitry. Watch the aperture of your vision slowly shrink to blackness as a doctor flicks a switch. Stand in the forest with your ex-lover. Smell the pines. Feel the faint itch of a mosquito bite. Watch a speedboat race across the lake leaving a white wake behind it. Try and find the flaw in the simulation. Marvel when you cannot. Tell your ex-lover that you did not think that virtual reality had come so far. Watch her wince. Remember that VR design was her chosen profession. Try to forget all the similar mistakes you made in the past. Tell yourself that it would never have worked anyway. Make love for the last time on the simulated grass beside the simulated cabin beside the simulated lake. Tell yourself that you have found the flaw in the simulation. Know that you are lying to yourself. Feel a sense of fear as the darkness closes in. Try not to panic when you realise that something has gone wrong. Tell yourself that you can`t be choking because you have no lungs. Tell yourself that your heart can`t be racing because you have no heart. Tell yourself that you can`t feel pain, you have nothing to feel pain with. Tell yourself that it`s an illusion, a product of your mind, the phantom reflexes of a phantom body. Feel a sense of relief as the doctor administers another sedative. Watch the world fade to black. Feel a sense of triumph as you drift over the simulated Jupiter. Trim your solar wings to catch the photon tide. Inspect the red dot with your camera eyes. Bounce your radar off the layers of cloud. Train your laser on the distant Earth. Speak your message with a voice of coherent light. Watch the scene flicker. Stand in the virtual reality of the briefing room. Listen to the doctor tell you that you`re as ready as you`ll ever be. Walk through the city with your ex-lover. Look up at the skyscraper towers. Remember the first time you ever saw them with her. Remember the first time you ever saw her. Ask yourself was it love or was it just a rush of chemicals through your brain. Ask yourself whether the reason you feel different now is because of time or because you have different chemicals in your brain. Listen to her tell you that she`ll be dead by the time you get back. Tell her she`s wrong. Tell her that medical science is advancing all the time, that you will come back to be greeted by a race of immortals. Listen as she tells you that there is someone else. Wonder at the fact that the pain is small and sharp and distant. Ask yourself: is this why you did this, to put lightyears of distance between yourself and the pain. Say goodbye for the last time in the shadow of those well-remembered skyscrapers. Look down on the Earth below you. Marvel at the radiant blueness of it. Watch cloud patterns swirl. Notice that there is rainfall over New Orleans and the shadow of a storm over the Atlantic. Unfurl your solar wings. Feel power surge through you. Inspect infinite night with your radar. Think of your dead family. Think of your lost lover. Think of all the days that are behind you. Measure them against an infinite future in near infinite darkness, against the wonders you have yet to see. Ask yourself one last time whether it is worth it. Realise that it doesn`t matter, that you are committed now. Feel the faint kick of acceleration. Turn your laser on the nearby comsat. Say; next stop, Alpha Centauri. Say; goodbye. [ Top ]     [ Fiction ]

This story first appeared in Mind Maps #1 in 1996. Edited by Mike Cobley