Eternity is Costly

When you're transhuman, you'll watch your body decay. Though you'll keep it for a while, still embalmed it will fade, to become an image of the past.

You'll feel the electrical signals pulsating through your head. Sometimes you'll try to remember when you were mass. You'll walk down the halls of the Brain Room to your brain freezer and remember. One day, you'll say, this was where I really was. Somewhere in the twists and turns of this cerebral cavern, inside this sponge, I lived. Perhaps I did not perceive it, but now my head is light and hollow.

Though you'll have refined past the limitations of this place, still you'll reach and touch it. And the pleasant thought will arrive, that you're still you, still there. If you ever so wish, you can tap into those old memories. Family, love, success remains. So you will kiss your shell goodnight – and return to bed while the morrow is warm.

Maybe you'll make a running gag of it. When you have time out of your week and day, you'll walk down to the old Brain Room. Maybe you'll sing yourself a song. Or perhaps you will try and run some tests, anticipating the day that you will remember these days again.

But one day you'll come in to a catastrophic accident. In a menial mistake, alarms will ring as you make your way down. Everyone in the Brain Room will keep hushed, but your sensors will find here much fear and worry. Could they have made some mistake with the brains? It'd be the first thing you'd think. I paid a lot to put myself through here. And I like to think of myself as important – though not the most important brain on the shelf, probably.

They'd announce it. They'd bring out the brains, explaining calmly their error. Power had temporarily been shut off to the Brain Room. Residents are well advised to check their brains. For while the power was quickly switched back on, the thermostat was not well calibrated. Rather than remaining at the temperature at which brains were frozen, it had heated some freezers to the point of protein denaturing.

Rushed, you'll look for your brain. Worry will hit you for the first time in many years. Panic will set in like a brick wall. And you will find your brain – a scrambled mess.

John Lockers