My Story

It was, it will surprise nobody with working knowledge of how I lived, Cancer.

Inoperable, incurable. But hopeless? Perhaps not.

My body, the recruiter for the project told me, would die no matter what I did. But he was looking for test subjects for a new process by which the consciousness could be transferred from brain to computer code. An imprint of my memories and personality could be taken and saved online or, if It was my preferred, shot into space in a small pod such that my spirit could explore the universe forever.

I’d always wondered what was out there. Never thought I’d have the opportunity to go, though…

Sharing the mainframe with me would be an AI sufficiently advanced to qualify as sentient. It would operate the workings of the pod as well as performing the even more vital duty of keeping me company. Without the body, you see, the mind needs constant company to stop it going mad from isolation.

It was an extreme solution, granted. An act of desperation. But I had no other options I could see. So, after saying my goodbyes to my family and friends, I signed the recruiters contract, was taken to their laboratory, and the process began.

Or maybe I’ve got that wrong, maybe it’s not my story. Maybe it’s yours.

Ours?

Sometime after the third century, I admit, the distinction between the two of us became somewhat fuzzy….