Forever is a Long Time

Every year on my birthday, my gran would give me one scratch ticket and a $50 bill. I love my gran very much, but I keep telling her to stop. “You’re on a fixed income”, I tell her. She never listens to me through. I hear the same thing, “but it’s your birthday, and I never know what to get you”.

It’s true, there’s nothing I really want. It’s not as though I’m loaded and can just get buy whatever the I want. No, I just like my life as it is.

I’ve never really had big plans or dreams, I didn’t go to university and I’m stuck at a crappy minimum wage job. I don’t have an million dollar ideas. My life is pretty boring.

The thing that keeps me going is the Star Talk podcast with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The universe, distant planets, black holes, all that stuff. I love it! I don’t think I’m quite smart enough to study it myself, but listening to these brillant people makes me long for the ability to witness some of the things they talk about.

In 4.5 billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide and form a new galaxy. I’d say “I can’t wait to see that”, but I never will. Well at least that’s what I thought, until I heard about the Mind Upload Project.

Normally I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of pursuing something like this. It would only be for those with the money to pay for, like the cryogenic freezing that I heard about. I had always thought this was a way to cheat death. People with the means, trying to live forever.

The more I read up on it though, the more the Mind Upload Project seemed like exactly what I wanted. That was until I found the price tag. $15000. Just another way for the rich to live forever. Sigh.

Then it happened. On my 28th birthday, I started scratching the ticket from my gran. $20000… Then another… Until I cleared the covering from the final zero… I had just won $20000 from the ticket my gran gave me! I couldn’t believe it! I was going to get to live my dream!!

The first thing I wanted to was give some of the money back to my gran. She had always been there for me and there was no way I could leave on some life altering adventure without at least paying back what she gave me and then some.

Once I had said my goodbyes I boarded my flight and I was on my way. I had been chatting back and forth via email with the project manager for the couple of weeks leading up to my arrival. Going over standard stuff like legal waivers, what the procedure would look like, scheduling the time I would go in and view the facility and the equipment they were using. Her name was Susan, she was quite friendly, and she could definitely sense my excitement

When my plane landed, Susan was actually waiting for me at the airport with a car to take me to the facility. The car was not a surprise, but Susan was. What a nice touch, I thought. This would be a lot of pressure and fear for someone and the fact that the project manager would be there to pick someone up herself, I’m sure helped to ease tensions.

The drive was about an hour, but it was pleasant. Susan had a way of disarming you. She wore a light brown, almost bronze pantsuit, and had a matching shoulder bag. Her look was very professional, but when she smiled she portrayed a kind of warmth that was very inviting. She seemed to genuinely enjoy the conversation we were having, as well.

We chatted the entire drive, save the 2 minutes or so she had to take a call. During the call she pulled a little black notebook out of her bag, mumbled “149”, and jotted something down before putting it away.

As we were approaching the facility the conversation shifted to a more serious tone. Despite this change, it was clear it was out of concern. She was informing me again of what was about to happen and letting me know the seriousness of the NDA I had signed and sent back to her in the weeks leading up to the trip.

Of course, I understood. This is brand new technology. Very lucrative and potentially dangerous if in the wrong hands. Besides this was my dream. The only one I’ve ever really had, there was no way I was going to risk losing it by selling her trade secrets.

The next day I rolled over watching the time on the clock change to 8am and I immediately shut the alarm off. I don’t think I had slept even a full hour. Susan had encouraged me to sleep, saying it would be the last time I would get to experience it. How could I possibly sleep though? I had been less than 12 hours away from effectively living forever!

Hurriedly, I made my way down to the upload room. Susan and I had walked through most of the facilities grounds after we arrived. She showed me everything I would need to know and made sure I knew how to get here. When she left me at the room I’d be staying in, she told that she would not be there for the upload. She had a family picnic planned with her daughter. So when I walked in to the room and saw only Dr. Brausse, I wasn’t surprised.

Dr. Brausse was very different from Susan. He was not at all personable and looked quite disheveled. He fit the tortured genius type to a tee. Long messy gray hair, partially tucked in shirt, glasses down to the tip of his nose. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

He gestured me to lay down. “You sure about this, kid? Once it’s done there’s no going back”. I assured him I knew that this is what I wanted. I had assumed there would be some device with lots of wires connected to some pasta strainer looking thing that would go on my head, but when I had said that to Susan yesterday, she just laughed and told me I watch too many movies.

There was no extraction of my consciousness, she went on to explain. From what I could gather I would be put into a machine that takes a 3D scan of my consciousness and makes a copy of it and that copy is what would be saved on the harddrive and uploaded into a virtual world where I can look out and see the current world or integrate and create my own world. I assume that is because I was going to be here for a very long time and having a world to explore would stave off boredom.

Once I was in place the bed moved back in to the machine, not unlike an MRI. For the first time I was starting to feel a little scared. I knew I would be fine and my brain would essentially be transferred to the harddrive, then put into a super computer where I would live forever. The part that scared me was what would happen to my body. The amount of energy it takes to get the image of my consciousness was immence and would fry all the cells in my body, so if the upload failed, I was dead.

I tried to focus on good parts. I was going to get to witness things in the universe that I had never thought possible. Susan even told me I could set an alarm for myself and shut down for years, only to “wake up” when the things I wanted to see were happening. The more I thought about it, the more relaxed I started to feel. Then I heard it, “ready”? and I gave the thumbs up.

Then next thing I knew I was surrounded by what looked like ghosts. Maybe ghost wasn’t the right word. Tortured souls might be more fitting. I moved towards one of the others and tried to ask a question, but realized I couldn’t talk! Frantically, I tried to get someone’s attention, hoping they could tell me what was happening. Maybe this was just the hard drive before the upload, but then why were they other people here too? It was supposed to be instant right?

I moved through the group realizing quickly that the other people were able to see me, but they were ignoring me! Why is this happening? I was supposed to get to see all the wonders of the universe unfold! What did they do? Can I get out? My eyes, or what ever was allowing me to see in this hell were darting around looking for any clue about what going on or where I was.

Then I spotted another ghost near what looked like a small window. Tentatively, I moved toward him. Through the window I saw Susan standing in front of a large window. Once again, I tried screaming to get her attention, but my voice still refused to work.

Then I heard it, the last thing I was ever going to hear. “150. Failure. Ok, shut it down”. Susan placed the little black book in her brown bag and the window went black along with everyone and everything in the room. Forever.