New Lease on Life

My reasons for making the jump were the usual ones: body failure and a lot of pain. To be spry and vital and strong and sharp again—a do-over. It wasn’t that I was filled with regrets. I’d learned a lot during my first go-round and was eager to apply that knowledge and wisdom to the next life.

I didn’t fully think it through. Maybe no one does.

The expense—such an insane amount, but how to put a price on a new life? No amount seemed too high. With routine maintenance and a bit of luck, I’d be around another thousand years or more. I’d be paying off the loan for more than half of that of course, with no way to file bankruptcy and no possibility of escape. If I were to hack myself or try to remove the GPS and get caught, I’d spend a good hundred years or more in prison as an advert server. The dreams are bad enough as it is, but twelve hours waking on top of that would be hell. Joining a borg cult would be preferable—at least there’s a kind of release in there, but ultimately it’s just a different kind of prison. The INCs are trying to figure out how to force an undo on those hive minds because the debt can’t transfer to a collective. At least not with the current laws.

It’s messy, but I didn't care.

I remember what it was like, but I can’t feel what it was like—all the prior versions of me, robust iterations now long gone, never to return. I was young and then I wasn’t. Next, I was old, but then I converted. Biological quantum computer stuff. A transfer and an upgrade. I’m not immortal, but I’m probably going to be around for a hell of a lot longer.

I’m still me as far as I can tell. I don’t have root access, so it feels like my mind is doing what it always did. I guess it’s kind of like emulated software. Or like when Windows was running on top of DOS. There’s all kinds of shit going on underneath that I don’t understand, but that was true before. That’s the only way this works. Otherwise, you’re not human anymore. Some people opt for that. Not me. I just wanted more life, fucker.

I remember feeling anxiety in my stomach. The older I got, the more I realized how much I was my body. My brain has the memories, most of them anyway, and all kinds of stored knowledge, but my body—I felt like me because of it. That’s gone now. By most metrics, this body is better than any prior version of me. I feel so confident. I know that means that some aspect of who I was is gone, but that was always happening anyway. And maybe the human I was is dead, but there’s nothing I can do about that—so why worry about it? There are plenty of other things to worry about.

Looking back, I wish I had paid more for the no-ads version. I miss having dreams that weren’t commercials. At first they were subtle and it was just product placement, but now it’s full-on and unskippable. I could jailbreak myself, but that would void my warranty and I wouldn’t be able to use traditional healthcare anymore. I typically self-heal, but if I get a virus, I could be in real trouble. A friend of mine got hijacked by bio-malware and is in one of those pyramid scamborg cults now. All of the followers upload themselves to each other and processes crypto for the higher-ups. There’s no getting them back either—they’re all intermixed and corrupted...it is so fucked up.

You can’t kill yourself either. It’s possible, but very very difficult to pull off. Not that I’ve done serious research into it, just read a few articles. Until you’re paid off, there are safeties running, so again it would require an illegal hack to undo that. Physical trauma doesn’t work either, since our bodies and minds are so damn resilient now.

I’ve heard of people who hire assassins for themselves. They call those Blade Runners™ which fits since those people just want to retire. The hired killers are basic humans with a lot of tools at their disposal. Used to be they’d drop you in a volcano, but access to those have been blocked. There are chop shops dedicated to it, but I hear the process is very painful. And dangerous for them if they can’t disable the GPS and safety protocols. The corps are serious about protecting their assets and collecting those loans. Again, I’m not really an expert, but you hear things.

I spend a lot of time eating and drinking. I rerun basic memories and relive them. It’s kind of like watching a movie except you forget it’s a movie and you just live it. You can get lost in that, but your body will only allow it for eight hours a day. Then you gotta do your work. Pay them bills. Work off that debt. It’s a life. It’s a living. I only have four hundred and seventy-three years to go.

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About Jerry White Jr. 

Jerry is a filmmaker, musician, writer. He began making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television in Metro Detroit, later studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and has continued to move across film, writing, music, and collaborative creative communities.

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About TANGENTS

TANGENTS is a new recurring literary section for flash fiction, short prose, and fragments that move outside fixed categories, published by STRATUM. It is a dedicated space for compressed narratives, strange turns, and writing that sits ambiguously between fiction, memory, humor, unease, and dream logic.

Edited By Yuyang Hu