So I Guess I’m Not an Actual Person Anymore
I wonder how many more dreams I have left
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Three months ago I had the last remaining piece of my parietal cortex replaced with carbon nanotube circuits. It was the last in a long line of procedures intended to make me a cybernetic organism (or something).
This kind of thing isn’t safe for the public. I had to volunteer for a complicated research study. Very few people have survived this many augmentations. As far as I know, I’m the only experimental subject who hasn’t gone insane. I’m also kind of a bum, so they don’t really care what happens to me.
Oh and my girlfriend doesn’t think I’m an actual person anymore, so she left me.
The other day I was in a bar with my only remaining friend Lars. He asked me, “Hey, Sam. In your dreams, are you real or a machine?”
I had to think about it for a sec. “Real,” I said.“In my dreams, I’m always real.”
If I’m dreaming, I have to be real, right? Someone once told me that humans dream so they could sort out all the garbage their conscious minds can’t handle. Computers don’t really need to do that.
I wonder how many more dreams I have left.
I feel strange. This isn’t what I signed up for. I don’t enjoy anything anymore. Sex. Intimacy. None of it. I still like talking, though. Conversation has always been my thing. But the physical stuff — no. I don’t feel any of it. At least not like I used to. Life’s not the same when your body doesn’t want anything. When you lack desire, what’s left?
Lars was left.
So Lars was drinking his beer. I don’t drink anymore because — you know, I don’t thirst. I said, “Dude. Stuff doesn’t feel right, like on my skin. Colors are strange. Smells are barely anything. I’m all kinds of messed up.”
His response was, “Man, sometimes I feel that way too. But not in like a fake person kind of way.” He took a chug and drained his cup. Then he ordered another and asked, “Why’d you even do that to yourself anyway? All that robo-surgery stuff. Seems like a whole ordeal.”
“Uhhh.” Here we go, the big question. I sat up and said, “It’s stupid, Lars. I did it so I could be young forever.” It sounded…
