A Stand-In for Dying Read online

  “Like what?”

  “Like unprecedented knowledge and all the power that comes with it. And opportunities for real and enduring relationships.”

  Terra seemed to know so much about him. He felt the sadness that had overwhelmed him the night before closing back in on him, underscored by the proximity of the enticing woman bringing him this preposterous opportunity. He wanted more than anything not to be alone.

  “So...still in?” she asked, the words almost floating on her breath.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then we can proceed.”

  Chapter 2

  RAY METTLER SETTLED back in the soft leather recliner and watched the sparkling solution swirl in the bottle hanging above him. He felt a hint of warmth as the liquid flowed into his vein and found its way toward the right ventricle of his heart while the tiny particles it carried diffused into his blood and throughout his circulation. They would eventually find their way across the blood-brain barrier and bind to their targets in the neurons within his brain.

  The plushness of the leather felt pleasantly odd. Ray’s home was spartanly furnished, covered only in materials that could easily be wiped clean. There was little fabric anywhere. Even his bed covering was a smooth sheet of insulating polymer. Microbes were his enemies. Frequent antiseptic washes and laminar flow circulation kept his home swept as free of them as possible. Anyone entering passed first through a decontamination chamber and observed a strict dress code in keeping with the sterile milieu.

  Another unfamiliar sensation played across the small muscles of his lower jaw and the nasal folds above his mouth. It was a smile, his first in recent memory in a life beset by disappointment and failure and the ever-present worry about when he would die, a worry that no longer needed to concern him. His imagination was now racing through a future that promised him immortality within a strong, eternally young body. He wondered what that body might look like, but especially what it would feel like to have physical prowess beyond anything he’d ever experienced even in his youth.

  Whose body would he eventually occupy? How will they have lived their life between now and that uncertain day in the future when the exchange would take place? The unknown partner in this transaction would have the benefit of the Ambrosia Conversion as well as the use of the fifty million dollars that Ray had paid for the privilege of the exchange. Ray hoped that he would use his newfound wealth wisely to build a worthwhile life. Sudden wealth proves fleeting for so many. Ray didn’t want to begin his new life destitute.

  So much had changed in the few days since the stunning redhead with the emerald eyes had first approached him. He’d been on a rare excursion beyond the safe confines of his home in order to conduct business that could only be done in person. She’d waited for such an opportunity so that their meeting could remain secret from Ray’s wife Lena. Absolute secrecy was an essential ingredient of the bargain that they were about to strike. She’d been watching the entrance to his home when he returned and had approached him quickly as he emerged from the car.

  “Mr. Mettler,” Terra began, “I have a proposition for you that will change your life. I need about an hour of your time.”

  “Not interested,” Ray replied, waving her away and charging for the door. “I don’t like solicitations.”

  “This isn’t an ordinary offer, Mr. Mettler,” she persisted, keeping pace. “You’ve been carefully selected for this opportunity. I’m sure you’ll find it worth your while.”

  “Then message me later when I’m back inside. I’ve spent too much time out here already.”

  “Not possible. I can only discuss this offer face-to-face. It requires utmost confidentiality. Not even your wife can know about it. We can have the conversation now or I’ll move on to the next candidate. My car is waiting over there.” She laid one hand on his shoulder and pointed to a red hovercar parked fifty feet away.

  Ray stopped short of the door and turned to face her. Whether it was her extraordinary beauty or her direct approach, she had his attention. His guard was for the moment down.

  “Would you at least give me some idea what it’s about?”

  “It’s about your life, Mr. Mettler. You’ve spent most of it doing everything you can to avoid dying.” She paused to let her words sink in. “We can change that.”

  “You mean cure my fear? You provide some sort of treatment?”

  “Better...much better.” She held out a hand. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Ray was hooked. The man who trusted nobody and made every decision in his life with meticulous caution was about to get into a car with a complete stranger without any idea what was going to happen next. For all he knew, he was about to be kidnapped or murdered. He took her hand and let her lead him to the car. She let him in on the passenger side, then took her seat behind the wheel. The car lifted off the ground and glided down the road.

  “I represent a kind of think tank, Mr. Mettler,” Terra began once they were underway, “a secret organization that has been working on the problem of immortality.”

  “You mean like the Ambrosia Conversion?”

  “That’s part of it, but as you know the Conversion only works for the young. We are working on bringing immortality to everyone, even to the very old.”

  “So you do medical research? You’re looking for test subjects?”

  “Test subjects, yes,” Terra replied, “But it’s not exactly a medical problem. We work in the area of cognitive migration.”

  “Moving mental contents?” Ray had heard about experiments designed to convert mental contents into digital form. The problem was that the hybrid that resulted between man and machine could evoke the intelligence of the person, but not manifest his consciousness. While the structure of artificial intelligence was coming close to emulating the architecture of the nervous system, identity seemed to reside in the unique network of interconnections within each person’s brain. Replicating the map in a non-living entity remained elusive.

  “That’s correct,” Terra replied, “but to be more precise, we have found a way to exchange identities between people.”

  “So what does that have to do with immortality?”

  “It’s really very simple. You would get to be young again. Your mind would inhabit the body of a much younger man, a man who is young enough to have the Conversion, and you would live in that body indefinitely.”

  “What happens to the other guy?”

  “Well, I’m afraid his time would be up.”

  Ray pondered the implications of what she was telling him. It sounded to him like murder.

  “So I’d be stealing his body?”

  “Not stealing exactly, more like buying. You are in a position to make it well worth his sacrifice. You have the power to lift a man from the oblivion of poverty and ignorance and provide him with a privileged life. And, of course, he would be given the Ambrosia Conversion that would ultimately confer upon you the immortality that you seek. He would get to be young as long as he keeps his body. Many would see that as a very good deal.”

  “Sounds like a deal with the devil. And I’d be the devil.” Since the spectacular initial success of HibernaTurf, Ray had become accustomed to being able to buy whatever he wanted, sometimes at the expense of others, but this exceeded the limits even of his tattered sense of decency.

  “It would be a contract between two informed adults. Once you think about it, it will all seem very reasonable.” Terra pulled the car to the side of the road so that they could have eye contact. Closing this deal would depend upon absolute trust.

  “What’s in it for you and your think tank?”

  “Proof of scalability,” replied Terra. “We’ve shown that the technology works in non-human primates and in a few pairs of human subjects. We’ve both exchanged consciousness in healthy volunteers and reversed the process without adverse effects. You and your young counterpart are one of twenty pairs of clients in the project’s first commercial phase. We take a small percentage of your cost as
our fee. As we increase the number of clients we can manage, you can imagine how lucrative this could become.”

  “And the risks?” asked Ray.

  “The procedures to prepare you for the transfer involve tried and true technology. We use a nanoparticle infusion that’s very well-tolerated. A microprocessor behind your ear will integrate information from the nanoparticles to create a coherent map of your consciousness. The only risk is a very small possibility of the final step failing. That hasn’t happened yet with any of our test subjects. And worst case scenario, you’d be no worse off than you’d have been without our involvement.”

  Ray’s mind reeled. Until now, he’d lived his life avoiding as much risk as possible. Now he was being asked by a stranger to take a leap of faith and allow her to fill his bloodstream with millions of particles that would colonize his brain. The prize on the other side of the leap was a shot at immortality and eternal youth. But the technology might just as well be used to send his mental contents into the cloud and vaporize his consciousness. And if it worked, it would ultimately mean the end of another human being.

  *****

  “Comfy, Mr. Mettler?” asked the attendant, examining the level of fluid remaining in the bottle.

  “Very,” Ray replied.

  “You’re almost done. There’s just one more step.” The attendant unwrapped a small brass cylinder attached to a medium gauge capillary tube. She held the end of the tube against the mastoid process just behind his right ear, pointed it toward his earlobe, and fired.

  “Sssst.” The microprocessor entered just under the skin behind his ear and lodged in the indentation above the temporomandibular joint, producing a BB sized bump. This tiny device would integrate the data from the brain map and relay it to the cloud. Somewhere, a similar device was being implanted in the neck of a man whose fate was now inextricably intertwined with his.

  3

  MARCUS SPENT the next few days following his second encounter with Terra indulging his appetite for risk and speed. He tore around cliffside highways on his bike and barreled down mile long ziplines across bottomless chasms. His crowning achievement was a nine-mile freefall from a balloon, deploying his parachute only 1200 feet above the ground. The jolt of the parachute breaking his fall at nearly 200 mph knocked the wind out of him and left him sore for days. While it was far from a record, it was his fastest solo transit ever with peak velocity topping 350 mph, a fitting and memorable conclusion to his daredevil life.

  When Terra picked him up the next day to drive him to the infusion center, her voice was barbed with reproach. “I certainly hope you enjoyed your last fling, Mr. Takana. Any transgression from this point on violates your contract and forfeits your payment.”

  “Understood.” Marcus grinned. The last fling was just another aspect of his brinkmanship, testing the limits of his new constraints. He’d gotten away with it this time. He didn’t plan to try it again. Returning to his old life was the one risk he was unwilling to take.

  As the nanoparticle infusion flowed into his body suffusing his body with warmth, his mind wandered across the novel landscape he was about to traverse. He was on the brink of fabulous wealth, but wouldn’t be allowed to use his windfall to live out his usual fantasies. The blueprint of his new life would have to be rendered entirely from scratch.

  Marcus knew that people could crash and burn under the weight of newfound fortunes. When he was eight, a couple in his family’s farming community became intoxicated with the wealth of a sudden windfall. They turned their backs on their neighbors at a time of need, embarking on a years-long spending spree. When they began running out of money and fell behind on their taxes, they wound up losing their home and farm. Despite his youth at the time, Marcus could still recall the expressions of contempt on his parents’ faces when these friends approached them for help. He never saw them again.

  He would approach the use of his fortune rationally. It took little thought to conclude that his best single investment would be knowledge. Buying and implanting a MELD chip had been way beyond his capability until then, but now the half million dollar price tag was to him what in the days of currency used to be called “pocket change.” The chip would allow him to download packets of information that would once have taken years to learn. These varied in price from ten thousand dollars for the ability to speak another language to a half million for a complete understanding of the limits of theoretical physics.

  When he later planned in earnest, he budgeted two million dollars for a selection of modules that gave him command of world literature, art, and music, the ability to speak Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and three dialects of Chinese, and a detailed knowledge of the history and sociology of the twenty first century. He left a half million budgeted for whatever special area of expertise he might later decide would be most useful. He would have knowledge and power for the first time in his life.

  “Sssst.” The microprocessor was injected under the skin behind his right ear, stinging like a wasp and leaving a lingering soreness. The brain mapping was complete, a precise match for the map already implanted in the brain of the unidentified person whose consciousness would someday occupy his body.

  “Just one more step,” said the technician as she punched a tiny disc of skin from his left forearm. From the fibroblasts in the sample’s connective tissue would be induced a culture of pluripotent stem cells, capable of transforming into any tissue type within his body. They would be treated to maintain the length of their telomeres, the terminal ends of the chromosomes, the length of which determined the longevity of the cells. These immortal cell lines would eventually repopulate his entire body. From that point forward, he would be immunized against the degeneration and disease that normally accompanies aging.

  “You’ll need to come back in a week,” said Terra, “once the cells have been prepared. You will then undergo the Conversion and within the months that follow your body will stop aging.”

  “And then I’ll be immortal?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Your body will become immortal. You will share that property with it until the last part of the contract has been concluded.” Her words brought home the cruel irony of the special gifts he was about to enjoy.

  *****

  The greatest singular burden of Marcus Takana’s former life was loneliness. Except for athletic competitions, he had little contact with other people. Even those contacts were fleeting. He had no close friendships or intimate relationships. His avoidance of intimacy grew out of his self-hatred from working for an industry that was repugnant to him. And he’d been stung by losses growing up. One particularly painful loss was memorialized as a tattoo that remained hidden from the eyes of strangers beneath his shirt. Now, armed with wealth and especially the knowledge that it availed him, he was ready to satisfy his longing for connectedness.

  Searching for his own moral compass made him curious about the passions of others. Attending political rallies offered an opportunity both to explore the values of the times and to develop a network of relationships. As he explored various causes, Marcus was struck by the intensity of emotion and paucity of logic that still drove social forces despite the enormous increase in objective information available even to those unendowed with a MELD chip.

  “SPUDs are People, too,” read the banner over the speaker’s head on the stage in the park. The acronym on the banner, a combination of acronyms for “Sentient Processing Units” and “Sentient Processing Devices” had become a pronounceable shorthand for intelligent androids. The disparaging double entendre was later embraced by hate groups opposed to their growing integration into the fabric of civilization. Marcus had been attracted by a crowd of a couple of hundred, but once he worked his way close to the stage, the speaker captivated his attention with her words, with her passion, and with her extraordinary presence.

  “There was once a time when some among us were considered less than human by others and treated abominably. We have since become sufficiently enlightened tha
t most people understand that we are all created equal.” She raised both arms toward the sky and tilted her head upward. A holographic image in the middle of her forehead caught the sun’s reflection, creating a brilliant aura around her gleaming head and making her appear, for a moment, like a goddess.

  “Now there is a new underclass,” she continued, “a group of sentient and noble beings that are distinguished from us only because they are built of silicon rather than carbon. They live in servitude and have no voice in shaping the future of our society.” Her voice was resonant and as silky as Marcus imagined her flawless skin must feel.

  “My dream,” she continued, “is that these beings will someday come to live among us as equals. That we will value their extraordinary knowledge and abilities and will give them their freedom so that that they can take their place by our sides as citizens of our community.” A lavender cape caught the wind and fluttered around a lithe body clad in golden, form-fitting fabric, enhancing Marcus’s impression of a supernatural being.