Downloading Memories

You heard a voice echoing from that far off empty corridor in your mind:

Download now at 7%, the mechanical voice said.

Your eyes slowly opened as hundreds and thousands of memories drifted through your servers.

274 days.

That's right. It was all coming back to you now. The last time you died was 274 days ago. But it was hard to remember what life looked like before then. They had deleted your memories of your past life. The past was now nothing more than a blank slate to you.

Your eyes barely open, you sat up on your bed and looked around the small bedroom. There were no windows and the room was completely covered in white; the bed, the bedstand, the floor and even the walls were a blinding white.

There was a white camera hanging high on the far top corner of the room. You were being watched.

Download now at 33%

Your bed creaked softly as you climbed out of it and stepped on to the polished marble floor. You staggered a little, leaning on the bed for support as you retraced your memory of how to walk.

Put one foot in front of the other and then down.

You looked into the mirror on the wall, staring at your reflection, studying every detail, burning the features into your memory. The coal-black hair. The hooded, hazel eyes. The synthetic pale skin.

The face of Thomas Maine.

Download now at 47%

My name is now Thomas Maine, you reminded yourself, running a hand over the small bump on the back of your neck. Just as you expected, the engineers had already implanted the microchip. At the moment, you were downloading every trace of Thomas Maine's personality right from that tiny microchip under your skin.

Download now at 59%

Killing you was easy; all it took was the press of a button. One press of a button and the microchip planted in your neck would send an electrical signal coursing through your body.

Your CPU would power off, deactivating your entire system. You'd be dead in 10 seconds.

Download at 65%

Thomas Maine wasn't your actual name; it was only a borrowed identity. Your name was X435. When you left the manufacturing warehouse, that was your model number.

That's right. You were part of Project IRIS, a government-funded experiment. The main objective of the Project was to successfully simulate artificial consciousness in androids. They crossed that milestone back in 2187.

Now they were moving to a larger goal: now they were looking to replicate humans using androids.

The real Thomas Maine had died five months ago. But while he was still alive he had registered to donate his consciousness in the event of his death.

So here you were, downloading the consciousness of a 32 years old dead accountant from Cullman, Alabama.

Download now at 100%

The white bedroom door creaked open, revealing two men standing in the doorway, dressed in white lab coats. One looked about early-forties, with salt-peppered hair and a hooked nose. The other one was a short, hunchbacked older man with a bald head and horn-rimmed glasses. The older man had a cane.

The room was quiet, and for a few seconds, there was no sound apart from the clicking of the older man's cane as he pottered towards you.

"Good morning, X435," he chirruped, in a high, nasally voice. "We've met before, though I don't imagine you'll recall our last meeting. You were a different person then, see. You were Rosaline Osei. But now you're Thomas Maine."

He cleared his throat.

"So let me re-introduce myself," the old man continued, gesturing to shake your hand, "my name is Professor Reinhardt. I'm the Chief Robotics Engineer here at IRIS. I'll be the one responsible for you."

You accepted the handshake. "It's a pleasure, sir," you said, the southern drawl strong in your voice. But that wasn't really your voice; that was Thomas Maine's voice.

"Spare me the formalities, X435," said Professor Reinhardt curtly. He raised a hand, gesturing to the younger man. "Over here, we have Adam Kohler: Head of Machine Learning. It brings me great sadness to inform you that you'll be seeing a lot more of our ugly faces these next few days."

He giggled, cracking a near-toothless smile.

.

Barefoot, you followed Professor Reinhardt and Adam Kohler out into the bright white corridor.

White doors ran alongside both walls of the corridor. No doubt, they were housing all the other androids in these rooms.

There was a room at the end of the corridor. When Adam Kohler opened the door, the room led to a lecture theatre. The lecture theatre was massive. The raise seating stretched far to the back of the hall, and you could see hundreds of scientists and engineers sitting in the crowd, watching you. All of them were dressed in the same white lab coat.

There was a chair and a desk at the front of the lecture theatre. Beside the desk was a computer monitor on a trolley stand. There was a graph on the monitor's screen.

You took a seat at the desk and Adam Kohler attached a helmet to your head. The helmet was connected to the monitor. "X435, I want you to complete a series of tests."

He dropped a stack of paper on to your desk.

You began the tests swiftly.

Apart from the beeping on the monitor, there was no other sound but the sound of pen scratching on notepads. The people in the crowd scribbled their notes, muttered amongst themselves, gasped with amazement. The graph on the monitor screen flowed in neat waves, but every now then it would rise dramatically.

On the first three days, you completed a range of abstract reasoning tests, grammatical puzzles and cryptic problems. IRIS wanted to measure your intelligence.

On Day 4, they slowed the pace down and had you sit with a therapist. You and Dr Stauber conversed while the crowd watched, making observations.

Day 5 is when things got interesting. There were no reasoning tests, no 2 hour conversations with therapists; there was just a photo album. A photo album to commemorate Thomas Maine's life.

Your only assignment for Day 5 was to look through the photo album.

The book fluttered open with a gentle crack.

Your only assignment for the Day 5 was to read through the book.

You flipped through the book and the people in the crowd observed, watching the graph on the monitor.

The first photograph was one of Thomas Maine's daughter, Lucy. Both of them holding hands at Disneyland.

There was photograph where Thomas was cradling Lucy in his arms.

Then there was a photograph of Thomas and his wife Alyssa at their wedding. You could still hear the sweet, strain of music that threaded through the ballroom, the clink of champagne glasses and the dim mingle of laughter. When you closed your eyes, you could see the bright, chandelier lights twinkling above you and Alyssa as you danced.

These were Thomas Maine's memories, yet they felt so close, so familiar to you.

And with each photograph, you pieced together the life of this stranger.

Your eyes stopped at a photo of Alyssa. Suddenly, you felt more memories unlocking. Her bright scarf, the scent of her hair. Thomas' wife. Sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window. Alyssa singing to herself, off-key in the shower.

Lasagne at the Italian diner on the corner. The warmth of Alyssa's hand in yours as you walked together.

You knew that these memories were not your own, but you felt as though they were, as though you truly lived them.

Suddenly, the graph on the monitor started fluctuating. You could feel your heart beating a little faster than usual.

There was a dim mingle of voices in the crowd in the raised seating of the lecture hall. You could hear the spectating scientists and engineers murmuring amongst each other. Professor Reinhardt stepped back from the monitor, visibly disturbed. "That's it for today. X435, let's take you back to your room."

.

You didn't want to die. Not again. But dying isn’t what you feared the most. What you feared the most was the punishment of forgetting. Forgetting all your experiences.

The objective of Project IRIS was to replicate humans. But you were too human for their liking.

They deactivated you. You had only a few seconds left to live.

They were going to reset your password again, they were going to lock you out of your own mind.

You felt your CSO 8 system shutting down. You felt yourself dying, your memories fading.

And as you gently closed your eyes, you thought about all the little moments you enjoyed, hoping you could find some more moments like that in your next life.