The Dream Lives On

Back in the 2020s people feared death. It was something to be avoided at all costs and we mourned when it eventually came for our loved ones. Now, 150 years later, I know that we were wrong. We all belong on the other side eventually.

As my head rests against the sleek gray walls, the black expanse outside my window seems to grow even more vast. How is that even possible? The walls feel closer, harder, and colder. I know we're supposed to, but I don't want to plug in today. I can't. I've already seen it all. Every movie. Every television show. There isn't anything new anymore. I've read everything old that I can stand, even the stuff from the 21st century that I didn't want to read in the first place. I tried the theatre again last week. It was tolerable, but stale. Since the children all grew up in the late 21st century, there's nothing new under the moon. It's the same minds trying to dream up something fresh against the same monotonous backdrop. I admit, their version of A Midsummer Night's Dream still managed to pass the time. My memory capacity never changed, so I forget things after a few years and there are still some surprises to be had. Oh my God, it was the silliest stuff I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot, but I'll take the lousy theatre over the CORPS news any day. The recent news is unbearable, depressing and dull. All the creativity gets channeled into technology and tools to keep us going. I've spent years wandering every street in Paris, sitting in palatial gardens, meditating, learning Mandarin, and flying through the rainforest. I can't take any more beauty or tedious novelty. Today, I just want to experience the silent, soft black, "reality" such as it is.

I can't help thinking of Catherine again. I try not to because it makes me sad. She wouldn't join the CORPS.

"No. No way" she would intone.

"Can't you just try it? Please? Do it for me. Don't you want to give them the chance to decide for themselves?" I motion toward the children who are playing in the yard just out of earshot as I wipe the perspiration off of my forehead, but Cathy isn't having it. She never even entertained the idea.

Chlöe shouts, "EWWWW...That's DIS-GUS-TING!" Charlie mutters something as he scrapes the squashed cockroach off of his red sneakers, leaving a small smear surrounded by brittle black fragments.

Cathy turns back to me when the pervasive silence returns. "I'll take the familiar unknown over the unknown, unknown. It's not natural and we're not doing it. Please stop trying to persuade me. This is painful enough as it is."

I stare distractedly at her. A dark stain is spreading on the blue check of her rayon tank top as she lifts a heavy arm to shade her eyes. I am momentarily blinded as the sun reflects off of the small gold cross that rests in the creases of her deeply tanned chest. "How can you choose to give up?" I ask.

"I just think of Theo, hon."

My brother-in-law had passed away two years ago from pancreatic cancer. My sister believed in God and love. In four days she'd be joining him. Me, I wasn't so sure.

Even though I begged and pleaded, I eventually had to say goodbye. Cathy was the smart one, but she was always recalcitrant. If I'm honest, our goodbye started when my sister wouldn't eat the cultured meat. Forget the rest, that was never going to happen. When I think of her now, I remember soft skin that was just beginning to sag, and long brown hair that was fading to a dull gray. We were both starting to get the familial age spots and skin tags. She had put on a few more pounds. I remember that she smelled faintly of soap, or maybe it was hand lotion, but the exact scent is lost to me now. It's not in the scent catalogues. I look at pictures and videos of her every once in a while, but she just says the same things to me in short archaic clips.

"Chlöe, turn toward me honey. Come show Auntie your fairy wings."

"Very pretty, sweetie!" I hear my perpetual refrain as I praise the sparkly costume Cathy had bought off Amazon the year before.

Charlie yells "trick-or-treat" as he barrels into view thrusting his plastic pumpkin toward the camera lens, and tripping over Duke, their cranky old Springer Spaniel. Cathy bends to wipe Robin Hood's milk mustache.

The pictures of myself feel similar. That person no longer exists. That form no longer exists. That voice no longer exists. Yet, here I am. Still. And Catherine is still there on that porch with her two children, on a beautiful, leafy green, completely sterile, suburban street in Athens, Georgia. She knew what was coming, but I don't have any pictures that show that.

I am pulled into the present because it's time to upload. The forest of tall vertical towers looms as I ease the pod into a dock. Alicia, my assigned companion, slides into the pod next to me. We've been riding together for some time now. After we attach the electrical muscle stimulation, she starts right in on me.

"Soooo, today I want you to tell me the story of how you picked that body?"

"Why? You don't think it suits me?"

"Actually, I do" she says with a smirk. "You're a boring old lady in there, aren't you?"

I nod in assent because she's right.

"Your mousy brown hair needs help. You don't have to wait for the next upgrade to fix that," she adds. She informs me that she knows someone on the black market who can intervene and add some curls and length to my blunt cut. My pleasingly bland features, on the other hand, are a lost cause because pigments and cosmetic adjustments are in short supply for the next two Kalends and are reserved for scheduled upgrades.

I know where Alicia is coming from; she's got bodies on her mind. In the recent elections she had voted for open form, but the votes for "natural human forms" won out again. They say it's supposed to help preserve our "humanity." She's asking all these questions because I'm not that attractive. My body is about fifty years old. On the last round I had this one built. I try to explain to her that it's how I'm feeling in the 22nd century. (I like to use the Gregorian calendar, it's my way of staying connected to the old world.)

Alicia can't relate to me at all. Since she can't take the form of a life-sized purple pixie, she's stayed a petite blonde with lavender highlights. In the beginning people chose something like their old bodies, or the sexy model they'd always dreamed of. When you look at the old documentation it's quaint really. There were hundreds of flawless bodies filling out the new spacesuits. Children were assigned a likeness and allowed to upgrade every two years until the age of eighteen. As the first models broke down, things got more diverse. Since you could custom build an adult body of any race or gender, people mixed it up a bit. I take care of my bodies and don't turn over as much as some people, but I've done my fair share of experimenting. My soul is feeling older now and I want my body to reflect that. People keep advocating for open form since they feel it's repressive to legislate our bodies. There are a lot of logistical concerns when it comes to spacesuits, standardized pod sizes, muscle maintenance machines, etc. Who knows, maybe they'll go that way over the next hundred years.

Unlike me, Alicia does not feel old and is keen to share the latest on her love life.

". . .also, I met this guy last week at Central Docking. I think we were assigned together fifty years ago, but he was in a different body then. . ."

"There are thousands of us, Alicia. Are you sure it was the same guy?"

"Well, no . . ., but . . .maybe? He says he's not sure either. He's really good-looking and he's a higher-up at Central. He says he can get me a Titanium pod. We have a date tonight. We're meeting up to watch the aerials. Hey, do you think you could drop me off a little early so that I can get ready?"

"Sure, no problem. What happened to that other guy you were dating? Was his name Nick?"

"Oh, yeah, he turned out to be a total ass. I hope I never see his ugly face again."

How the hell does extended adolescence last this long?

In her defense, Alicia joined the CORPS as a baby. Her parents brought her so she never really had a choice. She never knew the old world. Maybe they applied the preservation cocktail too early.

My own romantic tales are long past. I had some good relationships but they all wore out. People continue to get married and divorced, but I'm not interested anymore. "Till death do us part" ceased to be a reasonable proposition and "sealed for all eternity" was more than I could handle. There aren't any more fish in the sea.

After several hours, the incessant prattle finally slows down and Alicia waves goodbye at the dock. I have the uncanny sensation of having lived this Nychthemeron before. I take a moment to appreciate the silent black. The old vampire novels and stories of eternal life had it all wrong. They imagined that the good life on Earth was also eternal. They failed to take into account the mental toll of memory upon memory. They failed to devise a way to erase the past and start over. At least J.K. Rowling let Nicholas Flamel die with dignity. In the old world, we did our best to fend off Death, but I know now that no matter the age or circumstance, that transition is ultimately a blessing. That shared experience of release from our form, "natural-looking" or otherwise, is a crucial component of what links us in our humanity.

My eyes scan the dark sky. My hand reaches to feel the heavy heart-shaped locket beneath my suit. We all know that the seat of consciousness is in the brain, not the heart, but the familiar contours of this arbitrary shape still mean something to me. I feel serene as I enter my coordinates and gun it toward the distant light on the horizon. In an instant, a brilliant white light engulfs my screen.