In the future, science may offer humanity immortality. Through the use of cybernetics and biotechnology, it may prove possible to transplant a human conscious into a synthetic body, offering eternal life to everyone.
But how much humanity would be left? When everything but a person's ghost is replaced, is the immortal being still human? What would be the price in exchange for the eternal life of a synthoid? Who would by willing to pay it? Before the human race rushes blindly toward new technology, heedless of the consequences, perhaps we should ask, and answer, such questions—not when it's too late...

Dean stepped through the door onto the roof in its plane of shadows. She was sitting on the brick guardwall, legs dangling into empty space. She glanced at him and turned away. With each step making a scrape on the gravel roof, he walked to the wall close by and propped himself against a vent, watching.

“Hey," he called. No answer.

In the darkness he managed a look at her profile. Eighteen, twenty, he guessed. Long, dark pony tail, grey eyes. Wrapped in a black overcoat. Back straight, head gazing at the ground eight stories below.

“Are you the guy they sent to stop me?"

“No. Figure we'd just sit and talk. If you wanna jump I won't stop you. No dent in my paycheck." She turned, shocked at his blunt admission. “Out of curiosity, are you a synth? Because if you're not, I can go home." She looked at him more strangely.

“I'm a synthoid," she admitted, eyes closing. “Why send you up here? Nobody knows what it's like to be a synth." A cop, she figured. In his thirties, craggy face, tough and solid. Career man. Plainclothes under a faded trench coat. Soiled work gloves.

“Huh," he grunted. “Name's Dean."

“Ally." She found him annoying, felt he should go. “Leave or you'll get hurt."

“I'll take my chances."

Her lip curled. She stiffened the fingers on her left hand and slammed them between two bricks. Her hand sliced through, leaving scrapes of flesh and blood behind. She grabbed a chunk of brick and ripped it out strainlessly.

“Go or I'll smash your head." He shrugged. She threw. He didn't move.

Raising a hand, he caught the brick. Her eyes widened. He squeezed and the brick exploded into dust.

“Cyborg, huh?" Ally realized. “Think a ‘borg understands what I'm feeling? Not even close."

Dean pulled the gloves off, revealing fingers made of metal and an articulated wrist and arm. “Bits and pieces of me. Car accident. They replaced what broke."

“Car accident? Same as me." She glanced down and her voice softened. “Lost my family. The docs decided there was nothing of me left to save, so they poured my brain into this curse that doesn't even look like the old me." Ally knocked a fist on one arm to produce the sound of metal on metal. Her coat sleeves were covered with blood.

“How old are you?" Dean queried.

She grunted bitterly. “Pick a number. How old is my consciousness, my body, body appearance, birth date, time of death, what?"

“You're not dead."

Graphics by Tom Chi.

“Drek. I died when they changed my brain into a computer program. The only thing left of what I used to be is here," she said, tapping her head. “The accident and this body are two. The body is supposed to look twenty, but my consciousness is only eighteen. Even then, I'm still sixteen years old, because a synthoid's consciousness doesn't mature normally. So how old am I?"

“Did you kill somebody? Is that why you're going to jump?"

Harsh laughter. “Kill somebody? I'm the one who died! Are you thinking of this?" Ally raised a stained sleeve. Stepping off the wall, she grabbed the coat and shucked it off.

It was a lovely body, aesthetically speaking. Ally had torn all the fleshfoam from her body except for the hands and face. Underneath was her real form, a metal and plastic figure, covered in the fake blood of the fleshfoam that coated cybernetic replacements to make them look real. Unlike the blocky rectangles of robot work drones, the cybernetic parts of her body made one smooth, rounded sculpture, a statue worthy of Rodin.

“I'll never forgive them," she whispered harshly. “But it's not their fault. They had no idea what CSPR did. I gained existence at the cost of my humanity."

“CSPR? You're a recipient of..."

“Victim."

“...Complete Synthetic Physiological Replacement. Down to the cyberbrain."

“Yeah. It's sad that the evolution of cybernetics has come to this. The makers had no idea what the costs would be when they made this possible.

"First prosthetics, then vat-grown tissue for skin grafts. Then, once the neuroscientists figured out that nerves could be regenerated by deactivating a blocking enzyme, they figured out how to make synthetic nerves. What are nerves but conduits for electrical impulses anyway? Someone else discovered how to hook them into the motorcortex. So every person ever paralyzed gets a few silver wires run down their limbs and they're up and running again. Literally."

Ally paced beside the wall, kicked some gravel in disgust. “Then cybernetic replacements attached in place of lost limbs and connected to the brain by synthnerves, and there are no more paralytics or people with lost limbs. Eventually all you really needed were the major organs, and then just the brain, all packaged in a synthbody and you can survive from there, just inject a few nutrients occasionally. Of course, when the cyborgs started going insane from phantom limb syndrome and sensory deprivation somebody realized that using an arm is pointless if you can't feel it. And then come the sensorinerves to go along with the motornerves.

"Then worker robots, limited-choice capable automatons, and outright synthetic bodies. Did you know that synthbodies were originally designed for artificial intelligence use? Merge an AI with a cyberbrain, and there's your first completely artificial life form. But no self aware AIs were ever created, and synthbodies turned useless—for the moment."

Ally stopped, glanced up at the stars. Her voice dropped in depression. “The real kicker came when another Nobel decided you don't need biological components at all to sustain life. We'd already created an organic computer, and because the brain is just a biochemical computer he figures out how to translate the chemical codes that store information in our brains into computer lingo. He used a chaos program to translate the chemical data and transfer it into a cyberbrain to produce a synthoid, a human consciousness alive, or trapped, in an artificial body. And somewhere in that code is the human soul, but nobody could ever figure out where. Do you believe that? Quantification of the human soul? Take a near veggie off the ambulance and funnel that consciousness into a cyberbrain. Tell them to ignore the spillage, the lost memory, and just keep on living? Yeah, right. As if they knew." He stood in silence for a while after her tirade.

“So what's the problem?" Dean questioned. “You're immortal. You've got incredible strength and endurance and a brain that can process and store huge amounts of information. You can do anything. Just go in for a lube and filter occasionally and you'll be in mint condition for a century or so."

“Yeah, just keep that fusion cell ticking and I can go on forever." She laughed again. “How do you kill a synthoid, Dean? Stop the cell from powering the body and brain, separate the power source from the brain by cutting off the head, or just bust the brain. That's my plan. Take a flying leap and crack my head open. The body will be scratched, but Belial Cybernetics will repossess it."

“Is that it? You're worried about paying off the body?"

“This metal body doesn't come cheap, so you have to pay off Belial with an installment plan. Problem is, I don't know what to do."

“What are you talking about? The government will pay off the body if you work for them for a few years."

“In the military or toxics, because I can't be hurt? No way. Besides, Belial comes out big by selling their fake immortality to rich eccentrics. They never tell anybody a synth's average lifespan is three years, mostly due to suicide. If I'd known what it was going to be like, I would have picked death."

“So what's the problem?" he asked.

“Are you dense?" she shrieked, suddenly angry. “Don't you get it?"

“No. Tell me."

“I can't feel anything. My sensors say it's cold out, but I can't feel it."

“Bull. Your sensorinerves allow you to feel."

“Only what I can touch. But it's not enough," she said painfully, sinking to the ground. There would have been tears, if she could cry. “The sensorinerves are just pressure sensors. I can tell only the shape of what I hold!" She crawled toward him, electronic madness glinting in those robotic grey eyes. “It wards off sensory deprivation, but it's not enough! Do you know what it's like not being able to feel texture or softness like I used to? A balloon and a baseball are the same to me; only my eyes tell me differently! Everything I sense is either by sight, hearing, or basic touch. No smell, no taste! I'll never know the feel of skin on skin again! I can't even have a hormonal urge because I have no hormones!"

She paused. “And maybe that's just it." Ally sat down against the wall, voice anguished. “None of what it's like to feel human is available to me. Pain, physical attraction... nothing biological. Even the emotions I still have are colored by this loss, and I feel cut off from everything... normal. There's only inner pain. And do you know what's worst of all?" She rolled her head toward him and the sadness and madness in her eyes glimmered painfully. “Knowing that I could feel once and never can again. Phantom limb syndrome, but with sensations, not body parts."

She tilted her head toward the stars, closing her eyes and thinking. Dean saw she was calm again. “The loss of feeling isn't it, though. There's something more behind it, behind the physical side of being a synth."

“You're more perceptive than I give you credit for," she offered sardoncially. Standing, she looked over the guardwall.

Ally stopped, preparing herself for the admission. “I know it's not just the loss of feeling, despite what I tell myself. It's life itself, because I've been questioning whether I really am alive. And I'm not. I'm just a mechanical body with a computer intelligence. Metal skin and myomer muscle. Atomic heart, silicon soul. Nothing's real. My consciousness was quantified and codified, routed and reprogrammed. There's not a shred of humanity left in me."

“That's drek and you know it!"

“You think?" she snarled. “I'm just a machine who used to be human! My consciousness is a string of numbers! I'm artificial to the core, an assembly line product! There's nothing uniquely me left."

“Wrong. Despite what you think, you're still human."

Ally stepped up on the ledge.

“You think I'm human, Dean? Now's your last chance to tell me why."

“Because you are! You physically may be made of mechanical parts, but there's something unique inside that makes you. You're unique and human despite your losses. You've forgotten what's most important."

“And that is?"

“You think your consciousness isn't unique because it was quantified. Wrong again. There's nothing programmable about a consciousness." Ally edged closer to the precipice.

His voice grew frantic. “Look, everybody thinks that chaos programs can capture that consciousness, but it's not true, because it doesn't exist as a singular entity! What makes you, what makes that consciousness, is the interaction of individual memory, experience, and intelligence!"

Ally stopped. “What did you say?" Her eyes narrowed.

“Your consciousness is unique because it isn't a quantifiable entity. It exists as greater than the sum of its parts. People can code memories and learning, but then they interact to produce you. That's why there's no AI that can duplicate the human mind. The interaction necessary to produce consciousness is impossible outside of a human. Create components all you want, but the one thing that makes you human is that ghost in your head springing from its composite parts." She looked at him strangely.

He ran on. “Even the natural body is just a biological machine! All that counts is the ghost, the one thing that makes us human, and you've still got it! True, you lost much of what you used to know and took for granted, but what's important is who you are! Quit your denial. It may be tough, but you're still as human as ever. You can grow, and learn, and change. I know. In the past people lost limbs they couldn't replace, but got over it and went on living. You lost sensations, but you can live without them. I've seen other suicidal synthoids who went mad from the trauma of loss. But you're not mad. You are strong enough to survive! You can start over right now! Now come down. There's no need to die again. Don't reject this lease on life—use it!"

Ally looked at him quizically, then laughed, face contorted in pain and sadness. She inched backwards.

“Convincing argument, Dean. It may even be the truth. But I looked, and I can't find anything human about myself anymore. And if I can't exist as a human, I don't want to exist at all."

Ally took a step backwards. She looked at him with a terrible expression of sadness, mouthed the words “thank you," and fell into nothingness.

Faster than thought, Dean slammed into the guardwall, bending over and grabbing her wrist before it descended out of reach. She hung eight stories above the ground, his robotic grip her only lifeline.

“Why?" she shrieked above the wind's scream. “You said you wouldn't! Let go!"

“If you want to die, that's your business. But there's one last thing I want to tell you. And if you still want to fall after that, then I'll let go and you can have your wish."

“Then say what you have to say."

“You know, Ally," he growled bitterly, “you're right. You're not human. Because despite having emotion, awareness, memory, and a unique ghost, there is one thing you no longer have, and that loss makes you less than nothing."

She dangled, looking up at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. “What then, Mr. Dean? What is it?"

“The will to live."

She peered at him, calm now. The words penetrated deep into her shell.

“A human fights to the end rather than give up life because of a human craves that one more second to grow," he said. “You have all of that, but you gave up. You couldn't handle the change so you convinced yourself that you're no longer human. If you can't even cherish that you still have life while your family is gone then you really are just a machine. That's all. Are you ready to die, machine?" Long seconds passed.

“What use would it be?" she called. “Synthoids don't last long because they can't handle the change. None ever has, and I can't be the first. It would be too hard."

“Wrong again," he whispered fiercely. “I'll help you."

“What?"

His other hand came around, fingers gleaming. A needleblade hissed from his index finger. He pressed the blade into his forehead and dragged it downward.

“Oh, God."

The cut from brow to chin welled with blood. Dean didn't even blink. Skin fell away. Underneath, through pools of blood, she saw the dull shine of metal.

“I'm not a cyborg, I'm a synthoid, and I've been one for eight years, Ally!" he called over the rising wind. “I'm the oldest one alive, and I am alive! I went through everything you're feeling and survived because I didn't give in. I got used to the losses and now I know contentment. And I give thanks every day that I'm alive to see the sun rise on another chance to be. Why do you think I'm here? I came through and so can you."

“Now... now... now what?" she asked after a moment, face twisted in confusion.

“You find a reason to live. Giving up is easy, but staying and fighting is always better. So what do you say? Fight or fade? It's still your choice."

Silent in thought, she stared outwards and inwards and the final decision was easier than she thought possible. “A human always wants to be remembered," Ally said softly to him, “to leave something behind for others." And she laughed, heartily, as real a laugh as she had had in years.

“What's so funny?"

“Dylan Thomas was right. I'll rage, rage against the dying of the light. I will not go softly into the night." She gave an honest smile. “Pull me up, and with a little help from a friend I'll start over.

He pulled her up as the wind swirled in a vortex around them. For a moment the howling sounded like a cheer, and she felt that it cheered for her.

On the roof she glanced up at him, saw a smile. “What is it?"

“Look," he replied, pointing to the east.

On the horizon a red dawn was breaking on a new day, and, though she knew it was impossible, she felt the first rays of the sun warm her face.

Michael Hedrick, a freshman from Washington D.C., is a history and biology double major in the College of Arts and Sciences. He once found the meaning of life, but then lost it, and has been searching for it ever since.