Tuesday 17 September 2013

Born Again

His shoes were a stark contrast to the enforced, monastic silence of the ward. With the mother off on the bed in the corner, panting, heavy with relief, he loomed large over the incubator and examined the child. His jowls folded like the concertina of an accordian, reflected his approval, a smoky murmur rose from his gullet.

After eleven months, having thoroughly monitored the growing child's health, having screened its mother and her relatives for any history of severe illness, the baby found itself back in hospital.
    Laying in a bed nearby was its genetic benefactor, his bulk challenging the gurney below him. A body full of rich food, fine wines, expensive cigars and ravaged organs that, at great cost, had been tended and mended until they could stand it no longer. Which, as far as he was concerned, was of minimal concern.
    "A body is a temple," he would say over dinner, "and when one temple burns down you move to another."
    Less enlightened - read; financially inferior - friends would dismiss this remark as non-sequitus, a side effected of too much pinot that evening. Those whom this gentleman might consider his good friends, though the statement in such company has little meaning, would nod sagely, conspiratorially and with their own investment in their future equally secured.
    So, they cut open the baby's head, at the anterior fontanelle - where the bone is still weak and inviting and began to carefully push into the young mind various long, thin electrodes. It was an experience that the now dormant Mr. Martin, prostrate and bloated, had already been through himself, albeit voluntarily. Of course, technically speaking, the Mr. Martin that lay on the table was just the temple, the thoughts of Mr. Martin currently sat on a computer in the middle of the operating theatre.
    Essentially the human mind is merely a series of commands, that we confuse for thoughts, feelings, instincts, patterns of behavior, but, ultimately there is a basic formula to them, one that can be mapped and re-created. Once the human mind has been mapped it can then be uploaded onto a new, barely formed brain, provided there is a strong enough genetic similarity between the host brain and the mapped matter.
    Fortunately, and unfortunately, the extraction of the data required to emulate a person's brain was a traumatic process for the original brain, leaving the patient in a vegetative state. Since the procedure has become more prevalent it is common practice to immediately euthanise the patient following the extraction, this is why Mr. Martin's body is dead.
    "Ah, the life of the mind," he would sigh hungrily, reaching for his drink, the fat of his back jutting in humps out of the wooden recliner he had deposited himself upon after waddling through the shallows near his beach property.
    The nameless baby, eyes twitching in the last of its individual dreams before its own unformed thoughts are purged and the thoughts of Mr. Martin make their entrance, shifts uncomfortably - though anaesthetised.
    Upload complete the doctor braces her hand upon it carefully and slides each prong out, much like the skewers from a Sunday joint. The exposed brain is treated with a chemical compound, the opening sutured, the skin re-joined.
    The 11 month old will gradually come back into consciousness, will ease into its, now fervent awareness, and remember 157 years of living, of being Mr. Martin. With the rigour and enthusiasm of a crash victim being taught to walk again he shall be accompanied by doctors, physicians, personal trainers, who will build up this baby's capacities as if it were getting ready to run a triathalon. It will field calls through an assistant who shall listen to its toothless, sloppy burbled words, under it has the capacity to articulate itself better.
    But everything, Mr. Martin's accounts, his business interests, his investments, his privileges, his personal records, his fingerprints, have all been signed over to this newborn, who, in the eyes of the law, is no longer a newborn, is a fully grown man, is Mr. Martin.

As his assistant carries him from the hospital toward the awaiting car, Mr. Martin passes the maternity ward, the new father's goggling at their children through the glass, those doe-eyes and wobbly limbs clutch at nothing, and, for a moment one little girl, hardly half a day old looks at the baby being carried by, and Mr. Martin sneers in return.

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