Day 57 - Assembly Story

Assembly Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.”

-- Mark Twain

The assembly line kept running.  The machines kept working.  The computers kept analyzing and optimizing data.  The lab kept testing results.  Lying in bed at night, aging not so gracefully and far too quickly, she was alone and her heart hurt, literally and metaphorically.

It was possible.  They all told her it was possible.  No one told her it was probable.  That didn’t matter.  All she was interested in was the plans.  She wanted plans and ideas and they would be pursued.  The cost of the research didn’t matter.  A single left over penny in the afterlife does not a single purchase make. 

There are no second chances in life or do overs.  But that was what they had all set out to create – a plan to achieve the unachievable and allow a person to be freed from the constraints of a decaying and dying body.  Immortality.

One theory was to map the entire mind and transfer it electronically.  That was just a theory and there was no guarantee what would happen on the other side.  What good is a life in a new body that might not actually remember being you, or a virtual immortality inside a machine that might not be consciousness at all?  There were simulation models and indistinguishable copies that behaved exactly like you would, but none of those were you.  Maybe the machine or the program would think so, but you wouldn’t.  You’d most likely be dead and your imposter would never know the difference. 

None of these interested her.  It had to be her or nothing at all.  So the money was spent and they did what they could, basically pressing pause on the aging process.  They revitalized her telomerase.  They allowed her body the chance to keep going.   They repaired her body, building and cloning organs as needed.  But she had made her wealth late.  She had started late.  And she had lost him early.  You can repair as many organs as you want, add in fresh new young ones, but some part of you was always decaying.  An eighty year old was still an eighty year old no matter what age her heart or kidneys were.

Her grey matter was always dying.  That was one cell they had yet to properly replicate.  That was the rub.  That was the hard truth that no amount of wishing could change.  It was the debt that so far no amount of money could pay. 

That didn't mean she stopped trying.  Everything was set in motion.  The machines kept working even when their human counterparts required rest or relief.  The computers kept running simulations even while she slept.  She never gave up hope on technology.  She was an eternal optimist that way.

But she was still alone.

That was a problem they hadn’t properly solved.

Yet.

She was confident that was only a matter of time as well.

Downstairs, the assembly line kept running.  All she could do was wait in her room upstairs -- and wait -- and wait -- and wait.