The Technologies of God- A Serial Micro-Fiction 19/24

When all it’s said and done, what is your essence? Your soul perhaps? A vague term. We prefer to call it consciousness. Yes, we know it's also imprecise but less semantically nebulous than the former. We can now speak of intelligence, cognition, perception, and all the self-referential processes that make up your personality construct. We can conduct operations on consciousness by measuring its processes and patterns. I’m not just talking of neural constellations firing off throughout your nervous system, we’ll certainly need those, but also of the little moments of your existence, the memories and mementos, the traces of your presence, inconsequential ephemera in the grand scheme of things yet essential to understanding and reconstructing the singularity that left it there. YOUR SELF. Collect the patterns of your life, digitize them, and when the time comes, we will bring you back.

I wake up drenched in sweat, feeling a bittersweet longing for the voice that still rings in my ear- Tattiana. The dream had felt real but did not have any images. It was just her voice, metallic and haunting.

The glow of the Martian twilight throws golden shadows into my gently swaying cabin.

We will bring you back.

What did she mean by that? Did she even say it?

Above the barren horizon, the sky elevator rises and disappears in the purple haze beyond the atmosphere.

When I turn, I realize that Sarah isn’t in the cabin.

I sigh.

Time to get up. Oh well, sleep is overrated anyway.

Image by @litguru