The one-hundred-and-thirty-two-year-old man hobbled in, holding his chest and looking around in slack-jawed astonishment at the room. He was amazed by the technology the world had in its grasp now. He could hardly believe it. He gave a smile to the staff and immense respect flowed through him. One of the staff offered him a cup of water. He took it and had tiny sips.
“How are we feeling today?” one of the doctors asked.
“Like shit.”
All of the doctors laughed.
Yeah, laugh it up. Soon, I’ll be the one laughing, he thought.
It was true though. The ulcers in his stomach and the creaking of his joints felt uncomfortable still, and worse every day. He wasn’t “dying” by any stretch of the imagination. He was just worn out. Being the CEO of a major tech company that really picked up sixty years ago, he was now one of the richest men on the planet. He had more money than desire for life left in him. He felt like his time was up, but he wanted more. He wanted a bit more time to experience things that he missed when he wasn’t as adventurous—as daring.
The key to that life sat in front of him.
“Hey Mr. S. We ready for this?”
“Oh I sure am, I don’t know about you.”
“Why not,” the young man said. He thought his name was Micheal, or something beginning with an “M.”
The young man looked bored with life, as if his time was done too. They’d checked his health before the procedure confirmation, and all being said, he was as a normal, healthy twenty-seven-year-old. His cholesterol was a little high and he had a vitamin D deficiency, but that was all. He was handsome too, with a chiselled jaw and light-blue eyes. If he were a little younger, and the young man a tad older, it wasn’t impossible to see himself dating him. Now, with his wrinkled skin and liver spots, the thought only made him dejected. But now, having that face and having that body, he would be able to go and meet a man or a woman and experience that excitement again.
He'd picked the young man personally. He’d picked him on looks alone. All candidates had had to stand in front of a camera and remove their clothes. Then, there was four images taken. Front, side right, side left, and back. He’d looked at the pictures extensively, almost to an obsessive degree. Almost to a degree of falling in love with the man. His name didn’t matter, as that was a dead observer in his new home—his new temple.
The doctors helped him into the chair next to the young man. It wasn’t like in the movies with two dome thrones with wires jutting from brain to brain like a science experiment gone mad. It was simply a head glove that looked like a swimming cap, attached to the head with one wire threading through the back and into the machine. They’d both had the choice if they would like to have the procedure done at the same time. They’d been recommended to do it this way, and so they had agreed. This was the first ever procedure like this to be done on humans, so the likelihood of something going wrong were high. But it was either living a few more years of loneliness in a decrepit body, or it was starting again as someone new. Having the same hopes, desires, and dreams, but not being limited to the restrictions of age and gravity. It was time.
The wire was plugged into the cap and then put onto his head. He knew he looked ridiculous, but that was fine. He and the young man chatted, and the young man spoke of his recent tragedies in his life. About how he was okay only having a few more years. He didn’t seem sad, he just seemed hopeless, like he could use the billions offered to him to have an extravagant goodbye instead of trudging through an empty existence for a while longer.
“Could we please turn the lights down?” a doctor said. “We need the lights down, and please, let’s only have technical staff in the room for now, thank you. Now gentlemen, we will be commencing very shortly. If you would like to see the progress of the transplant, you may look behind you. The green bar will show the progress—right, I’m sorry, forgot about the color blindness—another perk right there for you haha.
“It should only take around sixty seconds. But if for any reason you feel distressed at any point, please speak up. The procedure will be stopped immediately. I do recommend you to speak up sooner rather than later, however, as anything said during the transfer might not register in your cerebrum while the machine does its magic. And then it might just come out as a slurred mess, right. So please, relax, have another sip of water if you start to feel sick. But if there aren’t any questions, we’ll begin.”
The machine whirred up, and the bar began moving. He didn’t want to see when the change happened. He just wanted to close his eyes and open them as a new being. The first thing he would see would be a non-bland spectrum of color. That made him thrilled, in just the simple act of looking. So, he did, shutting his eyes and smiling, thinking of the rest to come too. All the years he could actually spend without thinking of his wealth. Maybe he could get a job in a grocery store or something more active, like a rock-climbing instructor or a dancer or a footballer or a deep-sea diver. And the food he could taste again! It would nothing like the boring breakfast he’d had this morning, of tasteless oatmeal only eaten because it had as much taste as everything else he could stomach. The possibilities were so exciting he could hardly stop himself from laughing. He took another sip of water to relax his giddiness, and sat back, relaxing into the seat. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but the seat felt more comfortable, easier on his back. He wanted to open his eyes but he didn’t want to spoil the feeling. So he waited and carried on thinking of the joy he would experience and the new and old feelings that were so far away yet near now that he was in this seat, in this room, this cold, cold, cold room as the whirring of the machine grew so far away and the feeling in his arms became so painful that he moaned aloud and opened his eyes to a blurred and colorless world with a numbness in his legs and a pain in his stomach. He didn’t know who he was but this was not his expectation. He expected nothing. No one had explained this feeling of not fitting right; feeling like his skin was too tight around his bones, about the crippling agony in his stomach, and the bile rising from his throat. He couldn’t stop himself: he wretched and vomited. The coolness in his belly left him, as water and then brown sludge left him. He cried in panic and backed into a corner.
My name is Marcus! he thought. My name is Marcus and I’m still me. This is me and I’ve made a mistake!
He couldn’t physically say the words. He was too shocked. Someone was shouting but it was so quiet he almost wasn’t able to hear.
“Restrain them! They’ll end up hurting themselves! We need security! Security!”
Marcus looked up and saw himself, holding his ears, screaming. He was there, right there, where he was just sat. He’d teleported and swapped places with Mr. Sandera. After months and months of constant preparations on the procedure, they still weren’t ready. Nothing in the report told him his shoes wouldn’t fit right. No one said he would have to blink more often and breathe in and out at an increased speed.
They took himself away on stretcher. All he could see himself doing was crying his eyes out, begging to be put to sleep. To just sleep. He kept yelling it. He wanted to sleep.
Then the doctors helped Marcus, formally Mr. Sandera.
He looked down at a stranger’s hands and saw thick ropes of veins. They weren’t his. The foreign blood flowing through him pulsed. He felt the dry and wriggling tongue feeling the rotten teeth in the cracked and dusty cheeks, and it felt like a disgusting worm burrowing into the dirt. He couldn’t get used to any of it. Every second that passed brought new distress.
He was too weak to fight. He just babbled incoherently, asking for his mother, begging to go to sleep too. The doctors strapped him into a wheelchair and left. They told him they were going to get sedatives. He could sleep.
All that was left in the room was an old man reverted to a child; God’s subject against nature; a brain that could no longer bear the frame it wasn’t sculpted in.