Two Hours Till Death

“Mountain climber in the Himalayas or tiger hunter in India?” – John’s eyes wandered from one optical disc to another. In the right hand, he held the opportunity to inhale crisp mountain air at the top of the world, reserved only for the bravest of men, and a chance to experience the adrenaline rush brought on by the thinning atmosphere. In the left hand – long nights of stalking, ambushes, constant danger from the mighty predator, but later – the sweet taste of victory and a striped holographic area rug with a snarling grin, now forever silenced. A decision had to be made soon; the waiting period before the interview was quickly shrinking. “Mountains or tigers?”, John asked almost out loud, already knowing the answer, – “Both mountains and tigers!”

John opened another of those single-use syringes and quickly inserted the needle into his right temple – the pain was no longer as annoying as it used to be. After two more minutes, a segment of his brain will be freed to house both virtual personalities, and John at any time will be able to become a mountain climber, a hunter, or anyone else out of the thirty-six personalities he downloaded earlier: a surgeon, a lawyer, a submariner in the Marian trench, a soldier in Iraq, you name it. Too bad he will never be able to recall his kindergarten and elementary school experiences…

Nervously jerking his left wrist to position it in front of his eyes – the watch embedded directly in the wrist showed quarter to eleven – John for the hundredth time looked at the rainbow-colored face of the “Timex” Linda gave him as a gift a day before yesterday, on his thirtieth birthday. Troubled thoughts broke his concentration. “Who needs school memories anyway!” He started to bite his lower lip. School memories never excited John. He was the puniest and most shy of all the kids in the kindergarten, and therefore the butt of all practical jokes from all the older boys. In the following years during elementary school, the situation worsened, as even the girls were making fun of him. But who cares! Now they’ll never get to him! Another minute and… A holographic display came up in front of John’s eyes – the segment of the brain was freed. John shoved the “Himalayas” disc into the optical disc reader implanted behind his right ear, waited for a second for it to spin up, and blinked at the display. The holo-display blinked back with green light accepting the “OK” and switched to advertising while 19.67 terabytes of information containing the virtual personality of the Himalayan mountain climber were being copied into the brain matter. “I wonder what I just forgot?” – John was still interested in the answer to this question, even though today he underwent such memory erasing procedure almost twenty times. But there was no answer – you cannot recall what you don’t have access to. And the time is running out, too…

Two minutes six seconds – and the red exclamation point replaced the holo-ads. John yanked out the “Himalayas” and quickly tried to insert “The Indian Hunt”; he missed on the first try, and winced – either from short pain or from the realization of the missing seconds. On the second try, a few moments later, while “India” began downloading, John’s hands were already rummaging through a bunch of other optical discs in the box on the desk in front of him. The options seemed infinite: “The Wonders of Genetics,” “Samurai,” “The Godfather,” “Top Gun,” “Kon-Tiki: Across the Ocean on a Raft,” “Disco Dancer,” “The Vikings,” “Champion: 2020 Olympics,” “Spacewalk,” “Life and Films of Arnold Schwarzenegger,” “Gladiators,” “Coma,” “World Baseball Stars,” etc., etc.! And, most important, all are available for free! Any one of these virtual personalities was worth thousands of dollars, and there were hundreds of them! What luck indeed – he was brought into this room, was offered to sit down, and was told to wait until his interviewer gets ready. He was also offered to sample anything he wants from the company’s digital selections while he waited. Who could say no to that? He couldn’t take any of the discs, they’d notice that in a second. But he could install anything he wanted into his brain and walk out of there with all of it – no one can check what’s in your brain! Of course, the human brain can only hold so much information, so to make more room one had to erase what was already in one’s brain, be it facts, childhood memories, foreign languages, general knowledge, friends… what have you.

This morning John’s brain contained roughly twenty-seven years’ worth of useless information. It has now been over an hour that John was busy making free space, segment by segment, to install the personality “freebies.” It was alright that he no longer could remember… something. And… somebody. No big loss. A far better experience will be to immerse yourself into any of the 50+ downloaded alternative realities all day long.
John’s hands nervously shuffled personality discs. “Wow, they even have ‘Don Juan!’ – gotta have that! I guess Linda will have to go…”

* * *

From behind the mirrored glass, two men watched the visitor with the optical discs in his hands. The younger periodically glanced at the user guide he was holding; the older man stood without motion.

“Clay, watch the clock!” The younger man nervously glanced at his older colleague who called out to him, and then returned to his manual.

“Clay, get your nose out of the book and check the readouts!” The old man raised his voice. “Do you see the voluntary brain activity indicator nearing zero? That means it’s almost over.”

Somebody quietly knocked on the service door.

“Clay, open up, it’s Carter.”

Carter entered the room breathing heavily; he had to take the stairs since the elevator was packed.

“So, what’s going on with this one?” Carter was all business today. “How much longer?”

“As always, the process takes almost two hours.” The old man didn’t even turn to look at him. He and Carter have been working together for many years. “Look, he found ‘Spacewalk!’”

Carter grinned involuntarily – the old man was full of himself as always. Clay, on the other hand, looked like he desperately wanted to belong…

“Pardon me,” Clay closed his book, using his index finger as a bookmark, “Why does it take almost two hours?”

“These interns seem as dumb as those personality enthusiasts!” Clay’s gaze followed the old man’s finger that was pointing to the tragic yet comical scene on the other side of the mirrored glass. There the man sitting at the table feverishly grabbed at the discs, constantly dropping them, while he rolled his eyes and apparently swore under his breath. “Why? Because theoretically in two hours it is possible to download into the human brain over one-half of a petabyte of digital information, yet practically no human brain is capable of holding so much data. Look at the byte counter!”

“Nine hundred fifty-six terabytes… Nine hundred sixty-three… Nine hundred sev…”

“Keep it to yourself! We have eyes, too.” The old man looked at Carter. “Still don’t believe me? Look, an hour and forty-nine minutes, and the brain activity is at half of a percent!”

Carter quietly nodded, as if to say “Who am I, a mere mortal, to doubt this genius!” and tried to hide his smile. The old man was proud of this program and took every opportunity to rub it in. Well, he had a right to be proud – their company for the last twenty years was a nationwide leader in filling all kinds of employment positions with a one hundred percent success rate. All this was thanks to the efforts of the Chief Neuro-Engineer; the old man disliked his title and unofficially called himself “Geppetto.”

“Attention! Attention! Voluntary brain activity has reached zero!” Carter’s musings were interrupted by a computerized female voice.

“One hour and fifty-three minutes!” The old man turned to Carter, his wide smile seemed to make his face younger. “Didn’t I say this was gonna happen?”

“Excuse me,” Clay’s timid voice interjected, “But… now what? Just look at him?”

The other two men looked at the man behind the glass. He sat unnaturally straight, looking directly forward, as though peering at some non-existent point in space. Little droplets of blood covered his right temple, indicating needle punctures. The “Don Juan” disc fell out of his right hand with a quiet clunk. He didn’t react.

“What’s happening to him?” Clay’s voice was now suddenly small.

“Nothing is happening to him.” The old man pointed to the row of various readouts and displays. The kidneys, lungs, and heart were working. Blood pressure and body temperature were normal. Only the brain activity indicator displayed “zero.”

The old man repeated, “Absolutely nothing is happening to him. He simply overloaded his brain with too many personalities, but personalities themselves are passive, they need to be activated consciously to use them. By freeing up space to accommodate more and more personalities, he had to erase more and more of his conscious self, one part at a time, until it was all gone. That’s why it looks like the brain isn’t working. But the heart, lungs, and the rest of the body don’t depend on consciousness to work, that’s why they are working just fine without it.

“So what now?” Clay very much wanted to take notes, but was afraid to add to his already established image of the “incompetent intern.”

“Now we install into his brain our proprietary software, BrAIN v.1.2c, which will reformat his brain, freeing up the segments previously occupied by personalities he chose to make room for a new personality we’re gonna give him.” With a familiar gesture, the old man pulled a disc case from the desk drawer. “Carter, who’s next on your list?”

“A truck driver.” Carter flipped through pages in his folder. “Yep, that’s it. CDL driver for the ‘Trans-Continental Deliveries.’”

The old man turned to the shelves on the wall that housed a myriad of optical disc cases. They were alphabetized, with glowing program titles on the edges, and a few seconds later the correct one was located. ‘It’s almost lunch, but this dumb kid keeps asking stupid questions…’ thought the old man. He glanced at Clay and tried to restrain himself from giving the intern a dirty look. Some day he’ll turn this project over to this dumb kid; the Chief Neuro-Engineer was nearing seventy. ‘He should shut up and listen, this dumb kid! So what if he’s the Director’s nephew, big deal! Just gets in the way!’

“Clay, take the two discs, and let’s go do the install. Time for you to advance from theory to practical application.” The old man tried to hide the annoyance in his voice by sounding old and tired. “Oh, yeah, and get that first aid kit, there are alcohol and cotton balls in there, to clean off the blood…”

“But why… Why did he erase his consciousness?” There was another, hidden question in the young man’s words. Clay did not condone the whole process; he may even have doubted if it was even legal. He was addressing Carter, for the first time in this conversation; he deliberately avoided looking at the old man.

“It’s not our fault. Nobody made him do it. He, like anyone else, was familiar with the technology of virtual personalities. He even had his own disc reader installed in his head. He clearly liked the possibility to become different people, to live different lives. He just wanted to be everyone.” Carter spoke his mind and was ready to leave.

“I think, he just didn’t want to be himself.” The old man’s voice was devoid of all emotion. “Got the first aid kit? Let’s go!...”

* * *

Carter went downstairs, flipping through his folder. He came up to the door that opened into the general waiting room and stopped, making final attempts to locate the record he was searching for. Behind the door, a secretary’s voice could be heard as she extolled the virtues of the company to someone on the other side of the phone.

“That’s exactly correct. That’s the reason why our agency is called ‘Employment for Everyone,’ because we never fail to secure employment for our clients. We give you a one-hundred-percent guarantee, in writing if you want, that we will find you a job… You’re interested? That’s wonderful! Our next available interview is tomorrow, at eight in the morning… What to bring? Nothing! You do have an optical disc reader installed, don’t you? Yes, any standard twenty-terabyte model installed behind the ear will do… Do you have a fifty-terabyte model? Even better – the whole process won’t even take two hours… Yes, our address can be found in the virtua-net…”

Still paging through his notes, Carter involuntarily recalled Clay’s question. Once upon a time, he was a naïve young staff member, just like Clay. Well, he was a bit smarter than Clay – after starting this job, Carter decided never to ask moral questions, being content with a nice paycheck and yearly bonuses. This year’s bonus was promised to be the largest one yet… Carter smiled. In one month, he will take his family on a Mexican cruise for three long weeks.

Finally, he found the right application. Carter gave his face a serious look, furrowed his brow, and tried to get rid of any remnants of a smile. He liked to give an impression of a man that was all business. With the application in his hand, he stepped through the door into the waiting room. His eyes found half a dozen people in armchairs, most of them looking bored. A young tall dark-haired man rose to meet him and greeted him with a gathered look in his smart brown eyes. Carter gave his Mexican cruise dream one last bit of attention, then furrowed his brow even more, completely rid himself of the lingering smile, and called out with a voice empty of all emotion:

“Next!”

* * *