JUNE 6, 2055 – SAAREIN, AMSTERDAM
The bar looks better than it did twenty years ago. They extended backward into what used to be the pool table, opened up the whole space. More light. Same energy, though. Still the place where queer Amsterdam comes to breathe. I’m wiping down glasses behind the bar – volunteer shift, like I’ve done on and off since the 2030s. Never paid. Never needed to be. This is… church, I guess. If I believed in that sort of thing.
Gromoboy slides onto his usual stool at the end. Groy. Fifty-something, looks twenty-five in that specific way that almost works until you watch him move. Careful. Like his joints are filing reports with each step.
“Cosplaying youth,” he calls it. Self-deprecating. We have that in common – the refusal to perform age-appropriate dignity.
We exchange meaningful looks and witticisms. They tried getting me to act therapeutic to the kids who come here, ‘kids’ meaning anyone under 35. Amsterdam is a very crowded city these days, and lots of newcomers – the endless streams of uncomfortably painful young people, all beautiful. Every single one of them beautiful – and diverse. Not cookie cutter – one slight ocular strabismus. One with beautiful symmetrical Vitiligo. Most have high functioning disorders, asperger, synaesthesia. One in the place has six fingers – she’s very popular for reasons – Another can extend her tongue beyond her chin. Too bad she is shy. Groy is into Jiu Jitsu. We talk martial arts and shoes. I have been wearing GSG9 since before 2010. He wears these stupid looking Tabi. Then he always pivots to sex. I know what they are doing. They are trolling me. He talks adventures. That he had a threesome with Baba and Shtari. Very pretty, very young. Shtari has tribal scars, but the Berlin look, with bioluminicence in them. He laying it on thick, but not cruel. They all know I have desires that can no longer be functionally realized with a body that is 85 historically and looks early 70s. I can feel it, he is working up to something.
“Khannea.” He’s got that look. The one that means he’s been workshopping this conversation in his head for three weeks.
“Groy.” I set a glass in front of him. He doesn’t drink anymore – hasn’t for years – but he likes having something to hold. “We’ve been wondering.” He rotates the glass. “All of us. Why you never signed with Kyra ag.”
I stop mid-wipe. “What’s the fuck is an Kyra ag?”
The way he looks at me, like I just asked what coffee is.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I’m literally not. I have this disorder that everyone always leaves me completely locked out of shit. Social depatterning, whatever. People had to explain me facebook in 2020. ” I put the glass down. “What is Kyra ag?”
Groy leans back, recalibrating. “How long have you been coming here?”
“Since 2025, before I moved across the street. You know this. It’s been on media for decades. I am a legendary figure in the area. Fucking tourists pay me microcred to take pictures with me. “
“And you don’t know about Kyra.” He’s not asking. He’s marveling. “Khannea. Everyone knows about Kyra ag. Half the pretty young things in this city have applications pending.”
“Applications for what?”
He studies me for a long moment. Then: “You’re serious.”
“Groy, the rumors that some of us spit in beer is actually true. Some of us even piss in it. We do that to assholes. What is Kyra ag?“
“Life extension company. Offshore operations, Amsterdam gateway office. They were on Sticenet, like they did this whole immersive interactive. They… recruit.” He’s choosing words carefully now. “Mostly young people. Mid twenties to thirties now the natural humans are set to go extinct. They do full substrate work – brain preservation, body optimization, the whole package.”
Something cold slides down my spine. “In exchange for what?”
“Contract work. Intimate services. Slavery. High-end clients.” He’s watching my face. “It’s legal. Well. Mostly legal. The Amsterdam office handles EU compliance. The actual procedures happen in Havana, sometimes orbital. Seven-year minimum contracts, but most people work longer.”
I’m very still.
“Why,” I say slowly, “does everyone wonder why I never signed?”
Groy laughs – this small, bitter sound. “Khannea. Come on. You’ve been talking about life extension for thirty years. You ran those D&D campaigns about uploaded consciousness and synthetic bodies and tiny wood elves elves getting nasty with Centaurs. You’re terrified of aging and you are obsessed with smut. Everyone can see it.”
“And?“
“And Kyra ag has been operating for nine years. Their Amsterdam office is walking distance from here. You volunteer at a queer bar in the Red Light District. You know half the sex workers in this city.” He spreads his hands. “How did you not know about this?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“I...guess I am like obtuse or something?”
How do I explain that I’ve been so focused on staying functional, on fighting the AIID diagnosis, on keeping the authorities from institutionalizing me for “age-inappropriate behavior,” that I somehow missed the exact solution operating three streets over?
“Who do I talk to?” My voice sounds strange. Distant.
Groy’s eyebrows rise. “You’re actually interested. What have I done? I am serious here, this is not for the faint of heart. Their contracts, what they do, it isn’t play. These girls… it’s not like 100% safe. I mean you aren’t exactly sociable but we don’t like want to lose you, yanno?”
“Who. Do I talk to.”
Groy manipulates his palm – phone implant, crappy Hong Kong model. “I know someone who knows someone. But Khannea...” He hesitates. “You’re eighty-five.”
“Biologically seventy. Functional. I legpress 300 kilo.”
“They recruit young. Twenties to thirties is the target demo.”
“Why?”
“Client preference. Aesthetic. Amenable. The young these days they are so… insecure… Longer working life before the contract pays off.” He’s being gentle, which somehow makes it worse. “You’d be… an unusual candidate. You got this fucked up ego...”
“Get me the contact or I’ll have someone beat you up tonight.“
“Khannea—“
“Groy.” I lean forward. “In three weeks, the city wants to put me under psychiatric observation. AIID evaluation. My neighbors have been filing complaints for two years – I live with twin twenty-four-year-olds, they walk around naked in my house, apparently this is evidence I’m a danger to society.“
The words are coming faster now.
“I have spent fifty years refusing to age gracefully. I’ve been diagnosed, medicated, institutionalized, and I’ve fought my way back out every single time. I helped name transhumanism. I wrote the fucking manifestos. And you’re telling me there’s a company three streets from here that will preserve my brain, give me a young body, and all I have to do is fuck rich people for seven years?”
Silence.
Someone drops a glass at the other end of the bar. Neither of us looks.
“When you put it that way,” Groy says quietly. “Vondelkerk. They have this showroom there. Rapid expansion strategies. “
“Get me the contact.”
He nods slowly. Starts typing. “They’re going to say no.“
“They’re going to say yes.”
“What makes you so sure?”
I think about my Gangbang record. 2017. At age fifty-two. Twenty-seven, not counting oral. The way I learned to transcend cluster headaches that break through medication. The decades of fighting every authority that told me to stop, to slow down, to accept.
“Because I’m exactly what they need,” I say. “They just don’t know it yet.”
Groy’s phone chimes. He glances at it. “Okay. I sent your details to my contact. They’ll reach out if they’re interested.” He looks up. “Question is, are you afraid of death or are you afraid of living forever as someone old? Because that’s the future we all get, under welfare. We all get to be o...”
I’m already untying my apron.
“This is what I’ve always wanted,” looking at the small fold out screen in my hand. I tell him. “I’ve just been too stupid to see it was right here the whole time.” I see images on my screen that make me dizzy. Promises of sexuality. Beauty so perfect it stings.
He watches me grab my jacket. “Khannea. If they say yes… you know this isn’t reversible, right? The brain work. Once they start the preservation process—They roll back civil rights for upgrades.. can happen. We seen it happen in Australia. You wouldn’t be a person in the legal sense. “
“Fuck person. Fuck meat. When have I ever wanted to go backward?”
I’m halfway to the door when he calls after me.
“Hey. Khannea.”
I turn.
“You’re going to be magnificent. If you make it you owe be a freebie.” Groy says. And for the first time since I’ve known him, he’s not cosplaying anything. Just honest.
“I owe you a foursome, with Shtari and Baba,” I tell him. “I’l impress you.”
And I walk out into the June sunlight, across the street, toward the teep call that’s already coming.
When you know, you just know.
INTAKE CALL – ELANDSTRAAT 92B, JUNE 2055
The apartment is black. Not dark – black. Was like that from the prevuous owner back in 2026. Its been burgundy red for eight years. Then some girl lived in who speckled it in stars and then she died, stupid accident. I cried for months. Then It was grey and then it was dark red again. That was in my DJ period. Yes people still DJed in the 2030s, but these days that doesnt happen anymore. Mare and Rhiannon picked black again. Said it made the space feel infinite. I can hear them giggling in their room, playing some game that involves too much shrieking for 11 PM. They gravitate towards infantilized behavior…
They know. Everyone knows. Khannea has been unleashed. People are talking.
The desk is retro – actual wood, actual drawers. I bought it in 2031 because I liked the weight of it. It was old worn wooden wreckage with dozens of drawers… I had it incapsulated by that Some Girl, in Epoxy. Sitting here now, waiting for the call to connect, I run my hand along the surface.
The holographic interface blooms in front of me. High-res, full sensory. Not quite in the room, but close enough that my brain accepts the presence.
The Professional Woman is stunning in that way that makes you forget to breathe. Pale. Severely elegant. Bone structure that could cut glass. Short hair so blonde it’s nearly white, pulled back with geometric precision. Mid-forties, maybe, but that means nothing anymore. She could be seventy. Could be thirty.
She looks like she adjudicates fates.
“Ms. Sun’Tzu.” Her voice is warm, professional. Accentless in that way that means “expensive education, multiple continents.” She’s reviewing something on a screen I can’t see. “Thank you for making time this evening.”
“Thank you for taking the call.” I’m sitting very straight. Not nervous. Just… attentive.
“I’m Sabitha Reconquista-Verne, senior intake coordinator for Kyra Aglomerate’s Amsterdam operations.” She glances up, makes eye contact. Real eye contact, the kind that costs extra processing power in telepresence. “Your referral came through this afternoon. I’ve had a chance to review your initial profile. You are one of the most refreshing candidates I have seen in two years.”
“And?”
The corner of her mouth lifts. Barely. “And you’re… not our typical candidate demographic.”
“You emphasize this so charmingly I feel an amazing story coming next.”
Tabitha nods, as if affirming the mass estimate of a black hole barrelling towards the solar system.
“Eighty-five chronological, approximately seventy biological. Functional but aging.” She’s reading from the file. “Convicted to Cybercrime. Convicted of public aggression – against a man who hit a woman on the street” Blue eyes, a nod. “Maladjusted, Antisocial, Extreme impulsivity. You wrote articles that… oh… you caused trouble back in the day. My oh my we have a celebrity.” Long pause, she is buttering me up for rejection.
“History of AIID diagnosis resistance. Pending psychiatric evaluation.” Her eyes flick up again. “Transgender, transitioned in...” she pauses, “…when did you transition?”
“between 2010 and 2013 Socially. Medically ongoing 2014, GRS in 2016.”
“Long time ago.” No judgment in her voice. Just notation. “Current living situation – cohabitation with two individuals in their twenties. Mare and Rhiannon Chen-Vasquez, twenty-four, twins. Prostitutes.”
I can hear them laughing through the wall. Saskia’s eyes don’t move, but I know she hears it too. The algorithm captures everything.
“They’re wonderful,” I say simply. “They keep me sane and alive“
“I’m sure.” She scrolls. “Professional history – futurist, systems analyst, independent consultant. Published extensively on technological disruption, life extension, post-scarcity economics.” Another glance up. “You helped form the transhumanist movement. You ever did anything with that? Most parties these days get votes with that label.”
“I was part of the conversation, yes. But this movement was… unpleasantly Libertarian for decades. Some were downright Fascist. “
“And your referral...” She tilts her head slightly. “Mentioned a 2017 incident. Personal sexual history that would be… inadvisable to discuss in current social climate.”
My throat goes dry. “Gromoboy has a big mouth.”
“Gromoboy has excellent judgment.” Saskia leans back slightly. The hologram adjusts with her, maintaining perfect spatial presence. “Ms. Sun’Tzu, our standard candidate is between twenty-five and thirty-five. Minimal prior bodily modifications. Psychological profiles optimized for contract compliance and client satisfaction. High pain tolerance, moderate to low ego attachment, strong dissociative capacity.”
She pauses.
“You meet literally none of these criteria. “
The words hang in the air. Through the wall, Mare shrieks with laughter. Rhiannon shushes her, badly.
“Except,” Saskia continues, “the pain tolerance. And possibly…” her eyes narrow slightly, reading something I can’t see, “…an unusual capacity for sustained desire states.”
“I’m not asking to be typical,” I say quietly. “I’m asking to survive. I don’t want to be alive in 20 years and realize being a fucking Lich is not all that bad.”
“Survive.” She repeats the word like she’s tasting it. “Not ‘live young’ or ‘be beautiful’ or ‘escape aging.’ Survive. Tell me about the AAID problem you face.”
“Peter Pan complex? Personally I prefer Tinkerbelli complex. They make me all feel like I have a Captain Hook complex.”
A smile, but it’s courteous at witticism. “Be that as it may...” Tabitha (nobody in their right mind would ever call her Tabbby. I am fantasizing about giving her oral sex,) sets down whatever she was reading. Folds her hands. The gesture is deliberate, significant. “Let me be direct, Ms. Sun’Tzu. Of our Protege’s half fail and cost us money. Insurance. We pay high insurance premiums because we respect the interests of our proteges. They don’t just fail in one way, they fail in a dozen ways. Some… we can’t save. They prefer to depart this world. Some candidates don’t survive the brain preservation. Some survive but emerge… changed. Not themselves anymore. Some complete transformation but can’t handle the psychological integration. They retire early, and we provide minimal maintenance until they die. Failure rate goes up precipitously over 30.”
“There is no timeline where I fail in this.”
Tabitha doesn’t even acknowledge the statement. Her eyes didn’t even flicker. She leans forward now. “You’re eighty-five. Your brain has been forming patterns for eight decades. The preservation process is invasive. Painful. It requires consciousness during portions of the procedure. You’ll feel us working. And there’s no guarantee the person who comes out the other side will still be… you.”
I think about the cluster headaches. The way I learned to breathe through pain that breaks through medication. The transition surgeries, the decades of fighting diagnosis, the gangbang adventures record that would get me institutionalized if anyone reported it.
“I’m exactly what you need,” I tell her. “You just don’t know it yet. After be your entire business model will change. I will increase profits for your company.”
Saskia studies me for a long moment. She has a talent for not being impressed even if Black holes were in fact barrelling towards the solar system this very moment.
“What makes you come to such a bold assertion?”
“You have played it safe so far…. because your typical candidates are optimized for compliance. Low ego. High dissociation. They’re beautiful, amenable, malleable, designed to please. Pathetic.” I lean forward. “But what you’re building – preservation, substrate modification, wirehead integration – that requires someone who wants it more than they want to stay safe. Someone who’s been fighting to be this their entire life.”
“And you have been.”
“Aside from the Transhumanist angle – which I do not consider a claim to fame – I needed it to exist.” The words come fast now. “I’ve spent fifty years refusing to age, refusing to accept limits, refusing every authority that told me to stop. I transitioned because my body was wrong. Not dysphoria in the therapeutic sense – substrate error. Technical dissatisfaction. And now I’m seventy biological, staring at institutionalization to some literal funny farm in Germany…? …and you’re telling me there’s a pathway to exactly what I’ve always needed – and all I have to do is get sexually used for it.”
Saskia is very still.
“You understand this is sex work. Intimate services. High-end clients with specific, sometimes extreme requirements.”
“You are describing what I have literally considered Heaven since before the ZX spectrum?”
“You’ll be commodified. I understand full well this isn’t fetish for you. Problem is, we change something like 95% of your body. That places you outside the legal definition of what is a human being in 380 countries out of 598 and counting. They’d put you in a Terrarium in Australia. Client satisfaction metrics will determine your maintenance quality. You’d be considered an animated doll in most The Fracture. In Texas you would have to be transported in a box. You can’t even walk the streets there.”
“I wrote articles about that, I am well aware. I also wrote erotic fiction about dollification.”
“The standard contract is five years before retirement, IF you are lucky, Some of our models can’t retire – thet develop … problems that need extended warranty management. We had one who has to be in a Bathicarium for eight hours a day. Infusion. “
“Sounds kinky.”
Her eyebrow lifts. Just barely.
“I’m not doing this to retire, Ms. Verne. I’m doing this because the alternative is dying slowly in an AIID facility while the world tells me I’m mentally ill for refusing to accept aging as inevitable. They will make me arrange flowers in some enclosed garden in Karrenstroth, or whatever. “
I can hear my own heartbeat.
“I am not suicidal. Havent been for decades. I know I won’t fail, but if I were to fail you wouldn’t cost me a penny. I’ll give you a candidate who doesn’t need training in desire. Who’s already practiced transcending pain. Who wants objectification more than anything. You optimize for compliance – I’m offering you passion. Talent. Aptitude. Charisma. Faith. Extasis.”
Silence. Through the wall, the giggling has stopped. They’re listening. They know if Saskia says yes they’ll be living alone here for quite some time. I know how these brats think. They’ll wreck the place in my absense.
Saskia makes a note on something I can’t see.
“We’ll need full medical workup. Neurological mapping. Psychological evaluation – though given your AIID status, that’s complicated. Legal disclosures. Financial structure negotiation.”
My chest tightens. “Well that sounds rather like a yes...”
“It is absolutely not a yes. We accept this stage because we can actually learn from you. It isn’t even a maybe. It is – we study your neurology and see what we can use in our corporate model. You aren’t even a candidate. There is a theoretical model where you might be a candidate but essentially we will just string you along because you help us set neurological baselines, not to actually proceed further than that. We will use you. But you seem to like being used, as a thing, and then discarded. So, by all means...” She looks at me directly. “VU Hospital, Amsterdam. in two weeks 7 PM. Agree to medical access in attached contract. All of it. “
“Great. Gona make you people so rich.”
“Ms. Sun’Tzu.” Her voice shifts, becomes somehow warmer. More human. “In the remote contingency anything comes of this you need to understand. What we’re offering isn’t a cure for dysphoria or a solution to aging anxiety. It’s a transaction. You give us your years. We give you substrate that won’t die and is designed to serve in a sexual capacity. And that includes changing your brain at a fundamental level.”
“Tomayto, tomatoe.”
Saskia nods slowly. “My assistants will be here and we’ll talk the next morning after the preliminary scans.”
The hologram begins to dissolve. Just before it fades completely, she says:
“Gromoboy was right about you.”
“About what?”
“You’re going to be a fascinatig case study, or you’re going to be a spectacular disaster.”
She smiles – genuine, for the first time.
The connection drops. I sit in the black living room, listening to Mare and Rhiannon whisper to each other through the wall. My hand is shaking.
Not from fear.
From anticipation.
A seventy year old body and I am soaking wet.
VU HOSPITAL – NEUROLOGICAL ASSESSMENT Late June 2055, 7 PM
I walk into VU Hospital and the first thing that hits me is the silence. I came here first in 2013 for trans related struff and it looked completely different. Nothing is familiar these days. The busy street is gone. It’s all park now, the buildings are towering all around me. It’s a 24/7 enterprise and mostly contractual stuff these days. Drones hovering for unclear reasons. Quiet. Not peaceful silence, but the engineered kind. Like someone sucked all the messy human chaos out and replaced it with climate-controlled perfection. The lobby is somewhere between boutique hotel and operating theater. It’s still there, fused with the Chabi, what used to be a small Albert Heijn for decades. Blues and whites. Everything costs money.
The reception androids are situated inbetween palms and move to intercept me politely me as I wander in. Canadian model, very elegent and she’s not trying to pass for human. Transparent casing, visible structure in the torso, articulated joints that move with that unsettling precision. But her face is expressive, almost warm. Almost.
“Ms. Sun’Tzu. Welcome. Kyra Aglomerate has reserved Assessment Suite 7 for your neurological mapping. Please follow.”
Her voice has that modulated quality, like someone tuned it to be maximally comforting without being human. I follow her down corridors that smell like nothing. Not antiseptic, not anything. Just controlled air. First floor. Been here before but these days it looks like the Enterprise.
The prep room has two more androids waiting. These ones are purely functional and marginally humanoid. Clinical grey, hands like surgical instruments with too many joints. They work in tandem, synchronized, never speaking unless necessary. One starts on my scalp. Contact gel, sensors, tiny adhesive points mapped across my skull. The gel is cold. Her fingers are colder. The other handles the spinal interface, small ports they place at my cervical, thoracic, and lumbar vertebrae. I’m stripped down to a medical gown that’s too thin, too open. They politely insert… things inside me. I wish I had shaved.
It takes forty minutes. They’re efficient. Perfect. Inhuman in the most literal sense. I know this routine, at a body in my 70s, but the budget is a bit bigger.
“Do you have a name?” I ask the one working on my scalp.
She doesn’t look up. “Designation JM-447. You may call me whatever you prefer.”
“Do you prefer anything?”
Now she pauses. Makes eye contact for the first time. “I am not designed with preferences. But some clients find names comforting.” Eyes like a child, big and recognizable. But machine eyes. Blue.
“What do the doctors call you?”
“Julie.”
“Okay, Julie.”
She goes back to work without acknowledging it. I don’t know if that was kindness or just programming.
Assessment Suite 7 is larger than I expected. The scanner dominates the room, something between an MRI and a sci-fi prop. I’m reclined at forty-five degrees, restraints loose around my wrists and ankles. Just enough to keep me still, not enough to feel trapped. Yet.
Three large screens hover in my field of vision. Through the window to the control room, I can see him.
Lem.
Twenty-two years old, Japanese, and beautiful in that way that only vatgrown can be. Not pretty. Beautiful. Designed. He moves with this fluid precision, like every gesture has been optimized. He’s wearing clinical grey that fits too well. Three screens surround him, already showing preliminary neural maps of my brain.
His voice comes through the speaker, and it’s immediately obvious he’s not like the androids. Not trying to sound warm. Just… elaborate.
“Ms. Sun’Tzu, good evening. I am Lem Harada, senior neurological technician for Kyra Aglomerate’s Amsterdam operations. The apparatus before you will conduct a comprehensive mapping of your neural architecture. Structural, functional, and dynamic. The process requires approximately ninety minutes of sustained stillness. Are you experiencing discomfort from the interfaces?”
I shift slightly. The sensors pull at my scalp. “No. I’m peachy.”
“Excellent. Initializing primary scan sequence. You may experience mild disorientation, phantom sensations, or fleeting synesthesia as the mapping progresses through distinct cortical regions. This is anticipated and transient.”
The machine hums. Low frequency, felt more than heard. Pressure builds at the base of my skull, exactly where he said it would.
“You talk like a book,” I say.
Through the window, I see him smile. Just slightly. “An observation I receive with some frequency. Language precision is aesthetically satisfying to me. A peculiarity of my educational formation, perhaps.“
“Osaka state facility?”
He looks up sharply, meets my eyes through the glass. “You’ve done research. Yes. Osaka production, 2033. Transferred to Guangzhou collective education at age eight. Extracted by Kyra ag at seventeen.” He returns to his screens. “You are remarkably well-informed for a geriatropoly candidate.”
“I don’t like surprises. Geriatroply, you almost make it sound insulting. “
“I can actually see you are amused. I can see your fascination, so I know better than to be concerned. We will do a lot of that. First priority for our little adventure is to understand what makes a person desire experiences far beyond immediate social, sexual or survival utility. Does the idea of being considered Geriatropoly demea…. yes it does. ” radiant smile “what are your feelings about that exactly?”
“Horror. I was raised by a mother… who was not too wel equipped for the job. A grandmother who quite suddenly became senile, for lack of a better term. My mother had to redirect her care to a shriveled up grandmother, and there was a lot of violence around in my youth. I have examples of the horror show that aging represents, of what institutional … catholicism… did to people. Brainwashing. It’s all geriatro to me. It makes people intentionally unprepared. To maintain control. “
The scan progresses. I feel it moving through my brain like fingers searching through filing cabinets. Not painful, but deeply invasive. Like someone’s reading thoughts I haven’t had yet.
Lem narrates occasionally, clinical observations about cortical density, synaptic patterns, decades of accumulated neural architecture. His voice has this rhythm to it, almost musical. Every word chosen deliberately.
Twenty minutes in, he leans closer to his screens. Types rapidly. Stops. Types again.
“Extraordinary,” he says, more to himself than me. “Your limbic architecture is… this requires consultation. One moment. Yes. Quite a bit of scar tissue, but not much degradation. Always insisted on acting childlike, though societally maladjusted, helped your architecture a lot.”
He touches his interface. “Sabitcha, I need your assessment on candidate three-eighteen. Uploading neural map now.“
I blink. “Sabitcha?”
He glances at me through the window. “Forgive me. Sabitha Reconquista-Verne. My pronunciation reflects familiarity. We work closely.”
“She’s coming here?”
Lem pauses. Reconsiders something. “Ah. You were not informed. Sabitcha is not physically ambulatory. She exists as distributed cognitive architecture. An upload.”
The room tilts slightly. Or maybe that’s the synesthesia he warned about. “Wait. Sabitha is an AI?”
“That terminology is imprecise and frankly reductive.” He’s choosing his words even more carefully now. “Sabitcha is a naturalized Swiss citizen per the Bern Digital Personhood Accords. Her biological substrate expired in 2048. Neural preservation and digitization occurred within the requisite preservation window. She has existed as herself, albeit non-biological, for seven years.”
I stare at the screen in front of me. The one that showed her face during our intake call. “I had a video call with an Ghost. Epic stuff.“
“You had a telepresence consultation with a person whose substrate happens to be digital rather than biological. The distinction is meaningful.”
“She was on ice? Most of them were for a while, right?“
“Cryonic preservation, yes. Three years. The upload technology matured sufficiently by 2051. She was among the first successful consciousness transfers with maintained continuity.“
The center screen flickers. Her face appears. Same pale skin, same severe elegance, same bone structure that could cut glass. But now I know. Now I see it differently.
“Lem, darling, I’m reviewing the scan.” Her voice is exactly as I remember. Warm, professional, accentless. “Ms. Sun’Tzu, I apologize for the deception during our initial consultation. Many candidates find digital personhood disconcerting. I prefer to establish rapport before revealing my nature.”
I’m staring at a ghost. Or a prophet. Or something that makes both concepts obsolete.
“You died,” I say.
“I experienced biological cessation, yes. I croaked. I was asleep at the time, imagine my surprise when waking up. Rise and shine Cinderella, that’s what they said. I see it’s your birthday tomorrow. What you you prefer for cake?
Lem, induction can start now, it;s all straightforward. Do your magick.”
“Tiramisu would be angelic, Sabitha.” I murmer, intimidated. I feel bigger than most people around me but now I feel suddenly very small next to these two.
POST-SCAN CONVERSATION – VU HOSPITAL Late June 2055
The machine finally powers down completely. The hum fades to nothing. I’m still reclined, sensors still attached, feeling exposed in ways that have nothing to do with the medical gown.
Lem doesn’t move from his workstation. Three screens surround him, showing patterns I can’t quite read from here. Neural maps. Data streams. My brain, rendered as architecture. He’s quiet. Too quiet. Reviewing something with that careful precision that I’m starting to recognize as his version of concern. I am unsure whether he is displaying concern or dealing with dilemmas.
Then, still not making eye contact, fingers dancing across one screen: “I read some of your stuff. I was curious.“
I blink. “My articles? You googled me?”
“No.” He gestures at the screens. “Your neural responses during the scan. The architecture of how you process information. It’s… extensive.” Now he looks at me. “When I mentioned Sabitha’s upload status, your limbic system didn’t show confusion or fear. It showed fascination. Immediate pattern recognition. Conceptual integration across multiple domains simultaneously.“
He pulls up something on the center screen. Rotating 3D render of neural pathways, glowing in blues and golds.
“Most candidates process sequentially. They hear ‘digital consciousness,’ experience brief fear response, then cognitive dissonance, then gradual acceptance as they integrate the information linearly.” His fingers trace pathways on the screen. “You did something else entirely. You heard ‘upload,’ and your brain immediately connected it to substrate theory, consciousness transfer logistics, legal personhood frameworks, and...” he pauses, “…personal applicability. All within 1.3 seconds.”
“You never seen this before?”
“No. It’s unprecedented.” He turns back to his screens. “Let me show you something. I’m going to present a scenario. Don’t think about your answer. Just respond naturally.“
“It’s a pipe“
He looks at me, shakes his head. Wiggles his fingers.
“A client books you for a weekend experience. They’ve specified they want ‘dominant corporate executive seeks submission.’ Standard fantasy template. 550 element event web provided. You understand Event Web? Ok… Your role is precisely choreographed, embedded. How do you approach this?”
I feel my mouth move before I think. “I’d read the script, let it percolate, look at the guy. Be that little devil on his shoulder and understand him. Find where the dynamic tension is and play with that. Then I tease out the fun. Play with him. Play together. Mesh.”
Lem’s eyes are fixed on his screens. “Extraordinary.”
“What?”
He rotates one screen toward me. “Watch.”
The neural activity map shows something that looks like a storm system. Multiple regions lighting up simultaneously, connections firing across distant areas of my brain, pathways building and rebuilding in real-time.
“When I posed that scenario, you didn’t activate behavioral compliance centers. That’s what our plugin model is. We even tease it. We take the script and this AI in the Talent steers emotions, passons, lusts to conform to the narrative web. These things are immersive, embedded, noncausal. You go against literally everything. You activate creative problem-solving, social intelligence, strategic planning, and...” he zooms in on one region, “…this is utterly novel in our field. Your theory of mind processing is hyperactive. You’re not imagining following the script. You’re imagining understanding the person behind the request.”
“I would literally call that what is the assignment.“
“It’s catastrophic.” He says it matter-of-factly, turning back to his screens. “Kyra ag’s entire business model is predicated on relatively predictable service delivery. Clients pay premium rates for fantasy fulfillment. The talent follows scripts. The experience is choreographed, rehearsed, optimized. Repeatability equals reliability.”
He pulls up another dataset. “Our most successful talent show minimal theory of mind activation during client scenarios. They’re not trying to understand the client. They’re becoming the fantasy. Ego dissolution. Pure performance.”
“Uhm yeah. “
“You’re something that is completely impossible to integrate.” He’s typing now, annotating something. “Every scenario I’ve posed – and I’ve posed seven so far embedded in our conversation – you’ve literally go offscript immediately, try assert control… no not control as such… situational awareness..? you responded by trying to understand, reinterpret, and improve. You literally make up completely unrelated narratives. You lie? Your brain doesn’t ask ‘what role should I play?’ It asks ‘what does this person actually need and how can I provide something better than they requested?'”
He stops typing. Looks at me directly.
“You bring content to the table. Constantly. Your cognitive architecture generates novelty rather than following patterns. This is…” he searches for words, “…Sabitha was right. She has impeccable intuition. You are more like our more demanding clients than an actual Talent. The simplest conclusion is to study you, your background, as a margin model. These are very interesting for our field, sort of like to map all variations. Trauma. Pathology. Art. Passion. Desire. Frustration. “
“We are still talking, yes? So I pose a problem for you, specifically?”
“Yes, You’re vexing to say the least.” He says it with something that might be admiration. “Kyra ag has spent nine years optimizing for compliant, beautiful, dissociative talent who can become whatever fantasy the client provides. You’re the opposite of every parameter we’ve built our business on. One could almost see you as literal sabotage. In fact you’d be real interesting long term in case we get competition. Not as actual sabotage, but to well, complicate the field.. “
The room feels colder suddenly.
“I think I am getting an idea of..“
“But.” He holds up one finger. “No, wait, let me finish. Sabitha gave me you. I am an analyst, one of the better one. You are what we call ‘donor-ing’. She didnt give me you as a mere chewtoy. I have faith in her intuition. She may not get it herself, what’s happening. Maybe she wants new approaches, instinctively. Maybe she wants to cast a wider net. Bigger fishes. Whales. There’s a subset of (smirk) let’s call them Meth or (winks) Klept clients – very small, very elite – who are … they havent been human for years. You’d call them on the verge of transhuman to posthuman. They have problems maintaining connection to humanity. They… how do I read this.. ” Let goes quiet.
He pulls up a different file. Client profiles. Redacted, but I can see metrics.
“Tens of thousands. Problem is this demographic will double in the coming years and these people will only get richer. Our current client circle is huge. But it is set to shrink gradually. We will eventually need to evolve. …“
“Now that is fascinating.”