The year was 2122. Humanity had recently begun its first real phase of mass scale bionic
body augmentations. For the first time, it was now normal for people to swap out body
parts with more robust, technologically integrated prosthetics for non-medical purposes. A man
named Jack, age 29, had held off on all body modifications for as long as he could, and
was of the small remaining percentage of entirely organic adult human bodies.
Jack worked one of the few still-existing physical labor-based jobs, assisting in the
construction, upkeep, and use of robotic machinery used to load and unload cargo shipping containers
onto commercial ships that self-navigated themselves to and from delivery ports. While
being one of the few remaining workers with biological arms and legs, Jack had inevitably
fallen behind the increasingly high standards of the job. Naturally, his biological arms
and legs grew tired and could exert only about 1/15th the force of the vast majority of his
co-workers who had opted for the company funded, CyberBuild Brand, mechanical prosthetic arms
and legs. In order to stay afloat in the competitive,
automated, job market, on June 3rd, 2124, Jack finally opted in to giving up his biological
arms and legs for bionic replacements. These bionic prosthetics operated by implanting
various electrodes in areas of the brain that control movement and process touch sensation.
The electrodes were then activated and engaged by the user’s brain neurons as the user
thought about and sensed movement, directing nerve signals back through the electrodes
and into bionic limbs, moving them essentially just like biological arms and legs.
Following the procedure, at the bionic surgery facility, Jack filled out all the necessary
forms with his new hands. It was a bit tricky, but not too bad, he found. At the bottom of
the forum, he signed his name on the signature line: Jack Outis.
Several years went by. It took Jack a little time to fully adapt and get used to the idea
of his new arms and legs, but fairly quickly, he came to barely even notice them. Initially,
he didn’t recognize them when he looked down, but since he never really considered
his arms and legs to be a crucial part of his sense of identity, it was relatively easy
to eventually just assimilate them as a part of him.
However, simultaneous to Jack getting fully accustom to the new appendages, with technology
and medical advancements seeming to only continue to multiply, much of the rest of humanity
had begun taking on other newly developed, more extreme bionic augmentations in order
to keep up with the increasingly competitive, automated job market, as well as the heightening
standards of living. Over the span of about 15 years, by age 45,
Jack had exchanged out his rib cage, spine, eyes, ears, teeth, heart, several other organs,
and eventually, his skull and neck. The augmented replacements provided technological integrations
that synchronized with external devices while also improving bodily strength, functionality,
and longevity. These modifications were also intended to aid in slowing down the aging
process and extending the universal average lifespan, which, with many of these initial
bionic replacements, was predicted to easily extend in and past two or three hundred years
at least. At this point, Jack was essentially a human
brain in a vat atop an almost entirely different mechanical body.
The riskiest procedure, which also happened to be the last one Jack underwent, was the
skull replacement that changed out his normal skull for a bionicly integrated metal one,
requiring his brain to be removed and then placed back into the new head, neck, and spinal
configuration. Exteriorly, the skull looked like a completely normal human head with otherwise
natural looking skin and facial features, making the aesthetic transition fairly benign.
However, each person who underwent the procedure was given the choice to change how their face
looked to essentially anything they’d like, which Jack opted in for. Never having really
liked his face all that much, he decided on a new one that looked completely different.
Prior to and following the procedure, along with all the earlier procedures, Jack filled
out and agreed to a variety of lengthy waiver and clearance forms, signing his name on each:
Jack Outis. Within only a year of each procedure, sometimes
just a few months, Jack mostly became used to his new augmented body parts. The face
was of course the hardest and longest one to adapt to, but eventually, within the year
or so, he started to recognize himself in it just the same as his old one. His face
was never really him anyway, Jack felt. It was merely just the cover in front of him
and any arrangement or form of it could be him just as easily. At least once he got used
to it. Ultimately, he lived contently with his new bionic body, feeling like no more
than just a physically improved version of his original self.
Several more years would go by. By this point, as a result of increasing artificial intelligent
development, Jack had been automated out of his original job field and the global socioeconomic
system had shifted away from nearly all physical-based jobs. Consequently, after a harsh transition
period, new industries, markets, and jobs started to take form across the internet landscape,
especially related to things like VR, AR, art, communication, experiential services,
software, and so on. Jack eventually landed a job as a set designer and coder for virtual
reality entertainment performances. As a result of this shift, the long-anticipated mass market,
consumer application of implantable brain–machine interfaces was approved during this time in
the year 2146. The company Neuratie led the charge, beginning their first consumer market
roll out with their Model B-I brain-machine interface. Like all brain-machine interfaces,
it worked by implanting tiny chips into the bionic or organic skull of the user. Tiny
wires would then be connected from these chips and spread out into various, essential parts
of the brain. The wires could then receive and send messages from and through the user’s
neurons. As a result, the user could connect their brain to the cloud, and via brainwaves
alone, operate devices and bionic technologies, communicate non-verbally with others online,
as well as share and access public information, essentially merging thought with internet
and wearable technology. One of the most notable features of the interface was that it allowed
users to select and deselect technical skills and aptitudes that could be downloaded directly
into the brain as if they had been learned or forgotten over a lifetime in just a matter
of seconds. By activating patterns and sequences of nerves impulses, the technology rendered
specific body movements and mental abilities that carried out various skills.
Like all prior augmentations, the brain-machine interface was fully optional. Every step of
the way, including this one, one was faced with the choice to either augment or not.
However, inevitably, most if not all conceded eventually due to the apparent will to life
that technology possessed and carried out through human socialization. For many years,
recreational brain-machine interfaces confronted especially high resistance by groups that
were against the general consumer adoption of the technology. For many prior decades,
the technology had been exclusively approved and used for medical purposes only, strictly
assisting with neurological disorders and body paralysis. Now, however, because of the
need for enhanced mental capacities and digital integrations, the technology was approved
and set to be used more-or-less to modify otherwise quote-on-quote healthy human brains.
Jack was one of the many who initially opposed it. It was one thing to relinquish parts or
even the full body, but to go into the more abstract parts of the brain was something
else entirely, Jack and others like him thought. However, just like all the prior augmentations,
the technology exponentially creeped itself into the norm as more and more individuals
adopted it, creating a greater sense of ostracization and exclusion towards those who did not. Like
most things like it, it reached its inevitable tipping point and went from abnormal to have
one to abnormal to not. Eventually, Jack underwent the simple and
essentially painless procedure and awoke into a new technologically integrated brain. After
going through a brief moment of recovery, he turned on the interface, viewing it through
his bionicly augmented eyes. He mentally filled in his name on the startup screen: Jack Outis.
It was weird at first, but mentally deciding to write verses mentally deciding to write
and then watching your arm do it were fundamentally no different, Jack found, and he took to it
almost right away. As time would pass and Jack became more and
more used to his newly modified brain, he downloaded and relinquished certain skills
and aptitudes and so on. After a certain point, to Jack’s relief, it became clear that fundamentally
there wasn’t anything really changing about him – at least no more or less than just
learning new skills. Throughout Jack’s biological life, he had obviously learned and forgotten
many skills, ideas, capacities, and so on, but still always felt like the same person.
And here to, despite the extreme rate, the same phenomenon seemed to occurr. He realized
he was never his technical skills or abilities, but rather, the person experiencing them.
As the modern world moved further into the digital mental realm, new brain-machine interface
companies and models came out, aggressively competing with each other. Corporations started
to more commonly generate and push software updates to consumers as an effort to keep
their models at the forefront. Some of the software updates were relatively benign and
were no more than bug fixes or additional skillset options or better integrations with
bionic prosthetics. However, some software updates began to go further, dipping into
desires, interests, habits, and the like. Users who moved forward with these updates
could do things like increase or decrease tendencies towards certain states, remove
undesirable desires, and download or delete interests.
Naturally, these software updates were again meet with reluctancy by many. Jack, along
with plenty of others like him, avoided any updates that altered more than just the existing
functionality for as long as they could. Jack felt strongly that the alterations of tendencies
or desires or interests would change his entire sense of self-identity and render him unfamiliar
to himself. However, as time passed and the same pattern of history unfolded, Jack along
with the majority of others like him, eventually opted in and downloaded some of these software
updates. In the year 2153, Jack downloaded his first
major software update, known as Version Prime; an update that allowed users to control and
self-regulate personal desires, habits, and interests. Upon the download, as usual, Jack
had to read the terms of service and digitally sign his name where asked. On which, he signed:
Jack Outis. Following the software update, through essentially
no more than a push of a button, Jack could and did download and delete desires, interests,
and daily routines, often relinquishing old ones to make room for the new. Across Jack’s
entire lifetime, prior to the NeuraTie brain interface, he experienced many different interests,
desires, habits, and life routines, and never felt like a different person. Even if one
desire or interest led to another, the transitional period of time between them always kept him
feeling like him. Although more extreme, the software updates seemed to feel no different.
Since Jack was still always the one choosing to download or delete these features of himself,
it all still felt like it was based off of his foundational desire for certain desires,
interests, and routines, strung along a consistent, non-broken line of self-identity. And so,
even though Jack had a nearly completely different body, new set of technical skills, new desires
and interests, and new daily life, at this point in his mind, he still felt like Jack.
In the year 2157, Jack downloaded Software Update Version Senior; a brand new, revolutionary
update that allowed users to have memories added or removed from the memory storage part
of their mind. Initially, this was intended to be used towards removing past memories
of trauma, but it eventually evolved into more general memory removal as well as positive
memory implantation. Users could now plant false memories inside their long-term memory
bank, altering how they remembered the quality of their life. Jack slowly but surely participated
in this, deleting traumatic memories about his former biological childhood self, as well
as implanting nice memories throughout his teens and twenties to counterbalance the period
of prolonged depression he actually lived through. These alterations were integrated
subtly into the mind over time so that it felt like the original memories simply faded
away and the new ones weren’t even new - almost like how the biological mind might block out
or repaint bad memories through repression or nostalgia.
At this point, Jack forgot, altered, and had false memories, different interests, desires,
skills, pinions, and routines, and an almost completely different body. And yet, even across
all of this, he continued to feel like Jack. It was as if as long as he still had a continuous
memory of himself, he sustained a continuous tracking of himself, and thus, a consistent
sense of self-identity, regardless of any change or accurate awareness of that change.
He recognized that he was not the same person in anyway and perhaps couldn’t even know
what that same person really was anymore, but yet, somewhere in him, something still
felt like him. As part of the continual development and improvement
of the technology, Jack filled out optional questionnaires about every month or so. At
the top of each questionnaire forum, it asked, “Please confirm your identity. Who are you?”