Fin refuses to archive his memory even though I purchased designated storage space for the both of us. I’m trying to convince him that living in virtual space will be no different from how we operate in the physical world today—“everything is in the brain. If you’ve copied that, everything else gets perceived the same,” I tell Fin. Scratching the roof of your mouth while sucking shrimp heads, slipping our bare feet under each other’s shirts to warm up in the winter, sneezing at the frying chili peppers after we’ve forgotten to turn on the vent. All the same.
“My archive will be alone if you don’t get a copy made,” I say.
“Why do we need copies when we can just meet each other in the afterlife? As ourselves. Because there’s only one of each of us.”
“You know the afterlife doesn’t exist,” I remind him. “Once you die, you’re dead. You decompose and become part of the earth or whatever.”
Nothing exists after death. Seven years ago, scientists simulated the deaths of millions of archived brains and published a paper that made headlines. Shortly thereafter, NeuroGrape Inc. announced a new service to translate your brain into a chip that’d activate in the Alternate World once you died. They expanded its use case to the living five years ago.
I visit the Alternate World frequently because it’s my job to maintain the spatial accuracy, especially when new locations require recalibration. I’ve tried to pull Fin along to see the new lakes or mountains, but Fin usually refuses, claiming he’s afraid of leaving both our bodies unattended. “Who’s even physically available to do anything to our bodies?” I’d laugh.
“You’re free to have your archive. I don’t see how my decision is going to negatively affect you,” Fin says.
“Didn’t I just say? I’ll be alone.”
“Not you. Your copy. You would be dead.”
An argument we’ve had many times, and always ends in my concession. The literature already explains how an organism can be distilled to their brain interactions, and I know Fin has read them because he immediately corrects me when I mis-state the experimental procedure or mix up intracellular versus extracellular neuron signal processing. At this point, I’m banking on time to wear him down, though it looks less and less likely. Since his retirement, Fin has begun digging up our backyard of neatly cut grass and building raised garden beds. Half our fridge is stuffed with bags of seeds from fruits he’d eaten, each seed nestled between damp paper towels, sprinkled with cinnamon, and labeled with Sharpie to mark the beginning of their simulated winter. He’s more likely to die before seeing the tiny sprouts bear fruit.
While he tends to his fruit trees, I lay in bed and visit the Alternate World. I’ve joined a group that meets every afternoon in the Garden of Bonsai to try new teas. We pay a premium to use the Garden, touted for its mountain range backdrop with succulents and red, scalloped flowers that grow wildly, in waves and bunches as they would in nature. A rare sight in the Alternate World, where most visitors prefer symmetry and order, the landscape flowing in straight, clean lines with even numbers of fish hook cacti growing from both sides. The Garden rotates the Bonsai out once a month, the only regularly repeated Scene we’ve grown bored of. Instead of potted trees twisting and tapering at the trunk, equidistant from the next branch and the next and the next, we prefer to watch vines running wild like snakes.
“Fin still hasn’t come around?” One of them asks me as we sit around a table facing the mountains. I touch my lips to the edge of my cup, testing the temperature. Burns in the Alternate World sting as much as they do in the real world.
“Nothing will change his mind,” I reply. “I’ve given up already.”
“I’ve read that you can perform archives of others if you can prove they’re not mentally sound enough to make a decision,” another suggests.
“Fin’s brain is perfectly functional,” I defend.
“Of course, of course. But if you wanted to make a case to archive…”
I consider it. Fin’s memory will likely deteriorate sooner than mine due to our age difference, after which it’d be easy to qualify him as “not mentally sound.” But no matter how much his cerebral cortex dulls, I doubt he’ll forget his hostility toward the Alternate World.
“It won’t work, trust me,” I reply.
It’s still bright outside when I disconnect. I approach the bedroom window. A small bucket props the backdoor open and a chilly breeze slips into the house. Fin is hunched over the seedlings he’d transferred into the ground. He has built a small fence around the sprouts and dug up the surrounding grass so no one accidentally mows them down.
I pull the windowsill up. I hear the light pats of the trowel on the soil. Fin’s breaths as he adjusts his squat and stands to stretch his waist and knees. A furious gust of wind that sends an army of pinecones charging onto the roof. The soft drizzle you’d never hear in the Garden of Bonsai, perpetually free from rain.
Before I can open my mouth to call him in, he turns to wave at me. I wave back. Fin tilts his head to the clouds and rolls his sleeves up higher, as though waiting for the water to cleanse him. I press my palms to the screen mesh, wondering if the water will graze my fingers.
About the author:
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Find her at https://lucyzhang.tech or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.
Find Lucy:
Website
X / Twitter
Instagram
RECENT STORIES
