Story: The Preserver

Simon loved his job.

He sat in his den sipping bourbon and milk. He smiled to himself. Simon was always an inquisitive mind. He had always thought in strange directions. He liked to tree things out, take an idea and make it grow in all directions like a mold or a snowflake.

Take this drink for example. The personal facts about it were that everyone whom he had ever offered a sip turned their nose up either before or after. This to him was just another confirmation that people not only have different opinions but experience the world in fundamentally different ways. He suspected all the way down to having different qualia for color perception, that is what I see as blue you see as green, which would explain the 70s, and golf pants.

To him bourbon and milk tasted like a milkshake, and he sipped it with a smile. Then he thought about the production of each, both originally and post synbio. The resources it took to get that glass in his hand during his adolescence had been staggering by any subjective human measure, beyond what it took to pick up the milk and the bottle at their respective stores. From care and feeding of the animal, tot he agricultural base needed for the liquor. These days, his drink despite tasting Exactly like he recalled, was what people born in his era would have called synthetic, despite the fact that there would be no scientific test that could tell the difference.

Humanity had perfected the art of food construction, and had done so in 6 months. He smiled with a deep sense of pride at that. His species had undeniably survived its infancy. The singularity had come and gone, the transhumanists were claiming the galaxy in ways he literally could not imagine. He himself had an echo out there somewhere. Or perhaps he was the echo. Anyway...

The choice was put to everyone for the first week or so and then someone realized that there was the third choice of all choices and that space was massive enough to leave room for all of them. You see, mind copying and backup and persistence of consciousness, while once esoteric concepts, quickly became practical. Indeed, this era could likely be seen as the philosopher's renaissance. With the utter mastery by any previous human scale of the material world, the realm of mind and the creation and cultivation of ideas had become far more important.

In that vein someone realized that copying the mind, toughening and altering the person was not the end of the road, indeed a person now had the choice to externalize physically facets of their personality. Now, one's desire to travel and explore need not be tied to ones desire to sit and have a nice cool drink and curl up with a good book. Simon you see, was Simon's desire to share, and to enjoy life quietly. Simon's sense of adventure was probably swimming in Jupiter's red spot, while Simon's curiosity was fully observing the event horizon of the nearest black hole.

This Simon, was not a pet, even though the transhumans humanity had spawned were incomprehensibly intelligent compared to him. He had an important function.

Simon was a preserver. Simon's job was to offer humans from his era passage into this one. He himself had been a cryonicist, and smiled at the resources he expended to ensure his place in the future. He was amused with himself for having thought the matter through in such a linear fashion. Time travel had never occurred to him as a serious option.

Yes, at one time Simon would never have even imagined being a time traveler, but that was now his day job, his lovely 9-5. Of course there was no pay except the joy he brought, but for a person like him, that was more then enough since all his creature comforts were met.

Simon went back in time, and used a small space folder, as he liked to think of it, how it really worked he probably could never understand, to remove and replace human brains with exact duplicates picoseconds before irrevocable failure. He then put the brains into a communication vat, again his terminology, and put the question to them.

Shall I build a new body for you? Would you like to see the future? Or would you rather continue dieing? Many chose to die, because part of the question, was the clear impression that this was not a threat, and he did not feel sorry for them because they were given a real choice. Many chose to live and he watched them sail into his world. Some asked for second chances, but once he explained the damage that could cause, they didn't ask again.

He took the whole brains to avoid the duplicate problem and the persistence of consciousness problem.

You see a perfect copy of a mind is still a copy, to avoid the philosophical conundrums, the whole brain was taken and an inert copy left behind to "die".

Humanity had conquered death for keeps. It was in the process of going back to every human era, and offering the choice. Many referred to this era as heaven, or whatever they called their after life, and in many ways that was the case. We could manufacture or perfectly simulate whatever sort of existence was desired within the realm of physical possibility.

Simon didn't see it as heaven, he just saw all this as a natural outgrowth. Personally he felt this option was the granting of his greatest wish. “I wish everything would work out in a manner of which I would approve.” he was so proud of himself as a child for having thought of that, and he still was.

This world was everything he could have hoped for and more. For him, it was proof that yes there was a god, and it clearly loved all existence. It amazed him how close it had come to the brink of annihilation before its meteoric rise.

He remembered the debate from his era, and he had always found it amusing the clash between science and religion, and how it was totally manufactured since the two don't really cross paths.

He sipped and thought of all that, and then set it down so that he might prepare for work.

Today he had a very special client, and he didn't want to be late, but of course he knew he wouldn't be.

...his client's name was Simon.

Fiction

I'm going to start writing fiction, or rather I'm going to start publishing it.

Most of you jackasses think I'm full of shit anyway.

I'm not going to copy protect my work. Either my work won't be good enough to steal, or you people will be good enough not to steal it. Not because you fear the law, not because you fear your god, and not because your girlfriend told you not to, but because you're just not that guy.

Data is free. Time and again I've explained that. But you people still insist on owning it, packing it, planting flags in it, buying it, and selling it.

A real artist gets paid for production not product. A real artist profits on commission, or not at all.

My profit will be the telling.

As a race we have forgotten how to tell stories. I look back and realize that's all we have. We dos something cool or see something cool and the best part is telling everyone. Because in the end, what does it matter? Its only real if other did or could have experienced it.

It's not the experience itself. If that were the case we'd tell everyone our dreams constantly and be ashamed of our real stories due to their blandness. Sure we share the particularly outlandish dreams but only in so far as they relate to reality. You were in my dream last night only his eyes were made of crickets and he was trying to sell me a bakery that specialized in cat medicine.

What's the important part? You.

I know the truth, and I'm sure I'll keep trying to tell you people the truth, and I'm sure you'll ignore it. But I'm also going to tell you some stories, because I like telling them and because if no one is going to listen, then I better find a way to enjoy talking.