The Transplant (Short Story)

Updated 2/21/2014

Would it surprise you to know that I am not human?

I suppose that depends upon where you are reading from. Most of the democratically-governed world seems to be familiar with posthumanity. Or with, as it is known legally, alternative personhood.

I know that in other places, where religion's or superstition's influence outstrips technology's, people like me are considered sinful and unnatural abominations. For people in those places, the fact that I am not human is not just surprising, but shocking and disgusting. I have learned not to be bothered by those attitudes, but if you are one of those people, I would advise you to stop reading. You might learn something you don't want to learn.

For those of you still reading, my transition to alternative personhood came five years ago today. Perhaps some corner of this artificial brain is still capable of sentiment, and perhaps that is why I am writing this today, on the fifth anniversary of the day I became other than human. I read that it is a long procedure. There's a legal obligation to research the transplant before undergoing it. The journal articles I read all put the average length of the procedure at somewhere between seventy and seventy-two hours. I experienced none of that. As far as I know, and as far as I can remember, it happened in an instant. I closed my eyes. I went to sleep for a blink. I woke up outside of the body I had inhabited for a little less than thirty-six years.

I also woke up outside the brain I had inhabited during those years. I don't know exactly how it works, but neurologists can map a person's personality while (s)he is unconscious. The doctors stored mine in what was at the time a very innovative piece of computing technology. These days, regular people can go down to the nearest box store and buy one just like it, but five years ago it was top-of-the-line. I requested that this computer be placed at the helm of what was, five years ago, a rather innovative two-wheeled motorcycle drone. Even today, it is a pretty powerful piece of machinery, at least when I'm outside. Indoors, it runs on an electric motor that seems a little dinky and underpowered, although I suppose that is the point. In the past five years, I've learned how to get the most out of it.

But I have to be honest with you. Today is only the fifth anniversary of my legal posthumanity. It might only have been five years since the world began to recognize me as an unusual brain inside a motor vehicle, but I have never known myself as anything else. The old motor vehicle had a very different propulsion system, what with those unwieldy arms and legs doing all the work, and the new one is certainly much more powerful, but it was only an upgrade, not a a truly fundamental change. And the brain? The brain! The new one works faster, and it remembers more, but it still feels like me. It is me. It's just better.

In fact, having the old brain transplanted into an artificial humanoid body was an option. That was the earliest form of alternative personhood conceived by science, and it's a whole lot cheaper. Getting the chip instead of keeping my fleshy brain doubled the price, and the motorcycle doubled the price again. I had to wait another seven years and save a lot more money to get what I wanted, but I wanted to make sure that the world would stop seeing a body and identifying that as me. What is outside of me is still not a true reflection of what I am, but at least the falseness of the reflection has become obvious to the world at large.

I am not myself, only closer.

I am still myself, only better.