Are/Was (Short Story)

We are our bodies.

The science is increasingly clear on this. I can try to dispute it rationally. I could even rail against it, confirm to the world that I'm the madman some folks already think I am. I don't, because I don't see the point of it. New studies on the matter seem to outnumber new days anymore, and each one is stronger proof against me than the last.

Nevertheless, my experience is somewhat different. I'm not alone in this, either. In the bigger cities, there are support groups for folks like me. Apocryphally, we make up our own demographic, complete with stereotypes. I first learned of this as an undergraduate, when a classmate told a joke about professors who feel their bodies are just transportation for their brains. Up until I heard that, the idea that that was a feeling at all, let alone the kind of thing that might be discussed and even disagreed with, was completely foreign to me. I guess I had just assumed that the stark separation of body and brain was the human experience, like free will, and science be damned if it proved something different.

Of course, free will has been conclusively disproved, and that hasn't stopped people from experiencing it. I suspect even as science continues to cement the importance of everything that connects the body to the mind, and even as discoveries minimize the importance of things like the blood-brain barrier separating them, that I will continue to experience what I do. It's an experience that others continue to be confused by and I continue to have difficulties describing. I guess the best way to explain my relationship with my body is to cite an avid motorcyclist's relationship with cars: at best, they're mildly unpleasant but potentially useful vehicles, and at their worst, they are like prisons.

Getting out of this particular prison isn't as easy as pulling onto the shoulder and opening the door, of course, though luckily I've always lived in a world where the prospect of doing so is promising. When I was young, they only had the cybernetic enhancements, which were interesting and occasionally fun, aftermarket accessories for my cage, but not a solution. Plus, I had to wait about twenty years just to start getting them–my parents wouldn't sign the bodymod form, and they certainly weren't going to pay for anything of that nature. Thanks to a promotion in my career, I was able to get in on the second generation of the android blanks, and when they came out with the server conversion, I was one of the first to try it.

It's better. It really is. The interface they set up is too robust and too graphical for my tastes. I guess it's to avoid shocking people who are used to living in a physical world. So I'm still moving through spaces, but now they're fundamentally intellectual spaces, with no precise physical corollary.

Unofficially, I guess, I'm still moving through spaces. Officially, I don't exist anymore. Officially, I'm dead, and there is no “me.”

I was my body.

Tanner, or The Desert Island Question (Short Story)

My name is Tanner, and as far as I know, I am one of the last six people living on the planet.

The rest of the world, the part with contiguous land and registered travel and regular shipping routes, experienced an event. I do not know exactly what the event was, because of the spotty signals and static in my part of the world. I'm sure the slipshod reporting and government censorship in the rest of the world played a part, too. The rest of the world called it "the event," for guinessakes!

In my part of the world, though, they call it "the second event." The first event was the rapid capsizing of a luxury vessel.  To my knowledge, only thirteen people on board survived. Adrift, six of us reached this little island. I feel it must be the most isolated bit of land on the whole planet. It was once a volcanic hotspot, but it cooled long ago.

The stories I've read say that this island was once much larger, and that that it was only the last in a chain of many. The stories make it sound like it was a nice place at that time. I guess it's a nice place now, too. Especially when you compare it to the alternatives. Our coming here and the things that led to it are known here as "the event," because we need no other name.

Whatever happened to the rest of the world is called "the second event" because we know no other name for it. Most of what we do know about it is no more useful than the name. We know that it seemed frightening at first, and then it seemed like nothing, and then it was rapidly destructive. This is from the spotty signals Jaysin managed to pick up on the radio. We know that scientists in our area concluded that it was the will of Jahweh. This is from the last leaflet that somehow blew its way out the window of a superluxury cruiser and onto our little island. And we know that it destroyed the nearest branches of the civilization we left. This we know from the fact that the spotty transmissions and the leaflets don't come anymore.

I guess that there are other people in some other isolated part of the world who survived the second event. I know we all hope so. None of us are willing to admit any hope that we will meet those people, not anymore. But we hope they live anyway.

To be honest, I never did hope to meet them.

That isn't because life here is perfect. For one thing, this island is not all that big. Surely it's far more space than the six of us need by civilized standards, but it's surprising how quickly I became acclimated to the elbow room and started to feel crowded. Plus, everyone works three jobs, although the hours are surprisingly reasonable. Jaysin and Lee are hunters, carpenters and shoemakers, though Jaysin is just learning shoemaking now that his electronics business is obsolete. Morgin, Alex and Emma all spend most of their time gathering things, but Alex is our elected president, and Morgin and Emma are both clothiers.  Alex and Emma are responsible for our rainwater system, and Morgin is the closest thing we have to a chef. As for me, I am our toolmaker, our fire-keeper, and our veterinarian.

That last career choice was pretty unpopular with the rest of the people here. I guess that's not surprising. We don't have a herdsman or a dairy farmer. And when they found that I was pilfering food to feed a small flock of magpies and the feral cats on the island, I thought they were going to kill me. They probably would have, but Alex stepped in.

That surprised me a little bit. I thought Alex was pretty disappointed with me. I'm non-reproductive. There haven't been any children yet, but the two couples are trying. I've been intentionally avoiding any attempt. I was offered Alex, the president, as a mate. Though not quite attractive enough to be a screen star, Alex is the best-looking of us. I did notice that. At first, they assumed I am a homosexual. I let them assume. Eventually, someone asked. I am not.

It's just that out of all the species on this island, I don't have much interest in seeing humanity survive.