“Well, I've been getting a bit dizzy. I think my balance implant is wearing out. Something needs to be done. I'm suffering. Twice a day now for five minutes at a time, the thing doesn't work. It's soon going away completely. The web site isn't helping. That's why I needed to talk to a person”.
Sarah looked good, for a two hundred year old woman. Her soft skin was less wrinkly then when she worked as a doctor; her sensual lips had never needed much makeup and they still didn't, unless you counted the implants. Her chest was still prominent, and eyes clear and bright in the glow from the computer screen.
Only the slow and careful way she adjusted her interface showed her age.
Behind, in the dark, out of the light from the video, a cat mewed.
The young man on the video screen replied “Well, I'm obliged by law to report that I'm not really a person, I am an AI, but I will attempt to help you.” He looked down, or at least, his avatar did. “According to our files, you are not eligible for any sort of implant care under the medicare program, due to the budget cuts. You will need to pay privately.”
The man patiently waited while her old brain processed the information. The cat mewed again.
“No implants? But I checked. The implant is defective. What about the warranty?”
“The maker of that implant, ' Harvard Biodyne', has gone bankrupt: you are on your own. I could schedule you for a new implant but …. I'm afraid the cost is prohibitive for what I can estimate your finances allow.... surgical fees are two billion, plus the special extreme senior citizen medical tax.
She sat, stunned, in the dark. Without her implant working she would be unable to walk, and even just sitting in a chair would cause extreme vertigo. It had failed twice in the last week. She did not want to feel that again. “Are there any drugs I can take?”
“Hmm, I can recommend some, I'll downloading the info to your autodoc, with your permission? These drugs will cost about one million eurodollars per week.”
Sarah thought for a second. That would put her expenses to be a little more than her income. Since the big crash she'd been dependent on social security, which has become smaller and smaller each year. She needed to make some extra cash. There was no way a 200 year old woman could work.. or in this economy, any human being find a job, but there were some ways.
“Thank you for the information”. She said. The signal cut off, switching back to the card game she always played for several hours a day. “Connect me with Ambrose” she said.
Ambrose appeared on screen. He was tanned and grey haired, sitting on a lounge chair by a beach holding a margarita.
“Hi Ambrose, I know we've been divorced for years, but I was wondering if you could loan me a little money?”
“Well”, he said, “Straight and to the point. Our divorce was the most expensive thing I've ever done. What happened to all that money you got? The big crash? Or did you invest in real estate in Amish country before the anti-terror war?”
“Well, yes, it was the crash, did you make out okay??
“No. I went completely broke. I actually owed millions of dollars on a SkyNet deal. Couldn't stand to live off cat food. So now I'm here.”
A horrible suspicion began to fill Sarah's mind. “Are you dead?”
“Downloaded. My body has been destroyed, I'm living in a virtual paradise”. A young, bikini clad woman moved behind Ambrose and started to massage his shoulders.
“So you committed suicide, and an AI is playing your part”.
“Not an AI. I'm really here. They took all the surveillance of me and biomedical tests. I'm really here!”
Sarah had never believed in the “Downloading” of people. She thought it was a scam. You'd sign over your income … even just social security, to the downloading company, you'd commit suicide, and they'd construct an AI that was supposed to be you. They claimed they would use your brainwaves and chemical measurements of your brain to make it 'really be' you, but it wasn't.
“Well, then you'd remember your pet name for me, when we were first dating!” said Sarah.
Sarah always turned off the scanning devices when they made love. There was never a recording of that that could be accessed by an AI.
“Well, I don't remember”, said 'Ambrose'. “You know I don't remember things”.
Tears in her eyes, Sarah said. “I have to go now, Ambrose.”
Sarah had always known she would die someday. She just thought it wouldn't be so lonely. Where were the grandchildren gathered around her deathbed? Never conceived. Where were her children? She had outlived them. How about neighbors? She had never seen them. Indeed, she hadn't been outside in ten years.
At this moment Sarah decided to take one last walk, and then sign up to be downloaded. Maybe her avatar could appear at Ambrose's beach and clock that bikini girl with an umbrella.
She made her way to the door and opened it. Blinking in the sunlight, her eyes eventually adjusted. She saw her lawn, tended carefully by a squat little robot, and the street. The other houses were all boarded up with weeds growing in their yards.... she had no neighbors. The asphalt of the street was cracked in places. Dandelions and weeds grew in the cracks. She walked toward the center of town.
Slowly she moved, lest her balance give out suddenly. She wanted to be prepared to sit down should she become dizzy. But her luck held. No Dizziness. She hoped to get as far as the mini-mall. Maybe see someone. Birds chirped. In the distance came a low hum, probably the freeway.
The mini-mall was gone. It had been replaced by a large, cube-shaped, windowless building of painted brick, decorated at the top with solar cells. Small whirring squat wheeled robots entered and exited the building via openings too short for a human.... perfectly shaped for these robot. There was no sign, or indication of what the building was for. Sarah asked google what the building was, it was a business for the repairing of the small squat robots.
On the other side of the street was another identical building, but the doors were bigger. A larger robot, the size of truck drove up with a tank of something , arms reached out of the building and took the tank inside. Hmm, a chemical processing facility, said google. Sarah guessed she was living in an industrial neighborhood now.
She was starting to get tired, and the sun was hot. So she returned to her home and played solitaire for a while. The next day, she was quite dizzy. She survived, played some solitaire, fed the cat. She put out of her mind her impending doom.
The following day she was dizzy for most of the day. And the next. It was unbearable. She finally decided to call a downloading company. There were only a few left. Paradise Farms didn't sound as good as Celebrity Download. She called it.
“Thank you. Dr. Conner. Do we have rights to review your most intimate details? Are you sure? Thank you once again. We will pick you up in a limo. I see you have a faulty implant. To avoid any issues, while you are in our care we will provide you with a drug to prevent dizziness. Do you agree to sign over your remaining social security payments to our download service? Yes, we can take care of the cat. Do you wish it downloaded with you? No? Thank you. We will see you at 4”.
Interacting with computers always made Sarah tired. She waited, dizzy, until 4.
The limo was black and beautiful. The big humanoid robot who came with the limo sprayed a nasal drug, ending her dizziness immediately. It also made her a bit high, she thought. She hadn't been high in years. Filthy habit. It brought back memories. College. Outside, destroyed and deserted homes interspersed with cube-shaped solar power capped buildings seemed to be the rule.
“If you don't mind, m'am, I'll take your arm and help you into the facility”.
Sarah had not realized she had arrived at the facility. She passed by a waiting room. In there they would have parties, she thought, friends of the victim would wait around until the virtual version would appear on the monitor, under the sign that said “Another Soul Rescued from Death”.
She was taken a medical room. Soft, soothing music played. She was placed on a gurney. Sarah knew that the gurney would remove her lifeless corpse from this room in just a minute. A humanoid robot came up and said “This won't hurt a thing”, and got ready to inject her... and stopped before he had inserted the needle.
Lights flashed on his head. “Excuse me” said Sarah. “Excuse me?”
“There's a problem” said the robot. “Your downloading was only partially complete. There's a legal challenge to the operation”.
“A legal challenge? From who?”
“There's a lawyer outside who can tell you”.
Sarah went out into the entranceway. A large armored, police robot stood there. He had eyes that flashed red and blue.
“Sarah Conner?”said the police robot. He had a loud, amplified voice. Like he was speaking through a megaphone. “I am hear to tell you under the authority of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, you are being rescued from taking your own life. You are to be brought into a special habitat with some other remaining humans”.
“You mean the human race is almost extinct?” said Sarah. The police robot did not answer.
On the way out she caught a look at herself in the monitor in the lobby. There she was, under “Another Soul Rescued From Death”, sitting on a beach, talking to Ambrose.
Ambrose said “Can you tell me what my pet name for you was when we were dating?”
Sarah said “It's not important.” She sipped her virtual margarita.
