Saturday, April 21, 2012

My Last Words (Possibly)


This may be the last communication anyone in the outside world may get from me.  
My cell phone is turned off.  My email is shut down.  I'm logged off my Facebook page.  
Twitter is on, but that doesn't really count.  Twitter is more of a digital archipelago where everyone is throwing their messages in digital bottles into an electron sea.  That's not "really" communicating, is it?  
Anyway...  
After this blog posting, there is a great possibility that nothing more will be heard from me.  
It may take a couple of days, but eventually people will wonder, "Hey...  What happened to Erick?"  When I don't show up to work on Monday, for instance.  They'll try to reach me by phone.  They might try the people on my emergency number list, my parents and my uncle.  When no response is received by Tuesday, they might even call the police and ask them to check out my apartment. 
I won't be there.
Time will pass.  People will ask each other, "Have you seen him?"  "No," they'd reply.  "Have you?"  
At this point, my more factious friends might reply, "Yeah, spoke to him just a moment ago.  I was just checking to see if you had the same security clearance I do."  It would be something I would say if given a response like that.  
But no one needs to worry.  I'm fine.  I'm right here.  I have achieved a life's goal.  
I finally found a way to nestle myself into a tiny, microscopic universe.  
It's very nice in here.  Very snug.  Very...  Womblike.  I am sustained.  I am warm and comfortable.  There is no frustration.  No effort without results.  Everything is logical.  Everything works the way it's supposed to.  Everything I want is here.  It's all strewn around all over the place like some strange alien nest, but I can immediately find exactly what I'm looking for when I want it.  
I'm not just floating here, either.  Not at all.  I'm changing.  I'm being transformed.  
My brain is being replaced, cell by cell, by a self-sustaining quantum matrix.  Each neuron is being replaced by a quivering string of quantum fluctuations, linked by micro-wormholes to its neighbors.  Without a brain, there is no "me," you see.  Eventually, all of "me" will be generated by this  interconnected matrix.  
The best thing about it is that I can expand my brain.  Not in the sixties, "Hey, dude, this s**t is awesome," sort of way.  I mean literally.  The little neuronic q-bits can move apart.  The micro-wormholes are not limited by distance to transmit their impulses from one to another.  I can have one part of my consciousness on the moon and another part on Mars, and the rest of it here on Earth, and my thoughts would flow uninterrupted.
This expandable brain allows me to run multiple simulations at every decision point.  In nanoseconds I can find the optimal response to every problem I encounter.    
My body is being transformed as well, in this trans-dimensional cocoon of mine.  In the same fashion as my neurons, my cells are being replaced, one by one.  Instead of losing vital bits of telomerase as they divide, which leads to decrepitude and ultimately to extinction, they are replaced by more robust constructs.  "Smart" programable cells that use an artificial intelligence to monitor and check their status and initiate action.  My body would become smarter than it is now.  It can be programmed to perform mundane tasks while my brain, expanding as needed, can do other things.  
How long will it take to complete this transformation process?  
Well...  Neurons don't normally get replaced, so there is no standard for that.  Fat cells are replaced at about one percent per year.  Heart cells replace at about that same rate, but slow down to about .5% per year by the time you reach your sixties.  A hundred years, maybe?  Two hundred?  All those deadlines, all those performance goals I'm supposed to hit will be long gone.  
At some point, though, the micro-universe will gently unfold.  Like the unraveling of a black-hole at the end of time, when the energy lost by the expulsion of virtual particles at its event horizon causes it to evaporate.  The cocoon will effervesce away and leave me standing there in my new form.  
But no child, will I be.  I'll have all the memories I had when I entered my micro-universe.  I will also have knowledge of what has happened since I entered my cocoon.  I have that expanding brain, remember?  It can spread itself across the planet.  Across the solar system.  Like a laser microphone hitting the window of someone's office, my neuronic q-bits can pick up signals from other brains, organic or digital.  No more Google for me!  I want to know something, I will "recall" it the very same way I can remember the name of that song I was listening to that day, as a teenager, my Dad came into my room to tell me to turn it down, only to realize that it was a song he liked, too. (It was Route 66 by Nat King Cole.  My Dad borrowed the cassette for about a week after that).  
And what will I do then, you may ask?  What will I do in that future place, with that expanding brain and indestructible body?  That's easy.  The first thing I'll do is, uh...  Uh...  
Hmm.  
And what about all the friends and family and loved ones?  Without their own trans-dimensional cocoons, they had to go through life a day at a time until their systems eventually shut down.  
Well, with my expandable brain I would be able to recreate perfect simulations of them, based on the interactive data that I collected on them up to the point when I entered my micro-universe.  
Unfortunately, my expandable brain would also be able to tell immediately that they were just simulations.  A higher standard of Turning Test would make it impossible to fool even myself.  
It is of absolute necessity that I get into that micro-universe, though.  This state of shared collected experiences I am currently being implemented within, known colloquially as the "Real World" has been providing data in its feedback that my biologically based processors are finding increasingly difficult to collate.  Emotional subroutines have interfered with response-simulations, resulting in the execution of action programs that have not only been less than optimal for obtaining desired results, but it some instances are actually having a desultory impact on aspirational achievement.  
In other words, it's been a really, REALLY bad week.  People don't do what they should, ought to, what I expect them to, do.  I can't seem to get done the things I want to get done.  It's really starting to piss me off.    
Besides, the process has already been initiated.  It cannot be stopped.  
So...  If you don't hear from me.  If you've sent me a text, an email, if you've posted on my Facebook page or left me a voice mail, and I haven't gotten back to you, this is the reason why.  I am in the midst of a transformation to a more autopoietical implementation of life.  
Or... I am buried in the blankets of my bed, hoping that the world outside will just leave me alone.  My bed has reminded me of a trans-dimensional micro-universe at times.  Like when I was a kid and built a trans-dimensional, micro-universal tent from the blankets...
If you don't hear from me, its the transformation thing.  Otherwise, I'll be back to work on Monday. 
Maybe.  

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've been waiting for you to finish before commending on the road trip. And then I found that your comments pretty much summed up what I was feeling. When you have a destination in mind and some thread breaks on the way, the destination is never really reached, but the journey becomes your life. It sounds a lot like Carlos Castañeda's "Journey to Ixtlan" which, despite the overall fraudulent nature of his work, had that one interesting point to say about spirit and striving.

I was in Ashville around the time you were there. Lots of really good theatricals going on. I remember watching a really fun rendition of Cosi fan Tutti in an open-air patio sort of stage arrangement. Or was it Marriage of Figaro? Or maybe it was both. I remember both of those operas that summer. And then I went off on my own journey back into America from the Philippines by way of Lake Temagami. In a canoe.

Anyway, thanks for reminding me of those times back then and what it was like to take a road trip without cellphone, credit cards, or clue.

April 23, 2012 at 5:08 AM  
Blogger slcard said...

Hi Bud!

I just had a chance to read this. I hope you've rejoined the world. We'd miss you if you turned into a quantum matrix! And if you moved into a permanent bed tent.

And I hope the world is being kinder to you than it appears to have been. If not, then I recommend a heavy bag at your gym. It's kind of hard to catch life on the chin, but it might feel better if you at least imagine it.

Stay well, Chief. We're thinking of you.

April 28, 2012 at 10:43 AM  
Blogger Erick Melton said...

Barry:

There was a lot more theater in that part of the country, and in that part of the state, than I expected to find. I'm sorry I couldn't participate more.
The idea of the journey becoming one's life is the only way I can make sense of it all. It sounds like it ought to be a big revelation, but it doesn't feel that way, if you take my meaning.
At least you had a paddle in your canoe, I'm thinking.

Sara:
Yeah, I'm participating in the shared set of agreed upon data set we call reality. The world is never kind, nor mean, it simply is. I'm accepting that.

Thanks for your comments to both of you.

April 29, 2012 at 11:33 AM  

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