A few more weeks went by. And as I mentioned earlier, on the day of my death, I wasn’t able to see the sun before we went into the lab.
We were at the final uploading session. The reason for it was that the model—what was going to be my mind, the copy of me—had to be synchronized with my memories up to the very last second. Those were my final six or seven hours. Sitting with an IV drip in my arm, on the bed that they had assigned to me, I talked at length with Sandra and with Mariano: about the past, about what we had been through together. Sandra had forgiven us without reservations. She really didn’t have a choice. I had decided to forgive her, too, and Mariano was going to be responsible for flipping the switch, or erasing the hard drive, or whatever was necessary, at the first sign of disorder or madness in the emulation that was going to be me.
We also listened to a bit of my favorite music, watched a movie, and I read to them out loud a little (not Christina Rossetti). I insisted on doing it myself. Then Yair and Monica came in with a surprise: a chocolate cake. Sandra and Mariano looked at them angrily, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat anything, but I tried anyway, and managed it. Two slices!
They left me alone to rest for a while.
When the door opened again and Sandra and Mariano came in, I saw their faces and understood.
“Is it time?”
Mariano started to stammer something out, but Sandra simply said, “It’s time, Celeste.”
I knew what was going to happen. They were going to put something in the IV drip “by mistake.” My body would die quickly and painlessly, so they said. And then all that would be left of me would be the emulation: the copy, the “other me.”
I had imagined it many nights, many days, at all hours, but it was very different to be experiencing it in the moment.
I didn’t believe in supernatural things. I’d been an atheist since junior high. I knew that there was no “spirit”: no portion of our mental processes that is independent from our bodies, no part that is capable of living on after death, and I understood that if the original me survived, even for the short time that the cancer would have granted me (in other words, if I survived: me, the person who was thinking these thoughts), there would be even more complications.
The copy had to be me. Only she could go on as Celeste. I started to weep and to shout. Again. I remember thinking why am I crying so much, goddammit. I couldn’t stop crying.
Then I had a real panic attack. Yelling, I ordered them not to go through with it. That I didn’t want to do it after all. That they should let her, or it, live: the model, the copy, whatever it was, but I told them not to do anything to me. However, I didn’t have any strength left to resist. Mariano was there until the end, holding me. Another technician came in, a man I didn’t know, or maybe he was a doctor, and either Sandra or Mariano must have given the go-ahead because he took out a syringe and injected something into the bottle connected to my vein.
At first I felt nothing. Then I started to doze off. It would have been like drowsiness except for the fact that I started to have even more trouble breathing than was usual for me. It was a slight difference, and it came on slowly. If I fell asleep soon, it wouldn’t reach the level of suffocation.
It occurred to me that they were putting me to sleep like they do to sick pets. I tried to resist, but I couldn’t do anything except imagine freeing myself from Mariano’s arms, pulling the needle out of my arm, and walking out on my own two feet even though I might fall down and die in the hallway, or somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“Celeste, honey,” Mariano whispered. “I’m right here with you, babe. I love you so much.”
I still had the electrodes on my body. Everything was recorded right up to the last moment. It was true what they had said: I felt almost nothing. Everything started to fade away. I closed my eyes and wasn’t able to open them again. I tried to hang on to the sweet taste of the chocolate cake between my teeth. Then someone kissed me. Those lips on mine were the last thing I felt.