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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: FRESH START (01/05/17)
Caitlyn was only 115. With modern medicine, she would have another twenty years or more, if not for that unfortunate hovercar accident last month. She had lost both of her legs when her vehicle had been shredded due to another car's computer malfunction.

Now she had to make a choice, live with the disability, get bionic legs, or use the relatively new technology of creating a new body and transferring her mind into it. Her friend Ronnie had done so recently, when a disease had ravaged his body at age 100, after a half century in the service, meeting up with non-humans and their germs. Now Ronnie had his twenty-five-year-old body back, young and strong, with a whole new life ahead of him. Caitlyn thought about how it would feel to experience life’s joys again as a young woman. Perhaps she and Ronnie could enjoy a century or two together.

However, did she really want to experience all of life’s joys again? And what of her daughter? Caitlyn had always stressed that the physical was not an important consideration. Wouldn’t that choice make her seem hypocritical?

“Well,“ she drawled, “So what if she does think that of me. It is my life.” She looked at the bioscanner by her hospital bed and saw she didn’t have much time to decide. She summoned the nurse and instructed her to contact the Second Life Clinic, the finest one in her area.

The nurse, apparently a relic who still held on to religion in this modern world, tried to talk her out of it saying, “You’d be committing the sin of murder when you transfer your brain in to that poor clone’s body.”

“It would be my body, and I have the right to do what I want with my body. Leave your moralizing at home, if you please, and make the arrangements.”

The nurse grimaced, nodded curtly, spun on her heel, and left the room.

In less than two weeks, the new body had been accelerated from embryo to young adulthood. It just remained to hook her and her new body to the transference equipment. The clone, the doctor at the clinic explained, had been kept in a sensory deprivation tank so it would not have any experiences, and was sedated so it would have no memory of the procedure.

She gazed at her new body, a mere meter away, marveling at the smooth skin, long red hair, and clear green eyes. How different she’d look than this shriveled, white haired, lens-wearing husk she’d be leaving behind. The clinic’s lawyers had done a fine job adjusting her identification to match her new look.

“Now,” the supervising doctor said in his imperious voice, “You know that there will be a period of therapy as your mind adjusts to a youthful form again?”

Caitlyn squinted at the middle-aged man and snapped, “I read and authorized all the papers. Let’s get going, so I can start living again.”

He shrugged, and placed a crown of wires on Caitlyn’s scalp, which had several spots shaved to accommodate the wires boring into her brain. A switch was thrown, and she heard a low hum. Another was thrown, and Caitlyn’s awareness faded. When she could open her eyes, the first thing she saw was the older woman she had been.

Recoiling, she spat in the higher soprano voice she’d enjoyed as a younger woman, “Eww, get that thing away from me! I’m not her anymore.”

Attendants placed the shell Caitlyn had vacated into a plain zippered bag and wheeled it away to join other medical waste. Caitlyn shrugged off a brief wave of ambivalence.

After her three weeks in therapy, she was allowed to go home in a new hovercar. When she arrived, she found several notices in her inbox. The first was from her daughter, Molly, the mother of her only grandson. It read: “Mother, I guess you did what you thought was right for you. With my own grandson due in a few weeks, I don’t want to confuse him with his great-grandmother looking younger than his grandmother, so I am disowning you. You will have no further contact with my family. Goodbye, Mother. I hope you are happy with your 'fresh start' in life.”

"Well, I still have Ronnie." They’d kept in touch as she commenced her new life. Perhaps they could start a second family... But it still wouldn’t be Molly, her grandson, and soon-to-be great-grandson.

**********************************

Authors note: "It is appointed once for man to die,..." Hebrews 9:27a ESV
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Member Comments
Member
Date
C D Swanson 
01/15/17
A very different approach to the topic! I'm not a Sci-Fi fan, I think this may fall under that genre, but I did enjoy this story.

Well done,

God Bless~
Holly Westefeld
02/16/17
You do an awesome job of delving in to moral considerations of technology, both that already in use, and that which may yet be. A most unique take on the topic.