[ WP ] In the future , every human born lives for exactly 1 billion heartbeats . Some go to extreme lengths to keep their heart rate low .

Less than thirty years, maybe forty with a pacemaker installed at fifteen years, and only if you starve yourself, only if you do nothing worth living for, nothing to elevate your goddamn rate... 
 
 The tick, tick of the sandman has focused all of our minds. 
 
 Every bloody, unnatural, sickening loophole has been tried. But the only escape is to transcend death and now we are so very close. 
 
 I can see my body, the bio clock implanted in my arm, counting up ever so slowly. My sense of time here is fast. Everything in the real world is soothingly slow, especially the clock I am watching, The same clock that I have been watching for twenty years with dread. I ca n't take my eyes off of it. 
 
 999,999,999. 
 
 Just one to go. Here that seems like thirty seconds. I look into my green eyes, specks of brown. They will cloud over soon. The old me has been unconscious for a few hundred ticks. 
 
 I am a disembodied consciousness. This feels real. My new body in the `` real'' world is a glorified industrial robot. I can move and look at things, speak with people, although that is painfully slow. In here I have a virtual body, and I live in a virtual world, but I am alone. 
 
 My job now is to convince them that I am here, so that more will come. I wish that I had a decent real world body. 
 
 I slow my sense of time down, so that I can communicate with them. 
 
 I watch my old eyes cloud over, in real time now. With my metal hand I gently touch the eyelids and move them over the dead eyes. 
 
 They all look at me. I see joy, hope and fear. 
 
 `` I am here now,'' I tell them. `` This body is a fixer upper, but I'm in here.'' 
 
 I watch the fear evaporate, but I feel oddly detached. I want to tell them that I'm lonely in here, but that might bring the fear back, after all, coming to this place means dying in the real world. 
 
 My voice is quite good, and I spent the next hour answering questions. This would go on for a long time but I tell them that I am tired. 
 
 Only Invica remains. She touches my hand. `` I wish that I could feel that.'' I say. 
 
 She starts to cry. `` How do we make you a better body?'' she says. 
 
 `` I do n't think that is possible sweetie,'' I have a really nice virtual body in here. `` When your time comes we will be together here.'' 
 
 `` But John,'' she says, `` I did not think that was possible.'' 
 
 `` Not only is it possible, it's the only thing that makes sense,'' I say. `` People are not ready for this because it means complete detachment from the real world,'' but walking around in one of these tin cans is not living. I need you to help get me into a much bigger computer baby... Please help me?'' 
 
 
 
 
 
 

