[ WP ] Respawn technology exists . You are beta testing it . Each time you come back to life you are a little different than your previous self .

The changes were subtle, at least at first. I no longer liked the flavor of pineapple, but I was suddenly all for mushrooms. Nothing really alarming. I mean, taste changes, you know? Like how you used to hate anything that was n't colorful or dinosaur shaped as a kid, but once you became an adult, you realized just how many delicious flavors you had been missing out on. No biggie. Just little changes. But you get enough of those, and suddenly those little problems add up into one big clusterfuck of a problem where you're left in this existential crisis over whether or not you're still *you*. 
 
 But I'm getting ahead of myself. 
 
 It was a particularly cloudy Sunday morning when we first heard about it. The kids were being kids -- playing with their cars and dolls one minute, and engaging in petty arguments the next. My wife, having offered to cook, was preparing breakfast over the stove, and my stomach growled in anticipation at the scent of freshly cooked bacon and eggs. I, myself, was flipping through channel after channel in search of something interesting to watch. As of late, nothing held my interest any more. The only things that really brought me joy were my wife and children, but even that was sometimes... lacking. Life had just... lost it's luster, I guess. 
 
 My doctors told me I was depressed. 
 
 But, despite this, I kept up my mask. At least for the kids, anyway. My wife had this uncanny ability to see right through it. Came with knowing each other for so long, I suppose. She always knew when I was having a particularly rough day, and she tried her best to make up for it. Which was why she was in the kitchen, trying her damnedest to at least give me something to be happy about, even if it was something as small as breakfast. It was a large part of the reason I loved her. No matter what was going on with her, she always made sure to put others before herself. And though it was a little frustrating sometimes to get her to speak her mind and actually allow herself to let someone else take care of her, I was always grateful for her support. 
 
 Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Like I said, cloudy Sunday morning with the smell of bacon and blah blah blah. That's not what's important. What is important, however, is what I happened to see on the TV when I finally decided to land on the local news station. At first, it was the usual bullshit. The Democrats are doing this, and the Republicans are doing that, and, oh, did you hear about this adorable puppy from the Internet? Whatever. Bullshit, like I said. But then, they actually decided to report on something newsworthy -- shocking, I know. Apparently, doctors and scientists had a recent breakthrough in medical technology. You see, they came up with this new device that, allegedly, allowed someone to'respawn' -- is that the right word? Always seemed a little gamer-y -- after death. 
 
 My eyebrows furrowed at this. What did they mean,'respawn'? I mean, you die, and you're, well, *dead*. That's how it works. Er, well, *worked*, anyway. So, like any good viewer who was hooked on the story, I kept watching. It was said that, thanks to the knowledge they had gained from cloning, they could recreate your body from nothing more than a few cells. Of course, this brought up the issue of what happened to your consciousness. I mean, you can clone yourself right now, but you're still in your body. They might talk like you, act like you, and do everything else like you, but you're still right there inside you own head. They're just a copy. At least you'd hope anyway... I do n't know, it's all just confusing as shit. Point is, you die and they make a perfect copy of you, but that's all it really is, a *copy*. It's not the original you. But, to circumvent this, they had this little chip they'd implant in your brain that somehow captured what made you you, so that they could remove it from your dead body and implant it in your new one. 
 
 Though my brain was reeling from the information, and a part of me knew that it had to be too good to be true, a larger part of me felt hope. You see, there was a pretty big reason I was depressed. Not two months before this mind-reeling news, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. There was nothing my doctors could do for me, other than to prescribe me medication to make me as comfortable as I possibly could be before the time came. 
 
 I was dying. 
 
 The kids were n't really sure of what exactly was happening to their mom, but they knew that I was sick and that God was going to call me back to heaven soon. My wife and I were having difficulty expressing to them just what exactly that meant. But for the time being, I was alright, considering. Things had n't taken a turn for the worse yet, so we were hoping that I'd be around for a while yet. But if what I was hearing on the news was true, then that meant there never had to *be* a yet. I'd live in this body for however much longer it had left before I'd just pop back into another one, good as new. I would n't have to leave anyone behind. 
 
 Unbeknownst to be, my wife had snuck up behind me to see what it was that was holding my attention so intently. When she gathered what they were talking about, I heard her gasp. Slightly startled, I turned to see that there were tears welling in her eyes, and she looked down at me with the most hopeful expression on her face that I had seen in a long, long time. 
 
 `` Alice?'' she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. 
 
 I could n't help but grin back at her before embracing her in a tight hug. `` This might be it, Mary,'' I breathed, my heart beating so hard against my ribs that I was afraid it might burst out. `` Maybe God is n't quite ready for me yet.'' 
 
 Of course, while the news was shocking and we were more than happy to hear it, there was a catch -- surprise, surprise. It was a rather new procedure, and, like any of them, it needed to be tested before it could be released to the entire public. And, while I was a little scared of what this might mean for me, I knew that I either had to try this and hope for the best, or I would just sit on my ass for the rest of my days with no hope of survival. My wife seemed to share a similar sentiment, and it was n't long before we had me signed up for the program. 
 
 The implantation of the chip was... excruciating, to say the least. I was under for the initial surgery, but the pain that followed the next few days was unlike any other I had *ever* experienced. After that, they took samples of my blood and various cell samples from varying regions of my body. When I brought up my concern with the cancer reappearing, they waved it off with a reassuring smile. 
 
 `` Do n't worry, Mrs. Knight; you're in more than capable hands.'' 
 
 It was n't until a year later that my body finally succumbed to the cancer. Though my family knew of the `` Phoenix Project'' -- as the doctors had taken to calling it -- it was understandable that they were fearful of the outcome of my... reincarnation. And in the end, they were right to be. 
 
 None of it turned out how it should have. 
 
 But, the first time I died, things went swimmingly. The chip was inserted into my new body, and within a matter of days, I was back. My wife and children were overjoyed to see me again, and life went back to normal. We spent a lot of time together in the following months, from going on road trips to sitting down every so often to play Minecraft as a family. And though I enjoyed playing a video game together with everyone, I felt that the game had lost a lot of the enjoyment it once held for me. But it was fun for everyone else, so I bore through it, though I was certain I might just go insane if I had to build another castle. 
 
 The second time I died came rather unexpectedly. I was on my way home from a routine check up at the testing facility when another car suddenly pulled out in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, but since it was winter and the season was notorious for layering the roads with black ice, I spun out of control and flipped my car into a ditch. I was told that I broke my neck and died upon impact. 
 
 I came to in a manner much the same as the first time. Life, as it had before, went back to some semblance of normal. But now, I noticed, I discovered certain foods that I had once loved tasted no better than as if someone had shoved a handful of dirt into my mouth. But it was n't really a big issue. Like I said when I first started this story, tastes change over time. I was n't really concerned. 
 
 What was concerning, however, was how I seemed to be a lot more... accident prone than what should have been normal for the average person. It would n't be until later on, during the huge scandal of this entire project, that I would learn that the chip implanted in my brain was more than just something to store my personality. 
 
 As time went on, it seemed a little strange to me just how many accidents I managed to find myself in. And later yet did I find that it was n't *other* people causing them, it was *me*. A little twitch to my left, a little stumble near a ledge, the carelessness of my actions... Something inside of me seemed to have a death wish. 
 
 ( Continued below )
