[ WP ] Prison terms of `` life plus '' take on new meaning after transfer of consciousness to computer databanks leads to functional immortality . A moral and ethical outcry erupts after the first case in which an individual is sentenced to prison for one hundred thousand years .

Benjamin Oppenheimer was 9 years old when a chimp's consciousness was uploaded to a computer for the first time. Its name was René, named after the French Renaissance philosopher René Descartes most famous for the phrase `` I think, therefore I am''. René's neurochemical brain patterns were digitalized and transferred to a simple robot equipped with sensors for vision, hearing, and rudimentary versions of touch and smell, although its interaction with the physical world was quite limited. René had been trained to operate this robot, which essentially amounted to a screen on wheels with two claws, long before his `` demise''. He could drive around, he could interact and communicate with his caretakers, and he could play virtual games with them. 
 
 
 The technology had moved forward at an astounding pace during Ben's teenage and early adolescent years. A form of the technology was implemented with patients suffering from locked-in syndrome; people who, after suffering a stroke, had become completely paralyzed, and thus conserving only their consciousness and eye movements. They were taught to control a more advanced version of the RenéBot, allowing them to be physically present with their friends and loved ones without being confined to a bed all of the time, and to spend time with them in a virtual environment. 
 
 
 
 The greatest breakthrough came after the death of one French patient, Nathaniël Delalande, a former stockbroker who had become a successful comic book scenarist after his stroke. A back-up of Delalande's Conscientiome ( the technical term for the digital representation of `` consciousness'' ) was uploaded into the Renébot. The world was astounded when the robot version of Delalande continued to crack his signature dirty jokes and puns as if nothing had happened... except there was no longer a physical Delalande controlling him. 
 
 
 
 It was dubbed, in the words of Virtual Delalande himself, `` La René-Sans''. René referring to the robot, and `` sans'' or `` without'' to `` its one unfortunately missing appendage''. 
 
 TBC... when I find some time
