Weekly Writing – December 30 2023

Some call it the logical conclusion of marriage. Some call it an abomination, but then, they’re probably the same sort of people who would have said that about the horseless carriage.
Some try not to talk or think about it too much at all. Uploading your own mind to thoroughly-tested, self-repairing, practically immortal hardware is one thing. Half the people walking the street at least have a backup copy knocking around somewhere.
But merging your mind with someone else’s? Making, or becoming, something new in the crucible of the machine? That’s not immortality. That’s not preserving what is. That’s got to be something like death, even if the ones who’ve done it all say they’re rapturously happy about the outcome.
How couldn’t it be death? What happens if something about the two of you is just too different? If you love big band music and the sound of a trombone sends them into paroxysms of violence? Does the machine roll a die to decide who gets to keep that tiny part of themselves? Or does it average them out, and then neither of you are who you were anymore? What about the more important things? Who wants to trade or split the difference about their opinion on, I don’t know, equal rights or an afterlife not spent in a server bank?
If they all say they’re happy, who’s to say that isn’t because the machine just kept whatever parts of them most likely would be?