1
Oh look, it opens up!
Hello Emily.
Hiiiii.
One day, when you are
old enough, you will be
impregnated with a perfect
clone of yourself.
You will later upload all of your
memories into this healthy new body.
One day long after that, you will
repeat this process all over again.
Through this cloning process, Emily,
you will hope to live forever.
I had lunch today!
I am a third generation Emily,
contacting you from 227
years into your future
and I would like you to know
that everything is going well
in the transfer and
cloning process,
with very few signs of
mentl detariaration.
Is that Grandma?
No Emily, I am not your grandmother.
In a sense, you are mine. I am Emily.
Emily.
For those who cannot afford
the cloning process,
many of our elderly undergo a full
digital transfer of consciousness,
where they can experience a safe,
extended lifespan of hundreds of years.
Our grandfather's digital consciousness
currently resides in this cube,
where I upload the latest films and
books for him to enjoy every week.
Grandpa!
We are also able to download
correspondence from him.
Over 1,000 letters were received
during his first hour in storage,
as this was approximately 4
years time inside the cube.
I will read one of his
letters to you now.
Oh. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
Oh my God.
Holy mother of God.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh God.
For end-of-life procedures for our less
affluent citizens in the lower classes,
the face of a deceased loved one
can be peeled off, preserved,
and stretched over the head of
a simple animatronic robot,
so they can still be a
part of someone's life.
Our view-screens allow us to
witness any event in history by
reordering the light impressions
recorded on the subatomic particles
that are in constant chaos all around us.
It is how I am watching you now, Emily.
It is how we watch everything in your time.
Our more recent history is
often just comprised of images of
other people watching view-screens.
Do you like my cars?
How I'm contacting you today though, Emily,
is through experimental time travel.
Time travel for physical beings is a much more
difficult process than sending a message.
If the position of the orbiting
earth is not accurately calculated,
a person can be sent
off the planet.
Many of our brave test clones are also still
regularly crushed beneath the ground,
Or accidentally deposited hundreds
of thousands of years into the past.
Time travel is very often unpredictable,
and still extremely dangerous.
Emily, I shall now use time travel to
bring you to my current location in time.
Wha?
Hey!
Butterflies!
Oh! I saw some pink ones!
The people of your time were engaged
with something called the Internet.
Welcome, Emily, to the Outernet.
We are now connected
through a neural network.
Green
Blue...
Some lines are coming out.
Yes, Emily Prime, to the people of your
time, our technology must seem like magic.
Ooh!
And brown And brown and green and blue
and green Thats all the colors I got.
For all of its magic, the
Outernet can be a sad place.
Many lonely people from the lower classes
have disappeared into its safe infinity
to be never heard from again.
Look! I drawed
a triangle!
I drew a snake boy.
But some days you have
to not make a snake boy.
Because yesterday I didnt see
any snake boy but you made one.
Yes.
Can I do your other
Golden round things?
I have no idea what youre talking about.
Wiggle wiggle wiggle!
OK.
I have many memories that I would
like to share with you now, Emily.
We can go visit them together,
like seeing pictures in a book.
Please follow me
into the window.
Circle!
When I was your age,
there was a controversial new
exhibit in the modern art museum.
An artist placed a clone on
display in a stasis tube.
A child without a brain that the public
could watch grow old in real time.
Can you smell the floor polish?
The museums antiseptic but musty odor
of countless generations in passing.
What was his name?
Museum visitors nicknamed the body David,
and it became a popular attraction.
Regular visitors ate
lunch in his wing.
Classrooms of children came
to learn about anatomy.
People who'd speak quietly
to him in the night.
People who'd pay him a visit whenever
they found themselves back in the city
and remembered he was there.
It has a new one, it says its old.
Yes. David grows older and older until
he dies at the age of seventy two.
He is quietly removed from
display without publicity,
as per the artist's
original instructions.
He is mourned and deeply
missed throughout the city.
I can still remember its eyes...
- its blinking eyes.
- Eyeees.
Theres something
in my museum...
and there's... they dont move...
And I hear somebody talking a lot.
Yes. That is the memory
I just shared with you.
Because I have brought you inside of it, you
are now mistaking the memory for your own.
Okay.
We mustnt linger. It is easy
to get lost in memories.
My first job was supervising robots on
the moon. Are you familiar with robots?
Yes, I always like robots. I have
a red robot and a pink robot.
I enjoyed working with them.
I enjoyed the solitude.
The robots are
solar powered, and
must always be kept on the light
side of the moons surface.
To motivate them to constantly
move within the drifting sunlight,
I programmed them to fear death and
what lies on the dark side of the moon.
Its getting dark outside!
It was here, on the moon, that
I fell in love with a rock.
I did not understand my mental and
emotional shortcomings at the time
and only knew that I found this
rock to be immensely attractive.
It was sparkly.
The economy on the lunar surface
went through a recession
and I was sent home
after six cycles.
My rock and I were separated.
But the robots were too
expensive to remove.
To this day, they are in perpetual
movement across the sunlight.
Oh Look, its a little moon!
With no work to do, no more tasks to accomplish,
still living in constant fear of death,
and occasionally sending
us depressed poetry.
I will read one of their
poems to you now, Emily.
"The light is the life. Robot must move.
Move, robot, move. But why?
Move, move, move. Robot.
Forever move."
I was relocated to supervise the
construction robots on the boundary
of the Keeowah, in deep space.
Keeowah!
It was there that I fell
in love with a fuel pump.
This part of my life continued to develop, and
it was much more satisfying than the rock.
In one of the tropical moon caves,
I found an abandoned nest of eggs.
Its purple!
You open the lids like
that and it comes off.
What is that?
A monster.
Thats his mouth? No,
thats his mouth.
Stop it you silly thing!
I named it Simon.
Simon!
Yes. Again you think you remember
because you are experiencing a memory
from my point of view.
Yeah.
Simon grew up and followed me around for
7 years, saying unintelligible things.
We fell in love.
For vacations, we sailed
in balloons on Mars.
Hes flying!
But I missed my home.
I missed something deeper.
Did you miss me?
Yes.
At birth, I had inherited from you the
memory of myself meeting you right now.
What?
I made a decision to be reassigned to
Earth and spend more time with people.
These became the happiest
years of my life.
But Simon was inconsolable.
For many years, memories could
only be harvested from the dead.
The images were fished out blindly from random
clusters of neurons and looked like this.
I opened an art gallery of anonymous memories,
and it was here that I met my husband.
He was a clone as well, from the same
source as David, the boy in the tube
I felt I had known all my life.
Only now his beautiful sparkly eyes
were lit with the mind of his Prime:
a David from over 400 years ago.
As an older clone, he showed
many signs of deterioration.
But I loved him, as
though we were originals.
He died suddenly, and Davids
line was permanently ended.
That is the thing about
the present, Emily Prime.
You only appreciate it
when it is the past.
I harvested his memories and
they still bring me happiness.
This is one my favorite of his
memories and I cannot explain why.
He is descending a staircase and sees
a large plant blowing in the wind.
Flopping its fronds together
in a sort of plant applause.
I have viewed this
memory over 6,000 times.
You missed him.
I do not have the mental or emotional
capacity to deal with his loss.
But sometimes, I sit in a chair late
at night and quietly feel very bad.
When the night is at its most
quiet, I can hear death.
I am very proud of my sadness
because it means I am more alive.
I no longer fall in
love with rocks.
In 60 days from now, a
meteor will strike the Earth
and most everyone here
will die horribly.
Our wealthiest individuals are now uploading
their digital consciousnesses into cubes
that they are launching
into deep space.
Our lower classes are desperately
trying to escape the meteor
through discount time travel, causing
untold millions to die in orbit.
Their dead bodies burn as they return to
Earth and now light up our night sky.
Whats this up in the sky?
Dead bodies!
Look another one!
Yes. It is very pretty.
Theyre OK?
No. Theyre all dead.
Ill count them!
- One, Two, Three...
- We are all doomed, Emily Prime.
Even those on the
interplanetary ports.
They are rumored to be burying the clones
of world leaders beneath the Earth.
Emily Prime, there is another
reason I have contacted you today.
You retain an early memory that I have
forgotten that was very important to me.
I wish to retrieve it
from you before I die.
I shall extract this
memory from you now.
This is... This is me
And mommy.
This is me and mommy walking.
This is me and mommy walking.
A rainbow!
Thank you, Emily. This will bring
me great comfort in the days ahead.
You missed it. I saw it.
You missed it.
This is your future, Emily Prime. It is
sometimes a sad life and it is a long life.
You will feel a deep longing for
something you cannot quite remember.
It will be a beautiful visit.
And then we shall share the same
fate as the rest of the human race:
dying horribly.
The advice is give you now is the
advice I remember receiving from myself
at your age in this moment, so I cannot be
certain where it actually originated from:
Do not lose time on daily trivialities.
Do not dwell on petty detail.
For all of these things melt away and drift
apart within the obscure traffic of time.
Live well and live broadly.
You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of
all of the dead.
OK!
Thank you, Emily Prime.
It has been an honor to meet you and a joy to
emerge from your 3rd generation birth canal.
I shall now return you to your home and
current time. I will not contact you again.
Goodbye.
Aah!
What a happy day it is!
Daffodil, Daffodil, Daffodil
Oh look at these pretty colors!
I can see the sun is still there!
The rain's still there
and the rainbow's still there.
But the rain is still there,
and it didn't go away.