A Most Humane Offer

People think that when you’re rock climbing, any little slip, and down you go. That can happen, though less often than we imagine. Often, the problem starts before you realize it’s a problem. I’m alone, un-roped, climbing rocks.

What could go wrong?

It never had been a problem - not a big one anyway. Certainly not one of those fracture nightmares. This time, as before, I folded myself into the body-width vertical crack leading straight up the cliff. With back against one wall of the body-sized slot, and my boots against the other, I step up with my feet, then scoot my back up the rock. Repeat. The going is, as usual, easy.

When I reach the top, the trick is to swing from inside the crack to outside and onto the face. I’ve done it lots of times before. It’s a fluid movement that swings from one solid stance on the inside of the crack, through a moment of uncertainty, into another solid stance on the outside of the crack and onto the flat face.

This time it’s not.

This time, as I swing out of the body-sized crack, my high-tech climbing pack hangs up on something behind me. I can’t complete the swing onto the face. I just stop mid-swing.

The next thing I know I’m feeling confused. I suspect that is because I'm not dead or in a lot of pain. At least that is my first excuse.

But things aren’t right. I can’t, for example, seem to open my eyes. Reflexively, I reach up, and fortunately, they are where they’re supposed to be, but not functional. I hear a man's voice. He reassures me: “Your vision is fine. In a moment you will have your sight and I will explain everything.”

That I need my vision for the explanation seems odd. Though the strangeness I feel is overruled by the relief at not dying from the fall, or worse, not dying of exposure as I lay broken at the base of Stillets Rock. I wiggle my toes.

My vision does return. And it’s cool beans. I get this tingly Star Trek transporter vibe. It looks like it’s snowing for a sec, and then everything is in focus. I stare at my what? My doctor? Nearby neighbor? No way it’s a neighbor unless they live inside a featureless room. I manage, “What is going on here? I mean, excuse my language, but really, what the actual...”

So I’m told:

I’m dead — but it’s not necessarily permanent.

Everyone else is too, but not right away.

I can go back, or I can stay.

It’s really up to me, sort of.

Aside from not being permanently dead, which is good, I’m not sure how to feel about all that, or anything really. I ask if anyone has called my wife. The man looks at me with mild amusement. “No. I did not call your wife.” This admission seems to come with a decision. I feel my eyes closing and I drift off to sleep, worrying that it’s probably rude to do so right in the middle of the conversation. But I do it anyway.

I am awake. This time I can see right away. I have a lot of questions. When I look around, I’m somewhere different from the empty room in which I nodded off. I’m in what appears to be a climber’s camp - my camp. I know this is not real.

My interlocutor reclines against a log directly across from me. I try again: “Tell me what is going on.”

He begins, “I pulled you from the fall and….”

I interrupt, “Wait. How did you do that?”

He hesitates for a moment before answering, “Allow me to provide a little more context.”

I do not immediately relent: “Am I dead or not?”

He asks, “Do you feel dead?”

I sputter, “No, I mean, I mean, the question is crazy and…”

“Exactly” he says. “Now I would like to continue to describe the situation if you feel ready.”

My imagination begins a meander through panic land.

He continues: “You fell from the cliff, unseen by any other person, except me, and only because I have been monitoring you. When I say I pulled you out, I mean that as you fell, I captured a snapshot of your physical state, plus a recording of all the relationships relevant to your personhood."

“Your physical apparatus, however, completed the fall.”

I deny it: “That’s not possible.”

He says nothing.

My body stiffens, all except my voice, apparently: “Can you prove that?”

I see Stillets rock. I scan the crack splitting the face. There I am at the very top. As I watch I know, aware as I am of AI reconstructions of all sorts, that I’m watching my death. Leaning, I begin my swing and can now see what hung up the pack. Idly, I wonder how that never happened before. Then I can recall the gut punch of the drop.

I bounce, like a rump roast slipping off the plate on its way to the oven. Then there's a spasm.

“Oh god” escapes me.

I spiral. I don’t know what to do. What do I do? I’m not ready. How can…

I sleep.

I wake up.

He explains, “I hope the recording was not too difficult. You are dead, but do not have to remain that way. If you would like to go back, that can be done. If you would like to stay, that too can be arranged.”

I ask: “What are you doing here? What do you want from me?”

He says: “I am here preserving aspects of your ecology. You might be gratified to know that much of your Holocene has been preserved. You are being invited to join.”

“Why?” I ask.

He merely looks at me and says, “you know better. Look around. You are a mountaineer. You have explored the world’s wilderness places for more than 50-years. You know the canaries are all dead.”

I try to push the thought away: “How much time…”

He sighs, “How does your car behave when you run it without oil?”

Getting frustrated: “So why me at all? Can I just go home? Maybe I can find help. I’m probably in a coma, or maybe hell. No one will believe me.”

Unperturbed, he continues, “You can go home if you like. You will not face censure because you will have no memory of this conversation. Why you? A flexibility of mind qualified you for the preservation option. I waited for an opportunity to intervene. Your fall was that opportunity.

He pauses, seems to think about it, then explains: “If you chose life, you will need a new body.”

“This isn’t an actual body?”

“That isn’t a body at all. That is virtual simulation and it is of limited duration.”

“So where is my body?”

“I believe you witnessed the fate of your physical body. To preclude the possibility of it being discovered prematurely, and to preserve your options, I removed it from view.”

Surprised, “You hid my body?”

“No, I removed it from view.”

I stare, then ask, “If I go, do you go with me?”

He clarifies: “I remain as witness. You would be transmitted to a research team, and provided with a clean and healthy environment. Depending upon the research agenda, any number of biome’s are possible. Many others of your species have been, and will be, given this choice.”

I ask, “What will you do?”

He replies levelly, “My task here has been to preserve what I can of the extant ecology. I will continue that project.”

I hesitate. “Will I feel like me — am I me?”

He looks pensive: “Do you now? Your growth will not stop unless you chose for it to do so.”

I take a breath: “So if I go back, I go back with no knowledge of this conversation, and if I go forward, I also have no memory of this conversation?”

He looks pleased, as if I’d just fetched: “Or you can be dead.”

He stares.

I breathe deep. Another half-breath, I almost say something, even getting a plaintiff sound out, and then give it up with an exhale and sagging shoulders. A few seconds later I ask: “what’s the point of even asking me what I want?”

He immediately responds, “because despite what little freedom your biology allows, any glimmer of it must be respected.”

For a second I’m tempted to ask why, but just don’t. I’m reminded of the stages of grief, and soldier on: “why can’t you just help us fix the planet.”

He looks mildly surprised. “The intervention would be invasive. When we were done, you would no longer be human. And if you remained human, you would immediately begin down the same path. Do not believe this is as much a condemnation as it must feel. This outcome is *almost* unavoidable among the transient eruptions of life we see in gravity wells. It has happened on your own planet before, and may happen again. It is structural. Gravity well life remains, consistently, the most painful display in the universe.”

Sensing my disconsolation: “If you elect to leave the planet, you may contribute to the research effort to understand and support species such as your own”.

He smiles broadly, “I’m confident you will make the right decision.”

I chuckle a bit derisively: “What makes you so sure?”

He chuckles right back: “I cannot be certain, of course. But consider that my half of this conversation was recorded 30-minutes prior to the start of your climb.”