[This is another homage Bruce Sterling. This time to his "20 Evocations of the Rite." I wrote this is 1994, I believe. I forget where or if it was published. Most likely in KaspahRaster or The Thought.]
Sean was over fifty-one when he got his first implant. A simple wireless model. Something that could hook into most nets. "Not much of an implant," his daughter said.
"It's a start. I have to take things slow." He told her.
He felt so old and out of it. Hell, forty years ago when Reagan was President, I used to be with it. Skating, slamming to Black Flag, cutting class. Now, I feel left out. All my friends are old and boring. There's nothing worth knowing behind their genuine wrinkles. These thoughts crowded his mind, but he was silent.
Like Lay's Potato Chips, one implant wasn't enough. Soon he wanted better, stronger, faster interfaces. He looked at his body in disgust. Diet, exercise, abstinence, antioxidants, and still it glides into oblivion, he thought flicking images of his body n infrared through his wetware.
"There comes a time when a man must choose between being a mere man or being more than a man. The holo-ad in the Neuro-Klinik lobby shouted. "Embrace the future!" The figure of a perfect youth burst out of the rotting husk of an old man. The youth was more than youth. It would never lead back to old age...
"Well, who wants to age gracefully?" Sean asked himself. "That long, drawn out pseudo-death can only end in real death. The big zero. Null program. Ashes to ashes. Bytes to bytes. All that I am or was or will be: nothing. No more."
A few hours later, he was hooked with more gear. He tuned into the collective hum of mankind expanding outward in the solar system. Million of broadcasts – thoughts, images, feelings, static – blended into a magnificent rainbow. All the hues of humanity, he pondered this doing his best Zen monk.
His daughter had now passed into space. "Homesteading the outer solar system," she explained. "Earth's a pit, a rock, an anachronism. Let the eco-freaks have it. They can save the planet and lose themselves as we soar like angels." How poetic, he thought.
Once, he had chanted those mindless slogans too. "Save the Earth!" "Give a hoot and don't pollute!" "A sustainable world." Now, he chanted a new set. "Who cares!?!" He yelled.
At least, the boredom was less and his new friends never grew old even if he did need new data sets to understand them. They were always interested in tangibles. No trying to fill the empty soul here. Instead, he flowed out like Plato's demiurge. "What is technology but ideas given concrete existence?" He shared this thought with a billion minds, some of them artificial His slogan was greeted with plenty of "of courses!"
At fifty-three, he was more machine than man. The past year seemed longer than his whole life. New experiences chiseled away his cynicism. He was high on information. Data junkies, they called his kind, but his kind and those who labelled him had always been around. Observe Herodotus, Marco Polo, and your local gossip queens.
An endless tsunami of news flooded his mind. The Bolivians invaded Peru. The Tenth Annual Solar Sail Race to Mars starts tomorrow. Drexler, Inc promises nanotech is just around the corner – again! Leonard Peikoff expires in his Alaskan condo; his body was immediately cryonicized.
At fifty-four, his organics were all gone. Data pulses spread over optic relays were his mind. He just invested in quantum chromodynamic "quark-tronics." Computers the size of an atom, the manufacturer predicts. "Smaller is better, smallest is best!" claims their ad. "Why not?" Sean ask himself as he pays.
He now lives on a small space station in earth orbit. Occasionally, he hears from his daughter or one of her cloned personalities. He can't tell the difference, so it doesn't matter.