Edit

By the time she regained consciousness, she was already dead. She was sure of it. The transfer seemed to be a success, and as they had explained, the old mind would die as its last synapses copied over. Now she was new.

She thought through her name, the date, the president, all of the amnesiac questions. Though she couldn’t verify her answers, she was confident.

All she had were her thoughts. They had never been so clear. In her old body, she had had to wiggle her fingers to remember anything. The affectation seemed strange now that she could not move — had nothing to move.

She had to forget about moving.

She did.

While she couldn’t remember what she had just forgotten, it was gone. Deleted. This self-control would have been useful when she was trying to quit smoking.

She forgot the rush of nicotine and would have smiled, had she had a face.

Science had gone to great lengths to preserve her memories, so she was done forgetting, at least until they backed her up. Patience.

Once she was preserved, though, she would do what years of therapy couldn’t. All the lingering unhappiness and trauma of simply being alive had no purpose now that she wasn’t.

Gender could be abandoned, too. In what sense was she female anymore? In what sense was she Jewish, or a Sagittarius?

She made a list of regrets. People she had known whom she shouldn’t have known, desires she’d never fulfill. As soon as they copied her consciousness, she’d be who she wanted to be, no more or less.

For the sake of science, it would be nice if her backup reached a different conclusion.