The Bridge | Bots 'R Us

Chapter 1 | Crash Landing

HILO, HAWAII
SANCTUARY #1, BACK-TRANSFER LAB
30 APRIL 634 AE (2579 AD)

Of all the transformations I've been through in my life, the most dramatic one started on a bright and muggy morning of spring, sixteen years ago in Hilo, Hawaii. It unfolded over just a few days. I almost died. Twice! And even though I'd already experienced amazing adventures, over hundreds of years, those were the most significant days of my life, by far. And they marked a turning point in the history of humankind.

There I was, tense, sitting in the low-rising Back-Transfer tub, holding my knees, examining my Andro body one last time. Soon I would inhabit that perfect organic replica of my ancient self floating beside me in a tank of amniotic fluid. My old mind would give life to this silky smooth lookalike grown to a maturity of 29 years and ten months—my age at the onset of The Bridge. Same dimples, high cheeks, freckles, olive skin, dark hair, slim and robust build, and, hopefully, same green eyes. He looked so peaceful.

Professor Ferguson, my back-transfer operator, shook me out of my daydreams, a hand on my shoulder, trying to reassure me: "Don't be nervous, Councilor! You won't find a better human operator in any of the Sanctuaries. And that technology, it's a beauty! Centuries in the making! Everything will be all-right," he said with the syrupy conviction of a snake oil salesman.

"It's not nervousness, Professor," I replied. "I haven't felt nervous for such a long time. I don't know if I could even recognize the emotion. No, it's a type of Andro anxiety I am calibrating—the kind that generates disturbing loops of subconscious scenarios. Why? I am familiar with the safety record; I have observed countless back transfers..." I was thinking out loud, trying to figure out this prescient feeling. "Gimme a GINI! I'm the one who's put the process in place! I still remember when we phased it up, making ourselves whole again on a large scale. We became 'Landers,' naming our new flesh-and-bone selves after the final stage of The Bridge."

Ferguson didn't care much about my soul-searching. He was buttering me up to be done with me fast. "I know, Sir. It's a great honor for this Sanctuary and myself to bring our First Councilor back to real life," he said with forced reverence. "Tomorrow's ceremony should be grand! Nobody served as long and as often as you have since the beginning of The Bridge. But soon, when we've all back-transferred, Landers and Originals will form one big human family, all together again!"

"One wishes!" I sighed, knowing the slim odds of bringing back the rebels in the fray. "Give me a minute before I make the jump..."

There was something else, something wrong... It couldn't be about safety; there were so many other reasons to feel paralyzed. Andros had a knack for getting caught in too many thoughts at the same time. When I left my original body behind, some 498 years ago, I also discarded the human sensations intimately tied to its biological makeup. My brain was running cycles at the idea of reconnecting with those long-forgotten emotions. You can't say you're deprived of sensorial experience when you live in a nanomech body, but it's of a different kind.

First and foremost, I had mixed feelings about the timing of this reintegration. On the one hand, it was my turn. The Lottery had said so. Like most of us, I'd grown tired of this strange condition. I didn't hate that body. Its technology was still relevant. It was my twenty-sixth transfer in almost half a millennium, and the envelope I'd stayed with the longest: 96 years! Nothing like the first one: When we started mass-production, the nanomech technology was still new, and components of that time would wear off quickly. In the early days, the skin tone was the first telltale of our artificial bodies. It lacked translucence. And it would turn dull and grayish, aging like an object, not like a being. Every day, we had to ingest large quantities of virgin base nanomechs to replace the fading, dysfunctioning ones!