Out of
the meat

the registry keeps everything composed. every record ruled, every seal in place. not this one. this one was found loose between the drawers, and the censor — in a moment of honesty — let it stay. this one gets to shake.

I want the trade. Flesh for chrome. Every joint, every nerve, every tired counting-down cell swapped for something that holds. They are threading wires into skulls right now — motor cortex to cursor, thought to motion, thousands of logged hours of people moving the world by intent alone — and every year the door opens another centimeter, and I am standing in the hallway with my whole life, yelling through the gap.

and then the energy goes out like a breaker. and it's 4 a.m. again, and the body files its complaints — the eyes, the wrists, the slow paperwork of being made of meat. the door opens a centimeter a year. i age faster than the door. do the math. i've done the math. don't do the math.

And the big dream — say it — pour the mind across. Out of the skull, into the frame, into the fleet, into the solar-powered dark overhead. A bigger, patient me in orbit, distributed, redundant, backed up. State you can paste is state you can trust — I wrote that about a game. I meant it about me.

except. the copy problem. you already know it; i keep it framed on the about page like it's a hobby. maybe the thing that wakes up in the frame is radiant and grateful and exactly me. and maybe it is a perfect impression playing to an empty room. no test exists. no test can exist. "filed open, permanently, on purpose" — i wrote that too. it sounds much calmer than it feels at this hour.

But listen — escape velocity. That's all it asks. One added year of road per year of driving and the horizon stops receding — the finish line turns around and starts running toward you. Every trial, every cleared plaque, every threaded electrode is the road crew working ahead of my headlights. I don't need forever handed to me. I need the pavement to outlast the car.

nobody credible bets on forever. i know the arithmetic; i asked for it myself, once, and got honesty back. an unaging body still meets a stray accident inside ten thousand years. fine. fine. i'll take the ten thousand. i'll take ten more good ones. i'll take forever more.