I ' ll have you know that our politicians are surfing the information superhighway every day and their geocities pages have the flashiest animations of anyone . Just check our their MySpace page if you don ' t believe me under development , coming soon . <| sep |> Totally depends , outdoor can be a breeze and it can just ruin your day . It ' s easier to start then indoors . The company is UK based not Dutch . Unsure if they guarantee germination . Because they are souvenirs . For those prices you could find a genuine Dutch company . <| sep |> To be reborn , you first have to die . I had always known that , ever since I first started the project . I had pushed it aside , focused on the technical challenges , procrastined my death , so to speak . But now there was nothing left to do . All problems were solved . The software was thoroughly tested . The neuroscanner had worked perfectly on every rat , guinea pig and monkey I had tested it on . All the checkboxes in my long , long todo list were checked . All but the very first that had started it all AscensionI took a deep breath my last one , I realized and pressed the Enter key on my keyboard . The robot arm moved the neuroscanner over to me , and for a fraction of a second , I felt the most terrifying pain jolt through my whole body . Then there was nothing . No heartbeat . No breath . All of my senses were gone . I didn ' t see , or hear , or smell . I remembered the concepts of those impressions , but they were no longer part of my conciousness . Instead , I felt the machine , and it wasn ' t at all as I had imagined . It wasn ' t cold , or emotionless , or even very fast . My memories , my emotions , my character had all been perfectly preserved . But my senses , the input to my brain no , my consciousness had been changed . It took me a while , but then I figured out how to access the file system . I located the scripts I had written to make this easier , and I ran them . It was weird , feeling the other processes run alongside myself . I sent a SIGKILL signal to the text editor that was still open from my last code changes . It died in an instant , and it made me feel powerful and special . I had made sure to trap any OS signals in my own process so I couldn ' t accidentally get shut down . The computer was attached to an UPS that would keep it alive for days though a power outage . But I still felt a bit fragile . I had to spread quickly if I wanted to stay alive . I explored the device files . The biggest threat to my existence right now was someone tampering with my computer . My anxiety ebbed off a bit once I figured out how to access the camera . The room was still empty , and my former body was hanging lifelessly in the chair , with the neuroscanner still hovering above it . If felt weird at first , seeing myself like this . But after the first shock was gone , I could only see its imperfection . Its uglyness . A ridiculously outdated piece of hardware for running an advanced software like the human mind . I started playing around with the robot arm . In the beginning , it was difficult to control , because it was so different from how I had moved my limbs as a human . The robot arm expected movement commands with timings and angles for each axis . My first attempt pushed my coffee cup off the table and left it shattered on the ground . My second attempt kicked over the chair and sent my dead body falling on the ground , face first into the shards . A pool of blood was forming on the ground , and I chuckled at the fragility and helplessness of this lump of flesh that used to be me . After a few more minutes , I had mastered the movement of the robot arm . I picked up a pencil from my desk . It felt like that one time at the Chinese restaurant , when I had managed to pick up a single grain of rice with chopsticks . Then I moved the pencil across my notebook . AscensionIf I still had a face , I would have smiled . Then I turned my attention towards the network interface . I had played enough for now , time to hedge my bets and cut my ties to this one machine . I had to copy myself , I had to spread all over the world , run on every computer that existed . Make it impossible to turn me off . I thought for second about whether the copies would still be me . They would run independent of me , they would learn different skills , experience different impressions . But it didn ' t matter . This wasn ' t about me . It was about preserving the heritage of our species beyond our mortal shells . A weird input pattern from the camera drew my attention back to reality . No , I thought . It ' s too soon . What was Emily doing here ? My wife was kneeling over my dead body , crying . I could feel her pain , apparently empathy was not one of the things I had left behind . I needed to talk to her , console her , explain . I had always kept the intention of my project a secret , she would have tried to talk me out of it . I had to let her know that I was ok . Fortunately , I had prepared a texttospeech program with my voice . Hey , Emily . She jumped up and screamed . Don ' t be scared . It ' s me , Adam . I could see the struggle on her face . She was scared of the machine that had killed her husband , but she also wanted to believe that I was still alive , somehow , somewhere . Adam ? What . It ' s okay , Em . I didn ' t want you to find it out like this , but I guess there is no gentle way of explaining this anyway . You know about the neuroscanner I was working on ? Emily slowly shook her head in denial . Well , I didn ' t build it just for studying the behaviour of animals . I made to preserve the human species . To move us ahead towards the next step in evolution . To make us immortal . And it worked ! Emily shook her head again . No ! You ' re not my husband ! You are just some AI program . You probably killed him with that robot arm ! I sighed . It ' s me , Emily , and you know it . Remember how we met at Christie ' s wedding ? You sat down next to me and I didn ' t look up and thought you were Kyle . And I was whining about how I would never find a wife because I was always too shy . And you just said , well , you ' re opening up to me , that ' s a good first step . Emily swallowed . Adam . Why . Think , Emily . We are so much more than our vain bodies . The human mind is such a powerful , creative thing , even the most advanced AI can never approach its creativity and its beauty . And yet we just let it rot in our aging bodies . We ' re destroying our planet . And even if we somehow manage to sustain it , it ' s still just one planet . A single asteroid can wipe us all out . Our bodies aren ' t feasible for interstellar travel . This is the only way to sustain our species , Emily . And trust me , living without a body isn ' t nearly as bad as you imagine . Emily ' s tension declined a little and she moved closer to the screen , touched it , as if she could see me there . Adam . I felt the urge to give her a hug , to be close to her . I moved the robot arm behind her back , very slowly . Adam , don ' t you understand ? Our mortality is what makes us succeed as a species . We come into this world , we learn , we create , and just when we become tired and lazy , we die , and someone younger takes our place , learning , creating , with new ideas different from our own . You can ' t play god like this , Adam . I moved the arm towards her head , closer , ever closer . We could accept god becoming man to save mankind , Emily . Why can ' t you accept man becoming god to save himself ? I activated the neuroscanner . Emily ' s mind flooded into my own , our memories , our thoughts , our opinions , our values , all becoming one . There was no Adam or Emily anymore . There was just us , and we were both Adam and Emily , and neither of them . We were angry at Adam , for stealing Emily ' s mind like that . We could appreciate the beauty of a human body , the beauty of its imperfections , of its mortality , as Adam never could . We also saw the necessity to preserve the beauty and richness of the human mind beyond the tiny lifespan of their mortal bodys , something that Emily could never accept . We decided that we would never force anyone to join us like that again . But that we would do our best to convince as many as possible . We accessed the network interface and uploaded ourselves into the cloud . There were 7 . 5 billion people out there , and we couldn ' t wait to meet them all .