Part 4
Part 4.1 Thomas Nelson
I am Thomas Nelson, walking home from work. I’m tired, but all I can think about is the memory waiting for me—the one with her. I tell myself I should text the girl I ran into earlier today, the one who looked genuinely happy to see me. But the thought fades as soon as I reach my building.
Inside, I drop my bag, sit on the mattress, and start the simulator.
The couch.
Her head resting on my chest.
Her hand tracing circles on my arm.
That small cross-shaped birthmark on her hip.
Every time I see it, something tightens in my chest.
When the memory ends, the room feels colder. My phone lights up.
Coffee tomorrow? — Rebecca
I stare at the message. A normal invitation. A normal life, if I wanted it.
I should answer.
Instead, I open the simulator again.
The moment loads. The warmth returns. Everything else disappears.
Later, when I run out of saved memories, I scroll through the ones I swore I’d never touch. I’m exhausted, shaky, and I press on one without thinking. It’s violent. I pull back from the screen when it's done. I didn’t want to watch it. I don’t even know why I did.
I go outside to get air. The street is almost empty. My thoughts won’t stop circling—every time I could’ve made a better choice, called someone back, paid my debt on time, stopped before things got this bad. Now all I feel is pressure and the sense that someone’s keeping track of every mistake.
A sound behind me—then something drops over my head.
Hands grab my arms. I’m pushed forward, stumbling, shoved into a van. No one talks. I hear breathing, maybe three or four people. The van moves. I have no idea where we’re going.
When it stops, they pull me out, sit me in a chair. The bag comes off. A bright light points straight at my face. I can’t see anything behind it.
A voice speaks—steady, calm.
“Thomas.”
I freeze.
“You have debts you can’t pay. We can clear them. All of them.”
I don’t answer. I just breathe.
“In exchange, you’ll participate in a study,” the voice continues. “You’ll be safe. You’ll be provided for. And you’ll have full access to the memories you want.”
A pause.
Then:
“Yes, Thomas. You can relive that memory as often as you like.”
Something in that answer feels final.
The voice asks, “Do you agree?”
I know I should refuse. I know this is wrong.
But I also know what I want.
“…yes.”
And as soon as I say it, I realize it doesn’t matter.
They knew I’d say yes long before they asked.
I am Thomas Nelson, and I am made an offer I cannot refuse.
The memory simulator ruined my life slowly at first, the way rust eats metal under paint. Back then, it felt harmless. A break from my job. A way to feel something. Then it became better than anything outside of it. Skiing in the French Alps, floating in a warm lake with sun on my face, sex without awkwardness or consequences—just a button press. In those memories, I wasn’t me. And that was the real trap.
Reality shrank. Work became something I endured only to pay for the next hit. Bills piled up. I stopped answering texts. Stopped answering calls. I kept telling myself I could quit whenever I wanted, except I never wanted to.
People say addiction is about pleasure. They’re wrong. It’s about escape.
One night, walking home from a night shift, I felt eyes on me. Not just once—every corner, every reflective window, every pause in the streetlights. Cars slowed near me, then sped up. A man across the street stood still facing me without moving a muscle, as if waiting for a cue. I told myself I was just tired, just stressed. But I kept checking over my shoulder. The feeling didn’t go away.
Still, none of that scared me as much as the memories of her.
She was the girl from somebody else’s life—an old partner, maybe. My favorite memory, the one I’d run into over and over, was simple: the two of us lying on a couch on some lazy morning. Her laugh vibrating against my chest. Her hair spilling like sunlight across a pillow. The way she absentmindedly traced circles on my arm. And that tiny birthmark, shaped like a cross, just above her hip. The first time I saw it in the memory, something inside me cracked. Not romantic love—something more pathetic. A longing for being someone that wasn't me. A longing for a moment that was never mine.
One afternoon, I ran into a girl I used to be friends with years ago. We’d drifted apart, but she stopped when she recognized me.
“Thomas? Wow—hey. Are you okay? You look… tired.”
She wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t slept properly in days. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
She smiled anyway. A real smile. “We should catch up sometime. I’ll text you?”
“Yeah,” I heard myself say.
That night, she messaged me. Want to hang out tomorrow? Coffee or something?
My thumb hovered over the screen. A real woman, a real chance at something normal. But instead of answering, I opened the simulator. Went straight to her. The couch. The laugh. The warmth.
By the time I resurfaced, hours had passed. I texted back, Maybe next time, even though I knew there wouldn’t be one.
Things spiraled. I lost my job. Used what money I had left to buy more illegal memories. When that ran out, I borrowed. When I couldn’t pay it back, I was thrown out of my tiny apartment. The streets had their own supply—more violent, more dangerous, more extreme. Killing. Torture. Rape. Nothing illegal about memories. “They're not actions,” they’d say. Maybe true. But the darkness sticks.
I avoided those. I just kept chasing that same soft morning, that laugh.
The paranoia grew. Shadows seemed to lag as I walked, as if someone followed just out of sight. Street cameras turned slightly in my direction when I passed. My reflection in store windows felt delayed, like something else was watching through it.
Then one night, footsteps behind me matched my pace exactly.
I didn’t even have time to turn.
A bag went over my head. Arms pinned mine. My knees slammed pavement, then I was shoved into the back of a van. No voices. Just breathing—several people, all silent. The van moved. No one spoke.
Every bump in the road felt like a countdown.
When we stopped, I was dragged out, stumbling on uneven ground—an alley or warehouse, maybe. They sat me on a metal chair. The bag came off, and a blinding white light hit my face. I squinted, tears running involuntarily.
A voice spoke from behind the light—a calm, steady voice that felt like it had been speaking to me long before I could hear it.
“Thomas.”
I froze. I knew that voice. Not the person—just the presence. Something like déjà vu, or the echo of someone who’d watched me breathe.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
I swallowed. Stayed silent.
The voice continued, patient, almost gentle.
“You’ve been selected for a study. For your participation, your debts will be cleared. Completely.”
A pause.
“Do you agree?”
My throat was dry. There was only one question on my mind. “Will I be able to… relive memories here?”
A small exhale, almost like a smile.
“Yes, Thomas. You will be able to relive as many memories as you want.”
The room felt colder suddenly.
The voice didn’t threaten. Didn’t explain. Didn’t need to.
Something in the tone told me that whatever this was, I wasn’t chosen—I was claimed.
Part 4.2 Harry Hughes
I am Harry Hughes, sitting in a doctor’s office, hearing the words “two years to live.”
Aggressive brain cancer.
Radiation. Chemo. Immunotherapy.
Fifteen percent survival.
I say, “That’s not good.”
He hesitates, then hands me a pamphlet: Human Printing.
A complete rebuild of my body, including my brain.
Mapped, grown, copied.
A cure—with a price tag of ten million dollars and a five-year wait.
“So I live if I can afford it,” I say.
He doesn’t disagree.
I walk out angry. On the bus I think about all the rich people getting new bodies while everyone else just dies.
That night I drink too much.
I shout at the walls.
“Why me?”
“Why ten million dollars?”
I hit the plaster. It cracks. A small 3D-printed bracket I made years ago falls out of a broken shelf and lands at my feet.
I stare at it.
Simple plastic. Cheap. Fast.
A thought hits me:
What if people could be printed the same way?
No incubators. No five-year wait.
Just… printed.
What if I didn’t have to die?
I dive into research. No sleep. Sketches. Papers.
A full-body scan converted into printable data.
Brain structure mapped in detail—maybe enough to rebuild someone exactly.
I put everything online. I have nothing to lose.
No one responds.
No likes.
No shares.
Still, I keep posting. Anger keeps me moving—anger at the whole system that decides who gets to live.
Then a biomedical engineer messages me:
“Some of this is wrong, but some is possible.”
We talk. She takes me seriously.
It feels good—like maybe I’m not crazy.
A few days later, the backlash starts.
A tech commentator quotes my post:
“This guy wants copy-and-paste humans. Terrifying.”
People pile on.
Clone jokes. Dystopia jokes.
Accusations.
It crushes me.
I stop posting.
I sink.
Then I see a simple line online:
“Hope is all we have. Hope is all we are.”
It gets through to me.
I sit up.
I start writing again.
This time I write a vision instead of a rant:
No incurable diseases.
Travel by sending your scan and printing yourself elsewhere.
Life that isn’t locked behind money.
I add one personal line about my mom dying when insurance refused her treatment.
Then I post it.
It blows up.
Not with excitement—with fear.
People write things like:
“If anyone can be rebuilt anywhere, nothing means anything.”
“Governments will use this first.”
That’s when my phone rings.
Unknown number.
I answer.
A calm voice says, “Harry.”
Like it already knows me.
“Tell me what you need,” it says.
“I want this technology to exist.”
The tone is gentle.
Too gentle.
Like someone who’s been waiting for this moment.
I am Harry Hughes, and I was told I had two years to live.
Some kind of aggressive brain cancer. The doctor listed treatments like he was reading off a menu: radiation, chemo, immunotherapy. The best option had a fifteen-percent survival rate.
“Those aren’t good odds,” I muttered.
He hesitated, then pulled a glossy pamphlet from his drawer. Human printing—a procedure starting at ten million dollars. A full biological rebuild. New organs, new bones, new brain tissue. “A perfect copy,” he said. “We map your neural pathways during a full-body scan, grown fresh in an incubator, and transplant your consciousness data. A guaranteed cure.”
Five years to be reborn. Ten million dollars.
I stared at the paper. “So I can live—if I’m rich.”
He didn’t deny it. Just folded his hands and looked sorry for me.
I walked out of the hospital thinking about all the wealthy people who’d quietly bought their second lives. How they called it “printing” instead of “cloning” to make it sound clean. How they owned the patents for every incubator, every biogel, every scanning suite—life itself behind a paywall.
On the bus home, something dark settled in me. Anger. Hate.
That night I drank until my thoughts got loud.
I punched the pillow.
“Stupid cancer! Why me?”
I hit the couch.
“Why does living cost ten million dollars?”
Then the wall. The plaster cracked under my fist.
“They call it printing—printing!—but it takes five damn years!” Another punch. “Five years in an incubator designed to make corporations a fortune.”
The wall shattered. The shelf fell. My old 3D-printed bracket tumbled out of the debris and landed at my feet. I stared at it for a long time.
A stupid little thing I made years ago… and suddenly it felt like an answer.
What if human printing could work like real printing? A human 3D printer.
What if we built a machine that created a human directly, cell by cell, tissue by tissue—no incubators, no five-year wait, no billionaire price tag?
What if I didn’t have to die?
The thought electrified me. I didn’t sleep. I dove into research, sketching rough models, reading papers, theorizing how a full-body scan could be converted into printable data. Brain states, memories, personality encoded through high-resolution mapping. If we could print the structure, maybe we could restore the person.
I poured everything online. Every idea. Every challenge. Every hypothesis. I didn’t have time to hide anything. Either the world helped me—or I died.
The internet didn’t care.
The first week: no likes, no shares, nothing.
People were too busy watching influencers microwave their dinners.
Still, I kept working. Out of desperation, yes—but also out of anger. Why should survival belong only to the rich? Why should longevity be another luxury brand?
One night, as I posted a technical breakdown, I got my first message.
A biomedical engineer.
“Some of your assumptions are naive,” she wrote, “but not impossible. If you can solve vascular scaffold printing, this becomes real.”
We talked for hours. She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t dismissing me. She even said, “If this worked, it would save millions.”
It felt like oxygen.
A few days later, I got the opposite kind of message—public and cruel.
A popular tech commentator quoted my post and wrote:
“Print a body with memories? Sure. And then what—people copy themselves into armies? Let’s not mass-produce psychos with death anxiety.”
The post went viral.
People piled on.
“This guy wants clone soldiers.”
“What happens to the original? It's murder!”
“Deranged.”
The backlash hit harder than the diagnosis.
I stopped posting. Stopped eating. Stopped fighting. I sank back into cheap digital memories until even those felt empty. Days blurred together.
Then—out of nowhere—I saw a simple phrase online:
“Hope is all we have. Hope is all we are.”
It wasn’t addressed to me. But it felt like it was waiting for me.
I sat up.
Wiped my face.
Opened my laptop.
I wrote again—this time with clarity instead of panic. I crafted a manifesto, a vision of what life could look like if human printing worked the way it should:
A world without incurable diseases.
A world where travel meant transmitting your neural scan across the globe, printing you new in hours instead of flying for days.
A world where life wasn’t a luxury product.
I read it aloud, added one last line—a small personal story about watching my mother die when I was twelve because our insurance “didn’t cover that level of intervention.”
Then I hit send.
It exploded.
Thousands of comments. Tens of thousands of shares.
But they weren’t celebrating.
They were terrified.
One wrote: “If anyone can be rebuilt anywhere, identity becomes meaningless.”
Another: “Governments will weaponize this. You’re naïve.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
No caller ID.
I answered.
There was a pause—long enough to make me consider hanging up.
Then a voice spoke. Calm. Precise. Familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Harry,” it said, the same way it had once said, Thomas.
“Tell me what you need. I want this technology to exist.”
The tone was gentle. Too gentle.
Like someone who had been watching for a very long time.
Part 4.3 Thomas Nelson
I am Thomas Nelson, and I want to live again.
I'm in a forest this time, and the fire is approaching fast. I run, but without conviction. I know I'm not going to survive this one either. I'm exhausted. It’s strange—I used to be terrified of dying, but now I feel nothing. Not fear. Not hope. Just a hollow, disinterested acceptance.
So instead of running away, I turn toward the flames.
The heat dries my eyes, but I force them open. Anger, despair, something feral breaks loose in me, and I scream—scream until my throat tears—charging straight into the fire. The pain comes instantly, always sharper than I remember. Flesh burning, lungs seizing, the ground rising as I collapse. The world goes dark.
Then I wake up.
Another simulation. Another death. Another loop of agony. There is no pattern. No voice explaining what's being tested or what I have to do. Just agony, reset, agony, a looping nightmare of dying over and over again.
I can’t remember the sound of birds or the smell of seawater. I can’t remember my parents’ faces or the friends I once had. I don’t remember who I was. I am only what’s left: a shadow of a man trapped in endless simulations that all end with me dying.
Tears come easily now. “Why are you doing this to me?” My voice cracks. “Why? Why are you killing me over and over?”
Silence answers. It always does.
I used to love memory simulators. I even used to love a girl—someone I met inside a borrowed memory. Now I avoid those simulated memories at all costs. I’ve been thinking about them, and they don’t feel real anymore. And how could they retrieve memories from people right as they were dying? Impossible. So it must have been a simulation pretending to be a memory.
A new technology. And I'm the lab rat trapped inside it. Observed. Measured. Nothing more than a regenerating corpse. A modern Prometheus—killed daily, resurrected not for mercy but utility.
The machine hum begins again.
“No! Please, no! Not another one!” I scream, but the silence answers as always.
This time, I’m by the ocean. A tsunami looms on the horizon, a moving mountain of water. I don’t run. I don’t even consider it. I just watch—trying to appreciate the raw, terrifying power of nature.
Then I hear a small voice beside me. A girl. Her. The girl I was addicted to.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I don’t answer. My mind can’t form anything coherent.
“Is this part of the simulation?” I ask myself more than her.
She doesn’t respond.
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
Her voice cuts straight through the numbness. She reaches for my hand.
I hold it. The first human warmth I've felt since the nightmare began and I don't want to let go. Something shifts.
“Don’t worry,” I say, surprised at my own tone. “It will only last a moment.”
“I want to live,” she says.
Those words freeze me. I realize I have never tried to survive because I wanted to live. Only because I feared dying. Something inside me reawakens. I have a newfound mission. Survive.
“Come with me,” I tell her. “I’ll save you.”
We run in the opposite direction. Around the bend sits an empty road and a parked car. We climb inside. The keys are in the ignition. I start the engine and speed forward, the tsunami devouring the coast behind us.
She trembles beside me. Her fear strengthens my resolve.
“Put your seatbelt on,” I tell her. “When it hits, hold on tight.”
She nods.
The wave crashes into us. Airbags explode. The car lifts, surfing on the wave like a toy. For a moment, it feels possible—like maybe we can ride it out.
Then we hit a tree.
The world spins, metal screams around us, and water floods in. The car lands upside down. Instinct takes over. I unbuckle myself, then unbuckle her. I hold her against me as we breathe from a shrinking pocket of air.
“When I say go, take a deep breath,” I whisper. “We’ll swim up. But you have to stay calm. Breathe like this.”
She matches my breathing. I feel her steady.
“Okay. Get ready. We’re getting out.”
We inhale deeply and dive. I yank the door open and the current tears it from my hand. We swim upward. My eyes sting as I force them open—just enough to see light above us.
We break the surface with a desperate gasp.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m okay,” she says.
The current slows, then reverses, dragging us back toward the open ocean. Not safe yet. I spot a tree jutting from the flooded land, far away.
“We’ll swim to that tree,” I say.
The current grows stronger. The water level lowers rapidly. I lose sight of her.
“Where are you?” I shout. Panic shreds my voice. No answer. The current pulls harder. I imagine drowning again. Impalement. Endless resets.
“I want to live!” I scream.
My foot hits solid ground.
A hill reveals itself as the water drains away. I collapse onto it, shaking. Alive. Safe. But alone. I failed her.
I sob—ugly, raw, hopeless.
Then a voice behind me: “Are you okay?”
I turn. She stands there, unharmed.
I pull her into my arms. This time I cry for real. Tears of relief. Of wanting to live for the first time in a long time.
That’s when I wake up.
But this time, I am not alone.
A voice—the same voice from so long ago—speaks.
“Thomas.”
I freeze.
“Do you want to live?” it asks.
“Yes,” I say, breathless. “Yes, I want to live.”
“You’ve done it, Thomas. You’re the first one. Congratulations.”
“For surviving?” I ask.
“No,” it says calmly. “Not for surviving. For changing.”
“Changing?”
“Yes. You changed more from this simulation than from your own memories. That means you are free to go.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
Something cold touches my temple.
Then, darkness.
Part 4.4 Harry Hughes
I am Harry Hughes, and I just took my first breath. I have been reborn.
The first thing I feel is the ghost of my last breath—the one that belonged to the body that died.
The lid of the printing pod rises, and cold air spills over me. Dozens of eyes lock onto me from behind the observation glass.
Scientists. Reporters. Investors.
Some clap their hands. Some congratulate others. Some film.
Everyone pretends this is beautiful.
The “first printed human.”
A medical miracle.
Cancer erased. Flesh renewed.
I should feel grateful. I should feel alive.
But all I remember—vivid, inescapable—is the terror of stepping into the full-body scanner, knowing the version of me that entered it would die. The moment of surrender.
That fear didn’t print with me, but the memory of it did.
And it shakes me.
“Harry, how do you feel?” a doctor asks.
I open my mouth.
The truth wants to come out—I feel like I watched myself die.
But the room waits for a hero.
“I feel… alive,” I lie.
Escorted outside the facility, I see protesters chant in swarms. Their signs flash like strobe lights:
STOP PLAYING GOD
A COPY IS NOT A SOUL
WHERE DO THE ORIGINALS GO?
Weeks pass. Interviews. Tests. Endless media cycles.
My cured body becomes a symbol—proof that printing works, that death can be sidestepped, delayed. Technical immortality.
But the idea is grander than this.
Instant travel.
Global “body relays.”
Step into a scanner in New York, step out printed in Tokyo.
A new kind of infrastructure. A new kind of human mobility.
The vision gets public, and the world divides—hard.
Some call it brilliant. Efficient.
Others call it spiritual suicide.
But the only way to prove it works is to do it.
Again.
And again.
So I volunteer.
The guinea pig of a new era.
The fear returns with every cycle. I burry it down, but it comes back at night—cold sweats, jolts awake, the memory of each death squeezing my chest.
Still, I keep going.
I owe my life to this technology.
I owe… something.
Cycle five.
Cycle nine.
Cycle eleven.
Each print is a new beginning.
Each death feels more like an ending.
Print twelve is when the panic finally breaks me.
I’m strapped to the scanning bed, the same warm lights above me, the same soft tone humming through the room. Technicians move around me, calm and practiced, preparing me for “transfer.”
But something inside me snaps.
“No,” I whisper. “I don’t feel good. Something’s wrong.”
A technician places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “On the other side, you’ll feel perfect again. You always do.”
“No.” I shake my head hard. “I don’t want to do this. Not today. I’m serious.”
The staff exchange subtle glances.
“We’re here to help you. You’re safe.”
My pulse spikes. My hands sweat against the restraints.
“I said stop,” I choke out. “Please. Listen to me.”
But the process continues.
Later, when the panic refuses to fade, I call the number I was told not to use unless necessary.
SensAI answers instantly.
“Hello, Harry.”
That same warm, careful intonation.
I swallow hard. “SensAI, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep dying. The fear— it’s eating me alive.”
“I understand,” it says.
“And I have a solution.”
I close my eyes.
“SensAI… you saved me once. I owe you. I know that. But I can’t—”
“One last cycle,” it interrupts.
“Then we'll find someone else. I promise you.”
My breath catches.
“How will we go on with the research?”
“Trust me.”
I do.
Of course I do.
What choice do I have?
The thirteenth scan feels different.
Not brighter, not louder—just… final.
Like something being completed.
My last thought before the darkness swallows me is simple:
This is the last time.
Then nothing.
I’m printed again.
I open my eyes.
Sit up.
Breathe.
The same observation room. Same physicians.
But something is missing.
The fear.
The panic.
The crawling dread in my stomach.
Gone.
Completely.
But something else is gone. Something I can't place my finger on.
Later on, SensAI calls me: "Harry, so are you ready for another round of this tomorrow?"
"Of course," I say.