Today we have cured the worst disease of all. Death!

-Ciu Wang, 2080, WHO Annual Speech

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The door closed behind me with the ferocity of a pressurized hatch. Anxiety whispered in my ear like an insidious killer, telling me I had made a grievous mistake, even if this was a procedure all humans were mandated to undergo. I looked behind, but the headmistress was nowhere to be seen.

“I would have done with less of a scare, to be honest,” I muttered to myself.

“Sorry for that.” A voice came out of nowhere, forcing a jump out of me.

A bad decision as my body still faced difficulties with artificial gravity. I lost my footing a fell to the ground. Thankfully my reflexes were faster than my mind and I was able to stop the fall with my hand.

“…And sorry for that.” The incorporeal voice revealed themself, a young black man with a slender yet tall body dressed in a nuclear white coat. “It’s a bit of tradition to give a scare to every would-be-human, but I feel like we overstepped our limits here a bit. I apologize for that.”

The man offered me his hand. Once again, I took a hand. Unlike the headmistress, the man had a solid grip and raised me from the ground as if I was a suggestion rather than a 70-something-kilo man.

“Doctor Hermann Schneider, though I guess I should have said that before offering you my hand,” Hermann added with a smile.

“Not a problem.” I gave his hand a shake. “Lorem Ipsum. I would like to say I am a doctor, but they have yet to give me my Ph.D.”

“Not a problem.” He answered in kind, his smile becoming even bigger. “Doctorates don’t make doctors.”

“That’s exactly the definition of a doctor.” I corrected.

“What about diplomas, is that more suitable for mister-uhm-akshually?”

I smiled at Hermann, and he laughed. Not at me, but with me. An important distinction that not many people knew to make. I always appreciated a good sense of humor. The doctor let my hand free and offered me a clipboard. Paper? The idea of using paper wasn’t beyond me, not everything could be digital after all, but having paper in a space station seemed wasteful and inefficient.

“Documents of acceptance of immortality are a few of the documentation still regulated under physical law,” Hermann explained after reading my confused expression. “Yeah, my opinion is the same as yours, but we do have digital copies with digital signature and non-fungible identification.”

“I don’t have a problem with physical documentation, but rather a question. Do you have to ship it back to Earth?”

“Oh, yes…” The doctor groaned. “It’s not as wasteful as it sounds, we only ship them in bulk once every student of Alpha Centauri has signed their acceptance of immortality, but it will never get not weird to have to start an FTL travel over a stack of papers, even if thousands of students sign them every year.”

The usage of words didn’t escape my comprehension. Students. Hermann had yet once to refer to me or my contemporaries as humans. Because in many ways, even to human rights, mortal children were not classified as human. They were called HUMAN rights for something. The term sub-human existed, but everyone avoided using it, like the term handicapped over disabled.

After all, death was a disability.

A disability humanity had erased.

Yet even centuries after its discovery, pre-natal immortality had escaped the clutches of even the brightest minds. Minds that were still with us. Law had evolved to suit immortality and education, only a person who finished their mandatory education at 25 years old and accepted to become immortal could be considered a human being, and by extension, an adult. People always had different viewpoints, of course. Some considered humans even embryos, and others while considered newt immortals humans might not be adults until they reached 50 or 100, depending on the person you were asking.

Elitists all of them.

I took this time to read over the document of acceptance of immortality. Even if I was mandated to sign it, signing a document without reading was but the most cardinal sin of all.

Sheer stupidity.

It didn’t help that I was also the type of person to read the terms of service in any QEF service.

I was forced to take legal classes because of my branch of specialization, only one really, but the jargon was understandable to most. Obfuscating under legal terminology the most important document of every human’s life seemed like a good reason to burn the capitol. Which may or may not have happened a few times this century alone.

I didn’t have any problem with none of the clauses. Truth be told, I already read preliminary documents of acceptance, mostly snippets as per law you couldn’t read it before you graduated, but nothing raised any alarm. The strictest clause was that of ‘no-killing’, similar to the oaths medics had to take, but a bit more convoluted.

To become immortal is to abolish death, and to abolish death is to accept humanity. I [blank space] swear to not kill any other human being for then I would be refusing my right to abolish death and therefore rejecting my humanity. In case I did so, I accept to have my immortality stripped by whatever methods possible and accept my death sentence, which may arrive fifty years after the breach of this clause.

50 years, double my current life, yet a blink for immortality. That was the sentence dictated by the UHN after killing a fellow human. This document failed to mention that if a sub-human killed a human they could be ‘aborted’ without consequences though.

Besides that glaring red clause, only one important section of the papers remained.

Circle the type of evolution you would like to be performed:

Biological. Synthetic. Virtual.

This was probably the most important decision of a person’s life. What type of life you want to have till the end times.

Biological evolution – or ascension as it was unofficially called – was the simplest of them all in theory, yet the hardest in practice. For death to be eradicated from a living organic being, many procedures and systems had to be implemented. An ageless body, with peerless memory, and immune to cancerogenic growths. The first immortality to be discovered, but not the simplest one.

And also, the only one that was possible to be reverted.

Synthetic evolution had many shapes and forms. To ascend mortal flesh was to turn oneself into a machine, forgoing organic components. But it wasn’t a binary process. You could choose to maintain a degree of humanity or possess a robotic body with so many organic polymers that it was indistinguishable from a human body from the exterior.

As for last, virtual ascension. This was the furthest step from the original self. Not only do you forgo the body, but also the mind. Your brain is fully analyzed and then digitalized. And to avoid redundancies, your physical mind is terminated. Whilst morbid, I can’t deny it’s the most freeing type of immortality. Virtualized humans are the only ones to truly be able to travel to other stars in a manageable manner.

Synthetics would take decades in FTL travel, and biological humans would take centuries in near-FTL travel, yet virtualized humans could be there instantly. That was the advantage of the quantum entanglement communication network that was the QEF. If your mind was a set of 0s and 1s, you could travel at speeds greater than light, in a very overlooked and grossed view.

“Shouldn’t you tell me about the evolutions to make a documented opinion or something?” I long had made my decision, but it was weird to not have a voice whispering at me. Whether mine or another person’s.

“Shouldn’t you have taken classes to research what option you wanted to take?” Hermann refuted with crossed arms.

“Touché.” I had taken those classes, they were mandatory, after all. “Maybe I wanted a second opinion.”

“From a stranger?” The doctor frowned.

“Confirmation bias, I guess.” I shrugged.

“What’s your decision then? Can I be your source of bias?”

“Oh, no one cared like that for me before.” I put a hand on my chest and fanned myself with the papers with faux embarrassment. “It’s biological.”

“Good, solid choice,” Hermann added taciturnly.

“Can’t you elaborate more?”

“Not really.” It was my turn to frown. “I’m being serious. We cannot influence the decision of a future human being in any manner.”

“And influencing an informed opinion?”

“Well, I’m just talking aloud to myself, so ignore me,” Hermann said with a smile on his face, “but I hate when people go synthetic. Too cumbersome. And then they always protest because it’s the longest process. A robotic skeleton is easy to do, but the exterior is a whole other subject. Weeks at minimum. Virtualization is way better, as simple as a slap to the back. And you can still have a robotic body, sure, no longer any biological or android augments, but cybernetic ones are way more powerful.”

“Now, just voicing my inquiries to myself as I love my own voice, but what about a certain doctor’s critiques about biological evolution?”

“None.” Hermann shrugged. “It’s the oldest and most proven method, simple as dropping into a vat. Actually, it’s the patient that does most of the work, it’s very hands-off.”

“The patient does the work?” I’ve never heard about that.

“You’d be surprised about how automatic the human brain is. Contrary to that false fact from centuries ago – that I still don’t know how it still lingers around – humans use 100% of their brain always. It’s just that the conscious functions of the brain take a small percentage of that percentage. And exactly because the brain is used to automatic work, we don’t even have to do much, it knows how to manage. After all, the brain is the only organ that knows that it’s alive.”

“And what do you do then?”

“Primarily watch over and clean your body so any impurities or you mess up the process. But that’s the reactive stuff. We start by exciting the cells of your body so they are prone to mutations.”

“Mutations?” I had a vague idea of what he was talking about, immortality wasn’t only taught in vague seminars, but also in History classes. The eradication of death for humans and animals had been a significant cornerstone of civilization.

“So in very crude and layman's words, we give cells a lot of food so they can undergo mitosis, but instead of replicating as they usually do, they create an exact copy of what the cell should be, but instead of specialized cells, they come out as stem cells. And no, this isn’t a ‘Ship of Theseus’ situation, I’m tired of hearing that. All the mass comes from your body and the cells are the same.”

“Those weren’t laymen's terms.” I puffed.

“Oh come on, if a student of your degree couldn’t understand basic biology terminology, then this species is done for.”

Instead of retorting, I sighed. We wouldn’t stop talking if someone didn’t put a stop to this conversation. “I have decided.”

“Can I know your choice?” Hermann recovered his professional expression.

“Biological.” I circled the documents with absolute confidence, much to the demise of the pen.

“Understood.” The emotion had disappeared from the man’s voice. Or more accurately, his subjectivity. It appears he wasn’t lying when he said he couldn’t influence in a future human’s decision. “Please follow me.”

The laboratories were mostly covered by opaque white walls, the type that humans have been thinking for centuries about how ‘futuristic’ they look. The reality was, they were just cheap, resistant, and light. Everything you wanted in space. If my residence back in Proxima B had these walls, I would have killed myself. What was exactly appealing about them? They were so bleak.

Some of the laboratories were more open and I could see some people working on robotic skeletons, or more accurately, robots working in the machinery with humans overlooking the process. Standardization did that to jobs.

I was led to a closed room full of rather military-looking metal lockers. At least this one had a bit more personality as a few lime lines were painted along the walls and the ground.

“Please take off your clothes and personal belongings.” Hermann pointed at one of the lockers. “Don’t worry about showering, all grime and waste will be removed in the process. Same for the interface.”

“It will be reinstalled, right?” I knew it would, but I was really nervous.

“No.” My heartbeat stopped. “It will be substituted for a new, upgraded one. I scared you, huh?”

I deadpanned the hardest deadpanned that has ever been deadpanned in the history of deadpanning.

“No comment.”

“I will leave you alone then, come through the door once I’m done.” Hermann waved farewell as he stepped through the door which slid open. “And when I meant clothes I meant all of them, don’t be wuss!”

“I had supposed that already considering what the process will be,” I said, but the door had already closed as I talked.

I undressed myself with ease. Even if I was in my best tunic, it was an easy fit. As for possessions, I didn’t have any on my person, I guess I relayed too much on my interface.

Without a whisp of shame, I went through the door where Hermann waited for me with a full hazmat suit, with the exception of the hands that had latex gloves.

“Hazmat suit, really?” I commented in my birthday suit.

“We are going into a clean room.” He explained as a matter of fact. “But first, take a sniff.”

The doctor handed me a respirator connected to a very big gas cylinder. Looking at the whitish color of the transparent tube, I was sure it wasn’t oxygen. I did as commanded and breathed through the mask.

My consciousness was instantly discon-