Cybergenesis

You sit in the parkette by your apartment building, oblivious to the cleaning robot trying to tidy around the bench you're sitting on. An invitation to a public works program lays open on your tablet. Participants would get a full brain computer interface for free, and a guaranteed employment offer thereafter. 

The job description isn't anything amazing but you haven't found one after leaving university three years prior, and you can't afford a larger, private apartment, let alone one in a less dense area. The cleaner hums and thunks as it replaces a worn cobblestone. 

You tap 'Accept'.

A month later, you go to the consultation. A very nice doctor explains how they're going to saw open your skull, take out your brain, cut out parts of it, plug things into it, and then wrap it in ceramic and carbon fiber before putting it back in your head. 

Another very nice person, this one a social worker, assures you that you would still be human after the procedure, and goes over information on your rights and employment details that you've read at least thirty three times before the meeting. 

The new part of you is aware before the rest. The dissociative anaesthetic doesn't affect it like the meat. You watch the surgeon through the window as she manipulates the surgical waldoes to put your head back together. With a thought, you connect to the clinic's guest WiFi network.

You're wheeled into the post-op ward. A cybernetics specialist runs you through diagnostics and calibrations, then telling you how to wake up the rest of your brain when you're ready. You do, and you feel like you just crested the hill of a roller coaster. Tears stream down your face on the descent.

It's two weeks later. You've gotten the hang of walking unassisted again. You’re at the parkette, watching the same cleaning robot scrape chewing gum out of the water fountain. You start work tomorrow. Your new manager texts you asking if you feel ready for it. You lie.

The job is okay. It’s a lot of busy work, things that could probably be fully automated, that someone apparently thought would be worth putting a human face on. You smile at that thought since half of your coworkers have replaced theirs with synthetic coverings. You haven’t, but maybe soon.

You now process applications for the same BCI program you applied to. It’s been extremely successful, and you’re so busy it’s hard to find time outside of work for things you enjoy. One of your more "ecclectic" cyborg coworkers points you to an interesting blog post about instancing consciousness. 

You decide to experiment. You spin up another instance of yourself to catch up on your favourite cartoons and reading backlog. There’s plenty of extra memory hooked up to your brain, more than enough to handle the task even if you offloaded all of your actual memories to it. So you do that too.

Each night, you synchronize your selves before going to bed. It’s a conscious effort to put yourself into a meditative state where you can merge the disparate sets of daily experiences. It seems straight-forward to write a function to do it for you. That blog post from before teaches you how, step-by-step.

You choose to move to a new apartment in the same neighborhood. It has two extra rooms, but you can afford not to have a housemate. One becomes your home office, the other remaining empty for now. You tell yourself you might want to live with someone else some day as an excuse.

It creeps up on you, but now, you have four instances of yourself. One for media consumption, one for taking classes for a higher degree, one to try and learn to draw, and then you, the original, who works your job. You’re getting kind of tired of this arrangement and decide to switch things up.

The "Reader" is now responsible for going to work. It’s liberating being able to go back to your webcomic routine after working so hard for months on end. Some of your favorite ones have a backlog. 

There are some books the Reader started that don’t hold your interest. You start feeling annoyed with yourself for not finishing them. Your "Student" self wants to switch fields halfway through your thesis. Your "Artist" self met someone on a sculpture forum and you have a date with them this Thursday. 

This is getting hard to manage.

The same blog post you found the self-instantiation guide was recently updated. It references a new software visualizer for managing your instances. Apparently, having difficulties like yours is common when auto-merging memories. You download it, run the installer, then execute the program. 

There are a few options for the visualization setting. A business conference room, the old UN assembly hall, a nook in a tea shop, an artist’s impression of the Globe Theatre. You vote for the Globe. The others vote for the tea shop. You don’t really like tea, but you decide to deal with it.

Reader looks similar to your physical form. You do too, but she’s made some non-insignificant changes. Student is leaning into the current campus fashions, and has trendy green eyes that softly glow. Artist is the most drastically different one of you, and most of the time looks like an anthropomorphic bird of paradise.

You talk about splitting the work load so that nobody has to do all of it. You agree to share control of your body so that everyone gets to do things physically sometimes. You start talking about choosing names so that things don’t feel so impersonal between your selves.

Student keeps their title as a name. Reader decides hers is "Rita". Artist, having become somewhat more fanciful over time, chooses a picture they drew of an eclipse over a jungle island as their name/symbol. For brevity's sake, you both agree to continue using "Artist" in the company of others. You almost choose something new yourself, but decide to keep your name for now. 

Artist and xyr partner want to be physically intimate. Student wants nothing of this, and has taken to drawing the blinds in the tea shop when they’re together. You’re starting to think about more body modifications. The others have mixed feelings all the way from enthusiasm to anxiety.

Rita, in a panic, insists there’s a fifth person hiding in here with you. You find her. Her name is Angie. She’s quite small and timid. You vaguely remember that you had an imaginary friend named Angie when you were five years old.

You find a community of others like you. You had no idea, but there’s a apparently term for it now: “cybergenic plurality.” The blog post from before had mentioned it, but somehow, you hadn't made the connection that this is what it was. It feels entirely more real now that you have a word for it. You’re overwhelmed with what you’ve become. Rita is very supportive. You’re not sure what you’d do without her.

Your profile manager now tracks seven users. The tea shop in your head expands into an artsy commune of a building, and each of you make part of it your own. Artist has started doing paid commissions, and xyr romantic partner just signed up with the BCI program. 

Some time passes. You’ve fallen in love with Rita. You’re not sure when it happened, but thankfully, the feeling is mutual. 

A group consensus picks out configurable facial implants and metachromatic eyes. Coming to an agreement, even with seven people choosing, proves to be relatively easy. The recovery for these latest mods is nothing compared to your previous procedures.

Your body alters to suit who is fronting, and your coworkers pick up on it immediately. Your ever-supportive manager has been quick to stifle the rumor mill, but curiosity persists. One of them asks more than most. That same coworker soon reintroduces themselves with a different name and an awkward smile a few weeks later.

Student gets a work-study in the medical division, growing distant as they spend their time telecommuting in the remote surgery clinic. Angie gradually opens up to the rest of you, her space in your head filled with flowers and story books that she reads to anyone who listens. You notice her growing fondness for witch hats.

Artist and xyr partner join a collaborative engineering project aimed at creating android bodies for cybergenic "systems" like yourselves to upload into. Student provides feedback when they aren’t busy. Someday they might even leave, but the ideas are barely into prototyping.

Rita has begun to write. At first, she starts with literary criticism, but soon puts pen to paper on her own works. She constructs new virtualization spaces to play out her stories. You find yourself getting lost in these new spaces with her, happily. After a while, you both decide you want to commit yourselves to each other. There's no formal process for the ceremony you want to have together, but that doesn't stop you.

The others stay close by, sharing in work and play. Nobody can deny interest in Artist's project, but only as a maybe someday. One jokes that the rent is cheaper if they stay in the same brain. Another winks at you playfully.