“Creighton.”

“Yes, Alistair.”

“You asked me to notify you of your scheduled time to observe a brain transplant.”

I sat up in my hospital bed. “Thank you, Alistair.” At this point he was reminding me of almost everything in my life.

I entered the simultaneous VR Bryson Nichols had set up for me. It placed me in the lobby of NTI’s Neurological Enhancement Lab. I received the requisite retina scan for visitors before a woman led me through a labyrinth of hallways. The surgery was performed in a clean room. I was required to don a surgical cap, gown, and mask before we entered—for realism, I supposed. Being in VR, I could hardly infect the place.

“Professor!” Bryson Nichols strode my way. “They’re running a bit ahead of schedule. Didn’t want to start without you.”

He introduced me to the medical staff of four, led by Dr. Kamisha Sutter. They were preparing to do brain transplant surgery on Emma Fischer, a one-hundred-twenty-year-old with advanced brain disease. Though the surgery was minutes from beginning, the patient was awake and alert.

I stood with Nichols several paces back from the operating table. Emma’s brain, Nichols informed me, had been internally scanned by thousands of nanites and reconstructed in software form. The software version of the brain had been tested for functionality. It was working perfectly. It hadn’t been brought online so as to avoid the problem of simultaneous consciousness with the biological brain. The software form had already been uploaded into Emma’s new silicon brain. All that remained was removing the biological brain, implanting the silicon substrate, and activating the software.

“Aren’t they going to anesthetize the patient?” I asked.

“Momentarily. They administer it at the last minute. The general anesthetic has quite a short half-life. She will be conscious within a few minutes of the procedure’s being complete.”

Emma looked at us and smiled weakly. Nichols nodded to her reassuringly. “I do love being here for the procedure. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen one. The look on the faces of the patients when they wake up is worth it all. They know that nothing has changed, that they are still themselves, only better. And that they will be themselves forever. Many of them start weeping as the wonderful reality hits home.”

They anesthetized Emma. She lay motionless on the operating table. Sutter used a laser scalpel to slice open Emma’s skull. She cut a ridge around the skull just below the top of the ears. When the ridge was complete, she removed the top half of the skull entirely. I stared at Emma’s biological brain.

Sutter made a lengthy incision at the back of Emma’s neck and inserted the connecting nodes that would be the link between Emma’s spinal cord and the silicon brain.