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Once in his room
he went to the window and opened it. This was his only way to get in touch with the outside world, his only chance to breathe the fresh air of the evening, so loaded with aromas of wet summer. He remained motionless for a long time, staring at infinity, until the knock on the door announcing that dinner had arrived brought him back to reality.

As soon as the first beam of light
came through the window, heralding sunrise, the recruit stood up with a jump. He had enjoyed a peaceful night sleep and this was making him feel renewed. This time he was ready to beat the professors in their game, starting by being ready before Naim came to lead him to the office, where he was guessing to spend again his whole day. He showered and shaved hastily, and then he dressed and finished the contents of the breakfast tray that had been brought in a few minutes earlier. Once ready he opened the room’s door and sat on the end of the bed to wait for the every morning’s visitor with a triumphant smile on his face. But time was passing and no one had showed up. Two hours of waiting had elapsed and his smile had turned into a disappointment expression when finally a man wearing a white robe crossed the entrance of the room. This time it was Professor Kilgo, who greeted him cheerfully:

“
Good morning. I see that this time you are ready. My colleague has informed me that you have trouble being ready on time. That’s why I decided to grant you a couple of extra hours to groom.”

“
I have waited longer than that,” his voice sprang thick and sleepy from the back of his throat.

“Let’
s get going then.”

The route
the elderly chose turned out to be even more entangled than those of previous days, which added to his drowsiness for having waited so long, made him lose all interest in winning the game. He simply walked along with the professor.

When they reached the office
he found out that this time it was Naim who seated where hitherto Kilgo had done it, and as if he were his partner, he greeted him:

“
Good morning. Have a seat and tell me: where is the north today?”

Indifferent to the
game, the visitors simply raised his right arm pointing toward a corner of the room. The loud laughter of the professors was immediate. When they finally calmed down Naim said:

“
Congratulations, your answer is correct, how did you do it?”

I do
n’t know. The answer came to me by itself. I had thought of giving up, but when I heard the question my arm went up in a reflex action.”

“
We are glad that you have finally done this. It will save us walking many steps in the days to come. After all, your room is just less than a hundred yards from here. This afternoon you will lead us up there.”

“
I’m not surprised. What I have better learned from you is that you actually manage to be unpredictable, but I doubt being capable to lead you to a place that I must confess I do not know where it is.”

“
We’ll see when the time comes. For now, we will begin today’s session discussing your feelings for the corporation for which you worked so many years. We will begin by hearing how you felt at first towards your employer, before you even knew that someday you would be working for them. Can you tell us?”

“
Getting a job in one of the many corporations that in those days existed was the best that a college graduate could hope for when I still was attending school. Large employers were in contact with school principals in order to choose the brightest graduates, who were offered a position within their organizations. It was no secret that they watched the performance and the grades of some students. I felt lucky because I knew that a corporation was following me, but I had decided not to give much importance to this fact and did not give it much thinking. The recruiters who constantly visited schools to give lectures had good care to provide these large employers with an almost magical image, and this granted them the sympathy of the average student. It was said that whoever managed to get one of these so highly valued jobs would have assured a great future, since by the time, corporations used to grant to certain graduates lifetime contracts that would guarantee a standard of living above that of most of the population. I can then say that, as for almost everyone else, every corporation would seem to me as a kind of second father, and it would hardly be heard a bad opinion expressed in reference to any of them within the universities’ environment.”

“
But your first job was not for one of these corporations.”

“
Indeed. When I finally became a graduate, global economic activity had fallen into an uncertain period, and for the first time in years, people was speaking of unemployment. Corporations had limited their hiring to certain individuals who were considered by them as holding unique qualifications. It was by then when I came to know that I was not a part of this select group. I was disappointed, so I started to develop an aversion supported on my frustration towards all these giants. By then, I had had for some years a part-time job in a small business, so it was easy to turn my job into a full-time one; I could not afford to wait for better opportunities. The situation I shared with my mother was precarious. From that moment I distanced myself from all those school mates who had managed to be hired under more favorable conditions than I. I was frustrated at their success and could not talk to any of them without feeling envy. I felt neglected by the corporate world.”

“
What did you think about this issue after your father’s death?”

“
This painful happening occurred just a few months after having turned my job into a full-time one. The disenchantment due to my failed recruitment and the uncontrollable jealousy that the success of some others caused me were fueled by my loss, until finally turning them into a deep grudge. It was easy at that time to find me speaking against the economic system and the corporations. In my mind they had become the very embodiment of evil, and I blamed them for the sense of failure that had nested in me.”

“Then, wh
y did you agree years later to work for a corporation?”

“By then my
life was far from well off. I was married already and I still helped my mother with certain expenses. Money never was enough and I had the feeling that my future promised too little. The opportunity offered to me would place me once more in a position where I would be able to grow economically and professionally. On the other hand, my mother was against and urging me to find a different path. She could never forgive the corporation that, just like me, she blamed for the death of my father. Lucy, on the contrary, was feeling oppressed by my few opportunities for growth and encouraged me to stay within the organization, which ultimately I did. I can tell in that precise moment the point at which I changed my way of appreciating life. By agreeing in exchange for mere money to become a part of a group that I had for so long reviled, I completely lost my self-esteem and stopped questioning my motives forever. I had chosen to pursue economic power and social acceptance above anything else, and I would never dare to submit my conscience to my own scrutiny once again. Now I think that it was in that time when I took the first step on the road that today has brought me before you.”

“And w
hat can you tell us about the so many times you have used the isomentalizer?”

“
They would still be many years for me to have the access and the obligation to use that detestable device. As progress occurred in my career, technological advances were arising. When I reached a high level within the organization, loyalty and the blind leap of faith that implied to believe in the leader’s infallibility forced me to control my thoughts to the point of not being allowed to think freely anymore. As this endeavor falls beyond the capacity of a human being, they provided me a tool that would help me to meet such a commitment. Being plunged into absolute acceptance of the system, I never questioned its usefulness, and in the beginning I came to think about it as an ally in my desperate quest to reach the top. The many times I had to use it at first, gradually were spaced, until it almost fell into oblivion. Today I would pay any price to remember so many things I drove out of my memory without any consideration. Every time I turned to this absurd treatment I became a little more on someone other than me, and relegated my authentic self, condemning it to vanish. Proof of this are the years that I lived deceived, thinking that I was satisfied with the life I was living amid an aberrant sleep that could have lasted forever. The more I think the greater is my surprise for allowing the corporation to turn me into a void living being, with no more mission in life than to meet the natural functions to which all creatures are bound, albeit within an atmosphere of pomp and elegance that to others may seem almost magical, but which ultimately turns to be no more than the same. The isomentalizer is the fetter that the corporations close on the understanding of those who are indispensable for them to exist, so they can keep their minds submitted and their bodies enslaved.”

“And what about
mental backups?”

“
If the isomentalizer is the fetter, mental backups are the dungeon and the executioner. It is in allowing one’s mind to be read by others where the greatest fear lies. It is what oppresses the freedom of those who think to be above others for the mere fact of having achieved a commanding position within the organization. If there were no aberrant memory reading, there would be no reason to erase memories, and although the pretext is human immortality, the only beings that are guaranteed to become immortal are these monsters called corporations. However, all of us have submitted without complaint to this procedure in the name of our self-importance and to ensure our survival, while the one who applies it and keeps the information seeks only to control us, attacking us by the one side we cannot defend: our thinking. Once we become unable to prevent that the only privacy that truly exist is violated, we turn into helplessly exposed creatures, subject to the will of that who claims to be our protector, but actually only cares for us to use us.”

“
I see that the ease with which you had expressed in previous sessions has now become a passionate fury. We will now pause for lunch and allow you to cool off.”

The professors
stood up to go to the next room, leaving him thoughtful and still where he was. Now he could feel that each of his muscles had tensed without having noticed how they had got to that point. The words emerging through his mouth had done it by themselves. He had not thought them before letting them out. However, he knew he was right about everything he just had said. From somewhere inside him, finally all those thoughts that for more than 40 years he had suppressed now had sprouted. He knew that the man who had so precisely spoken was his true self. He was on his path to meet with the one who he had betrayed long ago.

After a few minutes
he met Kilgo and Naim, who were unconcernedly having a snack. His appetite was gone, so he simply filled a glass of water and gulped it in. For some minutes he wandered around the room waiting for the time to resume the session. The fit of anger he had suffered as he spoke slowly was giving way to the calm that had characterized his behavior during the sessions of the previous days. As the professors noticed in his movements that peace had returned to him, he was invited to take his seat to continue.”

“
Well. We will continue with replications. How have you felt before and after each of these?”

“H
aving gone twice through replication is the part of my life that has disturbed me the most over the years, and to have encouraged Lucy to take the first of these experiences, and then practically forced her into the second one, represents the largest emotional burden that I bear. When we both agreed that she would replicate that first time, we did it irresponsibly. We never stopped to consider the moral consequences of committing such an atrocity even though my mother was relentless in her efforts to discourage us. We vindicated our decision in our intend to have a child, even though deep inside we both knew it was the fear of aging that was driving us, and the proof of this lies on the fact that we never did anything to make her pregnant. We had become attached to material things, willing to sacrifice other relationships on behalf of our own immortality. When she replicated that first time, I began to hate her for the crazy way in which she began to behave, but I never let her know. She had become a young and reckless girl, leaving me scared of my own age and fearing that she would abandon me without notice. My life was wrapped up in a whirlwind of feelings and passions previously unknown to me and that were making me unhappy. I do not know how our relationship survived those times of emotional turmoil.”

“
And, when you replicated?”

“This
opportunity came unexpectedly, causing a sudden change in my behavior. I had become an angry person who could hardly enjoy life, and I was aware of this condition, so I did not need to think it twice and immediately applied for my replication. The process was truly striking, especially in those times when it was not customary to isomentalize the replicated one after having made him get rid of the previous body. Now I can understand why it takes those who replicate so long to adjust to their new existence. The experience is extremely hard, and only the immense size of the prize to be obtained is what can push someone to go through it.”

“
How does it feel to confront your old body?”

“
The procedure implies that, after having implanted the mind in the new body, the subject himself looks at his reflection in a mirror for a period of time, so that he reacquaint himself with that look that had been left behind in his past. It is really easy to get used to this new look, after all, it is a self-image that one had seen countless times before. The excitement of looking young again, while one is feeling fine, generates aversion to the very sight of the former body, making it an easy decision to activate the body-eliminator and get rid of it. If somebody would repent at this stage, they should have to get rid of the new body and resuscitate the former one. I have heard of cases where this happened, and when awakened again into the old body, the mind still housed in it every time complained about not having fulfilled the mission.”