Posthumous Brain - A Short Story

 

Posthumous Brain - A Short Story

I am a posthumous rights lawyer. Ever since the human brains have been preserved and their memories converted into huge data, that can tapped into with the click of a button, the world has become chaotic. Every altruistic person ever lived who have done a lot for the needy, have been defamed with one or the other trivial half formed thoughts of their brain. The masses don't understand that a thought necessarily doesn't mean action itself. Every single day, we get millions of thoughts out of which some are evil, some useless, some partially created and then abandoned because of another overtaking thought and some good. A human can not possibly act on all his or her thoughts of a lifetime. Heck, a human doesn't even act on the most planned thoughts, ideas and strategies. And here we are destroying a person's life posthumously, just because their racing brains conjured up some random thoughts.

There are many people like me and the number of people who are protesting this great experiment have been growing. But the evil corporations will never let us win, after all they are the most benefited. If they could twist and turn the living people's data as per their evil goals, the possibility of having a treasure trove of data containing such huge connections - which even a human mind couldn't consciously imagine, was a jackpot and every industry was shook. The big sharks acted quick and there began a war for getting access over the most noteworthy brains.

Every disaster of the past couple of decades can be attributed to the brain tapping. Nations have been brought down to their knees. Data has become priceless, some of it can't be bought with all the money in the world.

I can't fight the big corporations on individual law suits from the families of the dead. In fact those kind of cases are now almost non-existent, people have just accepted that their ancestors legacy will be slandered. They tried to ignore such data as much as possible, but it would sooner or later seep into their lives. Now people are worried about their own brains. Many are committing suicide with the help of their friends, who would then completely destroy the brain. This needs to happen quickly before there could be any funeral or before any authorities get to know about the death.

I only had one uncle to look up to, I had no one else in my family. My uncle loved his grandfather a lot, he was a national hero, having contributed a lot by risking his life several times at the enemy lines. He was derogated to the most pathetic state a decade ago, just because he had some angry thoughts as a teenager, when his parents were shot dead just for a petty robbery. My uncle couldn't go through it. He asked me. I was disturbed and refused to do it for several days, until he gave me an ultimatum that he will do it to himself, in a worse way. I intervened then, choking back on my own tears. I destroyed his brain completely. I came under investigation, but the authorities couldn't find any proof on me, though they were sure that I have killed him. The situation has only become way more pathetic today. Looking back, I am glad that I destroyed my dearest uncle's brain, he deserved that much at least.

I can't keep the fact that I killed my uncle secret anymore. I can feel that my time has come. I wouldn't have cared for the cancer that's been killing me slowly or my life, but now I am scared, that my brain, my life, my existence will all be cursed forever and ever in the history of mankind. I don't have anyone to trust with my brain. I have come to the conclusion that I have to do the honors myself, but I am not able to come to terms with the plan. I wish at least a gun trigger would have done it. But the technology has advanced so much that they can now reconstruct the data from the partially destroyed bleeding brain. I have acquired the so dubbed brain blaster from the black market.

All that is left for me to do is to blast my own brains out and hope my brain will never be reconstructed. I thought about all the cases I have fought for, the victims I have saved, the help I did for many people. But I won't be remembered for any of them. I will be remembered for the uncontrollable passing thoughts which I never acted upon.

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