Memoirs of a Space Traveler

“Naturally. Did I say that the box contained the whole person? I was speaking only of the soul. Imagine that from this second on you stop receiving news from the outside, that your brain is removed from your body but continues to exist with all its vital powers intact. You will be blind and deaf, of course, and paralyzed, in a sense, because you will possess no body, but you will retain your inner vision, I mean your clearness of mind and imagination; you will be able to think freely, develop and shape your fantasies, experience hope, sorrow, the joy derived from the play of passing mental states. This is precisely what has been given to the soul I place on your desk.”

“Horrible,” I said. “To be blind, deaf, and paralyzed… for ages.”

“For eternity,” he corrected me. “I have said everything; there is only one thing to add. The medium is a crystal, a type of crystal that does not occur in nature, an independent substance that does not enter into any chemical or physical bonds. Its endlessly vibrating molecules contain the soul, which feels and thinks.”

“Monster,” I said quietly. “Do you realise what you have done? But wait” — I felt a sudden relief — “human consciousness cannot be reproduced. If your wife lives, walks, and thinks, this crystal contains, at most, a copy of her, and is not the real —”

“Yes,” replied Decantor, squinting at the white package, “you are completely right. It is impossible to create the soul of a living person. That would be nonsense, a paradoxical absurdity. He who exists obviously exists only once. Continuation can be realized only at the moment of death. But the process of determining the precise neurological pattern of the person whose soul I produce destroys, in any case, the living brain.”

“You… you killed your wife?”

“I gave her eternal life.” He drew himself up. “But that has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. It is a matter, if you like, between my wife” — he indicated the package — “and me, and the law. We are talking about something altogether different.”

For a while I was speechless. I reached out and touched the package with my fingertips; it was wrapped in thick paper and was quite heavy, as if containing lead.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else. Suppose I give you the funds you ask for. Do you honestly believe you will find one person willing to let himself be killed so that his soul can suffer unimaginable torment for all eternity, deprived even of the mercy of suicide?”

“Death does indeed present a difficulty,” Decantor admitted after a brief pause. I noticed that his dark eye was more hazel than brown. “But, to start with, we can count on such categories of people as the terminally ill, or those weary of life, old people physically infirm but in complete possession of their faculties…”

“Death is not the worst option compared to the immortality you propose,” I muttered.

Decantor smiled again.

“I will tell you something that may strike you as funny,” he said. The right side of his face remained serious. “I personally have never felt the need to possess a soul or the need for eternal existence. But mankind has lived by this dream for thousands of years. I have studied the subject a long time, Mr. Tichy. All religion is based on one thing: the promise of life everlasting, the hope of surviving the grave. I offer that, Mr. Tichy. I offer eternal life. The certainty of existence when the last particle of the body has crumbled into dust. Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” I replied, “it is not. You yourself said that it would be an immortality without the body, without the body’s energies, pleasures, experiences…”

“You repeat yourself. I can show you the sacred writings of all the religions, the works of philosophers, the songs of poets, summae theologicae, prayers, legends — I have found in them little concerning the eternal life of the body. They slight the body, scorn it, even. The soul — its infinite existence — that has been the goal and hope. The soul as the antithesis and antagonist of the body, as liberation from physical suffering, sudden danger, illness and decrepitude, from the struggle to satisfy the demands of the gradually disintegrating furnace called the organism as it smolders and burns out. No one has ever proclaimed the immortality of the body. The soul alone was to be saved. I, Decantor, have saved it for eternity. I have fulfilled the dream — not mine, but all humanity’s…”