Passenger

Friends sitting around the room, Rocky lying on his bed at my feet. He's coughing. It's a cough that is a part of him now. I know it won't go away, a signal that his time here is nearly done. As the coughing fits become more frequent, at some point I'll have to make the decision.

The cough could be the cancer spread to his lungs. It could be his heart giving up. It could be something else. After tests and x-rays and examinations, the vets don't really know and at this point, it's almost not worth knowing. He's on prednisone again, giving it a last hurrah, as there's not much else that can be done anymore except more open ended, uncertain tests and I don't want to put him through that.

Friends sitting around the room last night and, though I don't exactly remember who said what and what exactly was said, part of the conversation goes something like this:

"It's strange, with Rocky getting old, his heart failing, his lungs failing, the cancer in his lymph nodes, his legs ... arthritis ... I wonder what "Rocky" is. It's not his body. That's not "Rocky". So what is he?"

"We'll be able to replace body parts soon."

"Did you know we are completely new people every 7 years? Yeah, our cells completely replace themselves every 7 years."

"Does that mean we are a different person than we were 7 years ago?"

"That's the question: what is the soul?"

"Does everything alive have a soul?"

"There was a doctor who weighed people just before they died and just after and he said the difference was about 21 grams less after death and that's the weight of the soul."

"Amoebas don't have souls."

"I think raccoons have souls."

"Okay."

"Then, why not amoeba?"

"There's this scientist who is pretty sure we'll be able to upload our consciousness onto computers in the future. He says we'll lose our individuality and merge into a collective consciousness."

"The soul is the part of life which is not the body."

"You mean we'll all be uploading our souls onto Facebook?"

Later, as I lay in the dark trying to sleep, I think about duplicating myself online. I can see the technical ability to do something like that becoming available but whatever thing would be online would not be me, at least not the original me. It would be like when you upload a photo online. The uploaded version is not the original even though it is an exact duplicate. But is it as good as the original? Yes, it's the exact same. So would the uploaded version of myself be as good as the original? Could it ever be the same? Would the online version be considered alive? Would it have a soul? Would it be a duplicate of my soul, whatever that is? And then what if someone else takes the uploaded version and manipulates it into something else, maybe something better than the original? You know, like with Photoshop. Would I be able to delete that newer version of me because I don't want a better me out there, outsmarting me, meeting cooler people than me, doing who knows what else to make the real me look outdated?

And on and on and on. Stupid thought games. Really, as I lie there in the dark, all I'm trying to do is think about something else, absurd and abstract, and not think about Rocky in his bed, coughing and settling, coughing and settling.

If I could replace Rocky's heart, he would still be Rocky. If I could replace his lungs, he would still be Rocky. If I could replace his cloudy eyes, his insensitive eardrums, his shattered knees, he would still be my Rocky. His body will fail him but his body is not who he is. His body is an old vehicle, running down. If I could just open the door, take the passenger out, keep him safe.