You are a Photoshop master. Your skills are legendary. And you have just found out that when you change the most recent picture of a person, the person then changes to fit the picture. After many people wanting to look younger again, you try your skills on something new: a picture of a dead person.
I start asking a few people if they want me to photoshop their lost limbs back on. Not just in case they want it, but because it’s relatively simple to do, and yet a complex test of my abilities. I start with a few people suffering from phantom limb syndrome and explain the theory and risks and ask them if they want me to try.
I start asking people if they wan’t free body-Mods. Elf ears, Antennas, things that not only add mass, but also function, and require nerves and brain mass invisible in the photo to function the way the image implies.
I photoshop myself to have wings and a prehensile tail, gills… physical tells of immortality. I become my most frequent test subject, for the things I dare not test on others.
I ask the poor if they want to be photoshoped to bear the physical signs of health and good care. Either they will come by money, because everything has to be expressed in a cause an effect relationship, or not looking poor or homeless might allow them to get a job they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. The result seems to be some combination of the two. Some accept, some decline, some seek me out.
Most importantly, though, I ask.
I put up an online form asking if people want me to try to change anything for them. I only offer things I think I can manage.
At first people think it a hoax. Most still do, but those desperate enough to try anything, they seek me out.
And I test how this works a little at a time and with the participants fully informed permission.
What kind of irresponsible jackass jumps directly to necromancy?
The dead… cannot consent.
Not usually anyway.
One day I find it in someone’s will that they want to be brought back if at all possible. It’s a case I had been following for a while on social media. Getting a hold of their physical personal journal turned out to be even harder than getting a hold of their remains. Not that they weren’t vocal about wanting to live after their death, but I wanted to make sure their private thoughts were the same.
I have been testing how this works for YEARS…
Many years.
I’m sitting in my mountain-top painting room, though it more resembles a lab with a tablet at the focal point, My hair is still damp from swimming in the ocean.
It’s been 200 years. I can’t say I look the same. The second set of clear eyelids give it away, even if you don’t catch the reflection from the backs of my eyes.
I’ve set up an online clinic with a refined list of what I can and can’t help people change. And also an open list of things I have not tested or haven’t figured out how to test.
Laws have been passed that taking photos of people against their will is now highly illegal, and punishable the same way as trying to actively deny them medical treatment, in some places,in the places where enough people believe. People sell masks that prevent someone’s photo from being taken, and those waiting for my treatments wear dark veils as if in mourning.
I have an extensive process to verify that the request is actually from the person in question and it usually involves a face-face interview. At least over a cam. Sometimes for complex and non-standard work, the person in question stays with me for a while at an undisclosed location. Sometimes it’s a small group all after the same thing, to have dragon tails or fairy wings. The photos must be explicit about it too, they must show the wings sprouted from their very flesh, and the next photo must show it in agile action.
There is no break.
There is no shortage of people who want something changed, there is no one else who can do the work. Quality of life takes precedent, including people transitioning, especially even, those who’s identity cannot be expressed with their bodies, yet. Pure cosmetics I do when there’s a spare moment in between. I’ve done what I can to edge myself away from needing as much sleep. Every photo has to be done as carefully as if I hold someone’s life and identity in my hands. A bad photo-shop could ruin someone’s life. I try not to do anything I am not 100% certain of if there isn’t a medical way to reverse it, or treat the potential side-effects. I have trained myself to let go of all personal bias. I make no modification or tweak without the direct consent of the client. I let them tell me what they need. These unique moral rulings are important to me and my work.
I have become a servant to the world. I could take a break if I wanted, but how could you look at the results of affecting such change and deny anyone?
I have not prolonged anyone else’s life yet, not the way I have directly staved off my own death. I do not know the status of my own mortality, I do not know my biological age or the full potential consequences. Those closest to me would not consent, and their reaction to me even implying the question told me not to ask them. I tried to make sure they didn’t feel bad, I try not to be bitter about it now. It’s been over a hundred years since the last person I was close to, when I discovered my ability, passed away. I’d have liked to have them with me.
Others have asked me to prolong their life, directly, but most just ask for the appearance of youth, maybe not recognizing that there are distinctions, even visually. I have not explained this to anyone. Many who ask directly are rich, but immoral, and their businesses hurt people, and so I say no. The rich who ask to look young and are willing to pay millions, they fund the travels and treatment of everyone else. They keep me in business.
Dictators ask. I say no.
Military leaders try to threaten me into modifying their soldiers. I say no to all of them. I no longer belong to any country. I belong in the middle of the ocean. The fact that I am the only person who can do this is the only thing that gives me the leverage I need for my freedom.
An urn sits behind me. This person was cremated against their will.
There’s a pedestal at the center of my lab with a circle of walls around it. This inner room has been filled with what is left of this person’s earthly possessions.
I know this power doesn’t work on the inanimate… but the inanimate was never animate.
First I tried a fish. It was a while before I could edit the photo of a fish enough to be convincingly alive so that the fish would fill in and come back to flopping about. But there’s no real way to test if a fish has retained it’s identity, or self.
Frank… the fish, floated in the tank behind my monitor, gave me another long look and swam off again. Frank may or may not be remembering me catching him, knocking him unconscious, and then next being helped by me into a bucket. Frank could not remember anything between those moments. I had already tested to see if he would remember the things that happened while he was being cooked, before I started this process. It seemed relevant.
I had held up objects in front of dead-fish eyes for a day before poking prodding or testing at the fish, until finally cooking the fish. I almost felt bad, but holding up those objects to the tank now elicited no response. The frying pan I had placed in the tank triggered nothing either. It was probably, ultimately, redundant, on some level, all of these little tests, or else pointless… Logically one would not make new memories while their brain was dead… but I wanted to be extra sure that no one would come back to life remembering being cremated, and that wasn’t pointless.
I’ve considered the morality and effects of this for the better part of two years. I have ascertained form their personal journals that they would have wanted me to try, even if I didn’t have any understanding of the consequences… and even if they couldn’t remember themselves.
This is the beginning of the greatest experiment and test of the ability. It will open or close thousands of doors.
I had developed a habit of talking to Frank. Frank only cares about feeding time, and when I reach in to pet him. He was weary at first, but learned I wasn’t going to hurt him… not again anyway. I still feel bad.
I have done every incidental thing I could think of to visually imply they are a direct continuation of the consciousness that they were. Working the lines around their face into a familiar expression, adding things to the background, things tested and untested as to whether they have any effect. The photo is of them in their coffin, before the cremation, though most people now consider taking photos at funerals to be in poor taste.
Except the cults. There were many reasons I now live high on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.
I ask Frank what he thinks and he moves his wide fish mouth at me uselessly. I’d be happy if I never had to have fish for dinner again. Every failed resurrection ended in a very odd fish dinner, with an oddly lively, yet still dead, looking meal.
I’ve started to prepare forms that resemble a combination of a living will and a DNR order, for people to fill out, with whether they would want to be resurrected, depending on their cause of death. I have held polls on whether people even think it should be the default in the case of murder, or when a person dies too young to understand enough to consent wither way. I have published novel after novel bringing these hypotheticals into question and scoured the discourse for insight on what people wanted.
Mostly I have determined it breaks down to the individual and their own autonomy in every case, and I hesitate to even consider publishing the forms until I know it can work. At least I am responsible for who will and won’t be helped by this. I only charge the rich, and I can keep it from being a tool used to widen gaps of inequality.
This woman, this poor woman, wanted nothing more than to live but her family had done everything, seemingly, to prevent that. She was abused in life and finally, also in death. Poisoned into a coma, the money, which she earned, set aside for her -theoretically functional- stasis chamber taken by her uncle, her body cremated against her direct wishes.
Sure, it was illegal to steal the urn… but it was the moral thing to do and not well guarded, besides. Even as ashes she would want to be as far from her family as possible.
It would be strange to know her so well when I am a stranger to her. It will be.
I take a deep breath.
I adjust the last layer to bring a living, healthy, flush back to her visage as the final step, and hit print. I put my stylus down and wait. Living as long as I have makes you feel like you can afford patience.
Please, please write a part 2
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Published
Borne Ceaseless 