THE CHAIN OF BEING

Ok, so I was a first-time buyer recently (which was great because I didn’t have the ominous ‘chain’) and I just want people to know that when they say, “sign your life away,” they don’t mean it, it’s just a joke. Everyone makes that same bad joke when you sign literally anything, that you don't realise it is a joke, but it is, don't worry about it.

If you've told people you're buying, you've probably already been inundated with unsolicited advice that's mostly contradictory and all anecdotal. The most common misconception I've found is about the timeframe, you hear the process ranges from a week to a decade but those are rare extremes.

The truth is it’s both tediously slow and lightning-fast. A case in point, finding a seller was the longest part of the process for me, with an ageing population there’s just nothing out there at the moment. Eventually, I found someone: a young man who lived by the sea (I was worried about sun damage at first but the survey said it was fine). But after the offer, the process flies by. (That’s another tricky part: the offer. You don’t want to be insulting, but everyone always thinks they’re worth more than they are.)

With the offer accepted you can get the survey done. It has to be done by a doctor and it’s really in-depth as you would hope. I mean, you’re not just buying a TV, you’re buying a home. So, they take urine samples, blood samples, other bodily fluid samples. They ask about your diet. How much do you exercise? Do you drink? Smoke? Any fun drugs?

The survey came back great with no major problems. You can make requests based on the survey and I asked that they switch to a vegan diet for a few months but they declined. Advice to sellers: your body is a temple!

Then that’s it, you “sign your life away”. The contracts go through, your life savings only cover the deposit, you still need insurance but then the final step is ‘exchange’.

Now, a lot of people misunderstand this, they assume exchange has to involve some kind of transplant, like a lobotomy or something, but it’s much more straightforward. The brain already rewires itself when you’re growing up, it’s called ‘synaptic pruning’ and the main technique is just an acceleration of that natural process. The unnatural bit is the portrait implant in the back of the head, oh, and a lot of hormones, radiotherapy, hypnotherapy, physiotherapy, regular therapy and tons of fun drugs.

The side effects are surprisingly minimal, only 6% memory loss and the occasional migraine for the rest of your life, but for another 40 years of living I’d say that’s no biggy. Oh, there can be behavioural changes so I do say ‘no biggy’ now.

Overall though, I'm really happy with my 'reincarnated self'. I'm no longer bald, everything works downstairs and I can now stand up without creaking like an old ship. I am a lot more gangly than I expected which takes some getting used to, but I wanted tall. Some of my teeth are wonky and I'll cover planning permissions in a later post, but that's minor. (And don't forget 85% of you is now owned by the bank!)

Just remember to think of this as an investment. With some refurbishment, you can normally sell your body on for a profit and upgrade to something younger in a few years.

Now you might be worried about things like, what about your soul? What about the guy whose body you bought? What about your old body? And my simple advice to all of that is: don't think about it.

I think the guy who used to look like me bought someone older and pocketed the cash, but I don't know, we don't keep in touch.

As for 'the old me', for legal and not-going-mad reasons I can’t call it ‘me’ or ‘him’ I have to call it ‘it’. What happened is it went to sleep for the surgery then if it was being sold on it would get rewired but at 84 and after three strokes, my case was a write-off so they simply did not wake me up.

It was cremated. No ceremony. But then, why would there be? I'm not there. I didn't die. When they say, "sign your life away," they don't mean it, it's just a bad joke.

ANAX