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They call it re-membering. The process makers have a kind of dry sense of humour. It’s actually the head that comes first, to bring back the seat of the soul, and the sensory apparatus, but that’s cruel really, as then every bit of re-configuration, re-being, re-membering (literally) is painful, conscious, aware and slow. Horribly slow.

So the joke is, the members – be it arms, legs, or other more personal things – come last, and it’s excruciating.

They don’t tell you that in the pamphlets, the brochures. They only say, if you get a disease we can’t cure yet we ‘dissolve’ your essence and hold it in statis until we can cure, then we bring you back. They don’t say how. I reckon if they did, most would just choose to die by the illness.

But perhaps that’s just me.

I know because I’m a nurse here. I’ve see one too many re-memberings to ever take that course myself. But I still I smile and speak softly and never tell the truth when we are drawing in the clients. And those that come back keep quiet because we can always dissolve them again remotely if they threaten to tell too much – having done it once, they’re ours.

We make sure they know it. Oh yes, we are much more informative on the other side of all of this. Before – ignorance is bliss, but after the re-membering, silence is truly golden.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2020