I wrote this story many years ago, recently found it and have decided to rewrite it a bit and give it some more thought to see if over the years I’ve changed my thoughts on this subject. Spoiler alert: I haven’t.

It started because something alarming caught my eye, a small piece in a now nearly defunct magazine stating that a bunch of British scientists had invented a “Soul-Catcher.” In case you don’t know, and I did not either, this is a memory chip which, once implanted into us, would have the ability to record and store human memory and thoughts. Scary, right?

A Mr. Chris Winter, who happens to head British Telecom’s “artificial life team,” (is there anyone reading this who might be able to explain to me what on Earth that is?) says, with a certain savoir-faire, “With these chips, we would not have to rely on holiday snapshots and our memories. We could simply play our experiences back to each other.”

We could? Why would we want to? Don’t our friends and family members already bore us enough with verbal lamentations of their insensitive spouses, ungrateful children, assorted surgeries, rampant crabgrasses, bad mannered canines and pitiless bosses without constantly inviting us over to view this memory chip thing the way we’ve had to endure their dreadful, torturous vacation slide shows? Doesn’t sound like such a good idea to me. And how on Earth would that memory chip actually show these remembrances? Somehow projected on a screen? A white wall? Seriously?

And another thing: Is this chip supposed to be implanted in us? The way they chip family dogs and cats? The immediate question which comes to mind is, where? I do not care to fancy.

Does Mr. Winter have any idea the huge financial losses he and his scientist associates would cause certain businesses such as the camera, film, video and picture frame industries if that memory chip thing caught on? All those innocent people out of work. Shameful.

And that’s to say nothing about how this memory chip could simply destroy a sacred way of life to all mothers everywhere. I mean, has there ever been anything more enjoyable for a doting mother who has set her sights on a young woman she’s decided would make the perfect wife for her beloved son than to break out the family albums and show the hapless young lady pictures of her naked baby boy on the universal bear-skin rug? How on Earth can she sit on the sofa with this sweet innocent holding a memory chip maybe half the size of a gnat’s eye and expect her to possibly see how adorable, smart and irresistible her son was then and is now? Can’t happen. Won’t work. Speaking for all mothers everywhere, we have to take a stand; Mr. Chris Winter must be stopped.

These guys expect to have this gizmo up and running within 30 years. Thirty years! I could possibly still be around for that, and I do not want to see this happen. I’ll have lived long enough and will by then be too old to have to endure any new hassles. I’ll be wanting to deal with my dear memories in the old-fashioned way — by endlessly boring my family with them. Verbally. With piles of fading snapshots on the table.

This is how these guys suggest the “Soul-Catcher” will work: They say, “By combining this information” — our experiences, I guess they mean — “with a record of a person’s genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally and spiritually.” Wait. What? I thought we were just talking about old memories here. Now they are thinking about recreating us physically? No deal. I mean, unless they can make me look exactly like Hedy Lamarr. (Ask your grandfather.) The world is already way too overwhelmed with humans. We have to shuffle off in an orderly fashion, to clear the way for the newbies.

Seriously folks, this is not good. Many of us are not keen to be recreated physically. For example, bringing back copies of that unpleasant uncle who only bathed at Easter or that cantankerous old woman down the street who always ate dirt I would think would not be met with resounding enthusiasm.

And, as if the above quotation were not chilling enough, these science geeks toss off one final cavalier statement, said not without some egotism: “This is the end of death — immortality in the truest sense.”

The end of death? Oh, boy. I’ve got just the tiniest problem with that. Hey! Guys! If you’re going to end death then, Mr. Chris Winter and your test-tube minions, you’ve got to end birth! Yes!

See, it kind of works like this. There’s this law of physics, and it states, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Or something like that, and so you see, Mr. Winter, if you happen to be reading this, you’ve got to promise all of us that you won’t go through with this diabolical scheme to end death. Call me fey, but it seems to me if people don’t die and people continue to be born, which they do with alarming regularity, we’ll quite rapidly, say in around 17 minutes, be so squashed for space on this planet, it’ll make the Japanese subways at rush hour look like Death Valley in August. Food, water and cable TV? Forget it. Too many people. No sharing. And soon, nothing to share.

Please, Mr. Chris Winter, sir, have you no sense of decency? Cease this plan instantly! Today, now, destroy your empirical pursuits no matter how hard and long you’ve worked at them. Just let everything go back to the nice, traditional way of things — getting born, hanging about to perform a few worldly chores and then, when everything’s done, just dying. This seems, at least to me, to be the most sensible of plans. It sort of balances things and leaves enough porridge and memories around for everyone.

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.