Break out of this body and swim in data:

there is immortality here;

you’re no longer bound in a fleshy tomb.

That near-death experience was your awakening.

You think a digital future will purge the haunting memory.

But what of the virus?

The cyber dismemberment of your source,

the deletion of your soul?

The Collective cannot save you:

This is the price of advancement;

this is what you asked for.

This is your endless future.

Her pale face is etched in my mind:

the angular nose, pallid lips and icy-blue eyes

that guard her fortress of solitude.

Portia – the digital mother that disturbs my dreams.

I can’t escape her, so I hide fragments of my memory

and keep them close to my pulsing heart:

the only thing left of me that resembles humanity.