"I'm sorry Ms. Hudges, but the technology is too young." Svetlana felt as though she were listening to a child whose first words were, "Too young."

Dr. Danes was a prodigious coneurology expert fresh off his residency at Mayo. At age 12 he published his first article in The Lancet Neurology. It was picked up by Nature, and eventually he became the first teenager to earn Time Magazine's Person of the Year Award. Though for someone as celebrated as he was, Dr. Danes maintained a sort of poised aloofness that kept him within the defined limits for physician arrogance.

"Look, Dr. Danes, I understand perfectly the limitations of the merge as it relates to children. I've read all of the papers including yours. I know the risks. I know the odds. I still want to give Jessica the chance to grow up," repeated Svetlana for what felt like the millionth time. "Plus, with good luck, there are huge upsides for both of us," she argued.

Conscious merging technology had been commercially available for few years, but everyone understood that children could not be meaningfully merged with adults because of the significant differences in neurological development. However, there had been recent work in a few private Chinese labs that showed promise in overwriting an adult brain with the functional equivalent of a child's. Svetlana hoped that Dr. Danes's ego would push him to try the procedure on her and her terminally ill daughter.

Ms. Hudges was desperate to give her daughter Jessica any chance to live no matter how unlikely. Jessica had been Svetlana's life since she was born four years ago. When Jessica was diagnosed with SMA at six months old, Svetlana spent countless nights pouring over every bit of literature she could find about the disease. There were a number of promising treatment options, but none of them seemed to help her daughter. By the time Jessica was one, Svetlana had already started reaching for alternatives as unorthodox as voodoo and cryonics.

"I've been thinking about those upsides, Ms. Hudges, but there are risks for me too," he replied. "If the procedure fails, I'll lose credibility, and in the worst case, I could even lose my license to practice." He stood up to pace behind his desk for a moment.

This was more hesitancy than Svetlana could recall having seen in her previous conversations with the doctor, and she decided to seize the moment, "You mentioned the window between when we scan my consciousness for storage and when we overwrite my brain to make room for Jessica. There would be anywhere from hours to days in which I'm creating memories we'd both know are temporary. Can you think of any way to take advantage of that?"

==NEW-STORY==

Even though I'd read all the material about the sub-cranial electrode-mesh implant and its acclimatization procedure, I still had reservations. It changes you. Ture, most of that changes is good. My few friends and colleagues who'd already opted to try out the SCEMv8 were noticeably better informed, quicker, wittier and really just all-around more intelligent, but they'd also adopted more moderate political leanings and were more critical of generalizations and superlative statements. I suppose it makes perfect sense - just as they explained to me - that after experiencing immediate access to a wider array of both knowledge and opinions, you can't help but relax your staunchest sentiments somewhat.

But there were some people whose entire outlook on life changed after adopting the SCEMv8. I hadn't had any in depth conversations with people in this category, but I'd met some constituents on the campaign trail claiming that the device changed their lives, and I'd read the occasional news stories about people converting to incredible, philanthropic lifestyles. And, on the other end of the spectrum, a few stories covered people who became excessively greedy and manipulative after the implantation procedure. Anecdotally, these personality developments embellished extant traits rather than being purely transformative, but regardless of the mechanism behind the change, it sounded downright frightening to me.

I tried to clear my head of these anxieties as I steadied the needle near my temple. I already made the commitment to go through with this when I made the purchase last week and had the tiny requisite hole drilled through my skull at the doctor's office. These were just last-minute jitters; I convinced myself. I took a deep breath and slowly emptied the syringe into my forehead.