John of Theseus

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Dear John! Happy birthday to you!" Bob and Mary sang to him.

John enthusiastically blew out 1000 virtual candles with his nitro-cooler apparatus.

In a robotic voice, he said, "Thank you for this. I'm quite excited that I now qualify for the transition!"

Bob and Mary beeped and played clapping audio clips.

Bob, his younger best friend, only 822 years old, said, "You earned it John. With all those transformations, do you have any organics left?"—He laughed.

John chuckled. "I think they say I have a trace of grey matter encased in a cryo-chamber somewhere here." He pointed at the top of his metallic head. "Just for the sake of being human. It's one of those Never a Robot guarantees. "

Mary—Bob's 340-year-old cohabitation partner—said, "We have to hang onto our humanity till the end. Or how are we any different than that robotic gardener in your yard?"

John laughed. "Mary, he's human. He's still got a partial-hemisphere working."

Mary's faceplate blushed. "Oh, sorry. Bad example!"

John replied, "Don't worry about it. Everyone makes that mistake. He's a neighbor of mine. He likes to feel practical, so he prefers to help cultivate people's gardens instead of being plugged in all day."

Bob nodded. "Good for him. I really need to become more practical myself. Just sitting around all day meditating on universal questions is becoming a bore. "

John scanned Bob. "What will you do when I'm gone?"

Bob replied, "Preservation, till I can join the hive myself. I look forward to expanding my consciousness, but rules have it not till I hit 1K. Mary and I would volunteer, but they want the world to remain human. Otherwise—"

John interrupted, "—Everyone would, right? I mean, that's the point of the Millennial Rule. No one can join the hive until reaching 1000 years. I've donated cells for a clone replacement, so a new John will take my place and start over."

Mary asked, "But why do we bother? I mean seriously. Why can't we just join the hive and be done with it?"

John beeped. "It's the age-old argument, right? Why can't we just upload and be done with it? Why must we keep humans alive at all? So I asked a philosophical expert, ironically, he's our gardener right there. Why can't we just go virtual in the first place? His answer was the Ship of Theseus."

Mary positioned herself straight up, clicked her head, and listened. "Go on…"

John continued, "Apparently, it was a cybernetics dilemma early on when they replaced our limbs and organs. But it became a critical ethical question once they replaced our brain functions. How much can be replaced and still be us?"

Bob asked, "Oh, I see, so how much of our organic selves will remain intact to keep us human vs. machine?"

"That's correct. "John nodded. "So eons ago, they decided on the Millennial Rule. That we must strive to keep our brains organic as much as possible until 1000 years."

Mary asked, "An arbitrary number?"

"I suppose so." John's metallic arms shrugged. "It provided humankind a scientific challenge to maintain our organic selves. To retain the biological individual and our species. They were afraid if there was no rule, there'd be no reason for us to exist. We might as well let robotics takeover."

Bob replied, "Makes sense. If we decided to remove all that's left, we might as well just go extinct, and exist in name only like that ship."

John replied back, "That's correct, Bob. I guess we're all that ship in some way."

Bob raised a virtual glass. "A toast, to our old friend John of Theseus! May you exist forever and ever, in your hive journey, and so shall you be cloned!"