Author: Shannon O’Connor

I got the chip in my head so I could go faster and discover things nobody else knows, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone because my enemies could use the facts against me. I have to travel to search for new ideas to steal from scientists to find out the secret of eternal youth.
The implants won’t make us healthy. They can make our brains rapid and calculate information, but health comes from another seed. I am going to travel to the Eastern countries because they have hidden labs where they experiment on humans; we are not allowed to do such work in the West. I am from the West, and I have always lived here, but the world is becoming one, though laws still differ everywhere.
I had an Aunt Bettina who had a pacemaker, and when she went through airport security, she had to tell them she had a machine that helped her heart beat correctly, and she was forced to do an all-body scan to be allowed on a plane. She didn’t want them to think she had a gun or a bomb secreted in her body. She was an old lady. She didn’t travel much. But when she went to Florida, her medical secret had to be revealed. She died eventually, as everyone does.
The implant I have in my brain is made of plastic and metal, and nobody told me if it would set off an alarm at the airport. I don’t want to tell the security detail that I have a chip in my head because it’s top-secret, and I don’t know how I’ll get through. I have to go to the East on my mission. I focus to try to figure out my problem.
Nobody can discover my mission. They can’t know. I work for an agency, and if the boss told them I exposed my assignment, they would murder me.
I think of my Aunt Bettina and how delicate she was when she was old. Since she had a pacemaker, she couldn’t drink wine, and she could move her arms above her head. She could go line dancing, but not the wild dancing she did when she was young. It’s difficult to be old. That’s why I’m doing this. Because I don’t want people to wither and die, and burden society.
I think aging is a curse. I think people who live to be elderly are destined to suffer.
The idea comes to me when I am putting together a table for my entertainment system. I can tell the airport security I have a screw in my head. I could tell them I had surgery and it’s there to keep the procedure in place. I don’t think the guards know much about neurosurgery, so my ruse should work.
I wait in line for my plane to the East. I have my passport and boarding pass in hand. A sign that says, “People with pacemakers, ICDs, and other implantable devices, wait to the left.”
I go in the shorter line to the left.
“I had brain surgery, and I have a screw in my head,” I say.
“A screw?” the woman says.
“Yes, it keeps me together.”
“Okay.” She shrugs.
She scans my body. She finds the metal in my head.
I take my luggage and go to the correct gate.
I am helping unearth the path for humans to thrive. Almost forever.