(Excerpt from a larger piece)

Being a ghost is really a mixed bag. No, that doesn’t do it justice. Being human was a real mixed bag as well and being a ghost is very much not like being human. At least, as someone with experience in both positions I would say they are very different, but, then again, maybe there’s some alien cosmic-brain super-intelligence out there that would disagree, say the two are pretty similar all things considered, but until you get in contact with the super-brain you’re stuck with me, and I say being a ghost is not like being a human, so there.

Ok, technically, I’m not a ghost. I’m a localized, indefinitely stable series of electromagnetic interactions which are able to capture and emulate the complexity of the human brain. In my case, the brain of a dead person whose life experiences seem subjectively, more-or-less, contiguous with my own. But, that makes me exactly way-the-fuck-more of a ghost than anyone else around here… assuming there’s anyone left at all.

I really can’t quite be sure. Being a ghost has some side effects you see, in particular, I have no corporeal form and no sense of anything except sight. As for sight, I can see on pretty much the whole electro-magnetic spectrum, but that’s really not all it’s cracked up to be when you’re still working with a more-or-less human mind. You see, the number of colors I see hasn’t changed all that much, but it covers a lot more range now, the whole spectrum of traditionally “visible light” is pretty much just variations on the color blue for me. So, figuring out where exactly humans, or living things in general, are or aren’t at any given time can actually be pretty difficult.

Especially after the big hullabaloo, with all kinds of different radiation hanging around in every nook and cranny, radiating all these bright and distracting colors: it’s like playing Where’s Waldo in a world-sized Jackson Pollock painting… but where there’s also a bunch of dead Waldos everywhere, and finding them doesn’t count.

Anyway, assuming there is someone reading this, you’re probably thinking, “Damn this guy survived armageddon and he doesn’t have to worry about remembering to use deodorant anymore? Sign me up!”

Well, hold your horses buckaroo, like I was saying, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It was a run of bad luck that got me here. I got sick, real sick, real young. The specifics don’t matter much now, but suffice it to say, I was going to be lucky if I made it into the 27 club. In the depths of my terminal, pointless despair I get an offer that sounds something like:

“Hey kid, we heard yous was dying. Seems like some real tough shit… Anyway, if you let us kill you now for science, slice up your brain real small and copy it into some fancy machine and maybe it’ll turn you into a science ghost. Whacha say?”

So I hem and a haw about it for a couple days until I remember that my other option is just slower more painful death and a say, “sure, whatever, let’s just get it over with.” and next thing I know, ta-da, I’m a phantom (and just in time for Halloween).

Of course, when I first… wake up? Emerge? Whatever. It’s less sunshine and rainbows, and more agonizing pain and despair. See, they didn’t have the whole phantom thing really worked out, and initially, for the first few months until this sort of simulation of my mind adapted, all the light and forms of radiation I can sense were interpreted as basically random nerve stimulation, much of which, as it turns out, is quite painful.

I guess all this is to say, be careful what you wish for. One minute you just want to live to see your thirtieth birthday, a hop-skip and a millennium later and your slowly losing your mind in and endless wasteland of rainbow radiation and loneliness. It’s turned out to be a real monkey-paw type situation.

Ian Tassin

Biography: Originally from a small town in a part of Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, for exactly the reasons you would expect, I have always been drawn to the escapism of stories in all forms. Stemming from a life-long interest and love I wrote and published a series of rulebooks for a TTRPG called Apotheosis a few years ago. More recently, my attention has turned to prose and poetry writing as I have been working on a collection of short-stories and poetry with the aim of publishing within the next two years.

Artist Statement: Transcending Physical Form To Become a Quasi-Immortal Being of Pure Energy: A Retrospective and Memoir is a sci-fi story that takes a look at the lived experience of someone whose consciousness has been stored in a non-physical form. In short: they have been up-rooted and isolated from their connection to nearly all elements of normal human life.