Science Fiction
Theseus
-Mursalin Habib, CSE
I am the only person in the world who
doesn't know if I am me or not.
I understand that you are curious so let
me tell you my story.
I have told this story more times than I
can remember and for you I’ll do it once
more.
I was seventeen when I was diagnosed
with the Disease. The Disease is, as you
can probably tell, a disease. The doctors
don't call it that though. They have a
different name for it. But for some reason
I can never seem to remember that.
I don’t remember anything from before
my diagnosis either. Forgive me; my
memory is not as strong as it used to be. I
am not sure if the memories I have are
even mine anymore. This is one of the
byproducts of living with the Disease. You
start to question if anything at all belongs
to you.
Here’s a quick rundown of how the
Disease works. First your entire body gets
discolored. Then your cells start to
disintegrate. Every one of them. Even the
brain cells - the cells that arguably make
you you. The cells decay literally right
before your eyes. Do you know how it
feels like to see your body decay right in
front you? It feels like losing yourself in
the most literal sense possible. It's not
pleasant.
The Disease spreads itself very fast. In a
year or so, the patient is pretty much
dead.
So how am I alive, you ask? It’s because
I’ve been treated. I’m being treated right
now as I speak. I am the only person in the
world to be treated for the Disease. Or so
I’ve been told.
The premise of this treatment is quite
simple in principle: replace every decaying
cell with a new one. This idea is not
anything new. In fact this is quite similar
to something they used to do back in the
day called ‘organ transplant’ but only
slightly less messy and done with cells
instead of organs. As a method of
treatment, it’s not pleasant but at least it
works.
I’ve been being treated for quite a while
and I’m pretty sure that every cell in my
body has died at least once by now. I’m
completely brand new in some sense and I
should be happy. But I’m not.
I apologize for going off on a slight
tangent here but I presume you’re
familiar with the Ship of Theseus? It is a
thought experiment that asks whether
something that has had all of its
components replaced remains
fundamentally the same thing or not.
Some Greek guy called Theseus had a ship
that he used a lot. As a result, it required
lots of repairs. Eventually through
countless repair jobs, every single part of
the ship was replaced. The question that
was raised was quite a puzzling one: was
the ship in question still Theseus’ old ship
or was it a new one since none of the
parts of the original ship even existed any
more?
You see, I am a living and breathing
version of Theseus’ ship. Just like Theseus’
ship, nothing in my body belongs to me
anymore. But if nothing belongs to me,
am I even myself? What makes me me
anyway?
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