Conscious Designs
In the near future, Eugene, a wealthy executive for a company that grows organs for human transplantation, looks for ways to escape the pain and disability of his biological existence as a paraplegic. Eugene considers purchasing a Second Self from Conscious Designs, a company that claims to be able to replicate his consciousness into a digital utopia where he may be free of the pain that torments his physical existence. A relatively new technology, the ethics and philosophy of digital life remain disputed. Eugene’s wife, Corina, questions his motives and his understanding of what it means to be human if consciousness can be copied. The more Eugene understands about digital replication, the more he begins to question the nature of personhood, love, and reality. In their journey of self discovery, Corina and Eugene learn the value of suffering, empathy and mortality. Conscious Designs explores the boundaries between body and mind, self and other, neurology and cybernetics, reality and simulation.
Praise for Conscious Designs
This novella is a marvel: a vision of a not-so-distant future in which our bodies are virtually obsolete and our consciousnesses immortal. Into an otherwise nihilistic world, Nathanial White encodes a kind of tragic beauty suffused with longing. Reading Conscious Designs made me want to download the author’s brain, harness its powers of imagination, and wrestle with the questions he so intelligently dramatizes in these pages.
—Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men
Nathanial White brings his lived experience of paralysis and recovery to Conscious Designs. What follows is a journey into ethics, morality, and the philosophy of being and personhood. Each time I thought I knew where the story was going, it surprised me, and drew me deeper. The prose is reminiscent of classic science fiction greats such as Asimov or Aldiss who played with ideas like colors on a canvas.
— Marie Vibbert, author of Galactic Hellcats
Conscious Designs knows what it is—which is more than its characters can say for themselves. Nathanial White’s fiction has its mind on human consciousness and artificial intelligence and an exoskeletal boot planted firmly on story. If you find yourself returning to the sci-fi of Philip K. Dick and the philosophical provocations of Brian Evenson, Conscious Designs is for you—at least, the version of yourself you call “you.”
—Christopher David Rosales, author of Word Is Bone and winner of the International Latino Book Award