I wonder if the lights are still on. Not that I would really notice if they were. I guess it is just one of those things that gets instilled into your mind as a child. Don't leave the lights on. Then after a while, you just turn them off. Not because it matters one way or the other, but because you just remember that you should not leave them on. Which brings up the whole question of even turning them on.
Again, it is not like I would really notice. I have not yet decided if it is habit that has me turning on lights, or if it is some kind of nicety for others. Which is odd, since I cannot remember the last time I've had visitors. Welcomed ones at least. There one that incident with the thief, she took some silverware and the stereo. I thought about alerting the police, but I wasn't using those items. Besides, if the background scan of her was to believed, she did rather need the money she got for pawning the items off.
I also noticed she was a regular for lottery tickets, so I twisted the systems. If she's not completely dumb, she won't need to steal anymore. If she is, well, the city will be paying her room and board in a manner of speaking anyways. It felt good, being a good samaritan, even if it was a bit Robin Hood-ish. Which is why I think I turn on the lights.
Thinking of it, I probably would have moved out years ago. I don't use most of this house. Moving is such a pain though. Packing all that you have, carrying it around, then unpacking it again. Then having to figure out where it all needs to go, since where you move to rarely is the same as where you moved from. I wonder about that. Does anyone actively try to move somewhere that is not different from where they were?
My condition doesn't make moving any easier. I suppose I could maybe ask friends for help, but I lost many of them after the accident. The few remaining are on such thin threads I really don't want to stress them. Not exactly strong friendships there. Being alone doesn't bother me so much as not having any foundations to fall back on. I did learn that much from the incident.
Really it seemed like such a good idea at the time. It is a bit funny, how history shows the crashing of the health care machine. Insurance finally cost just too damn much, and capitalism is all about who is will to pay for what, and who will provide. People stopped caring if the one who healed their wounds were legit or not. They couldn't afford to care.
They where the best route for the money I had, and I did not have all that much. At the same time it also gave me an advantage, so it seemed like a great idea at the time. From that perspective at least. A bit risky and definitely edgy, so far as the general public thought. My body being mangled as it was did not have many options. They did have a success rate of sixty percent. Outstanding odds given the other options.
Which isn't to say the other options had worse chances. Just that they mostly required hiring a full time body sitter. You know, someone to make sure your body got feed and cleaned, since you were in no shape to take care of it. Even though you were hooked up. Just that people had such this mentality of losing their form.
I guess it was like turning off the lights. You had it for so long, you couldn't quite imagine what it was like without it. I took the chance, shed my shell, and lived quite well without it. Though that first year, so many spooky dreams.
Like people that lose a limb, they say that they can still feel the limb. Sometimes when some other part is touched, they can feel it on the lost limb as well. Right, now imagine that for your whole body, except it has nowhere to map. As I figure, the lost forty percent didn't fail the exchange, they just failed to adjust to being without. Not that I didn't barely make it either mind you.
It was a fairly snap decision, I was losing consciousness, and it had to been done within those first forty minutes. I've always hated those ads that attack you on your cell. I still do. With the exception of one. Except of course my family wasn't too keen with it. It just made that first year that much harder.
Until they just flat out decided that the real me died, and I was some fake me. If you cannot tell the difference, is there a difference? It actually got easier after that, once I accepted what they chose. Friends were an equal situation. For a while I just let them think and say what they wanted, I didn't care, there was no way for them to understand. My mistake there was in not trying to understand what they were going through. I recognized this in time to save a few friendships.
Work was rough, only really because my family had filed for my death, and the government wasn't quite sure how to take this. Was I alive or dead? In the end, I could earn money and pay taxes, and that was all they were really interested in. They don't let me vote though.
In any case, I'm tired, so I need to shift into low power mode soon.
I think the lights are on.