2009-06-04, 02:00 Earth time.

But before I describe the day, I should introduce myself. My name is Abigail Cabal, and for those of you who have surmised I am female in at least one way, you are correct. I am biologically female. Though I don't feel I think exactly into the category of "male" or "female" when it comes to mind. This could be due to exposure to above-average testosterone levels while in the womb, which I am dead certain of as I was supposed to have two older brothers. Both of them were miscarried. I have no emotional attachment to them.

I am thirteen Earthian years old. I was born on July 24, 1995. I live in what is today Simi Valley, a growing town in southern California, a state in the United States of America. However, I was born of in Baguio City, the Philippines, and spent the first four and a half years of my life there. Those were happier, simpler times... Well, not that I'm not happy right now. It's just on average I was happier most of the time during my early childhood than I am happy living here.

It's a reasonable and modest house that I live in, two stories tall, three bedrooms, three bathrooms. Our garage has room for two cars. The house is certainly nothing to complain about, though anyone who has been inside and does not question the design and décor at least in the head I shall declare insane, or at the very least blind and blissful. The interior of the house isn't that bad but it's more than mediocre, especially to someone who has taken a course in Home Furnishings.

Let me describe the area. We have many great mountains, though they are all dry and partially barren. They are also brown, and not the mouth-watering brown of chocolate. No, it is a hideous, dead brown that goes in its own disgusting way well with the polluted sky. We can still see blue, but every day it is always hazy with the little particles of pollution we so emit with our cars. In the rare instances it rains the sky is cleared up, the dirt having gone down and seeped the soil with the rain itself. And the pristine sky only lasts for about a day. After that, it's back to haze.

When it's slightly foggy, and only up in the air, the scene is even more ugly. What a terrible sky to fly in! And, for better or for worse, this haze and fog obscures the deadness of the mountains. Either way, birds are a rare sight in Simi Valley. Or at least in the skies. Near the trees, near the gardens, near the fields, yes, but not in the sky.

My detestation for the soil of our sky knows no boundaries. Most nights only the brightest of stars are visible. That means only about fourteen, give or take, tiny, dim, specks of light are visible. Always in retrospect I always weep inside, but in the moment I always jump high and reach for the stars. They seem so close! These days it seems I am the only one who even acknowledges the heavens. Everyone is so caught up with everything else... And it's almost as if it never occurs to anyone that we actually have stars other than the sun in the sky until you mention it to them! My disgust for this attitude actually rivals my disgust at the ravaged skies.

I want my work to be with the cosmos, but I do not want to die so quickly, so early, so young. So, I have refrained from becoming a cosmonaut. Instead, I will become the next best thing—the person who programs a completely robotic cosmonaut. But to touch soil, to jump and test gravity, to be so close to it all... But I do not want to die, so my hopes rest on the future of virtual reality technology. I want to see it all through the eyes of a cosmonaut! To feel it all, to breathe it all, to take it all! Oh, what I wouldn't do for such an experience!

My thoughts on life and the universe… I think it is hard to understand for today’s “average Joe.” But, when I comprehended, or at least tried to comprehend, death, and the vastness of the universes, of space-time… I became a new person. I had been reborn. It was like being doused a refreshing pail of water, but at the same time feeling unimaginable trepidation. Relief and renewal at this new knowledge. Fear and anxiety at its implications. Of course, I underwent this metamorphosis while gazing up at heavens’ stars. I was thirteen.

When exactly had it been… I am not sure. But some time this year, or perhaps even late last year, my family and I went to vacation in Las Vegas. It was overall an unpleasant vacation (everything “family-related” headed by my father is always at the very least unpleasant). The vacation was not important. It was what happened on the vacation, which would inevitably happen some time in my life, was what I feel I should note.

Until that time, ever since I had realised the universe, I had aspired to build myself a robot, upload a copy of my brain onto a hard drive, and put that hard drive to use in my robot. But then, on that night in Las Vegas, while being driven back to the hotel, I realised something terrible. However many copies of myself I create, and however long they last, they will always be copies, individuals, separate from me…

This horrified for me, and for a while, I silently fell into despair, all the while putting up the façade of normalcy. But I recovered. Making copies of myself would not save me (but I would still do it out of obligation for posterity). No. Instead, I entrusted my faith in bionetic implants, and I have been entrusting it since.

As I type this… I have another revelation. A shared mind! Of course, I shared mind! A network! Yes, yes, those clones of me will be of use to me after all. My presence all across those clones and also located in me. It would be like gaining another, superior eye, and eventually losing the original, inferior eye to wear and tear. Yes! I shall survive, I shall! So long as the technology comes before my death and I can some how afford it.

Immortality. Many people say that they are content with their lives, and would be fine without have immortality. But wait, until they age, until they near death… They near it year by year, we all do. If they are like me, they would be driven to madness! Desperation! And perhaps I am mad. I feel no shame, but no pride in it. I am only happy to be alive, so very alive… I do not want to die. Anyone who has thought what I thought will never want to die. Even in the midst of torture, I would not give up my life. I want to live.