I Signed Up for This

WHAT I'M CALLING FOR NOW, until someone corrects me: speculative fiction with non-fictive elements.The premise, plot, and trajectory of the piece is fictive, imagined, but I use curriculum fragments, sticky memories of curricular events that I have experienced and can't get out of my head, can't shake no matter what (Poetter, 2025), as the basis for most of the action and movement in the paper.I don't think it's important to parse out what is "real" or not here (it's all real by the way), which things or items or memories or statements or dialogue or characters are fictive or not.I've mixed it all together, with what my good friend and colleague Morna McDermott McNulty-the the energy and inspiration behind this special issue-would call a good dose of "fictive alchemy." c. 2050This may sound fantastical to you, but it's all true, and real.Near the end of my "true earthly life" in 2050 (My TEL, as they say now; I lived to the perfectly round age of 88) my primary care physician, Dr. Sills, asked me to meet her for coffee at DunkBucks (yes, the two entities merged and it's the best the executives could do!) following my semi-annual appointment.I agreed to the meeting, though I found it odd.We had been in the relationship of doctor/patient for many years, but not necessarily friends.When we met later that morning, she turned my world upside down."Tom, I asked you here today to seek your permission to recommend you for a long-term study being conducted by Gilly Labs and quantum physicists in Spain.They have a new 'medical process' (she used her fingers to highlight the phrasing 'medical process' with air quotes) for what they are calling 'New Life Alpha,' or NLA, where they harvest a small sample of your DNA, and mutate it with other particles that mesh with your remains, and through a complicated chemical process convert 'you' into a new living organism that is microscopic but that has all of the qualities of a human being in terms of brain function, memory, and communication, just without a traditional body."Dr. Sills paused, I perceived, because the words coming out of her mouth sounded purely fantastical, made up, silly, science fiction-y, not possibly true.No doubt some kind of weird, sick joke.But she didn't blink, staring right into my still bright, still not dull, hazel eyes.I stared right back at her, fixed, and said, "Wait" I paused, just to catch my breath, "So, this sounds to me like cryogenics, the wild notion during this entire century and part of the last one A