I’m trying to convince her, and I’m failing. 

“It’s a simple procedure, Ma,” I say. “No pain. No stitches. No hassle. You’ll be in and out before you know it. And it’s absolutely free. The company is covering it. God knows I’ve busted my ass there long enough to have earned it. So, please. Take it. Consider it my gift to you.” 

“But I don’t want it,” she says. 

This is Ma’s go-to line—the portion of the broken record that she’s been stuck on for the past thirty minutes, the past three months since I first raised the idea. She keeps on watering her tulsi plants as if we’re talking about dinner plans, or upholstery, or which path to take for our Sunday morning walk (the hill or the lake, always the hill or the fucking lake). She tips her small yellow ramekin full of water over each of the pots on the window sill; her wrist curls like the neck of a swan. I’m not sure if she’s watering the plants the right amount. She never measures. 

“Please, Ma.” I watch her with my hands in my pockets, my back pressed against the island countertop. Her back is to me. “This is the only way you’ll get to see your granddaughter grow up. This is the only way you’ll get to see your great-grandkids, your great-great-grandkids—who knows how many generations. This is the only way you’ll get to live.” 

For a flicker, she sighs—almost chuckles. “Aiyyo, kanna. I have already lived for seventy-two years.” 

Seventy-two years. Seventy-two years. 

I appraise this number, toss it and turn it, and tap at it as if just the right force applied in just the right place will shatter away the veil and reveal the brilliant diamond buried at its core. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t see it. It’s nothing. Barely a blip compared to the eternity I’m offering her.

“I don’t understand,” I say, my tone sharpening. “There are people out there who would kill for this opportunity.” 

“Let one of them have it, then,” she replies effortlessly. 

I resist the urge to bite my lip. “I’m not ordering a TCT for just anyone.” After a pause, she says again, “I don’t want it.” 

The procedure of a total consciousness transplant (or TCT) can be summarized as follows: 1) digitize a living human’s neural network through a noninvasive brain scan, 2) upload this network to an external hard drive, 3) download the network into the brain of a freshly cloned human bioprint through patternized electrochemical stimulation, and 4) awaken the clone from stasis with a shock to the sternum once the original body dies. Naturally, given that the tech is still in its infancy, all of these steps are still prohibitively expensive—the bioprint alone sets you back $3 million. Somewhere in a secure company database, there are 130,457 lines of code that articulate an algorithm designed to read signals from the human hippocampus. Of these 130,457 lines, I contributed 15,650, and for this contribution, I was awarded a health insurance plan that will cover the cost of my own TCT and the TCTs of up to three loved ones. I’ve already made arrangements for my wife and daughter to undergo the procedure when the time comes. 

“Is this about Dad?” I take a few steps toward Ma. I try to peer around her shoulder to get a better look at her eyes, but they remain hidden behind the silver strands of her hair. “If I could go back in time and give him a second life with this technology too, I would. But I can’t. Don’t throw your life away because I couldn’t save his.” 

She shakes her head as she pours water into the last pot. “You’re just like your appa, you know that? Two working ears, but only listening from one side.” She sighs. There’s still an inch of water left at the bottom of the ramekin, so she tilts her head back and swallows it in one gulp. Typical Ma. Always taking care of our leftovers. When my brother and I were kids, she would live off the food we wouldn’t stomach—pizza crusts, mango pits, bits of sour lemon achar left in curd rice. She made a religion out of thrift. ‘Waste not, want not. Waste not, want not.’ How many times had she repeated those words? She never let anything go to waste but herself. 

A bitter heat rises from somewhere deep in my gut. The heat burns through my throat, sears my tongue. I look at Ma: her thinning gray hair, her narrow shoulders wrapped in a pink wool cardigan, her liver-spotted hands which grow shakier and shakier by the day. I want to hug her. I want to throttle her. I want to cry into the crook of her neck and stain her cardigan with my tears. I want to scream. I do none of these things. I remain frozen. 

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go around the lake today. Hah, kanna? I want to see the ducks.” She kisses me on the cheek and disappears down the hallway that leads to the front door. 

I’m left alone with the tulsi plants. They look worse than they did the last time I saw them. Their leaves are getting brown and crumbly; their stems are nearly as thin as my fingernails. They never seem to last longer than a few months. I keep telling Ma: they’re tropical plants. They’re not meant for this cold weather. But that doesn’t seem to bother her. After one set of plants dies, she buys another and repeats the cycle. Grow, crumble, grow, crumble, grow, crumble. Again and again and again.

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“Tulsi Plants” by Valmic Shridhar Mukund and the artwork titled Sudden Fiction Spread by Erin McCann appeared in Issue 43 of Berkeley Fiction Review.

Valmic Shridhar Mukund is a writer from Northern California with a passion for the surreal, the absurd, the magical, and the beautiful. He has previously been published in Lunch Ticket‘s Amuse-Bouche series, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sci-Fi Shorts, and Every Day Fiction. You can often find him at work at his computer or drowning himself in music.

Erin McCann (she/hers) is a sophomore illustrator and graphic designer. She studies cognitive science and enjoys finding creative ways to apply her design and illustration skills.