The cellular phone rang with a bad impression of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. His hand crawled from under the bedcovers to it like a wounded spider. "Hello?" he weakly croaked. "This is your seven a.m. wake-up call. Thank you for using WakeTek automated phone services." He fell out of bed like an avalanche and the motion sensors in his room stated matter-of-factly that he had fallen and asked if he required medical assistance. He set the digital readout on the shower to 80 degrees. After washing himself, he dried himself off and got dressed. The mechanical racks of ties, jackets, and pants went jerkily by like bored dancers in a strobe light. He went downstairs to make himself breakfast. He microwaved some instant oatmeal while he looked over the daily news on his PDA. He grabbed his keys off of the counter and headed into the garage. The dull thud of his car door reduced the sounds of the engine and the rest of the outside world to a droning hum somewhere far away. He checked his mirrors and backed out to the driveway. As one hand pressed the garage door remote to close it, the other hand nimbly leapt to the OnStar onboard navigational computer on the dash console. It mapped out his ride to work, factoring in construction detours and any accidents on the way. As a tinny voice told him where and when to turn, he put on a little background music. Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" came on the radio. When he arrived at his office, he briskly made his way to the main doors. He lifted his wrist up to the scanner. The scanner hummed in monotone as it read the ID chip under his skin. The chip allowed him to enter the building and automatically clocked him in. He sat down in his cubicle and logged in to his laptop. He checked his business account using his company's wireless Internet. After hours of e-mails and remote assistance to his clients, he e- mailed a filled out menu form to the noodle restaurant down the street. He had them deliver it at the park across from his office building where he sat waiting with his PDA out. The courier scanned the ID chip. He paid with an electronic check that would clear inside of an hour. He sat with his Thai noodles and ate, exchanging instant messages on his phone and checking his personal e-mail on his PDA. Shortly after finishing his lunch, he clocked back in with his ID chip and fell into his chair unceremoniously. With nothing to do until more clients contacted him, he searched for an entirely new wardrobe online, watched uploaded television shows on YouTube, and played videogames with an emulator. A co-worker stopped by his private cube world. "You heard this one?" He stared at his co-worker as blankly as a computer monitor on stand-by. "Two computers are sitting there and one says 'Hey, you hungry?' and the second one says, 'Yeah, I could go for a byte.' Get it?" There was no laughter. His girlfriend called him as he lazily played a losing game of solitaire. "I came over today to drop of some off my stuff and I couldn't put it anywhere, because you have too much God damn techno crap," she said with venom dripping from the last word. "I do?" "Do you really need sixteen jump drives," she inquired incredulously. "Well...I'm going to take care of all of that tonight." "You're not getting it done, are you?" "Yeah, right after work," he said matter-of-factly. "You do and we're over." Her voice sounded like razor wire and attack dogs. "Not when you find out where the vibrating battery extension is." There was a brief pause. "God speed," she whispered as she hung up. He clocked out at dusk, the main door slamming with a concussive crack from the locking electromagnetic frame. As he gingerly fingered the one-button remote that unlocked the car and fired up the engine, he was filled with excitement. He arrived at Second Life Laboratories. The main door required a retinal and palm print scan to enter. With child-like abandon, he looked into the bright light of the eye scanner and pressed his hand against the lime green hand plate below it. The doors slid apart and made a sound seemingly reserved for doors of spacecrafts in science fiction movies. He calmly walked up to the reception desk where a bored secretary filed her nails while listening to her MP3 player. Her LCD name display rapidly flashed "Denise." Denise looked up, through the haze of apathy and pirated hip-hop, and cast a look at him that would make "bored" seem to be the life of the party. "Down the hall, third on the right," she said looking back at her MP3 player and played the machine like a Stradivarius that it wasn't. As he marched diligently where she directed, he was lost in the thought of just how long it had been since he had heard a human voice actually come out of a human. He found an empty room with a turned down medical table. It was the sterile pale green of hospital walls or pond scum. At the head of the table was something cruel, shiny, and rounded like a robot from Lost in Space. As he warily tiptoed into the room like something was going to jump out and assault him, the thin metallic voice of the doctor chirped from an unseen intercom like a spring bird in the morning. "Hello. How are we today?" His neck tightened with a shocked spasm as his head turned haphazardly, looking for a person to go with the disembodied voice. "Fine," he answered. His voice hung in the room like ghost or a guest that refused to leave. "I'm in the room next door. The HUD lets me control everything you requested from my coordination center." "HUD?" "Heads Up Display. These screens show me everything from real-time video to your brain's theta waves and an EKG for your heart. By the way, please calm down. Everything's going to be okay. Just lay back on the table. You might feel a slight pinch before the download." He stretched out along the platform like a tired drunk and closed his eyes. He couldn't tell if it was the combination of air-conditioning and his sweat, or his nerves blazing with endorphins like a mid-summer wildfire, that made him shiver. What was described to him as a slight pinch felt more like the human equivalent of a paper jam. The procedure happened so fast he hardly had the time to whimper. He opened his eyes and was met with the alien perception that could only come from two 800 mega-pixel cameras turning on and adjusting to fluorescent lighting. He was in a different room now, in a different body. He heard the low humming of his joints as he unconfidently started moving like a newborn colt. He looked down as his new eyes corrected their aperture. His new tungsten steel alloy and titanium body was better than he could have imagined. It ran on a guaranteed 150-year lifespan fusion engine. No more cable modems, RAM upgrades, or looking things up on Google. His new body had a wireless T-5 modem, 50 terabytes of hard drive space, and his genitals were Bluetooth enabled. His dermal sensors booted up and flooded his processors with intangible data about what his body should be feeling. His surprised voice squawked out from a speaker set deep in his metal throat. An invisible web of germ-sized "nano-mites" orbited him, feeding the tactile sensory nodes scattered across his gleaming skin. Every time he required it, he would download the new EMUP, or Emotional Upgrade Patch. They were working on Happy 2.1. It would be on iTunes in three months for $9.99. He clinked and clanked out of the front of the lab like it was Oz and he was the new Tin Man. Children on the street ran up to touch him as if he were a new bicycle on Christmas. The thinly stretched antennae webbing inside him lit up as the girlfriend called. "Are you...did you...?" "Baby," he said, sounding like he was inside a soup can (which he basically was, albeit a very hi-tech soup can), "the future's so bright you'll have to wear shades. I'll just adjust the contrast and brightness."