The Jump

ACT I 

Scene 1 

A college lecture hall. ETHAN, a man in his 

mid-thirties, is the guest speaker at the podium. 

HE shuffles his notes, then begins.

ETHAN 

Thank you for inviting me to Sarah Lawrence. I'm 

honored to be the guest speaker to welcome in what's 

probably the biggest event of human history. I guess 

I'll start off this lecture by correcting any 

assumptions that you might've heard about choosing to 

stay here or upload. 

Changes slide. 

ETHAN (cont'd) 

First of all, being uploaded won't necessarily make you 

smarter. If you have a brain chip installed, then don't 

worry, you'll be able to function at just as high a 

speed as your friends who don't want their old bodies 

anymore. 

Changes slide. 

ETHAN (cont'd) 

Second, when you upload, your consciousness is 

definitely transferred along with the rest of the 

information, even philosophically. The process starts 

with making a copy that is 100% off, then we slowly 

start turning on the different parts of the virtual 

brain as your physical brain is manually being shut 

down. The brains will work in tandem until the virtual 

brain is running everything. There is no point at which 

you as a person will ever shut off. In fact, you 

wouldn't even notice it was happening if there weren't 

a progress bar on the computer. 

When we make the home version next year, we'll even 

have your computer take in your surroundings so that 

the virtual room will be identical to the physical one. 

The version out tomorrow will be at participating 

doctors' offices, so their rooms have all been 

preprogrammed. 

Changes slide. 

ETHAN (cont'd) 

Next, at the lunch, a lot of you were asking me where 

you'd be living. For most of you, you'll probably be 

living where you've been living up to now. However, 

I've heard that some of you don't want to live where 

you currently are due to high rent or because you can't 

afford a body. While I highly recommend buying a new 

body and I stress the fact that it's only $5000, I 

understand that due to student loans or other 

situations, it may be impossible to afford one for a 

while. 

This is fine, don't worry too much about it. We have 

all the major cities loaded brick by brick into our 

databases. You'll all have plenty of space, so you'll 

be able to make your dream home, even if you don't have 

much money. 

Changes slide. 

ETHAN (cont'd) 

So, why would you want to stay in your old body? Many 

of you are probably going to be waiting in line to make 

the switch next month, but I urge you to think about 

the consequences before you make such a big decision. 

After all, once you lose your body, you can never have 

an organic body again. 

We hypothesize that organic bodies will become a sense 

of pride soon, as your second body will be able to 

configure to any shape you want. Hours at the gym won't 

mean anything anymore if your body is already perfect. 

There's also the risk of overspecialization. If 

everyone uploads their brain, then there's a 

possibility that a virus could spread over the whole 

population. 

This is of course an extremely rare possibility and not 

something to think about in day to day life because 

loopholes in security are constantly being closed. 

However, if such a time ever comes, we would need a 

good amount of people to be in organic bodies. 

Changes slide. 

ETHAN (cont'd) 

This is why we're starting a program for people who 

don't plan on uploading until they're on their death 

bed. This is of course more dangerous, as organic