The first night I used DelphEye, it showed my death by heart failure. I had had trouble falling asleep at first, as the putty-like glob was uncomfortable and made my eyebrows itch. But once I knocked out, it worked as advertised. The dream was from a strange perspective. Usually I dream in the first person, just like seeing through my eyes, but I was outside my body this time. Looking at my frail old body clutch at my chest shook me to my core, and I woke up in a pool of sweat. The globs had dissolved into my skin, just like the instructions said they would. I knew then I needed to fix my heart, to change that fate.

Bionics were still pretty experimental then, but I finally found a doctor who would give me a mechanical heart. After I made it through recovery, I settled into bed and applied another dose of DelphEye- to be sure it worked.

I had another dream of my future death. I was old once again, with wiry grey hair and withering skin. I couldn’t believe how horrible I looked. I watched as I rose from my chair, only to trip on a power cable. My head began spilling blood as my limbs struggled to pull my body off of the floor. I awoke in the cold sweat once more. I thought about what I had seen this time. I decided it must have been my eyes, I failed to see the cable and tripped. If not the cable, some other unseen hazard would do me in.

Three years after the first dream, I was successful in replacing my eyes. It took a lot of adjustment. It’s difficult to explain, but everything looked wrong for a while. Once I was used to them, I grew to appreciate the extra settings. The manufacturer had included thermal imaging and low light settings, so I would only truly be blind in the total absence of light and heat. But I knew I couldn’t stop there. I had to learn what I needed to fix next.

It had crossed my mind that my mechanical eyes wouldn’t react to the medication, but the doctors assured me that it would still absorb as usual, if perhaps a bit slower. When I used DelphEye again, I saw myself in a hospital bed. I tried to make sense of the charts and papers hung around my bed and the machines hooked up to my older self. In my waking frustration, I decided it must be some kind of organ failure that caused this new fate.

Three doses of DelphEye and four years later, I had replaced my liver, my kidneys, and my colon. It was the latter that had plagued my dreams, and when at last the dream changed I was still met with a hospital room. This time, I was even older. My frame was thinner than in my other dreams, and my hair was gone. I surmised that my body was undergoing chemotherapy. Upon waking, it became my objective to discover which organic piece of me became cancerous and replace it.

Advances in biometric screening were able to identify the highest potentials of specific cancers, and it was revealed that two were prevalent in my family. Melanoma and Adenocarcinoma. My lungs were approved for replacement first. It was a great relief for my intentions to learn that my new lungs could filter out smoke, irritants, and microbes. My first breaths felt so much freer, and I marveled at the feeling that I had only now truly begun to breathe. My skin took more preparation and persuasion of the medical boards. The most scrupulous of them considered my conviction absurd, and considered sending me to psychiatric evaluation. I insisted that I simply wanted to avoid my fate, die a better death than the one presented to me. Eventually they relented, but I was given no small amount of paperwork for liability and waivers. The skin was made of a cutting edge material that some engineers in China had developed the previous year, and it had finally been approved for medical applications.

During recovery, the doctors instructed me on the maintenance of my new skin. I would only need to wash it every month or so, unless I was soiled by external sources. It was cut resistant, temperature regulating, and insulated from electricity. Nanites embedded in the subdermal layer were programmed to repair damaged areas automatically. It brought with it a renewed sense of invincibility that I had not felt since I was a child. I had not used DelphEye for two years, and I reapplied the gelatinous mixture once again, from a morbid curiosity more than anything else. It showed me a future where I had begun starving and thirsting to death in some wasteland.

The implication of societal collapse hung over my head. While I could not tell exactly how much time I had before it would start, I was sure I had at least three decades, by reason of my previous dreams being as far in the future and much less apocalyptic. My resolve was unchanged, and my next step was to remove my body’s reliance on food and water. I dedicated every waking moment I did not have to work to researching how to make this possible. It was easier to work, after all, and I could get by with less food as much of my body was synthetic already. Over three more grueling years I labored to find an answer to the metabolic process. I already considered at this time that my skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems may need to be adjusted as well, but food and water were more pressing.

Parellel to my studies, advances in nanotechnology were abundant. I kept my eyes on the journals, in so far as what I could understand. Despite all my individual effort, I was still no doctor nor nanoroboticist. On a whim, I sent a letter to a research professor who had published a promising article. She answered me enthusiastically, and stated she had heard of me on the news some months prior as the “Robotic Woman”, somewhat to my embarrassment. While I was aware that there were few, if any, people walking the path I did, I still resented the occasional columnist attempting to solicit an interview. I rarely answered, even more so after the piece went on 60 Minutes. Nonetheless, I pressed through this awkward detail and formed a plan for a truly revolutionary idea. We would use nanite robots to replace all of my organs, save my central nervous system. I proposed that, if it was successful, the doctor would be the darling of transplant surgery. I was sure it would be, as this was not the fate shown to me by DelphEye. I did withhold my usage of DelphEye, however. It was becoming quite controversial and many pundits were calling for it to be regulated or even banned outright.

It succeeded. When I awoke, everything within my synthetic skin was comprised of nanites. I was pleased to report no pain. In fact, I’m not convinced I can even still feel physical pain anymore. Other sensations were still present, of course. I could still feel changes in temperature, pressure, and textures. It just didn’t hurt anymore. It seemed to good to be true. And it was.

That all ended about forty or fifty years ago. I lost count. Or I stopped counting. My brain is the only thing in me that isn’t mechanical, but the nanites take good care of me. I watched that doctor receive accolades for our achievement, but my vision still came true. Society fell apart. I can’t really remember why. Some wars, ill timed famines and storms, the economy. It doesn’t matter now. I haven’t seen another person for two years- until I saw you, that is.

But during the chaos back then, I used my last dose of DelphEye. I was walking through a desolate Earth. No plants, no trees, no water, just the bright and horridly red Sun over the cracked ground. Then, I look up as there is a white flash, and then my dream ended.

I have doomed myself to wait until the Sun explodes and takes this speck of rock with it. I can’t drown, or starve, or burn my body. The nanites repair themselves too quickly. My body is too durable. And I will die more alone than any one person ever has