Best Offer

I should’ve considered the paperwork before I decided to die

In a sharp contrast with common sense, it wasn’t my kidney, which was in a fairly decent shape, mind you, that brought in the bulk of the proceeds from the sale of my body parts. It was, and it’s a source of a minor embarrassment to myself, the ears that made the bank.

Turns out, I lived my life—all 40 years of it—in perfect ignorance of being in possession of “uniquely comical” auditory organs, with not a single of all the people I ever was in contact with caring to mention this peculiar fact about my appearance.

Frat boys, too rich for their own good, waged a fierce eBay bidding war in a desperate hunt for a cool gag accessory for their next party, inflating the price to the level that even the crazies in the /r/BodyBets subreddit considered to be beyond ridiculous. In the end, the sale went to user @Zeroin6969 (rated 4.9 based on 362 reviews, impressive really) for a whopping $19,880 netting me a cozy $15K after taxes and commissions. It even made the news, if a tiny online publication reporting e-gossip can be considered one. “Meme body trophy” they called it, I believe. Even published a follow up later on.

Now, like every other recently deceased, I did read the official instructional materials, even splurged on a few orientation sessions from a reputable afterlife success coach. I was dead set (pun unintentional) on following their advice, too. Nothing good can come out of obsessing about the bits and pieces of your flesh that you no longer have a use for, they tried to drive the point across. Yet, I couldn’t resist the pull.

@Zeroin6969, as it turned out, being a moderately successful entertainer, acquired my impressively sized radar dishes for the sole purpose of an additional comedic angle for his shows—a bit of flare that, he believed, would facilitate his break into the big leagues of the satire scene. He’d swap out his unremarkably perfect auricles for mine by means of a mobile InstaSurgeon™ unit just before getting on stage, trusting they’d provide an added value for his mediocre dad jokes. Against the best advice, I did watch some of his shows on YouTube, filmed from the point of view of the audience, and must admit that, though I might be slightly biased, he looked quite silly. Which, in retrospect, gives me something to think about how I myself might’ve appeared to the others.

40 years—a universally believed cut-off age where lingering longer would see your brain degrade to the point of it being no longer viable for the transition, not to mention the deprecation in monetary value of your body. All this time, walking with those sails on my head and not a single of my supposed friends, relatives, lovers or occasional acquaintances having a heart to tell me…

Speaking of hearts, it’s the last item on the list, that’s still mine. Normally, that shit would sell faster than a hot-dog at 2 a.m. in a bar crawl district—the world is full of whackos running their cardiovascular systems into pulp due to their drug-assisted habits. For the right price, that is. Yet, the indecisive sentimental sucker in me just couldn’t quite let it go, clinging to my heart and the idiotic notion of it somehow being a single most important organ in the human body, and thus somehow worth more than the market was willing to offer.

The cardiac organ, as the official designator labeled it, stood put when all the other anatomic spare parts flew off the shelves one by one, all the while I was flapping between lowering the price, rising it even more or simply scrapping the sale altogether for the sake of leaving my heart as a memento for the grieving family. On a spur of the moment, I even went online shopping for an enclosure to encase it in. Not the cheap imitation plastic crap, just so you know, but one of those real, one-of-a-kind artisanal masterpieces on Etsy. Thankfully, sound judgement prevailed, and I decided against encumbering my parents with a bulky paperweight they’d have no use for but could not quite bring themselves to get rid of.

What is a laminated heart, floating in a glorified pickle jar, good for anyway? It’s ugly to look at, and it doesn’t have any function outside a body it could pump blood for.

Now brain, brain is a whole different matter altogether. Equipped with a proper computer interface and set in a suitable case it could do a lot of good, such as providing raw computational power for AI data-centers, mining crypto, or controlling motoric functions for some uncomplicated automaton assembling delivery drones in a Chinese factory. That, in fact, would be worth a pretty penny.

The issue here, though, is that it needs to be intact to be able to do all that stuff. Unfortunately, the process of transitioning to the digital afterlife requires a rather intrusive procedure of shaving micron-thick layers of the brain to scan your consciousness, leaving only a useless mess of a grey mass behind after it’s done. No, for my skull contents to have any actual value, I’d need to die the old fashioned way, preferably from some kind of body-wide failure while in a controlled clinical environment.

So here I am, lingering in the virtual reception area, together with other clingers to the mortal world, the bureaucratic procedures reasonably prohibiting the final transition until the entirety of the new entrant’s asset portfolio is cleared. The DigiEarth™ simulation runs in a wholly different overclocked reality and thus, pace. Trying to coordinate between the two worlds would be a nightmare for everyone involved, especially us—digital humans. Nobody in their right mind would want to wait a hundred virtual years for a response from a fleshy blob who took an extra second to think.

Fuck it. I ain’t got time for this. Well, technically, it’s not quite accurate—I can hang out for all eternity here, but I hear the entertainment options in the full-on DigiEarth™ go beyond the ad-peppered Netflix feeds available in the waiting room, so, yeah, fuck it.

My digitally-rendered virtual hand brings up the eBay UI on the digitally-rendered virtual display. I go over the description of the item, making a few changes here and there, attach the latest assessment from the cardio-vascular component appraisal specialist, and finally, with a simulated sigh, click “Publish changes”.

After a second of hesitation, the updated listing page pops up:

Human heart, good condition, no known issues for sale by the original owner

Price: $999 or BEST OFFER

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