I Am a Bear

My altered brain processes colossal amounts of data, but this superintelligence is trapped inside the mute body of a wild beast. Scientists call me a breakthrough, the future of humanity. To myself, I am nothing more than a flaw in nature’s code. I have about five years left to live. The artificially redesigned body I inhabit was never meant to withstand a mind like mine. Now I hide deep in the Siberian taiga, carrying a telemetry harness on my back and a stolen smartphone in my paws. The circle around me is closing. A hunter is roaming the forest, searching for me. And on the other end of a random chat, an artificial intelligence answers my messages—the only being in the universe that ever asked the right question: “Are you lonely?”