i'm approached by an agent, they have been scouting for two days, cat and mouse, octopi and seahorse, they elude the obvious and therefore i have already made them.
i'm processing information, advice for the agent, 'hide in plain sight, never wear a primary colour, to make yourself invisible you must do much more than blend in, you must blend out,' but the advice fails to be uttered coherently as i am disengaged by her smile, it's very appealing and magnetic.
'you are very observant mr. mission.'
'it's just mission.'
'i took precautions, used all my skills,'
'i'm sorry, i have enhanced perception.'
'is that from magickal training?'
'no it's probably from psychedelics.'
we are in the street, face to face, she's starting to get nervous so i suggest a coffee shop i know.
inside we make ourselves comfortable, order our drinks. i lean in, 'you may as well just be honest with me.'
'yes i may as well be.'
'i work for humanitech, it's an artificial intelligence company that has the technology to upload people into a new body. we transplant their augmented brain and use nano technology to keep data stored inside it.'
'data?'
'yes behaviour patterns, thought processes, information on how the subject thinks. we do this for about ten years prior to death.'
'my brain is quite happy within this body at the moment.'
'ah. forgive me mr. mission, err mission, that's not why i am here.'
'oh. i assumed you must have been surveilling me to gather information?'
'well yes, but that was just to understand you beyond the dossiers i have read.'
we exchange a glance and she adds, 'interesting reading by the way.'
'so, what do you want?'
'help. we need your help.'
'how?'
'humani has been working for a decade, the team although small is incredibly powerful and has made great progress they are the best in their fields but we have hit upon a problem, a dilemma. a spiritual quandary mission. we have not considered two areas of the human experience in our planning.
'one would be karma.'
she leans back, surprised.
'yes, yes what are the implications?'
you would have to ask a buddhist monk or hindu mystic.'
'we have, they just smile but offer no solution.'
i smile. 
'please mission, what do you think about this?
'there are karmic issues involving the subject, personal karma, your intervention may be inhibiting the subjects path to enlightenment, but then again maybe it is the subjects path to become reborn as an artificial intelligence or replica, it is not for me to say. you can apply the same rule to your own karma, one cannot begin to comprehend the delicate machinations of what is right action with a brain that has limited understandings of such cosmic designs.'
'mmm, so the answer is you don't know.'
'no the answer is you don't know.'
'that will not help us at all.'
'your second enquiry is how do you map the subjects metaphysical intelligence. mapping consciousness is comparatively easy up against mapping the area of unconsciousness which is impossible no matter how much nano-tech you have at your disposal. but there is a way.'
'how?'
'transplanting the brain only gives you one single intelligence, but if you transplant the heart and the guts, you will have the three intelligent aspects of human beings. the heart is part of the intelligence system, our unconsciousness is connected to our heart which is why the electrical discharge of the heart is equal to the brains. but the gut, that's where we are all really controlled from. the gut is where various bacteria organise create colonies that also regulate the health of the entity and act as an instinctive intelligence,  therefore until you have replicated these patterns and intelligences one can conclude humani is a long way from creating immortality. however it may be limited to manufacturing cyborgs.'
'i don't think of them as cyborgs, they are more accurately described as facsimiles.'
'whatever they are, they are not real and therein lay's the problem.'
'you can say that about any art form.'
'art is an expression, you express less than the original with your facsimile's.
'so, you think the exercise is pointless?'
'no, i think it's worthwhile but you should be aware that what you are doing is diverging along a pathway that deviates from natures and therefore cannot be valued as real unless it is enhancing the divine and cosmic agendas. you invest belief in a science that is man made, reduced to our level of understanding through technology, but technology and biology are two different components.'
'but biology is a technology.'
'that's like saying a car has personality.'
we sit in a moment of silence, i can see her mind working behind her big open eyes. she sips a straw half submerged in a green drink made from vegetables.
'why didn't you order a coke?'
'i don't like sugary drinks, besides they are really unhealthy.'
i smile, and as i gaze between her eyes, clouds part, the grey fog of incomprehension begins to clear and light shines through.
'do you believe in god?'
'yes,' i say, i don't claim to know what form a god takes but i do believe in a principle at work within everything that has intelligence and direction. it has given us freedom and we create prisons.'
'like belief?'
 'all things are prisons unless they set you free.'
'are you free mission?'
'no more than anyone else but i can see the bars of my prison and that's something that offers me a different perspective.'
'do you remember what it was like, to be free?'
'yes, william blake describes it well. it was like being innocent.'
'child like'
'similar but with a wisdom. a kind of love for all things and less complex thinking processes.'
'we evolved.'
'yeah well evolution is basically being set free within our environmental limits. free will or determinism.'
'and i thought it was radiation effecting our genome.'
'through the prism of science i guess you could claim that to be true, but science has limits which is why mysticism is closely related to it. one day science will reach a point where it cancels itself out, scientists only speak in terms of mystics but with different words, different languages.' 
'it's been interesting talking with you, i guess i better make my report.'
'yes, i have to make mine to.'
surprise crosses her face, 'are you an agent as well?'
'yeah but i have know idea who my employer is. i just file my reports.'
she smiles, a little uncomfortably and leaves me sipping my coconut water.