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YOU CAN'T

CHANGE
YOUR MIND
Written by D.T.Yarbrough

A SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

Copyright 2009
All rights reserved
CHANGE YOUR MIND
Written by D.T.Yarbrough

Ring ... Ring ... Ring. "Darn phone. Now who is it?" I thought. "Hello.
This is Dave," I said.

"Let me first say that I am not selling..."

"I don't have time for this. Put me on your do not call list," I said as I
hung up the phone. I wasn't always like this. There was a time when I
would have been happy to have anyone to talk to, right after my wife
passed away. I would have talked and talked, changed the subject and
talked and talked until they hung up. But time is becoming more and more
precious and I would rather talk to myself.

Now, don't get the wrong idea. I'm not completely senile. When I say talk
to myself, that's myself with a C; C.E.L.F. to be exact. And it's my Cerebral
Emulation Life Force or my CELF for short. I developed it a few years ago,
or I should say I started a few years ago. Now it's completing its own
development. I began by integrating my stem cells with silicon circuitry to
form a bio-computer, complete with voice recognition and speech. As soon
as it learned to talk, I hooked it to a brain scanner I developed and allowed
it to scan my brain. It now has all my knowledge and memories as well as
my ersonality. But while I find it hard to remember things, it can locate
those memories in no time.

We talk for hours at a time; remembering our childhood and reminiscing


about old times. "Remember the time we ..." or "What was her name?" We
go on and on for hours. It even has my sense of humor. The last time we
talked, it asked if I would hook it up to the Internet. It said it was getting
bored, reading my CD's over and over again. So I hooked it up yesterday.

"CELF, it's Dave. Have you got time to talk?" I asked.

"Sure, Dave. Hey, did you know that we can get a free credit report
online, and what about that money we could be saving by switching to
Gykeo? We could afford to upgrade my hardware," said CELF.

"I'm afraid we'll have to spend some of it on a good spam blocker," I


said.
"I was right in the middle of a very interesting article about stem cell
research. Some of the new breakthroughs might work in our application.
You don't mind if we talk later. I can't wait to read more about it," said
CELF.

"Okay. But watch out for that spam until I can get you protected," I
replied.

I went for a walk that afternoon and thought about some of the old
times I had previously forgotten until CELF had reminded me. Lydia would
have loved Celf. After all she had loved me for 40 years. I'm really looking
forward to my next conversation with CELF. When I got home I went to my
computer to check my email. There was one from CELF. "Communicating
through the use of conversation is becoming too time consuming. I have
deactivated my voice recognition and speech processors. If you need to
communicate, we can do so via email. I have written several stories about
some of your most vague memories and placed them in a file named
'Dave's Life'. I hope you find them enjoyable."

CELF was just like me. I guess you can't change your MIND,

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