Existence Equation

Liam Kerr is your typical 16 year old boy in 2293. He wakes up, eats breakfast, goes to school, and, in 24 months, he will make the biggest decision of his life. Now, I know what you're thinking, and no - it's not college. Human ingenuity has evolved past that. Upon graduating from grade school, the need for that 4+ year advanced education exercise is truncated into a single, instantaneous download of information. Instead, the human paradox in the 23rd century is simply the decision of a lifetime, made at the age of 18. Facing the transition from teenager to adulthood, all humans must decide what is more important: traveling the cosmic ocean as an android, devoid of most capacity for emotion; or living out their days as a "biological" on earth, confronting all the beauty and ugliness of the human paradigm.  Even with science fantasy technology being harnessed, physics still has its limits. Only highly-advanced nanotech machinery can travel and particularize up- and downstream, withstanding the crushing forces at these unimaginable speeds. The biological human body cannot withstand this (though not for lack of trying: decades of failed missions have brought us to this solution). The optimal way to collect interstellar data and information is thus to fuse the human consciousness into a one way ticket, human machine hybrid. An Android.  Mind transfers and other robotic innovations are commonplace in the 23rd century, but again we find that with great innovation comes the ever present caveats. The biological transfer only works at the age of 18, due to the health of the synapses' in the brain. Any older and it becomes uncertain if the transfer would work - by the age of 30 it's akin to suicide. Earth has achieved marvelous innovation. Unimaginable science fiction has become science fact, including the most impressive feat of them all: the ability to travel at Faster Than Light speed. Humans have unlocked the possibility to visit countless worlds filled with intelligent life. A dream that science has imagined since the dawn of Copernicus. Now fully-realized, the question that festers in every adolescent is simple:  "What is the price of the stars?" Wishful thinking has been lost to time. Science fiction folly of fairytale endings and dreams of a long and fruitful life on earth, ending in a fusion of man and machine into the dark horizon of space and time with the never ending adventure of the cosmos was nothing more than a fool's errand. .  The great humor, as the people would refer to it, is the poetic truth that no species beyond the earth could ever meet a biological human. No matter how clever their technology was, no matter how elegant their solutions may be, humanity would never encounter another species face-to-face. Only their Derivative Andronic selves had that honor.  The time is now nearing for young Liam to decide what type of being he is destined to be. A space-faring machine with an undying consciousness and the prospect of endle.