CONSUMER REPORT: COSMETIC MOLECULAR RESTRUCTURING

Since its inception during the latter part of the 22nd Century, the highly publicized process known as Cosmetic Molecular Restructuring, or CMR, has been both criticized and praised for allowing the elite of our modern society to design a custom-made body, and load their reformatted conscious minds into brand-new shells. However, for those who can afford the $500 billion dollar price tag, the ability to play God is a small price to pay.
While CMR is a widely recognized hotbed of ethical debate and religious conflict on both sides of the table, please note that I will not be addressing any of these viewpoints in this article, nor is the repeated use of the pronoun \"you\" intended to endorse this process. It is not my intent to validate either side of this no-win argument, only to explain the process to the average citizen through simple terminology, and avoid using confusing technical jargon whenever possible.
Designing a brand-new body from scratch is not a decision to be taken lightly, and, at present, there is a five-year wait for the mandatory psychological screening. Since the location of all CMR facilities is a highly guarded secret, prepare to be heavily sedated and examined with a fine-tooth comb while the security staff examines you for tracking devices or hidden technology before transporting you to their secret facility to begin pre-treatments. The full CMR process takes six months, so clear your calendar.
After you\'ve paid the bill in advance, signed the necessary paperwork, and been determined mentally competent by CMR staff psychiatrists, you\'ll be assigned a care director who will work with you to ascertain the type of body best suited to your needs. A team of professional counselors will take you through an intense two-month evaluation period, and help you unearth and confront any repressed memories or last minute problems that may hamper the procedure.
If you aren\'t already familiar with the CMR process, here\'s a brief description of it in layman\'s terms: your brain is literally copied, digitized, and uploaded into URSULA, the three-acre supercomputer capable of translating the electrical impulses of your brain into a readable format. Since the human brain has always been and probably will be the most powerful computer ever known, an equally powerful machine had to be built to hold the contents without damaging them. URSULA is so dense that it cannibalizes its own molecules as on/off switches, harnessing an amazing zettabyte (1021) of hard memory that allows you to sift through the contents of your brain, your memories, and your mortal soul in real time, with all the ease of turning pages in a book.
Since every memory and experience in our lives goes toward making us who we are as people, whether positive or negative, it should be stressed that removing, erasing, or deleting some of the more unpleasant ones may have an adverse effect on the final product, which is one of the reasons prospective CMR patients are assigned counselors to help them. This part of the process is easily the most traumatic, since it involves the vivid rehashing of childhood recollections, and deciding ultimately what memories you will say goodbye to permanently.
I was informed by several of the staff that while some patients suffered harrowing mental breakdowns during this stage, others have defined it as being \"born again\". CMR reserves the right to refuse and remove, by force if necessary, any patients damaged by real or imagined stress disorders incurred during this or any other delicate phase of the upload.
CMR allows their clients to select their new skeletal structure, muscle density, hair color, and eye color. It also allows them to change the way they talk, smell, walk, think, and look. It should be noted that while duplications of celebrities are not permitted, CMR offers over a billion possible genome outcomes-- less than .01% of that number represents past CMR clients, so it is almost guaranteed that clients will never see a carbon copy of themselves on the street.
Disposing of the lifeless former shells is easier than one might imagine. CMR offers a wide variety of methods, including burial at sea, cremation, firing squad, and recycling. Moreover, since the body is \"woven\" into URSULA\'s genetic womb, the clock doesn\'t start ticking until the age of the new shell is actually achieved. For example, if a 33-year-old male builds himself the body of a 23-year-old tomorrow, he won\'t begin to actually age for another 23 years. If he were to turn the aging process down as far as it will go, he\'s looking at 30 years of free time before he reaches what is known as the Zero Age. Zero Age is the age where the CMR process begins, but with an improved physique and a stress-free reformatted brain, that time can easily be extended by an additional decade.
CMR is also getting cheaper. A six-month session sold for $500 billion dollars early last year, and now they cost as little as $450 billion. Recognizing the market for such a specific product, CMR has introduced a program that will allow their clients to design the perfect mate within three years at a projected rate of only $200 million, and are currently accepting clients by appointment.