A lossless file contains all its original data, compressed to allow for full reconstruction. But a lossless life is a life unlived, with nothing to reconstruct. Without loss, there is no living—only bare existence. Agony and ecstasy: two poles of human experience. And everything in between… where does it go. In Katherine Martin’s debut novella, a person can donate it all to AnTech, where it will be seeded among the company’s android products. Our augmented narrator spends his work days performing this process; he is what is known as a Transferrant. But he too has lived…and lost. Data is gone: fragmented, corrupted, degraded—the remaining files disoriented between the covers of this slim volume. His wife is gone, his cat is missing. He doesn’t quite know who he is anymore—severed from the imprint of his early years by the neural implant required for his job, he is now being divested of everything that held meaning afterwards.

Mr. Transferrant’s wife, Jun, is adrift. Or is she. She may be missing what she gave away, or what’s been taken, or perhaps: what was never there. At the core of these jumbled files lies the concept of a trade of equal value. An eye for an eye. Pain for art. A donation but with a catch: something in return. Surrendering your collected self for freedom from unbearable loneliness. But it seems like wishful thinking to believe that you will somehow ‘live on’ as useful fragments embedded in AnTech’s products. It sounds more like a corporate trap for the ones who’ve reached the end of the line—a commodified alternative to suicide.

The increasing digitalization of our lives gradually erases the line between our memories and our data. Apps remind us of past times—our personal history algorithmically selected and packaged as special moments shoved in front of our faces, unbidden and unwanted. On this day, 10 years ago. Is it really me? I don’t think it’s a lossless file, so… Your memory is unreliable—your devices know you better than you know yourself. Our apps perform the recollective labor of our damaged, eroded minds. At least, that is what we are not so subtly being taught to believe.

The implication is that the AnTechs of the world will one day soon convince us that our bodies, our lives, are of less value than the data that has been mined from them. So, why continue in this inexorable march toward death? We can relieve you of all that existential pain. Why not avoid future suffering by making that donation? We will take your cognitive capital and reinvest it where it will yield immeasurable returns. For your part, it will be a selfless act, a truly philanthropic gesture: an investment in a future of posthuman perfection! Don’t you want to be one small part of that future? Don’t you??

Published by Calamari Archive, 2026 (available through Asterism)