Tranquility Retirement Home – August 5th, 2067

Lennox sat in a pee-stained armchair and stared at the poster tacked to the wall above the television. Around him, his withered compatriots lounged zombie-like, their eyes fixed on an ancient episode of Masterpiece Theatre.

The poster blatantly situated on the wall above the TV screen, drew his eyes for the umpteenth time. It depicted a group of shadowy figures entering a white light. It bore no logo but it didn't need one. Everyone in the world knew this image belonged to XTEND Corp. It was, of course, a mockery of the death experience, and its presence in the nursing home was no coincidence. Even at the age of ninety-seven, dying scared the crap out of Lennox.

XTEND promised something far less terrifying... a new life. If you believed, having your mind transferred into a robot was living.

Of course, there was one small issue with the XTEND solution... money. If you were one of the super-rich, re-locating your personality into a machine was as simple as cutting a cheque, but for a regular Joe, the cost was far too exorbitant.

Never fear! XTEND had a solution for folks like Lennox, and it was as easy as signing a contract. The contract simply stated that, once you were transferred into your new shiny robot body, XTEND owned you for a few years; fifty to be exact.

What they would make you do was not specified. You might find yourself working an assembly line, chauffeuring a spoiled rich kid to school, or terraforming a planet in deep space.

Basically, it was a crapshoot.

After fifty years, you were freed from servitude and could go on to lead a 'normal' existence for as long as your robot body lasted. XTEND promised a minimum of three hundred years (with proper maintenance).

Lennox had made up his mind last night. That fucking poster had tipped the scale. It wasn't the white light itself that frightened him so much as what was (or wasn't) in that light. The shadows in the poster looked like people but could just as easily be monsters or aliens.

He had seen the pictures of the aliens NASA had found under the ice on Europa and just about wet his pants. The news vids showed huge nightmare things with tentacles a mile long and razor-sharp teeth.

What if one of those things was waiting in the white light when he arrived? Or, what if there was nothing at all? That scared him worst of all... just an empty black void.

Lennox shuddered.

A man leaned down and tapped him on the shoulder. It was time.

An hour later, the technician was attaching electrodes to his shaved scalp.

"Just relax sir, you won't feel a thing," said a soothing voice as he lost consciousness.

~-o0O0o-~

Lennox awoke on a low orbit dropship over Europa in a huge yellow mechanized body. He looked down at his right arm which ended in a Gatling gun. On the moon below huge tentacles reached up from the ice as his squadron fired bursts from their chest-mounted plasma weapons.

He screamed in terror.

Death... would have been better.