A Whole New Ash

     The short film Be Right Back introduced us to a semi-futuristic reality where it was possible to spend time with people who have passed through a program that compiles their online actions and opinions, effectively making portable copies of the dead on their phones. In the film, the female protagonist Martha uses this service to talk to her boyfriend, Ash, who had died in a car accident a few minutes into the story. After using this service for some time, Martha decides to take it a step further and bring Ash back not only in mind, but in flesh as well, using the highest package the program has to offer. But it is not long before she notices the flaws in this Ash who lacks the imperfections and habits of normal humans, as well as the memories and mannerisms of the real Ash. She finds the double to be too artificial, too different from humans. I however disagree. I say, the new Ash is just as human as the original, if not more so.

     It is not difficult to see the ways that the new Ash is different from the average human; he lacks the need to eat or sleep, he does not bleed when he is cut, and he can not go further than the house's mailbox without Martha coming with him. These and a number of other physical issues easily separate him from the rest of humanity. However, if these physical abnormalities were all it took to make someone inhuman, that would imply that humans are nothing more than their bodies. Look back at the film for a moment, was Martha's issue with this new Ash simply physical? That wouldn't make much sense, she seemed to be intelligent enough to gather that there would be differences in his body simply by looking at the fleshless package she first received. And when it was simply a program on her phone she was fine, it was close enough to being the real Ash. It was only when the android was dealing with parts of Ash's life that he neglected to post about that it was seen as a problem. Her desire was for the copy to be exactly like the original, much like a person getting out of a relationship projects their old partner onto their new one. But this Ash is not like this. He is a wholly new person with a different personality. He thinks and acts in the same way a normal human would when starting a new job or school; he does not understand all the nuances of his surroundings and has to play off of what others around him do. He will not act exactly like someone who has been there for years, he can only act as he knows how. In this way he is just like an ordinary human, stumbling through life unaware of what will trigger people around him, altering his actions to avoid upsetting people, and learning more about the world with each passing day. So the question is not if he is human, but rather, what does it really mean to be a human?