Tons of people want to preserve themselves so they have a chance of coming back after they die, whether it's via cryogenic freezing or having their head preserved in a jar, Futurama-style.
Now one tech billionaire has splashed out $10,000 ($7,170) on a scheme that guarantees to kill him - so his brain can be kept in good nick for all eternity. Sounds pretty sinister to us.
Sam Altman, president of the American seed accelerator Y Combinator, is now one of 25 people on the waiting list at Nectome, a start-up which claims it can upload a person's brain to a computer when they die, the Daily Mail reported.
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The only catch is that for the company to do what they say they can, Altman will need to kill himself in a way that's similar to physician-assisted suicide - which is only legal in five US states.
According to the MIT Technology Review, the process Altman has signed up for involves embalming the brain so it can later be simulated onto a computer - similar to 'backing up your mind'.
The 'customer' is hooked up to a machine while they are still alive and then injected with Nectome's special embalming chemicals in a process which the company has said is '100 percent fatal'. Who wouldn't find this appealing?!
"The user experience will be identical to physician assisted suicide," Nectome's co-founder Robert McIntyre told the Review.
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Nectome's website claims that its mission is to "preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favorite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family.
"We believe that within the current century it will be feasible to digitise this information and use it to recreate your consciousness."
Embalming fluid is a powerful tool for humans, capable of keeping human bodies 'frozen' and safe from decomposition for up to thousands of years.
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However, Nectome claims its procedure can only work if the brain is fresh, according to the Review. There is also the small matter of the law, which means that this service will only be available to people who have a terminal illness with six months or less left to live.
If you think Nectome's plan is a load of baloney, it could happen: Nectome's embalming technique just won an $80,000 (£57,000) prize for preserving a pig's brain so well that every synapse inside it could still be seen with an electron microscope.
We look forward to speaking with Altman's mind in a few millennia then.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Brain, Interesting, Community