to a contoured area of about 4 sq.
inches.” Cool, eh?

Anyway, this is probably more
than you need to know, but the
obsessive detail and strangely poetic
undertones of these near-fetishistic

reports caught the attention of English

author J.G. Ballard, who was moved
to incorporate elements into his

novel The Atrocity Exhibition. The
author actually claimed that these
reports could be read as a kind of
“obsessional fiction that links science
with pornography,” and mused openly
whether the experiments had ever
aroused deeper stirrings within the
researchers’ lab pants.

Ballistics testing
This one is exciting! You might
have heard of it. In 2004, news
emerged that cadavers willed to
Tulane University in New Orleans
were, in turn, sold to the U.S. Army,
where they were summarily blown
apart in land mine experiments. The
general public was horrified by
this. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure
why, because the practice of shooting,
stabbing and exploding bodies like
you is an open secret in the medical

research community. Indeed, a scan of

the Journal of Biomechanics reveals
articles with titillating titles like
“Biomechanical response corridors of
the thorax to blunt ballistic impacts”
(2004).

Mary Roach, in her book, Stiff
: The Curious Lives of Human
Cadavers, documents the long
history of armies formally and
informally “firing into dead bodies
for the purpose of teaching the
effects of gunshots in war.” These
days, organizations like the Armed
Forces Institute of Pathology’s
Ballistic Missile Trauma Research
Lab would love to have you for
highly-choreographed munitions
experiments. They might test land
mines on your legs. Or shoot new

 

 

 

 

kinds of bullets and/or lasers into your
meaty thighs. Or test body armour

on you, or shoot you in the face with
non-lethal projectiles. You’d be pretty
good at any of these.

Harvesting for parts

Perhaps the single most inspiring
post-mortem adventure you can
undertake is to have your parts
harvested. I should warn you that this
will decimate you, however. Note
that this is not “decimate” in truest
Latin sense of word. That is, “reduce
by one-tenth,” in accordance with the
punitive mechanism of the Roman
army in which 10 soldiers were forced
to draw lots and club the loser dead.
No, this is the modern colloquial
usage, meaning you will be reduced
absolutely to inhuman gristle, to pulp.

Wait, wait. It’s okay. Your parts
will find new life in strange and
beautiful ways. For instance, your
precious collagen will soon engorge
the meagre lips of others. Your fatty
tissues (the ones you’ve always been
so self-conscious about!) will smooth
the wrinkled faces of aging women.
Grafts of your skin will extend and
enlarge the meagre penises of sad
men. You will be a humanitarian!
You'll help too-wrinkled women sag
a little bit less and too-wrinkled men
sag a little bit more.

I suppose I could go on about
other medical research experiments
available to you. Like the one
in which you are dropped out of
airplanes to see what happens
(answer: you break) or in which
synthetic muscle implants re-animate
you. Yes, I could go on. But the glaze
in your eyes is becoming very dim.
Your appendages grow taut. Your
odour is now aggressive. You must
get to work quickly. Science has
waited your whole life to have you
like this, in this premium condition.
But it can’t wait much longer.

 

 

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