There are companies that will, for a fee, take your remains and make a diamond from the carbon in your corpse.

Frankly, this is a scam because they charge a fortune even though you have paid an arm and a leg to provide them with the raw materials. And they are clearly raking something off the top, because the diamond you get (well, the diamond that your nearest and dearest get) represents only a fraction of the carbon in a well-fed corpse.

Worse yet, your terminal diamond will be cut and polished, meaning that bits of you wind up as diamond dust being washed down the sink. And, as a diamond, you'll look just like everyone else. Your multifaceted personality will be standardized, regularized and normalized to uniformity.

Not the way any thoughtful person would want to go.

Hear at Buchanan Funereal Services (a wholly-owned subsidiary of MaxTech), we can offer you a more fitting post-mortem state.

After your death (this is usually best, we find), our highly-trained professionals will purify the 20-30 grams of silicon present in your ashes. This silicon will then be taken through a scaled-down version of zone refining, creating a miniature single- crystal slug from which several wafers can be sliced. The wafers will be considerably smaller than those to which the electronics industry is accustomed, but each one will nevertheless suffice for the lithography of a single integrated circuit. The necessary dopants will also be derived from your ashes.

A well-nourished person will suffice for the production of a quite complete chip set. Naturally, any failed chips can be re-purified, refined into an even smaller slug, and used to make replacements.

Choose from our range of tastefully-designed motherboards and comprehensive range of ancillaries and accessories, and - requiescat in pace! - you can live on in silico.

Your most cherished memories can be preserved in ROM, and you will still have sufficient RAM and processing power to tweet, send emails or control your former home's central heating system, ensuring that your family remembers you warmly.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 01 2013

I'd like to be buried at sea. That is, someone can extract all the sodium and potassium from my corpse into a single lump, and lob it into the water for all to watch. [+]
-- Wrongfellow, Apr 01 2013


Why to think digital ? For me, just build some signal transistors and put them in an audio amplifier. All the music played through this will be coloured with my very essence. If my essence sounds too much distorted, don't try to fix it, just use as guitar effect.
-- piluso, Apr 02 2013


//our highly-trained professionals will purify the 20-30 grams of silicon present in your ashes...

Reading that, I was thinking they'd end up in certain implants, that also contain silicon.

Likely to lead to "I wasn't leching at that lady, I was smiling at grandad".
-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 02 2013


[+] A post-dementia discount [PDD] might be welcome.

I wouldn't mind becoming a guitar effect. However my nearest and dearest would probably object to everything that's played through me being turned into a self-indulgent blues in E.
-- English Bob, Apr 02 2013


Isn't it a little bit presumptuous to assume that anyones' ashes will necessarily be full of dopants?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 03 2013


Nah, there's a little bit of heavy metal in all of us.

Incidentally, for [8th] and his hive-mates, we figured silicon was too obvious. Instead, the traces of carbon which can be found in all Borg will be refined and lovingly crafted into a miniature replica of a kitten.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 03 2013



random, halfbakery