There's something about the future you're afraid to remember. It's about your body. (You can't feel your body. That's not what scares you.)
No more than a year a minute - the phrase comes from nowhere. It's been trained so deeply into you that it could probably be reverse-engineered from your modified ribosomes.
What is a ribosome?
There was pride associated with the word. You had sought and achieved something. A transformation. Not you. Your future. You're remembering him faster than you're becoming him again. You'll be in his body while you're still you. You're panicking. He would panic. You know without perception the people around the pod (what's a pod? a pod is where you are) are panicking. The machines aren't but are doing what machines do instead: they are deciding. Personality and memory regression were needed — they needed the person you were no who you are — but can't be sustained too long by a human brain, even yours. You will die if you don't remember. They made a mistake and it's you, not your future, who will remember. You, not your future, who will live in your future body, the one you're proud of, the one you're terrified of almost-feeling. You try to tell them to push you back again, to die without knowing. You can't say anything and the machines wouldn't do it anyway.
With a final biochemical click all your memories return and you can feel your body.
You trash inside the pod trying to get out of it. The understanding fills you, sharp and massive, that even if you could do it that would kill you: there's no you separate for the pod in any physiological sense. You try harder and harder until the machines deem it safe to push you into a shallow darkness you hope you won't be the one waking out of.
(Originally posted on my blog.)