Companies show off a lot of weird stuff at CES — connected dog collars, smart litter boxes and even shoes that can detect when you fall and send an alert to friends’ or family members’ phones. But this week’s creepiest and oddest booth is for a company called Psychasec. Psychasec bills itself vaguely as technology that morphs human bodies and promises a way to keep people alive. Two models at the booth show off artificial bodies sculpted to perfect form. The premise is to encourage attendees to sign up for a “sleeve” into which they can transfer their consciousness and upgrade their body. There are also body bags with people inside them. The booth is the most disturbing exhibit CES attendees will come across.
The catch: Psychasec is fake, and the booth is a promotion for Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi show Altered Carbon, which begins streaming in February. The show is based on a classic cyberpunk novel (by Richard K. Morgan) and takes place more than 300 years in the future. The setup: “Society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitized; human bodies are interchangeable; death is no longer permanent.”