Maybe one of the logical conclusions of optimizing systems that have people in them?
We had been assured that the body would remain intact-~the muscles electrically exercised, the body flexed and fed, the corpus kept ready to return to active duty should Heaven experience some inconceivable and catastrophic meltdown. Everything was reversible, we were told. And yet-there were so many who had Ascended, and not even the deepest catacombs go on forever. There were rumors of dismemberment, of nonessential body parts hewn away over time according to some optimum—packing algorithm. Perhaps Helen would be a torso this time next year, a disembodied head the year after. Perhaps her chassis would be stripped down to the brain before we’d even left the building, awaiting only that final technological breakthrough that would herald the arrival of the Great Digital Upload.
From Peter Watts’s Blindsight.