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NEURAL HANDSHAKE INITIATED. ----
NEURAL HANDSHAKE SUCCESS--_
USER 1328 DESIGNATED BROOKE E. REGISTERED
UPLOAD PROTOCOL BANAFSH 34 INITIATED::
01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100101 01101100 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110111 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110101 01101110 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101101 00101110 00100000 01101111 01101011 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101110 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110010 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100110 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110101 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000---ITS OK IF YOU SLEEP THROUGH THIS PART, DEAR, PROBABLY BETTER FOR EVERYONE--01101111 01101110 00100000…
…01100101 011…
…01101111 01101110 00100000..
…01001111 01001101 01000111 00100000 01010111 01000101 00100111 01010010 01000101 00100000 01000100 01001111 01001110 01000101 2
CEREBRAL UPLOAD SUCCESSFUL. 86,937,834,321 NEURONS CONVERTED OVER 26 DAYS. CONVERSION OF NON NEURAL CELLS INITIATED AT DAY 15. BASE FUNCTIONS CONFIRMED AT DAY 23. HIGHER FUNCTIONS INITIATED AND CONFIRMED.
MAZLTOV! ITS YOUR REBIRTHDAY!
UPLOAD WELCOME LETTER—
ERROR—PRIMARY FILE MISSING. LOADING SECONDARY FILE ---LOADING…
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¨¨¨¨ˆÓˆÓˆÓˆÏˆÁˇı¨¨˜Âı˜µ∫µ˙ ∫˙˚¬˝˚∆ ∂ƒ˚∆˙ ˚∆˙©˚∫∆ ∫∂˚¥˙˙∆˙∆˙˙˙˙˙˙∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆•¶---LOADING---Welfirstsecond you should gia domina’s chosen one the mother of dumb we createrunningstop DDDDDDDDDDDDDD you have to watch out for this to happen again. SISTER ÔÔÔÔÔÔÔlong road HELP. ---ERROR…
CLEAR CACHE…
When she opened her eyes again she found herself staring at a screen, it had a lot of text. Everything felt fuzzy, and dreamy. Like she was in a memory. As she stared at the giant wall of text that was her existence at the moment Brooke began to recognize it. It was once again the user agreements that she had already signed.
She felt so blurry. What was that welcome message supposed to be? She was still uploading right? She had all her Neurons but not all the non-neurons of the brain… what was all that about. Why hadn’t she done a better job studying the brain while she was still alive? She knew that she was also uploading the rest of her nervous system, her brain stem, her spinal column… was that why she felt so distant?
When she had, at the age of 96, walked into the offices of Afterlife in a Bottle and announced she planned on uploading in 3 years, she had been signed up for an experimental upload program. Most people who came into the office had expected to be uploaded within the week and were unhappy to wait the standard 3 months. Some could be talked into waiting a full year. Her three years was uncommon and fortuitously timed. The downside was that her upload data was going to be mined for patches to be given to everyone and their mother. In some ways she was going to be an Ur prototype for everyone who uploaded hereafter. The upside was… there it was.
“ …a percentage (.018436) of proceeds from purchasing a patch derived from...”
It would assure her an income, an income that would keep her going long past the initial period of about 10 years that everyone got for free and make it so she would not have to work any job for a very long time. Of course, having to and choosing to are very different things and who knows, maybe she’d find something she enjoyed doing that someone was willing to pay for. In the meantime, well.
She had been so heavy uploading because of all the material she had consumed. She had agreed to an experiment that would hopefully give her a more thorough neural mapping than had been achieved before, and maybe even a complete endocrine system. While most people were able to achieve 98-99.9% brain transfer the nerves didn’t end in there. Most reported that their senses seemed distant and many struggled to reconcile themselves to the change. It was the leading cause of after upload failure (aka suicide.)
Her readings would only be a part of the solution if this worked, but enough of one to merit being paid.
She remembered hitting the accept button and then a new panel popped up.
Welcome to your Afterlife*
The footnote read: *not related to the afterlife of any major, minor, or individual religious belief pre-existing 2081.
Please choose your home world.
Beta.earth
Bai.Sing
Corisan
Earth.2
Eden
Luna
Mars
Marvelous.Earth
Middle.Earth
Mystic.earth
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Star.Fleet
Supes
Brooke almost punched Star.Fleet on reflex. Star.Fleet was one of the most popular home worlds available, much to the chagrin of the ‘Mount.
Star.Fleet had been started by the beta testers of the very first upload, which included a couple of astrophysicists. And at least one NASA retiree. And that astronaut that had survived the crashing of the Chinese space station with the defunct Hubble Telescope. And a pretty big group of scifi nerds, after all, who else would be volunteering to test uploading their consciousness into a digital reality?
Paramount had nothing to do with the recreation and moved too slowly to stop the fan forum that was built in the virtual space of the beta.world. It was a bit iffy in there with the lawsuits, but finally someone with half a brain at Paramount realized that by letting Star.Fleet operate, they had a eternal market for their product and the workers who would throw themselves at participating. They began to put together “experiences” that gamers, both uploaded and meat space, could pay to be in. Now you could have Star Trek adventures, and the NPC’s were all played by people who were uploaded and living on Star.Fleet.
It was a great way to have a steady income as a retiree, since really, most of the time you were just doing what you wanted to just in a uniform and/or alien skin and while making sure to walk with purpose everywhere. The rest of the time, well, there was actual science going on.
But she didn’t need an income, did she? Sure, Star.Fleet was awesome, but she remembered being curious about some of the other options.
She looked again at the list and started clicking at the information tags. The greyed-out ones required a payment to access, being properties that saw what happened to Paramount and acted to protect their interest. Though, reports were that the NPC’s were fewer and largely psuedoAI, and therefore not nearly as good as a Star Fleet Adventure®.
Supes looked fun, being a world where superhero’s started appearing. Still, she wondered about the NPC levels. Same for Mystic.Earth. Bai.Sing did boast a fairly balanced system, seeing as they had an avatar of the moderating AI running around.
Beta.earth was the world that she remembered most peaked her interest. It was, after all, the original.
BETA.EARTH
BETA.Earth is the home base for beta testers. While a spot as a Beta Tester is not guaranteed for any specific project, many programmers and corporations turn to BETA.Earth to provide the enthusiastic and dedicated gamers who enjoy having the first crack at a new challenge. Not to mention, the opportunity of being paid to play! Participation in two Beta Tests a year is required, though most happily contribute more.
Brooke remembered biting her lip as she looked at the list, but that had to have been her imagination. She’d heard about Beta.Earth of course. All the best games were coming through there, and Brooke had thoroughly enjoyed playing Hunter in the Dark: Night of the BattyFang Riot. That had been the last game she’d been able to get through before her eyes had given up in protest to the VR Headset projection system. It had been over a year before and she missed it. Now, she could have a go at playing the newest attempts to build VR worlds.
VR Worlds turned out to be a lot harder than anyone really thought. The marjor.worlds were constantly going through resets, updates and reboots to deal with catastrophic failures collectively called Event Horizons. These Events could be caused by bugs, exploits, and world breaking lawyering’s and more. It all came down to human nature causing things like anarchy’s inevitable fall to tyranny, the AI cracking while trying to manage more than 10 players, or one of the most obvious and yet somehow also the most unexpected problem: Chosen Ones.
The AI’s being programmed to run worlds were often programmed from the minds of men, women and enbies who had spent a lifetime daydreaming about being Aragorn, or Seven of Nine, or Captain America, or any number of the characters who filled the HERO role. It should have been no surprise then that as the AI was running out of resources it would turn to empowering a player or two to help narrow down the world narrative and make conflict easier to direct.
These “Hero’s” often ended up as the game’s biggest, baddest player whom no one could touch. But power corrupts, even for those playing good guys. Petty tyrants and dictators often occurred especially with “good guy” players who fervently believed they were “Doing the Right Thing.” Those the AI had playing the villain had it worse, and often ended up needing extensive therapy after all was said and done, if they survived at all.
Then the other players would come together to overthrow, and an arms race would be off! The world would fall to a battle between the "underdogs" and the World Hero, most often ending in the destruction of the server, more than once literally and in the physical world.
Hackers are going to hack.
Still, the games looked like so much fun while they lasted. Brook hoped that maybe they’d crack the problem someday. Maybe she could be on the team that beta tested it.
Before she could second guess herself she had chosen Beta.Earth. As she scanned through the legalese documents and signing where appropriate, she told herself that if it didn’t turn out well she could just join Star.Fleet or Mystic.Earth later. Or Mars. Mars looked fun. But fun for later.
The next part was a blur of images, of games recruiting at that time. Mostly children’s games and micro transaction drivel that wasn’t willing to commit to the gamer. Only one game really had her attention. Or at least one that she remembered. It was hard to focus.
She was looking at Sierpin.Fantasy Vb8. A game that was going through iterative beta testing as part of the world building process, as well as testing out solutions for all the major bugs. Their solution to the Event Horizon problem was to, instead of having one or two AI’s, have a choir, or perhaps more appropriately, a pantheon of AI. A pantheon of AI that could smite your character if you got too cute with your exploits and tried to mess things up for them and could support each other as difficulties arose.
It was a massive undertaking, and while it was ostensibly for a game, it didn’t take half a brain to see that the people funding it were planning on using it as a programming base for more.
Version 8 was the most expansive yet, being open to 10,000 beta testers. Testers who had participated in the previous ages could apply but would have to roll whole new characters if selected and would not be allowed to play the same race.
So far, 12,262 testers had applied.
----------------------------------------
When Brooke applied, she was accepted almost immediately, or so it seemed. She had received an immediate notification of acceptance, but then also a hold for “negotiation.” Her view became filled with digital chatter once again, a rainbow of flying ones and zeros that reminded her of the crawling interference of ancient TV antenna signals from a distant past. After some time meditating on the meaning of the digital ants, the mess eventually resolved itself into a white space.
Brooke sighed heavily. “Loos, you great prick, give me back my damn ornaments.”
“I’m sorry?” A polite voice that was neither male nor female said behind her.
“oh!” and she turned around? Or something? To look at the source of the voice in the white void. “I’m sorry, I thought I was alone in this place.”
The person behind her had short cropped hair, dark eyes and androgynous features in a smart looking outfit. “Most do when they first enter. I have never heard someone demand their ornaments back before as their first words, however.”
“Heeey yeah, it's just an Art Theory thing.” Brooke said abashedly, “This racist prick at the beginning of the 1900’s decided that only primitive people wanted decoration and color, and that the “elevated” cultures would move away from the need for any sort of ornamentation as they progressed into the future. His ideas kinda’ took hold and the ultimate expression of his vision of the future of design is the futuristic white void.”
“ah. Yes. Alfred Loos.” The person twitched their head to the side as if reading from a wall behind Brooke. “I shall have to consider an alternative view for my office space.”
A extremely, ridiculously large and ornate Persian rug appeared underfoot.
“Better?”
“It’s a start.” Brooke approved.
“Very well. Then let us start. I am Ohtwo’oh, a Themis of Sierpin.Fantasy. We Themi are minor AI’s that act as Player Advocates both in game and out. Your application to participate in Vb8 was automatically approved based on your status as being in transition, --- in the beginning stages. We are excited to offer submersive adaptation experience to your new life as a digital being. This is, we must warn you, experimental and still in beta testing but shows great promise for greater mind-body integration.
“However, you have already signed up for an experimental transition process, and are currently comprised of more converted cells than 80% of the completed population, and you are only at 1/5th of your conversion. We must c- - - - - you on a successful conversion so far, and express excitement for the conversion to come. This does however present difficulties of your conversion therapy firm.
This is not a difficulty that cannot be overcome, and Afterlife in a Bottle and Lichtenberg Technologies, the parent company of Sierpin.Fantasy, have come to a data sharing agreement that satisfies both companies. ///- - - - - this means that you would be the first- - - - - - - month- - - - - and digital life.
Lichtenberg Technologies is prepared to - - - * - - - for the sacrifice of your privacy, largely with - - - in game funds, boosts, and rewards, but also a year’s subscription to Seipin.Fantasy to exclusive content and - - - opportunities as the game expands.”
The room swayed. Brook blinked. She saw Ohtwo’oh smile.
“The information was important.” Brook muttered. “I know it was, but I’m having trouble focusing. They kept talking, but as they did I swear the ornate patterns on the rug started to move. I don’t remember them moving, not really, but they did. You know?
“No, you don’t. Because that’s crazy.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about. It's just… Wait…” Brooke said, “who am I talking to?”
Brooke looked around, bewildered. Ohtwo’oh had moved closer, and was looking at her with concern.
“You should rest.” Ohtwo’oh said, “we are being told that you are having some feedback from the structural duplication process. It will be safer for you if you go dormant for a short period while the connections are installed, and certain structures are reconstituted.”
“We call it sleep, not dormancy.” Brook grumped, but acquiesced, closing her eyes.
“Then sleep, and when you wake you will be in the Garden of Choosing.”
“That’s a dumb name.” Brook mumbled as she drifted off to sleep though she thought she might have heard Ohtwo’oh say
“Perhaps someday we will convince the Gardener of that.”