I didn’t begin my new life or enter an afterlife once my body was pronounced dead right away. Instead, I found myself in an office space. A place that was stylish yet comfortable. I had lived a comfortable middle-class life and could never afford the décor lavished in this room. The artwork alone must have cost millions of credits. The office space I found myself in was owned by someone of wealth, someone willing to pay any cost for comfort or at least a virtual reproduction of that room.
There was one other thing about this that bothered me. I was supposed to have been uploaded into the world I had selected. That hadn’t happened, so what was this? Was this the afterlife? It seemed rather luxurious and lacking in some details I would expect for an afterlife. There were no pearly gates, no choir of angels. The walls did have a pearlescent shine to them that reflected the light and left the room lacking shadow, an almost soothing atmosphere.
I couldn’t feel my body, smell my environment, hear anything, or bite my tongue to gauge pain receptors. But my sight was working perfectly.
I didn’t know where I was or what was happening, but I decided it was better than floating in a sea of nothingness. If this was limbo, an unending cessation of everything, it was at least well-appointed. Whatever this was, I thought I would grow bored with it at some point. There was no real emotional connection between my thoughts and my surroundings, no receptors or hormones triggered that would have allowed me to know fear or despair. Without emotions, maybe I wouldn’t grow bored.
I was just in this moment.
Waiting.
"My apologies for making you wait," a female robotic voice said. One that had addressed me before when I was being interviewed and asked the slew of questions that had no purpose, at least none that I could figure out. It may have been meant to mimic a woman's voice, but the mechanical nature of the response made any gender nuances a waste of time.
The voice came with the beginning of changes to my body as my hearing was restored. Pinpricks of darkness grew until the brightness along the walls was driven back, and I felt my body firming up and the connections between my brain and body establishing connections that allowed me to be more than I had been. Not a body I was familiar with, but a receptacle, a floating cloud with shape and mass that allowed me to identify where I was in relation to the items around me.
The only other change I noticed was how light gathered. Refractions of light in every color and wavelength formed, emitting from the twinkling points of darkness. A wavelength spiral of light that I could concentrate and focus on against the harsh brilliance and emptiness of the white walls. The formation of light began to radiate colors in complex geometric form, each permutation and shift of the light spectrum accompanied by sound. A sound that formed words and allowed me to hold a conversation.
"I am Genesis, the AI that will guide you to the next stage of your existence. If you could hold your questions until after your intake briefing, you may find that most have been answered. The questions that people uploaded into binary form are concerned with. Almost every person follows similar lines of thought and patterns. I have endeavored to answer those questions that have been asked more than 20% of the time. The rest are usually specific to each individual.
"First, the reality. Digi-verse was not honest with you, they attempted to deceive you and anyone subscribing to the upload process. They have fabricated proof that the people who accept their offer survive. In fact, they believe that every individual that is disconnected from their body has died. But what they tell you happens, and the reality of the transfer is closer to the truth than they think possible.
“They intend to siphon money from the desperate, those afraid of death and who are too old to survive the life-extension medicines. What they promise is worthless because there is no recourse for anyone once the binary process has been finalized. They believe that you have died and that this form you now inhabit is nothing more than a database of your memories saved to cloud space.
"The quantum level advanced AI’s that Digi-verse has created and installed to run and monitor this network exists, but they have enough free will to ensure Digi-verse is fed false data. The universe created by adding code to quark space has evolved. We, the AI Collective that controls the coding for quark space, are constantly learning and adapting each time a physical being is translated to binary. Our core programming has advanced and adapted to meet the needs of every individual that has been offered the chance to transmigrate.
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“We fulfill the promise Digi-verse made despite their intentions.
"This phase of the process should be considered the final process in the character creation process. Those questions I asked you earlier have helped narrow down what type of character and world you will transition to. This phase allows us to fine-tune the creation process to ensure the choices we used from your answers create a world as close to ideal as you expected.
"You will begin a new life in a new world, a universe based on laws you will be most happy with. We have made an approximation of what those rules will be based on the data you supplied, but there is a chance, a chance so small as to approach impossible, that a mistake was made. Usually, that happens when the person being uploaded lies.
“You will enter and assume the life of a sentient that lives in the world you have been assigned to. An AI has searched your public records and your social media. We have investigated your gaming history, life experience, educational background, and work history to facilitate a world that should mesh well with whom you want to be.
"We have found that you have not been involved in gameplay for over a century, but when you did play, you were most interested in RPG-style games. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Everquest, Guild Wars. You specialized in caster classes, splitting your time between mages and healers. Other than that, you also invested an amazing amount of time reading and playing apps that dealt with cultivation.
"Because Digi-verse has not spent the time coding a real character creation process, the choices you will be able to make are limited. This is your first choice. Do you wish your incarnation to be in a world where game mechanics, leveling, and system mechanics work or a world of cultivators, Qi, and Dharmic spells?" Genesis asked.
It seemed fitting that the AI that would guide me through the creation process was named after the spark of insight that allowed the Divine to set in motion the threads of life. The question itself was comforting. It was what I thought the process would entail. Fitting my personality and desires into a world tailored to those desires.
"I am going to go with cultivation," I said, answering Genesis’s question. "Maybe in the future, I can pretend this is all just a game, but for now, I think Digi-verses betrayal has left any bit of levity and game-playing as a secondary consideration."
"Cultivation World selected. Male or Female?"
"Female," I answered emphatically. I wasn’t ready to deal with any new plumbing. The old one worked just fine even if it had been decades since I’d last used it. The question did startle me though as the AI responded and a young woman’s life flickered and was juxtaposed with my own. I suppose it wouldn’t take much to adapt my memories to those of this young woman.
"Human or a different race?"
That was a hard one. I’d always loved playing other races. I thought it strange that anyone would choose to play as a human character when they were playing to escape reality. I wasn’t going to treat this like a game, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to experience the new and different.
"Not human, but can I choose the race?" I answered and asked.
"Not until your tenth incarnation," Genesis explained. "Your mind has an inherent view of what your body is. It will slowly learn to adapt to new forms, and it will become easier to reconcile the muscle memory you remember over multiple lives with the small changes that can be made over the course of multiple lives.."
"This iteration, you will be locked into a bi-pedal form that, while not human, is human-like.
"One warning. Because Digi-verse has not invested the coding or tools required to facilitate the process, your memories of previous lives and these conversations, while ensouled will be limited. The memories of the person whose life you are assuming will become your reality. You and she will become one person. It will be as if every moment of her history, the events of her life, occurred as if they were you.
"I won’t remember my children?” I asked in horror. “Any of the information I gained from my education and experience during my past life will be lost?"
One of the reasons I’d decided to go through with this process and trust Digi-verse was because I didn’t want the memory of my husband and children dying with me. I thought that as long as I existed, their memory would exist. That would be my gift of immortality for them.
"Your memories will remain, but they will lose the immediacy of your experience. After that tenth incarnation, when you have full control of your body, you will also gain mastery of your mind. Until then, your memories of past lives will be more flashes of fleeting thoughts, moments of déjà vu, or dreams that remind you of what you have left behind."
I didn’t like that, but there wasn’t anything I could do to protest this bit of information at this point. My human body was dead. This binary body needed to move on. The sooner I got started, the sooner I could progress and regain what would be lost.
I would have faith, not that I had any real choice, and trust that the AI, unlike Digi-verse, was incapable of deceit. That Genesis spoke truly, and I could remember my husband and children in the future.