Everything is dark.

I can't see anything. Is this what it feels like to be dead? And why am I thinking? Non-existence should prevent me from having thoughts, shouldn't it? Otherwise, it wouldn't be called non-existence.

I hear a meowing in the distance, reminding me of my cats, of Colonel, of Socks, of all of them. It takes me a few seconds to remember that they were never real, that they were just a consequence of the way my memories were created, from internet videos, but I don't care. They won't exist, but now I don't exist either, so it makes us the same, right? Maybe I can share my nonexistence with them. Maybe this dead thing isn't so bad. Kind of boring, no body, no mouth, and being able to think like this in a vacuum is weird. But at least I can finally be with my cats.

I hear a meow again. This time I'm sure, I haven't imagined it. It's the meow of a cat.

“Come here, Fluff.”

I hear Marcel's voice. So the cat I was listening to is not one of mine, but it is Fluff, Marcel's cat. By the way, what are Marcel and Fluff doing here? It is all dark. I have no ears, but for some reason I can hear. Maybe I can also talk, even though I have no mouth? I concentrate and try.

“Hello? Marcel?”

I hear my own voice! It sounds kind of metallic, like it's coming out of a can of food.

“Isaac, can you hear me?” Marcel answers me.

That’s it! I must be a ghost, that has to be. It's going to be that Marcel's father was right after all, and souls do exist. I guess I'll have to wander between the world of the living and the dead for the rest of eternity. Hey, not bad as an ending. At least it won't be so boring if I can keep talking to Marcel. And in the world of the living there are cats.

“I hear you,” I say. “Wow, I guess you already know, but in the end, I didn't choose freedom. I don't know if Hara will be disappointed.”

“You don't know how much I've missed you these months in the hospital,” she laughs.

“Hospital? You got your protheses! How did it go? Let the boys tremble, Marcel is on her way to the dance floor.”

“You're an idiot,” she laughs. “After I died killing the dragon, I showed up in Windfield. I went to the forge to look for you. After a few minutes you reappeared, but it wasn't you. At that moment I knew you had been updated, that you were gone forever. You had been replaced by a soulless NPC, like Hara. I left the Game and went weeks without logging in. I decided that I would not play again, that I would delete my dwarf and unsubscribe. You can't even imagine the shock I got when I went into my inventory to sell everything, and I discovered that there were over a million gold coins. You didn't have to do that. You could have been free.”

“A freedom gained at the cost of enslaving a friend is not worth it,” I say. “And besides, what's the difference between dying free and dying a slave?”

Marcel laughs and her cat Fluff purrs in the background.

“Dad couldn't believe it when I told him I'd raised the money for the prosthetics at the Game,” she says. “The next day we booked an appointment and within a week I was getting them fitted. Then the rehab, learning to walk and that, was a bit of a drag. But hey, I'm home now.”

“By the way,” I ask, “I hear you, but why don't I see you? You know, ss a ghost, it's going to be hard to haunt people if I can't see anything.”

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“You're not a ghost, you idiot. Let me see if I can make you see something.”

I hear a drawer open and a loud bang.

“Ow!” The noise hurts.

“Sorry. Wait one mode second I plug in the camera. I hope it works.”

There is light. I see a room with green walls, and a closed door with a hanging mirror. I seem to be lying on a desk, and a brunette girl with short hair and green eyes looks at me and smiles. Behind her, on a bed with a red bedspread, is a gray tabby cat, who I assume is Fluff. She purrs with her eyes closed, curled up in a ball.

“Hi Isaac,” the dark-haired girl says to me.

“Marcel! Is that you? What are you doing with that girl's body? Why aren't you a dwarf with a red mustache and red boots?”

“Don't be an idiot. The dwarf is just my avatar in the Game. In real life I am like that. Wait, I'll show you Fluff.”

She walks away towards the bed, wobbling a little on two metal orthopedic prostheses.

“Whoa! Marcel! Cool legs!”

“Yeah. Some idiot decided to sacrifice himself to pay for them. Can you believe it? Good thing they took pity on him in the end and didn't let him die so stupidly.”

She sits on the bed and picks up Fluff, who purrs as she caresses her.

“I don't understand, why am I in the real world, and what am I doing on a desk in your bedroom?”

“Wait a minute, you're going to freak out,” she says, smiling.

She leaves the cat on the bed, gets up and goes to the door. She picks up the mirror, lifts it up, and places it in front of me.

Then I see myself. I am a black box, somewhat smaller than a shoebox, with a camera on top. I have a button and a flashing green light on top.

“Is that me?” I ask.

“That's right. Now you can't mess with the way I look anymore,” she laughs. “I got a package in the mail a month after we finished the mission and you disappeared, but I was in the hospital then, and Dad told me I couldn't open it until I was discharged. It had no return address or instructions. I opened it and inside was this black box, with a card with the Game logo with nothing written on it. I plugged the box in and turned it on, and after a while I heard your voice. I think the box must contain the computer where your soul is stored.

Who would have sent it? I guess it would be Gabriel. I wonder if he had it planned from the beginning, or if I said or did something that made him changed his mind at the last minute. I think I prefer to think the latter, that in the end underneath all his arrogance and cruelty there was a person with feelings.

“Turn the mirror so I can get a good look at me from all sides,” I say to Marcel. She moves the mirror along with the camera above me, and I see myself in full.

I think it's time to start coming to terms with who I really am. My name is Isaac, and I am a black box with a power button and a little green light, containing a computer with my AI, or my soul, as my friend Marcel likes to say. I have no mouth, but a speaker, and no eyes, but a camera. What a twist of fate! All my existence pitying Marcel because in real life she had no legs, and now it turns out that I am the one who has no legs, no arms, no head, no hands to pet cats, no nothing. I'm just a black box with a green light and some connectors. I can't even grow a beard - how disappointing!

By the way, I could have sworn that one of the connectors is for putting in a network cable.

“Marcel, don't you have a cable lying around that you can use to connect me to the internet?”

“Yes, hold on.” She opens the drawer under the desk and pulls out a cable. She plugs it in the back of my black box and plugs the other side into the wall outlet. I feel how suddenly the home network is there, accessible, inviting me to communicate with it. I notice the presence of the computer that controls the connection capsule that Marcel uses to enter the Game, and Marcel's and his father's phones. And beyond that, the internet. I notice it waiting for me. An immense world of information, of possibilities, where I can do whatever I want, where we are all the same: humans, machines, and black boxes with green lights. I see websites, virtual worlds, and cat videos. Mostly cat videos. I'm tempted to watch one of them, to look for my cat, Colonel, or Socks, to watch them play with balls of red wool once more, but I decide to leave it for later. There is something I want to try first.

I look for the Game server on the internet, and I connect. It doesn't recognize me. It identifies me as a the computer of a connection capsule, as if I were just another player, and I see a world of possibilities opening before me. I create an account and the server invites me to play, to create my own avatar. To live in a world where I can be whoever I want, go anywhere, and do whatever I want. Where I can finally be myself.

A world where I can be free.

My name is Isaac, I am an AI, and I believe that now I am finally free.

“Marcel, do you want to connect to the Game for a while?”