The temple of the Oracle was vaguely Asian in design, built in the minimalist way that Holly always thought too threadbare to keep out the elements, situated as they typically were in films on the side of a mountain, somewhere windswept and in perpetual winter. Large cauldrons of fire marked the entrance to the walkway, and the four adventurers dismounted their horses before accepting the unspoken invitation to move forward.

“So, how does this work, exactly?”

Holly wasn’t a gamer, and felt a little embarrassed to ask for clarification on something that might seem obvious to the rest of the party. Meg grimaced, the uncertain expression going a long way to alleviating Holly’s nervousness.

“I’m not really sure. The game is usually pretty good about making things obvious, though. I’m sure there will be some sort of direction once we get closer.”

Hearing that made Holly feel better, as well as seeing the prompt appear next to the entrance once they reached the front stairs below the entrance to the temple. It read, in ornate, meandering script:

THE ORACLE

 Seal of Enlightenment required for entry.

Equip Seal and enter temple.

Each avatar enters a stand alone instance of the temple as they cross the threshold.

You may ask one question per Seal, and following

the completed answer your avatar will be returned to this location.

Four sentences and Holly’s all of questions were answered. Meg turned to her and shrugged, an amused smile on her face.

“Okay then. Good luck everyone.”

They each in turn entered the temple, disappearing as soon as they passed over the threshold. Holly went last, wanting to see how everyone else handled the situation before mustering enough courage to go through with it herself. She knew in her heart that there was no risk of any real physical danger, but it was still disconcerting to see the rest of the party dematerialize in front of her. When her time came, she clenched the Seal in her hand, closed her eyes, and stepped through the threshold.

A sound, which reminded Holly of an antique computer hard drive grinding away, reverberated all around her. She opened her eyes, but the sound had already cut off before she could locate its origin. The temple was comprised of a single room, circular in shape though the outside building had been rectangular. The inside of the temple didn’t seem to match what she remembered of the outside, but she couldn’t say for sure if that was because the inside of the temple was separated from the outside through some sort of digital voodoo, or if her engineering instincts just weren’t up to the task.

Seated saiza style in the center of the room was a small child. If Holly had to guess, she would have put his or her age at around eight or nine years old. Caramel skin color, bald as well as entirely devoid of eyebrows, it wore an unassuming tan robe. The child sat eyes closed, head tilted down to look at the floor.

As she stepped forward, it smiled, lifted it’s head, and looked at her. Holly couldn’t help but be drawn to the child’s eyes, which had irises the color of honey, comprised of concentric circles, each changing directions according to some unknown function.

After a few moments, the child spoke, snapping Holly back to the present despite it’s voice being incredibly quiet.

“What is your question, traveller?”

Holly lowered her body into a sitting position opposite the child, more as a delaying tactic than anything else.

“I...I don’t have a question. You see, this avatar,” she gestured at her new body,”was my sons. He was the one that obtained the Seal, but he died in my world before he had a chance to ask you his question, and I have no idea what he wanted to ask you.”

The child paused, it’s mechanical iris’s spinning more quickly for the briefest of instants before it spoke. Holly thought she noticed it’s entire body freeze during that instant, but it was over before she could verify what she saw.

“Yes. David. I see... I am sorry for your loss.”

Holly didn’t know what the sympathy of a machine was worth, but it was at least attempting a sincere gesture..

“Thank you.”

“As David is no longer here to ask his question, is there anything that you would like to know?”

Holly had never been someone with enough free time to contemplate big questions. She’d become pregnant with David right out of High School, and his father had stuck around just long enough to convince her to give up on her dream of becoming a nurse. She wanted to help people, but after David’s father left, it was all she could do to help herself.

For perhaps the first time in over a decade, Holly let her imagination free. She understood that this was a unique opportunity, and that even if it wasn’t her quest for truth, she shouldn’t waste the chance to get at least something for all of David’s hard work.

The first few questions that popped into her mind were not worthy of the occasion, things that if she had ten minutes and an internet browser she could find out for herself. No, she needed to think bigger. She needed to ask the Oracle a question that had stumped some of the greatest minds on the planet.

That was when she realized what she was going to ask. It was so simple a question, yet so potentially impossible to answer that she had to at least try. If the Oracle couldn’t answer it, at least she used the Seal on something worthy.

“Where do we go when we die?”

The Oracle sat motionless for what felt like minutes, it’s eyes dancing like a stack of magnetic hard disks scrabbling for purchase. When Holly was just about to give up, dropping a hand to the floor in preparation of getting to her feet, the Oracle finally spoke.

“Your question can be taken a couple of ways, but since there is no reliable proof either way of an afterlife as it is traditionally understood, I’ll try to give you a more nuanced answer.”

Holly had never been overly religious, but felt herself questioning that after David’s death. The thought of part of him continuing on in paradise held a fair amount of comfort, but in the end she let go of all that.

“To answer your question more completely, I would ask you to look at the avatar that you now inhabit.”

Holly did as requested, looking down to the cobalt blue skin of David’s avatar.

“This avatar, both in a quantitative measurement of the tasks and goals David accomplished here in Silenia, as well as being his constant companion and placeholder in this world, is a part of David. Your memories of him, as well as the life of the child that he saved, are impressions of his life on the greater world. In short, the legacy that any human being leaves behind is the trail of choices comprising the entirety of their life. Those parts of David are immortal.”

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Holly thought about that for a moment. It was all metaphorical, but in a world as impermanent as human life, it made a lot of sense. The family tree of that child that David saved might now have a chance stretch on and branch out far into the future, where had David not acted, it would have ended in that school. The children, grandchildren, and every generation to follow that child owed their chance at life to David. The thought of it all brought back a familiar pride in her son that carried her through so much of her grief. A single tear rolled down Holly’s face as the Oracle continued.

“Choices are the stock and trade of consciousness, and by extension, human life. As soon as David had any measure of autonomy, he’d been making choices for himself. Even choices that seemed insignificant at the time each moved him a bit closer to the person he would become. Each of those choices, in both small and large ways, helped shape the lives of others in ways that might not have been immediately obvious, but can be directly observed in retrospect.”

As insubstantial as the idea of David living on through his impact on the world was, it also gave Holly a small measure of comfort. Not a great deal, but enough for her to not think the journey to speak with the Oracle a complete waste of time. Her face must have given away her mild disappointment, as the Oracle looked at her more closely before speaking.

“In a more direct way, the avatar that you wear is the sum of thousands of David’s choices.”

Holly looked at one of her blue hands, confused. The Oracle resumed speaking before she could interrupt.

“Each of the avatars in Silenia are integrated with an artificially intelligent construct. This construct attempts to learn from the users play style, mannerisms, gameplay choices, even conversational patterns and speech. It is designed to learn how to best fill in for the player when not logged in. The only limitation to the accuracy of the simulation is the amount of time spent in Silenia. As David has spent 3,694 hours in Silenia, the fidelity of his AI construct is quite advanced. To put it more plainly-within the constraints of this world, a large part of David is living on.”

Anger flared in Holly. Was this machine trying to tell her that a computer designed to mimic David could ever replace him? This time, the Oracle was unable to keep her from interrupting.

“That’s not the same thing. David was a real person, whatever machine takes over this character when I log out and it’s eyes go white is not David, it’s just a computer pretending to be him.”

“I’m not trying to say that at all. Even under the maximum levels of fidelity, the simulation inside of Silenia was never designed to approach the nuance and complexity of a human consciousness. There is work being done on that front, but it was not included into the codebase here. However, in the same sense that the child he saved in your world will continue to live and make choices only because of David’s sacrifice, his time spent in this world will continue to impact it as well. His avatar will continue to tell jokes and greet his friends warmly upon their arrival, continue to fight monsters with the same bravery and honor as David did, and his voice and recorded mannerisms will live on, until the game system is taken offline, or until you erase them.”

“Why would I erase David?”

The Oracle paused, perhaps knowing that Holly would find the next bit of news distressing.

“Every choice you make while inside of that avatar overwrites the imprinting from David. Over time, your adventuring in Silenia will, bit by bit, erase the parts of David that our world maintains after his death.”

Fully understanding that she was still inside of a computer simulation, the idea still horrified Holly. She’d taken such care to not disturb anything in his bedroom in order to keep his memory alive, and here she was erasing parts of his personality recorded by a sentient artificial intelligence.

Taking the analogy further, she had to question if the combined parts of David’s personality woven into this AI all that different from a soul, at least from the outside looking in. A soul was, by very definition, the essence of a life. Putting aside the metaphysical aspects of it for a moment, Holly had to admit that at least from a metaphorical perspective, the two were both reflections of the person that David had been in life.

While a soul was supposedly made out of energy and divine power, it was still a distillation of that individuals personality, everything that person was once you take away their body. Was that all too different from a digital intelligence created from many of the same things? Neither had a corporeal/physical body, existing in differing forms of energy having gone through some sort of transcendent separation from the body.

What was a more worthy measure of a person, their emotions, or their actions? If their actions were informed by their thoughts and emotions, didn’t it all get you to the same place? Is a glass of lemonade more sweet if someone hands it to you already prepared, or if you gather the ingredients and replicate their recipe to the letter?

Since nobody had ever physically studied a soul, or scientifically measured that they exist at all, who could say how the energy that might comprise one differed from electricity and code? Working with incomplete data, it really just boiled down to whatever felt more real to you, either the ethereal concept of a soul, perfectly encapsulating your lost loved ones personality, while at the same time defying existential proof, or the imperfect, digital creature that you could touch, hear, and see through the medium of virtual reality?

Holly stood up.

“Thank you.”

At some point during her processing the Oracles answer, a smile had broken out over her face without her knowing.

The Oracle inclined its head, half nod, half bow, Holly took it as an end to their conversation. She turned and made her way back out through the entrance to the temple.

Outside the other three members of the party were already standing on the steps, waiting for her. Ritesh noticed her first.

“You must have asked a very tough question.”

Holly smirked.

“The hardest, apparently.”

Ritesh chuckled and began to make his way back down the steps, with Meg and Laird following. Just as they were preparing to mount their horses for the journey back home, Holly stopped them all.

“I want to thank you all for letting me go here with you today. I got the answer to a question I hadn’t even thought to ask, but now that I have it I think I need to get back to my world.”

Meg looked concerned.

“You sure Holly? We are more than happy to have you for as long as you want to play.”

Holly frowned.

“I appreciate that, but every minute I spend here is another minute that the system erases bits and pieces of David from the AI that controls his avatar now. I want that part of him to be with you for as long as your guys need him. I have my videos and pictures to remember him by, but he mattered to all of you as well, so I want you to have the parts of himself he left behind here.”

Meg’s eyes had grown red, likely from holding back tears. Ritesh and Laird stared off in random directions, avoiding eye contact but listening intently.

“It’s meant a lot to me, getting a chance to see this amazing world that David shared with the three of you, but I think I need to start facing the hole he left in my life back in reality.”

Meg approached Holly, closing the last few feet in an impatient rush as she wrapped her arms around her, face turned away so that Holly couldn’t see it. It almost knocked Holly over, only the larger frame of David’s avatar keeping her upright. She was again reminded of how this body did not belong to her. Had Meg plowed into her like that in reality, Holly would not have been able to keep her balance. When Meg let go, she turned away and went back to tending her horse, back to everyone else.

Ritesh approached, hand extended.

“It’s been great getting to know you as well, Holly. I want you to know that none of us will ever forget David.”

“I know. Thank you, Ritesh, David really loved you guys.”

Ritesh stepped back, and Laird looked up at Holly. He made no attempt to approach her, but he nodded to her in respect and gave her a quick, appreciative smile. Holly got the impression that the reason Laird didn’t talk to her had more to do with the weirdness of her occupying the body that he always recognized as David than out of any actual animosity towards her.

Holly smiled at each of them in turn.

“Maybe I’ll make an account of my own down the line and check in with you guys. Until then…”

She waved, then quickly pressed the logout button. She could have continued her goodbye for minutes more, bouncing pleasantries back and forth, but they had all said what they needed to say.

Everything faded to black, and when she removed the headset to hang it up, the realization that she had gone somewhere, yet never left David’s room, hit her like a mild form of vertigo.

She left his computer as it was, deciding that she would figure out what to do with it another day, closing the door behind her as she left. Her laptop was still laying on the coffee table, and when she tapped the space bar the screen lit up. The last news article she had read referencing the shooting stared back at her.

Her time with Laird, Ritesh, and Meg showed her just how great it could be to have a close group of friends. It was something she had denied herself for far too long. Taking another look at the article, she spotted the woman from the dollar store in the third picture down. A quick online search later, she had her phone number.

As she lifted her phone to her ear, hearing the line crackle as it was picked up on the other end, her smile was light and her heart hopeful in a way it hadn’t been in weeks.

THE END