A blue fog enveloped me, and I was standing. Nope, not standing. I was just being. But I don't have a body? There was light and a sound of wind blowing, but not the sensations of wind on the skin or the heat of sunlight.
I moved my hands to cup my mouth. Or I moved some blue fog to a location where other blue fog would be that should be my mouth. I did what we had all done when waking up alone in an unfamiliar place or bed. I called out, "Hello!". Then I mumbled, "Is it me you're looking for?".
I am going to rip someone a new arsehole for this. I was just getting started in my new life. For all I knew, there was an undiscovered haram that I needed to be liberated from the evil clutches and engender so much grateful goodwill.
"Hello... Louise..." I call out gain.
"Louise, you said that I would be protected and safe. I need to understand what happened," I called out again. I would complain to a supervisor or manager if a griefer were spawn point camping. I did not know what that meant, but it sounded good.
Really, what was happening? I don't even have a body. What was I yelling out with? Maybe I was thinking insistently? Who knows? With this stuff, AI took control of the quantum-connected computers 300 years ago, and we use them. They work because they existed once, meaning they always exist or live, and if one exists, then it thinks the others into existence. I remember talking to someone once who thought that the AI had dreamed up the 'Earth is doomed' thing just to get rid of the human race, helping us to build ships and leave.
"For the love of all that is good, can someone please let me know what is happening?" I thought instantly.
The fog began to swirl before me. This disembodied stuff messed with me. I did not have a body. So I had no eyes. How was I observing swirl? The swirling became more localised and started to take on a personal shape, that of a female, and the process began slow, sped up, and then it blinked. Yes, it, the swirl blinked? And before me stood Louise.
"Great! Louise, what the hell is happening? Why am I not in my medieval keep with the Haram? And what the hell with the pain?" I said
"Walter, first, this is not Louise. My form is to remind you of a recent bond, and we are using it to communicate with you in a human-acceptable way", Louise said.
"Great, I can accept that I am in stasis, and you will be communicating with my mind directly. So this seems OK. When can you return me to my chosen reality." I asked. And at this time, I think I would have tilted my head and cocked in a way that conveyed sarcasm and a level of pissed off.
"Are you the sort of person who would rip the plaster off your hairy leg or slowly work it off with all manner of wincing and hissing?" Louise capped her hand palm to palm.
"Rip it off," I said or thought to or at Louise.
"Your dead." Louise stood looking at where my body should have been.
"Yeah, I figured that some nut had assassinated my avatar and that I would respawn," I said, thinking with luck, bound with silk ropes in a Haram.
"There was not a Haram." Louise offered
"You are not a character in Sol. You are in the real world or the real meta-universe. You humans need to update some of your terms and concepts. You have all of the multi-dimensional universes. Be a little more creative with descriptors." Louise offered.
"So you are not Louise from the ship?" I thought asked.
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"No. Now shut up and try to understand." Louise said.
"You are not as nice as the real Louise. Can I please talk with her?" I asked.
"No." Not Louise responded. "Remember the Queen Lament?" Not Louise asked.
"It exploded, and your body is gone. Lost to the vacuum of space or incinerated in the explosion. These are the sorts of details that are not that important right now." Not Louise said.
"What the hell? I am dead?" I thought out loud, "Yes." Not Louise confirmed.
"Then why am I here? And why am I not freaking the royal fuck out?" I ask, Not Louise.
"Freaking out is a function of the endocrine system, and you don't have one." Not Louise stated with a slight tip of her forehead towards me, and she opened her eyes wide, showing a little more white than I would have expected, which was interpreted by me as 'err dah'.
"As part of the system, we normally connect your body to your mind so that if one dies, the other dies; it's all balanced, you see. But in your case, we were setting everything up, and your mind was in one place, and the connection in terms of quantum space was being observed. Which preserved your existence," Not Lousie said.
"And I know this one from my school days: a quantum state under observation does not fill the role assigned when it is not observed," I said.
"Yeah, that is not how it works, but it is enough for you to understand." Not Louise continued.
"So you see, when the ship exploded, your body and mind were not connected to the right systems. So the other remained when one went. Unbalanced." Not Louise said.
"Now what? Am I going to be in this fog forever?" I asked.
"No, not at all. And by the way, you are not in the fog. You are the fog. And we have to collect it to put you somewhere." Not Louise said.
"What happened?" I asked, dam it thought.
"You died. Have you not been paying attention?"Not Louise said.
"No, you mad computer, not me! The Queens Lament What happened to the Queens Lament." I said.
"It seemed in 2018. A car company launched a car into space as a promotion of some spaceship company they also owned. And it hit your ship," Not Louise said.
"What is that we are going to do with me?" I asked. At this point, I was sure this should have been a question I had asked much sooner than I did.
"Sol, we will put you back in the game." Not Louise said. "And then what? I exist in a game forever?" I said.
"No, of course not. That is the type of thing that only Science Fiction would allow for this is reality." Not Louise said.
"If you survive long enough, we may find you a body that does not have a mind, and we can transfer you into that. Then we will have balance." Not Louise said.
"OK. And until then? I got back to my life as a merchant?" I would have lifted my eyebrows relatively high if I had eyes at this point.
"Not really. Have you ever heard of the term fully qualified? You see, in a logical world, things are balanced, and that persona has been allocated now cannot be reallocated." Not Louise said.
"Hang on a moment. I paid good money for my position while we traveled the stars, and I expected to get my money's worth. If I had a finger, I swear it would have been pointing and wagging side to side.
"You got everything you 'paid' for just a little shorter time frame than you thought." Not Louise said. I opened my mouth to offer a follow-up objection, and nothing happened, no sound, and Not Louise started to fade into the fog, or was it me? What the hell?
* * *
The sound of the wind became much more pronounced, and I could feel it on my face lifting my hand, I touched my face and opened my eyes. The sun was so bright. The sound of the sea and the feel of a rocking ship replaced the wind. I am on an excellent ship. Looking around, I could see it was an old trireme, and from what I could see, two masts stood tall about me, and a drum beat a steady rhythm. I was sitting, my hands were bound to a long oar and dam it.
A whip-crack rang out, and I called out in pain.
"Row your dog; we are half a day out from port, and you will all be free with a king coin for your service." a loud voice called behind me.
Turning to see who it was, the image of a large wolfman loomed in my vision. The creature had a sharp row of teeth in its muzzle. And a brown fur coat. Note I was wearing a coat that was brown and made of fur. Under that was what could only be described as a sailor's outfit, pants down to the mid-calf, and a shirt of white linen.
I got a sharp elbow to my ribs, an older man in his forties, a human with a bald head, who hissed at me.
"All of us, Row. One does not row. We all get the whip. And I have had enough of this ship. So row like you have somewhere to go." he said.
And so I rowed for the next half day. The sun had passed the peak, and we rowed into the early evening to help the sail, or the sail helped us as we rowed, I don't know. True to the Wolfman word, we sailed into the harbour.
I could hear the sails dropping, and the drum beat slowed and stopped. The deck crew call out, "We have made the berth. The Kracken thinks us worthy. We'll not be its meal today".