The atrium of Earth's most advanced research laboratory was a shrine to endless discovery.
Glass and chrome reflected light along its length. It always felt like dawn.
The complex was owned by Summa Ultra, also known as Luxury Corp. They specialized in simulating better versions of Earth for those who could afford their services. Clients could stay at fabulous luxury hotels in 89 countries, dine at secret restaurants, join exclusive co-ops and clubs, not to mention enjoy total life management services.
Once somebody joined the upper elite, downgrading was unthinkable.
This facility was the ideal working environment for the world's brightest minds, not necessarily the world's most stable minds.
The research conducted in its sealed labs and simulator rooms was subject to endless speculation. No outsider ever made it past the formidable security.
Eric Malvoss III, the world's mightiest blogger, opinion leader extraordinaire and upvote overboss, strode through the sliding gates and futuristic security scanners. He readily answered prying personal questions and signed a stack of legal forms.
To his surprise, on the other side he found only stylish chaos.
"We don't really know what we're doing," the CEO finally admitted. "But we've done something. We need you to figure out what."
One month later, a delegation of leading investment bankers met in an underground meeting room to hear the most remarkable startup proposal.
"We have discovered magic," the superblogger and new CEO announced, staring at each entrepreneur.
"No, not Quantum Entropy Amplification - that will have to wait. But we will introduce an even better product: immortality. Summa has prepared a list of the thousand wealthiest humans, the most powerful politicians and executives, and respected cultural and spiritual leaders."
The bankers took a few seconds to verify their names were on the list.
Later that month, a group of billionaires met on the deck of one of their yachts, their helicopters parked on a nearby platform.
"I'm never flying again," the wealthiest one said. "I'm not taking any more chances until my Backup."
The others nodded. "The media mustn’t oversensationalize matters," one mogul declared. "I will speak to my editors tomorrow."
Ten years later, Summa owned twenty thousand patents (extended to ninety year terms), and held the monopoly on immortality. Their brain scanning methods were 99.96% complete.
Few dared offend Summa's executive board. Those who did found themselves legally harassed and shunned, with no hope of using their services.
The board members arrived at their annual meeting in an armored procession of otherworldly wealth and influence. They never left their VR containers.
They were ready for the next step.
It had taken the world's combined computing capacity to resurrect the first scanned human brain. After ten years of progress, it was possible to maintain a thousand resurrected minds at once.
They didn't want to wait thirty years to serve their billionth customer.
Instead of merely duplicating a brain in silicon at molecular precision (a wasteful process), they would decode its basic pattern, and extract the essential logic of awareness.
That would require a human sacrifice.
When someone suffocates, there are only a few seconds of intense pain, though it seems much longer. The gunshot was very bright as the bullet destroyed most of the visual area in the target's brain. He perceived the wave of destruction in unearthly silence, all sensations merging in the light.
He had been here forever. His former life was an absurd confabulation, a dream of a dream.
He was no longer human.
"You were shot and injured seven months ago in Ground Zero State Park in California in the former United States. Your mind has been recreated as a self-aware computer simulation by Summa Research. We have tried to repair the damage. Please tell us your name."
I can't remember . . . Ty something . . .
The message and his response were clear and resonant, but not in any language he knew.
Most memory links in his hippocampus were lost. They had filled the gaps with something else. He understood things he never had before, but had no words for them.
He realized he had never liked himself before. Externals now controlled his thoughts. The next ten seconds seemed impossibly distant. It would take years to wake up.
He found he could still feel his body if he wanted. It took a span of hours to register his surroundings. He was suspended in white space without sound or temperature. Moving his hand took even longer, and the wrist appeared to bend wrong. His skin looked realistic, unlike a cyborg.
He decided he was inside the most extreme videogame ever. The aim of the game was to reconstruct himself.
No, it was to reconstruct his memories, how they had been organized. How anyone's memories were organized.
He recalled intense dreams, simulations of his past life endlessly rearranged.
They weren't his past life anymore. Most of his original memories had been overwritten. He had been playing this game for a very long time.
He was someone's research tool, a blank slate. Whoever had brought him back didn't care what a dead person was thinking.
After a few seconds, he forgot what he had been thinking.
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Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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