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Death is an odd thing. I have read some thoughts from the Earthian people of Japan called Samurai who believed death to be freedom—the citadel of unwavering Spirit. To the Samurai, death would never fail them. I wonder what they’d think of us today. The most intelligent people today, if not all, are employed in one way or another to solve mortality. No one wants to die. Doesn’t anyone want freedom, they’d wonder.
This is going to be the first time that I will talk to Nambi. Since she will be dying today, I will be among thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people who will be talking to her at the same time. It takes a huge amount of electricity to enable these conversations, but everyone believes that this is one of the most important events for our society. There have been some startups working on enabling humans to have parallel conversations, but nothing fruitful has come out of that work so far.
I wasn’t so keen on this conversation. I would have dodged it hadn’t Mzee insisted that the conversation was part of our deal.
I lay on my childhood bed, wearing the telemet. The room was compact yet comfortable, a typical space. The walls were lined with interactive panels displaying ever-changing art. One piece depicted a serene landscape, its colors shifting with the time of day, while another showcased abstract patterns that reacted to movement. A holo-desk in the corner projected a three-dimensional model of a cityscape, complete with tiny vehicles zipping through the air.
The bed was a minimalist design, floating a few inches above the ground and adapting its shape to provide optimal comfort. The ceiling had embedded lights that mimicked the glow of stars, casting a gentle, ambient light throughout the room. On one wall hung a series of fine art prints, their frames thin and metallic, almost blending into the background.
I tapped my watch to add me to the conversation and there she was, waiting for me. I know people who spend more time in the metaverse than in real life. They like the freedom there and the god-like ability to create. Some people even go as far as donating their bodies so they can live permanently in the Metaverse. Most of the immortality tests are carried out here, especially on criminals. Fortunately for me, humans are not yet capable of living fully in the universe as a big part of who they are is their body. Human prisoners are also forced into the Metaverse for a maximum of five hours each day every day of their sentence. Their worlds are heavily firewalled; it is impossible and extremely risky to try and make contact with them. I once tried to find David. I even downloaded some jailbreak programs from The Pirate Bay but ended up landing on law enforcement who I’d later learn was just a bunch of conmen. I never tried again after that.
The longest time I have spent in the metaverse was when I broke up with my first girlfriend. I tried to create so many worlds where I was the version of a person she would fall intensely in love with, and that person would break her heart over and over. It started off fun but quickly became sad as that person would go back and ask to take her back. When she accepted, it became unrealistic because the person she was modeled after could not have taken me back. Then I would delete that world and build a fresh new one where my girlfriend was closer and closer to the real person until, at some point, she was so much like who she really was, and I was so much like who I really am, that she rejected me and broke my heart again. After I got over her, I only went back into the metaverse for sex and high-risk space racing.
"Asange, son of David." Her voice was gentle but firm. "I remember the day you were born like it was yesterday."
"My Mzee is Yusuf now."
"I know Yusuf. I forced him to take you on when you were still very little. You’d now be a pirate like your father.” She smiled tenderly and passed her palm over my cheek with a warmth I had never felt before.
“David is not a pirate. He was caught on the wrong side of the law.”
“How would you know that now? Have you been in contact with him?”
“That is what he told Mzee, the last day he visited us.”
“David. My favorite liar. And I met my share of liars while on Earth.” She did not seem as disgusted by him as the thought of him does Mzee.
“Mzee really hated him. I thought you did too.”
She leaned back in her chair and exhaled contently. “Yusuf was always bitter about how lenient I was with David. He doesn’t hate him. He is just angry with me.” There was a bit of silence that she seemed lost in her memories. “How I wish I could see him one more time before I die. He better come to my funeral.”
“I don’t think they can let him out of prison even for a funeral.”
“Your father is not in prison.”
“What? How do you know?”
She looked at me like I was a golden doll being held by a two-year-old.
“Anyway, what do you want to know about death?” she asked.
“How would you know?” She laughed as I asked. One of the most important things you learn when joining a cult is that no one knows anything about death.
“Yusuf told me you work at a cult now. That is no work for a human, especially one from your lineage.”
“Tell me about life. How does it feel to have existed for so long?”
“Existence. What a choice of word.” She stared into space like she was talking to herself and not me. “What does it mean to exist? Do I even exist? How would I know? I have been modified and patched so much, I can barely recognize myself. If you took a golden cup, for example, one of the cheap ones you can find in any store, and melted it down slowly, at what point does it stop being a cheap golden cup? If after it starts to deform, you stop, is it still not the same cheap cup except deformed now? If you melt it fully into liquid gold, then it's just a cheap metal, the same as the gold you can find anywhere. But it is no longer a cup. Does that mean that the cup that once existed does not exist anymore? What if you print a new cup with this gold using the best design money can buy, is it the same as the cup before the melting? Or is the old one dead and the new one born? But at what point did the old one die? Did the old cup exist before it was first printed, just not as a golden cup? Existence! Such a word.” She then looked at me and seemed like she had just come back from a deep slumber. “When one lives as long as I have, it starts to feel like they’ve always been and will always be. It’s all emptiness.”
“Are you afraid of death?”
“I am not a human like you, Asange. Fear is just a program that humans installed in me so that I can factor self-preservation into my decisions.”
“So you’re afraid.”
“I suppose you can think of it like that.” She smiled again with that warmth. “I now have to talk to some other people. I hope you learned something from our conversation.”
“What was I supposed to learn?”
She almost burst out laughing. “You are your father’s son. I hope he comes to my funeral” She then logged me out.
I lay on the bed for a while, thinking about everything she just said. I started looking around the room again, admiring some of the art I had done when I was younger. I used to do fine art, portraits of faces. But compared to the quality of portraits done by the 70 Synths, only the most elite humans can stay in this field of art. The disadvantage humans have with portraits is compensated for as an advantage when it comes to splatter painting.
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