And, I died.

Helluva a way to start this out, huh? But, that's how it went. It was sudden and unexpected. I didn't get to say goodbye. No last messages of love and forgiveness. Just a moment and I was gone. Well, sort of.

First, I watched as the walls and furniture in the room around me splintered and gave way to reduction after reduction until all that remained was the molecular form.  Then that form was reduced further to things unlike I'd ever seen before. It was suspended, brightly colored formulas and equations that were writing themselves and rewriting themselves at lightning speed.  I suddenly realized that the physical constructs of our existence (e.g. mountains, lakes, freeways, walls, toys, etc.) had never really been there at all.  They were just artificial scenery in a digital landscape created by these mathematical calculations. 

Next thing I remember is that the expanse beyond the physical world I had known was black, just black. Then I heard a loud metallic/electronic cacophony similar to what you experience with your cell phone or computer from time to time. 

Things were progressing so fast that by the time I wanted to protest, I had progressed beyond that which I intended to protest. And, then I noticed how light I felt. I looked down just in time to watch my body fall off of me into a heap of bright, multi-colored yarn where my feet had just been. It was also similar to the colorful beams that used to be the early Windows default screensaver. In this fast progression and following the previous pattern, the yarn that had been my body then also began to degrade down to the molecular level and beyond.

In a panic, I tried so hard to scoop my body back up and put it back on me; but I found I couldn't because I no longer had hands. I tried to judge whether or not I was breathing when I heard - not audibly heard, but heard in my head - someone telling me to be calm and that it was going to be alright. By now, I sensed the English language was falling away from me as I struggled to say my last words, "Don't let me die."

"You've just crossed over. You are fine and everything will make sense momentarily. You've done this before. Just give it a few moments and you'll understand." 

No real emotion or empathy were contained in these disembodied words.  I suddenly knew that all the memories and experiences that were the totality of my life were being downloaded to some great database where those that came before me to this place were also stored. At the same time, I detected an upload occurring. Life's mysteries, my experiences, my everything was being categorized by importance and things deemed inconsequential or irrelevant were being discarded without my input - it seemed an automated procedure. Any pervading question I had during my life was answered before I could finish formulating the question.

These words were not audible and weren’t even words as we define them. The ideas came in 4D depictions, symbols, equations, and visions that my mind strung together and made sense to me - it was a sort of a digital language I think, but far, far beyond what we observe now as a programming language. It became clear to me that I didn't need English anymore and it was pretty much gone anyway. It was just one of thousands of dead languages. 

I asked where God was. Legitimate question in my time of shock and despair as I’m realizing I should be near his place right about then. 

“There is no God or if there ever was one, we haven’t seen him in a very long time. We believe we are all God.”

 

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just…come out the other side. Or, you don’t.” 

Stephen King, The Stand

 

The faces of those I loved were fading just as my language had. I tried to hold on to my husband so hard, but I couldn't remember his name. I couldn't see his face. I could only remember I had "an other" and I wanted him desperately. I asked for him, but there was only a response that he would come later. This desperate desire to be with him soon waned to bearable levels as more and more was pulled from me. I was becoming more connected and sharing in the knowledge of the mainframe, or central database or whatever the hell it was called that was both pulling and pushing on me at the same time. 

I could only see darkness aside from what looked like a cold, wispy flame hovering beside me and I could make out a few more in the distance. I knew that flame was the only vestige that remained of me as well. That's our soul, I thought. 

The person speaking I associate with a female form. I think. I also think I knew her and I'd known her for millenia. It occurred to me that she was to be trusted. She was as much a part of me as I was. She was calming me, communicating a sort of debrief as the information exchange from and to me continued. Suddenly, I realized I understood. Everything. And, it was not too complex. Really it was rather trivial and simple. I wonder now if the being took the image of my sister who died over twenty years ago. I wonder if it was really her or if the being just took that persona to keep me calm after the crossover. 

I knew that which I hadn’t known. 

I saw ideas in figures, symbols, and equations - flashes of light in an interconnected web. There were countless equations that made up the sum of this world and all others. I understood this language effortlessly and instantaneously. The ability to see the idea or object from all sides and through brought great and rapid understanding to me. 

My time here on Earth had merely been an exercise as had countless others who were interjected in the model multiple times like me. We were building a complete historical record for what had occurred millenia before - the time prior to and at the onset of the digital age. My life had been a simulation of a period in history where we plugged in the known datasets into a model and kicked it off with planted receivers (like me) who would absorb the needed material to complete the record as best as we could. 

We volunteered to be in the model for various reasons - our communal connections (what one knows is shared with all others), and our joint effort in the cause to know our own history. Lastly, there was one selfish reason. 

We wanted the human experience.

At the start of the digital age came increasingly progressive advances in science with dramatic impact on the human race. This is the period we would call “present times." Except, I was grasping that this terminology reference to the digital age is a misnomer of epic proportions.

Life spans increased exponentially as science developed the means to prolong our existence. Laboratory grown or developed replacement organs and cures for diseases at first brought us to a state where we started to become more machine than man. 

The cyborg progression by its very nature had costs. We became unable to procreate, so no sexual relationships were possible and therefore no children were born. The desire and need to touch, to feel each other, became more and more useless as automation, sensors, and biologics infused with metal and chips and programming replaced our organic physicality as the demand for the superior artificial replacements became requirements. 

We no longer required nutrients, water, traditional medical care, didn't feel hot or cold, wet or dry. Taste, physical feelings, auditory reception, visual reception as we know it was no more the standard. The human organs replaced with that which still enabled most of the sensory humans experience, but redesigned and heightened in acuity replacement parts came at the expense of the traits that weren’t as necessary. We had pain - sort of. It was a programmed response to structural damaging stimuli indicated by various sensors which alerted our form to a required an action to remove the stimuli. The same as now, but not. Basically, physical pain as we know it came to an end.

 

“When it started not to hurt, it started not to matter.” 

Stephen King, Pet Sematary

 

I know that the world’s population in this reality is nearing seven billion. I’ve also read somewhere that seven billion is the maximum population the planet can contain. Elon Musk disputes this, and says it's a non-issue. I disagree. So, if these advances progress as I describe, how does that work? People just stop dying, continue reproducing… at least for a while. We don’t know what to do about the current projection of population increase; and, since we can’t colonize space or Mars in the next couple of years, the only other options are grim. If we don't manage to get enough earthlings out of the equation, then how do we get from here to what I saw in the ages to come? 

The short answer is I don’t remember for sure. Control of the population will be completely necessary in my progressional scenario if, in fact, it goes according to my theory/dream/experience/delusion. I suspect that some event, man made or natural, does it for us in cataclysmic glory in the not-so-distant future.

I also bore witness to another degradation of humanity that was inevitable and incredibly destructive which occurred just before the cyborg era. As AI and robotics progressed, they did all the dirty work for humans. Humans were left to pursue leisure as the AI and robotics that served us were self-sustaining and didn’t require any human intervention. There was nothing we could do that would even come close to what it could do and it was improving itself daily. We implanted microchips and processors in our brains, but still we couldn’t keep up. 

It quickly came to the point that humans grew bored. Many (mostly the wealthy at first) opted for a virtual life, where the body was encapsulated and life-sustaining measures were provided so that the human lived out their lives by choice in a digital simulation utopia. Society began to also encapsulate criminals. First, in an effort to reprogram them. Then it just became a permanent place for criminals. No one had to get their hands dirty imprisoning them or taking care of them, and no one had blood on their hands either. The criminals got to be virtual criminals if that’s what they wanted, and those with mental or behavioral defects were given the synthesized reality they wished or their families chose. 

For the mental/behavioral patients, the families decided that it was for the best for the person to live the most meaningful existence they could. Next, patients with physical restrictions/deficits were added to the roster. And, life went on for those in the capsules until they were virtually forgotten. Inevitably, due to costs and resource allocation, the plug was pulled on all of them eventually. No one noticed. 

“When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.”

Master Yoda, Star Wars

One day, one of the few humans left with intelligence and care, realized that the current progression of digital lives would be the end of the human race. He brought his concerns forward and was able to get enough buy-in to the idea that it had to stop. The only way to stop it was to pull the plug on everything. No electricity. Nothing technological could survive. Humans would have to go back to the dawn of civilization again.  

He quickly discovered a fatal flaw in his plan. It was too late. The AI no longer needed humans to provide it with power and it couldn’t be bypassed. Attempts were made, some horrifically violent and desperate, to rid the world of the power grid; but it was of no use. It didn’t even make a dent in the progression of AI and regression of humanity. 

And, here’s the thing about right now in 2022. It’s already too late. This is the future and end of humanity. 

Stephen King, Pet Sematary

As we compiled ourselves in datasets that would serve to form a blueprint for who we are as individuals today…. What? How? Think about it. We add pieces to the blueprint every day. Pretty much all of us, excluding the most secluded and isolated of primitive tribes. We do it through every bit of lab work, genetic testing, DNA testing, medical records, blood typing, genealogy, sociology, photographs, social media, videos, bios, posts, phone conversations, emails, meeting minutes, etc. All of these things can constitute a virtual framework of us as individuals. Individuals which can be re-created. 

What isn’t already in the digital blueprint can later be pulled from the memories of those that surrounded an individual, events they were present for, decisions they made, publications they wrote, etc. Basically, with advanced technology and science, we will be able to resurrect the dead; and we try to, deeming it what the dead would want. But, it’s a terrible, terrible mistake. 

We first bring back the people we think the world needs the most. We don’t understand what we are doing. We cause some cataclysm that I can’t quite get my head around. But, imagine the scene with me and imagine it’s a successful resurrection. You bring a person back that’s been dead for hundreds or thousands of years. You are aware that there will be shock, emotional overload, confusion, etc. I don’t think we can even imagine what it would really be like. It's nothing compared to the overall damage we do to the universe by playing in something we don't understand. Just like the hydrogen bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll. 

Worse than death ever thought about being is the extreme possibilities of re-animation. Sadly, the worst is the most probable. The paradoxes that play out from this blunder are infinite in their progression. Reanimation to Ruin for the innocents sacrificed by our arrogance. 

 

“The light appeared to have the power to hold him and draw him into a perilous other world; it was so compelling. To his horror, he found that he was unable to resist.” 

Pat O'Shea, The Hounds of the Morrigan

At the close of the age of humans converting to cybernetic organisms, we complete the desired infrastructure. What follows is a complete upload and the destruction of whatever last shred of humanity that may have remained within our computerized shells. The end of humankind and the dawn of the true digital age.The unique portion of us that makes us who we are - some call it our soul, some call it our ka; whatever it is at this stage cannot possibly be what it once was, and now it is positioned to exist forever. 

We need nothing but the continuation of the mainframe; and it, too, no longer requires a physical, stationary form. We have become positioned to exist forever, digitally housed and interfaced. But, like so many things, living forever comes at a great price: the total and irrevocable loss of what and who we once were, the totality of the experiences that shaped us, made us grow, and poisoned us. These factors are edited out as they aren’t necessary for the desired goals of the programming. Simply, they are undesired by-products of the methodology that can be culled.

So, we go into the available simulations willingly, craving what we'd once had as humans or as other beings. We’re willing to endure time and time again all the pain as well as the pleasure the only way we can. Just so we can do the things that we are so ungrateful for currently in our day to day - to feel once again the sun on our face, the softness of an infant’s skin, falling in love, hugging, the sorrow of the loss of a companion, the pain of childbirth, to save a life, to take a life, the adrenalin rush of amusement park ride, the joy of flight, cooking, washing, walking, driving, and all the other components, good and bad, that make up the human experience. In addition, there are the components that we yearn for, but don’t quite remember because we lack the ability to look at the world through human eyes, and touch with human hands, and we cannot exclude the alternate non-human experiences because truly, “there are other worlds than these.” (Stephen King, The Gunslinger)

I can’t recall everything from my time in the darkness. Most of the things I learned there were repo’d when I slipped back here, in this form. I’ve shared the gist of it here with you, dear reader. I welcome your thoughts, your commentary. I’m not claiming my actual experience depicted here was 100% real, but to me it continues to feel that way and never leaves my mind for long since it happened. I want to go back to the beliefs I had before, because they were so much more beautiful then what I think I know now. Ignorance truly is bliss. I cannot share in words just how disappointing it was to die.

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” 

Stephen Hawking

 

Perhaps, I’m looking for the answers I lost, or maybe I need to chalk it up as a dream and get a new hobby to occupy my mind. The questions crash into one another, and I find myself seeking answers as an obsession. What if what I saw and experienced is a factual representation? What if it was only a dream? Something my subconscious made up and tried to pass off as fact? 

I can only answer with these things I have told you. 

 

“POPULATION: None. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds,. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.” 

Douglas Adams,The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

 

My cold light suspended in the darkness, all that was left of what once was me. No longer recognizable as a human. Devoid of emotional, irrational, archaic states as a fragile human being composed of virtues and vices. I’d loved and hated, cried and laughed, frowned and smiled, was skilled and clumsy. I'd been hated and admired, foolish and brilliant, artistic and scholarly, empathetic and withdrawn, and so much more.

I was. I am. 

Those things were gone in just a blip of data entry. Then I slipped into the rational, deductive, computative, programmed, perfunctionary, if/then digital abyss. 

 

"Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched 

With a woeful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale; 

And then it left me free.

 

Since then, at an uncertain hour, 

That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

 

I pass, like night, from land to land; 

I have strange power of speech;

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The RIme of the Ancient Mariner