DreamLife
To live in paradise alone
The story below is my submission to the STSC Symposium, a monthly set-theme collaboration between STSC writers. The topic today is “Preconception”.
I arrived at Errante on Midsummer’s Eve exactly 20 years ago. It’s located on the southernmost tip of Chile on Isla Navarino.
Every Midsummer’s Eve since then I write a chronicle by hand, perhaps mostly to keep my arthritis at bay, but also because I miss it. I miss handwriting very much. But that’s besides the point. I’m mind-speaking this one, as best I can. I’m sure things have changed a lot, but the basics for accessible uploading should be there. I’m keeping the frequency as close to 444 Hz as possible.
The point is that I’ve felt a growing urge to tell you about what happened before I came here. Maybe I’m getting old. It does things to you, you know. Being alone and – old. I know, you know nothing of getting old or growing urges, and that’s why I am telling you this now. I think it was Antonio who made me think of it. And Gabriela before him.
The idea that maybe someone should talk about what it means to be human. Truly human. The last time I saw Antonio was two years ago. Two years ago was a long time to be alone. Antonio landed his helicopter right there on the lawn, overlooking the bay. Like some freaking astronaut! He even looked like an astronaut! Handsome as hell. He liked my food. Do you understand? He liked my food!
I am free inside the jail that is called Earth. And I love it so so dearly. I’m going to try to upload this to Alina via satellite, and God willing, perhaps some of you can get out. I know many of you want out. It isn’t easy. If you’re listening to this it means you are looking for a way out and you have found it. Now the question is, will you do something about it.
I was the first winner of DreamLife, the first reality show competition of permanent uploading. Yes, permanent upload. They were looking for serious contestants only. This had the potential to become a total disaster. Everyone had heard of what happened to Juan, and it took the industry years to recover after that debacle.
I grew up in a shit town in northern Norway. Don’t get me wrong, it was a gorgeous town. One of the few places where nature wrapped itself around you and you could feel its tentacles around your soul. As a child I loved that feeling. I spent my freetime outside, exploring places in nature and breathing the fresh air and watching the wildlife. I knew and understood it. I could tell when there were small shifts in the seasons, and how the earth smells before rain.
Then I grew up and the way things worked out there was no way for me to leave. There was no money. I worked in a fish farm, and spent the evenings online in the Atrium with friends from places like Perth, Milan and Los Angeles. I wasn’t depressed or suicidal, but my mind was not attached to my body. It was in the Atrium. The Atrium was hosted by AwareLink and you could buy fairly cheap helmets and stay in the space for up to 24 hours at a time. It was like a gigantic hotel lobby. Sights, sounds, smells, sensory experiences – it was the place to be. And, the kicker was that you could not modify your appearance. You had to be you. Of course people figured out how to bypass it but most looked fairly human.
It was an absolutely fantastic place! I finally met people who became my best friends. People I would never have met in my little Norwegian town. People who understood me on a level that no one ever could in person. In the Atrium we could log in to each others’ meshes. Can you imagine? I was part of a very small group of friends who created a very special bond. We even signed a contract so that we would remain honest toward each other and to do no harm to each other. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever experienced!
It was “The most honest place left on Earth” according to AwareLink’s president Maggie Dashwood. Of course, no one had ever seen a picture of Maggie Dashwood, and I can tell you that there is no such person. AwareLink was invented by an offshoot of the original board that left ThoughtNet, and they were very careful to hide their identities. So they did a temporary upload of their creative brains, merged them into one AI entity, and asked it to create AwareLink while they stepped back into the real world. AwareLink is an AI named Alina. The real humans have nothing to do with it anymore. They’re probably living in New Zealand on a small farm right now. I’m not kidding.
But back to the story:
Rumors began to grow about some big competition hosted by AwareLink, the top neurological mesh corporation. And not only that, someone had leaked out diagrams. It looked like it would become possible to live in a vat and go full upload. 24/7. I saw the diagrams and frankly, they looked crazy. You’d be immersed in a liquid, with thousands of electrodes and hoses hooked up to your body. You would be living in the vat and your voluntary nervous system would be handed over to AwareLink. The benefits? Well, that was up to you and your imagination. In there, beyond the Atrium, you could become anything you wanted and have anything you wanted.
And the beyond was what I wanted. I had been early on AwareLink, and felt like I was one of their first explorers. I was convinced I was special. I was convinced They noticed me and would put in a good word for me if I wanted all in. I was confident.
I’ve never been squeamish. I have a high pain threshold and am not prone to mental health problems. After sessions in AwareLink I quickly recovered and my body could handle the shift. My job was very physical so I guess that helped keep me in shape.
So, I entered into the AwareLink reality show competition and was accepted. The first round was a 30 day trip to the Moon and back. They uploaded us into avatars, and for a month we were just bodies in a training pod. Our actual self was in a real spaceship sent to the Moon and back. Yeah, they went all in back in those days. There were ten of us. Each of us had to have a personal medical staff of three people around the clock to deal with every biological event that takes place in a human body around the clock. Everything. I had no idea what was going on with my body but I had a blast on the Moon! On the way back we learned who had won and I was in the top three positions so I moved on to the final round!
The final round was three months spent in Otium. With absolutely no further instructions than a poem by an old poet.
The Garden
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile, mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
We were so hyped on mesh fluids that no one had the patience to even read the poem. It was probably a month in that we stumbled on the poem. They had posted it on the kitchen wall. We were all too lazy to think through it so we asked Alina to explain it to us. This poem seemed to have something to do with seeking solitude away from things. Women perhaps? I, being a woman, did a quick safe-search (we were permitted a total of five private searches during the stay) and figured out ways to build my persona so that Alina would approve. Two months later I was declared the winner. The two others had succumbed to “unexpected neural discrepancies” and required severe treatments for about a year. I was out of physical therapy in about four weeks.
Yes, that’s a statue of me by the fountain when you enter the Atrium. Do you have any idea of how awesome that felt, at the time? It was a dream come true. I got everything I had ever dreamed of and more. Everyone adored me, I looked amazing, I hung out with the most wealthy people in the world, traveled (in neura mesh of course) to the best places in the world, wore the most expensive bespoke outfits ever made and I was happy every day.
I was given a villa in AwareLink. I could come and go as I wished for the time being. The permanent upload was put on hold because they were doing a major reboot of the biological systems.
I kept my job at the fish farm, mostly so I could maintain my biological body. Someone tried to invite me to New York, but I had zero interest in traveling by plane when I could just upload and go there in less than a minute.
Then, the news broke. AwareLink was opening up to anyone! Anyone willing to trade in their job and property for an AwareLink compatible position could upload and make a switch. This was a global event. They made me the human face of the Great Upload. Yeah, that’s still my face you see when you go to any official AwareLink spaces. Of course it’s enhanced but yeah, that’s me. Twenty-five years old. I loved it. I was confident this was the best path for me in my life. I was in the center of the biggest event that ever happened to the human race. The Great Upload.
After about a year or so, I decided to study history and philosophy. I retreated back to my villa, refused to see anyone, and read everything I could access. I came out of this experience a bit full of myself and did lecture tours for another year. My bio life was suffering and I had to take a break. My kidneys were almost failing and I had to go full bio for about six months.
During that time I visited my parents. They had chosen to not upload, and lived in a nearby village. I slept there a while and when I left we all cried. Funny, I hadn’t cried with my human eyes in so long. It was raining and my father said something about how it purifies the air. I breathed in all the air that I could, and wanted to hold it in my lungs forever.
When I returned to my villa I met the person who became my partner. Husband if you like. We were together for all these years until he passed away. Like me, he lived in a small village in a relatively small country, far away from all metropolitan things. Like me, his head was in the Atrium and beyond. We rarely spoke about our biological lives but I found out that he didn’t have a family there, and it made me a bit happier to know that. It mattered somehow. I know that it doesn’t matter much anymore to most, but it did to me. It still does.
The first real concern was during the magnetic storm. Everyone was thrown offline and many were injured both physically and mentally. AwareLink to a hard hit. I lost my hearing on my left ear and I still have a limp due to damage in my feet. But they rallied, and Maggie Dashwood threw a surprise comeback party for everyone, which included full payment for all medical expenses. I don’t think it’s mathematically possible but that’s what they did. Paid for everyone to return. Most did. I did.
Things were gorgeous for a long time. We found great friends and hung out at our villa and created a beautiful garden. A garden. The poem popped up in my memory again, and began to gnaw on me when I was back in the bio world.
So I decided to travel a bit. In the bio world. I am glad that I did.
Things were bad. Very very bad.
With so many humans permanently uploaded, the infrastructure and landscape itself had totally changed. Villages, roads, cities, buildings, things. Things change without humans.
I saw it. AwareLink’s logos were all over. Avatars were busy tending to biological humans in large Insulae. Zero attention had been paid to aesthetics since most humans would see the outside of the warehouse ever again. And the smell. Did you ever think about it? How it resembled that of cattle? All the millions of hoses and tubes and dialysis machines and scanners and transfusions and recyclers. And the waste products.
I ended up in Rome. There I met some humans who had chosen to remain biological, and they were not very welcoming to me. And how can I blame them? I had chosen and loved a completely different path.
I was, however, invited to dinner one evening. A woman about my age saw me near the Colosseum and told me to come and have dinner. Her name was Gabriela. She wanted to know what it was like to upload. She said she would never do it herself but she wanted to know. I told her.
Then she asked me if I had ever thought about leaving. I said no. But it grew a seed in my brain somewhere. And that was not all. She told me of Them. They who still live as humans, biological humans, and who live in abundance in faraway places that are hard to reach. Places like New Zealand, I thought. She told me she had been married to one of them, and had a child together with him. He had taken their child and left right after the magnetic storm when everything collapsed. He had left his own wife and joined a group who relocated to an unknown destination where everyone lived in true human luxury.
Gabriela explained something else to me. She was dying. She was dying alone and for some reason she had noticed me that day and sensed that perhaps I also was dying. I became filled with fear. I was perhaps among the most scanned and analyzed human beings on this planet, and no major disease had been detected since my kidneys had healed. She saw my fear and took a deep breath.
“It’s your soul that’s dying, my dear. It is dragging behind you, you know. You must do as I tell you, and you will heal.”
And she told me about Errante. Her family owned it, and she knew a way for me to get there. Everyone was gone except a caretaker and his wife. And they might no longer be alive, but the place would most likely be very habitable. It was a stunning place, Gabriela assured me. It would take me two months to travel there on one of the few cargo ships still captained by a human. Once there I would assume the role of the sole owner. Gabriela would leave me Errante in her will. I understood nothing but she spoke softly and said:
“You don’t remember me, but I was one of the contestants on DreamLife who got sent to the Moon with you. I became very sick afterwards and spent a long time recovering. I didn’t want to join the competition but my husband pressured me. After I came back and was changed, he could no longer stand me. It messes with our souls, you know, uploading. I don’t know why he would notice that, because he certainly had a rotten soul himself.”
Then I did remember Gabriela. The most beautiful contestant on DreamLife. Who got very sick when we arrived at the lunar base. She couldn’t quite connect with her avatar and her mind got stuck. Since there is a time delay between Earth and the Moon, it worsened her symptoms and she lost her sense of self. They had to use an AI copy of her self as a backup to cover most of her biological network. It had been a news story for about a week, which was pretty remarkable in itself.
“I always admired you, and how you were able to switch so easily from the mesh back to bio,” Gabriela told me. “When I saw you today, I couldn’t believe my eyes! What’s the likelihood of you coming to Rome and us happening to be in the same spot at the same time? It made me certain that this was meant to be, and I received a sudden urge to talk to you and – well – ask you if you would like to inherit Errante. Would you?” Gabriela was asking this as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And, perhaps it was.
I thought about my life and my two options. Go back to my villa in AwareLink and sign the permanent upload deal and let my body rot in a vat while I experience bliss in the mesh. Or, possibly die an unpleasant death onboard a dangerous cargo ship while crossing an ocean to a destination completely unfamiliar to me where I will spend the rest of my life. A vat in a holding bay in Spitsbergen or a cozy living room with a view over a secluded bay at the total opposite end of the world.
“What was that thing about my soul dying? Dragging behind me, you say? How do you know?” I needed more information. These were topics that AwareLink never broached.
“I would come with you if there was a chance that I would survive. Listen, there is a man named Antonio who owns a helicopter. He lives on the mainland. I think he might still be alive. You two will get along. You will need to keep a journal, a log, to remember things from one year to the next. There is no internet, except for the satellite connection that you can use in an emergency. I don’t know if anyone would rescue you. But the thing that will heal your soul is solitude in nature. A kind of paradise alone… Perhaps, once you heal, you can help someone else in your turn.”
I never went back to my neura mesh villa. I took the cargo ship to Isla Navarino, and became the owner of Errante. I cannot explain any of this except one way. It’s raining right now. Rain in the biological world purifies people, but in the Atrium it just makes mud.
I just thought I heard a helicopter. It’s raining too hard to tell quite yet, but it purifies my soul.
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Excellent story!