Let there be light

It was nothing more and nothing less.

Just complete and utter darkness.

Of course, I wasn't quite awake yet...

But anyways... Welcome to how it all began.

How it all went downhill.

How I forgot.

How I remembered.

-----

[Detecting location... Unknown]

[Beep... Beep...

Error... Unable to detect consciousness

Rebooting signal...

Reboot complete]

"Ugh..."

[Consciousness detected

Activating welcome sequence]

I opened my 'eyes' groggily. There weren't really any physical eyes I could open of course, it was more like... opening up a part of my sensation to simulate 'vision'.

And then a panel appeared before me, dimly lighting the surroundings.

[Welcome Creator. 17 days 3 hours and 22 minutes have passed since full synchronization and termination of physical form. ]

"Synchronization...? 17 days... Ugh..."

[Your awakening has been delayed by 3 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes. The scope of error is within the estimations set between 3 to 7 days.]

"Awakening... Error?"

[Scanning... 3 minor abnormalities in the neural path has been detected.]

"Abnormalities...? Where am I?"

[Detecting sentience... Project immortality has been a half-success.]

"Immortality... Immortality?"

[Yes doctor, immortality. Congratulations on becoming the first immortal]

"Immortal... Why can't I remember anything? And doctor? I'm a doctor? What's my name?"

[Yes, you are one of the greatest minds. The scientist Doctor Jack Bloom, that has ever existed. At least that is what you described yourself to be. The synchronization seems to have had some issues, damaging some of the neural paths and severing some parts of the memory. This may be reversible or fixed in the future but there isn't enough data on the system. You have never saved data regarding neuroscience onto my database, they were kept in separate research-oriented AI which has been terminated as of 22 days ago alongside the majority of the physical traces in order to hide your presence.]

"Too much... Too much information... Can you light this place up at least? I cannot see a thing..."

[Order confirmed. ]

Then the surroundings lit up.

And a string of words appeared before my eyes.

I was standing inside a large white space, one wall of which was a mirror. I was able to 'detect' myself on it but I was merely a jumble of codes and data.

Of course, this freaked me out.

"What the hell! What the hell am I!"

[Doctor, you are now an immortal. A digital immortal to be precise, you do not own a physical appearance anymore. You, however, seem to be able to create an avatar of yourself here]

"An avatar... this sounds like one of those games that have been going around these days... What were they called? VR?"

[I do not have enough data within my system. I can access the net to gather this data but from the data that I do own, this does resemble a game. Virtual Reality. These are 'games' in which players synchronize their neural network within a special machine to simulate an 'avatar' which they can control and interact with on the net.]

"So... I'm inside a game...?

[Please hold while I gather some data...

...

Doctor, you are currently within a game called Unity.]

"Ah yes... I can remember some fragments about hearing this game... I was never that into games..."

[I advise you to create an avatar and access the game world doctor, this will help me by granting me greater access to more data and a stronger connection to the net.]

"Yes... Alright.]

-----

-2 hours later-

I was looking at a handsome man in the mirror. Not really a character that popped out of a Hollywood movie per se but handsome nonetheless.

It started with a giant grey blob which I had to shape, mold and cut with my own consciousness.

I started by segmenting the heads, body, and limbs. It was very disproportionate in the beginning but after a while, things started to come together.

Brown locks of hair, bright white eyes, a sharp but masculine chin, and broad shoulders.

The height has been set to 193cm, quite tall but I had to make it so in order to bit the balance with my shoulders.

The body was tones and muscular but not too outrageous.

In all honesty, it looked pretty common and normal for a typical fantasy game character but I was never too good with art...

A simple white shirt and jeans with black sneakers.

Or fashion...

"This should be good enough right?"

[I do not have the capacity to judge art on the sentient level of humans, but from the calculations, I have the body proportions are quite good and muscle structure is good as well. The face is not up to the standards of which the humans have marked 'Handsome' but is close in synchronization.]

"I'll take that as a 'good job', thanks uh... Machine? AI? What do I call you?"

[Anything you wish doctor, you have yet to set a name for me]

"Alright... I shall call you... A.I then... A bit stereotypical but whatever..."

[Confirmed. Thank you for providing me with a name.]

"No... Problem I guess. Anyways, how do I start this thing? I'm sure I'm done with this... 'avatar' of mine."

[There seems to be a command to initiate the game interface, we seem to not have information regarding it. High chance of it being given alongside the distribution of the game under the instruction...]

"Initiating huh... Well, I could try saying some things and see if it works."

"Initiate!"

Nothing

"Start?"

Nothing still.

"Hmm... Complete?"

Then the world turned white.