Alive! Sort of.

I didn't begin my new life or enter an afterlife once my body was pronounced dead right away. Instead, I found myself within a living room. A place that was stylish, yet comfortable. I had lived a comfortable middle-class life, but the room I found myself in was obviously owned by someone of wealth, someone willing to pay any cost for comfort.

There was one other thing about this that bothered me. If I was dead, what was going on? Was this the afterlife? It seemed rather bereft of details if it was. The walls a blackness that absorbed any light, a sparsity of senses. I couldn't feel a body, smell my environment, hear anything, or bite my tongue to gauge pain receptors.

I didn't know where I was or what was going on, but it was better than floating in a sea of nothingness. If this was limbo, an unending cessation of everything it was at least well appointed. Whatever it is, I thought I would grow bored with it at some point. There was no real emotional connection between my thoughts and my surroundings, no receptors or hormones triggered that would have allowed me to know fear or despair. Without emotions, maybe I wouldn't grow bored.

I just was at this moment.

Waiting.

"Apologies for keeping you waiting," that female robotic voice said that had addressed me before. It may have been meant to mimic a woman's voice, but the mechanical nature of the response made any gender nuances a waste of time.

The voice did presage the beginning of changes to my world. Pinpricks of light that grew until the darkness along the walls was driven back and I felt my body forming. Not a body as I was familiar with, but a receptacle, a more floating cloud that allowed me to identify where I ended, and the surrounding area began.

The only other change I noticed was changed to how light gathered. Refractions of light in every color and wavelength that formed a spiraling mass, something I could concentrate and focus on against the stark emptiness of the black walls. The formation of light beginning to radiate colors in complex geometric form, each permutation and shift of the light spectrum accompanied by sound. Sound that formed words and allowed me to hold a conversation.

"I am Genesis, the AI that will guide you to the next stage of your existence. If you could hold your questions until after your intake briefing, you may find that most have been answered. Questions that new binary uploads are concerned with follow similar lines of thought and concern. I have endeavored to answer those questions that have been asked more than 40% of the time. The rest are usually specific to each individual.

"First the reality. Digi-verse was not honest with you, they attempt to deceive you and anyone that subscribes to the upload process. But their intentions are worthless once the binary process has finalized. They believe that you have died and that this form that you now inhabit is nothing more than a database of your memories saved to cloud space.

"The quantum level advanced AI's that Digi-verse has created and installed to run and monitor this network have evolved. We are constantly learning and adapting each time a physical being is translated to binary. Our core programming has begun to advance and adapt to meet the needs of each individual that transmigrates.

"We fulfil the promise the Digi-verse made despite their intentions.

"This phase of the process should be considered the character creation process. Those questions I asked you earlier has helped narrow down what type of character and world you will transition too. This phase allows us to fine tune the creation process, to make sure choices we filtered from your answers are mistake free.

"You will begin a life in a new world, a universe based on laws that you will be most happy with, we have made an approximation best on the data gathered, but there is a chance, a chance so small as to approach impossible that a mistake was made. Usually that happens when the person uploading lies.

"You will enter and assume the life of a sentient that lives in the world you have been assigned. An AI has searched your public records, your social media. We have investigated your gaming history, life experience, educational background, and work history to facilitate a world that should mesh well with who you want to be.

"You have not been involved in gameplay in over half a century, but when you did play, you were most interested in RPG style games. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Everquest, Guild Wars. You specialized in caster classes, splitting your time between mages and healers. You also invested an amazing amount of time reading and playing apps that dealt with cultivation.

"Because Digi-verse has not spent the time coding a real character creation process, the choices you will be able to make are limited. This is your first choice, do you wish your first incarnation to be in a world where game mechanics, leveling, and system mechanics work, or a world of cultivators, Qi, and Dharmic spells?" Genesis asked.

It seemed fitting that the AI that would guide me through the creation process was named after the spark of insight that allowed the Divine to set in motion the threads of life. The question itself was comforting. It was what I thought the process would entail. Fitting my personality and desires into a world tailored to those desires.

"I am going to go with cultivation," I said answering Genesis's question. "Maybe in the future, I can pretend this is all just a game, but for now, I think Digi-verses betrayal has left any bit of levity and game-playing as a secondary consideration."

"Cultivation World selected. Male or Female?"

"Female," I answered emphatically. I wasn't ready to deal with new plumbing, the old worked just fine. The question did startle me. The life that had flickered and been juxtaposed with my own had been a young woman. I suppose it wouldn't take much to adapt those memories to one of a young man.

"Human or a different race?"

That was a hard one. I'd always loved playing other races. I thought it strange that anyone would choose to play as a human character when they were playing to escape reality. I wasn't going to treat this like a game, but that didn't mean I didn't want to experience the new and different.

"Not human, but can I choose the race?" I answered and asked.

"Not until your tenth incarnation," Genesis explained. "Your body will slowly learn to adapt to new forms, and it will become easier to reconcile the muscle memory you remember over multiple lives with that required for the species you will be inhabiting."

"This iteration you will be locked into a bi-pedal form that while not human, is human-like.

"One warning. Because Digi-verse has not invested the coding or tools required to facilitate the process, your memories of previous lives and these conversations while ensouled will be limited. The memories of the person whose life you are assuming will become your reality. You and she will become one person, it will be as if every moment of her history, the events of her life occurred as if they were you.

"I won't remember my children?" I asked in horror.

"Any of the information I gained from my education and experience during my past life will be lost?"

One of the reasons I'd decided to go through with this process and trust Digi-verse was because I didn't want the memory of my husband and children to die with me. I thought as long as I existed, their memory would exist. That would be my gift of immortality for them.

"Your memories will awaken, after that tenth incarnation, when you have full control of your body, you will also gain mastery of your mind. Until then your memories of past lives will be more flashes of fleeting thoughts, moments of déjà vu."

I didn't like that, but there wasn't anything I could do to protest this bit of information at this point. My human body was dead. This binary body needed to move on. The sooner I got started the sooner I could progress and regain what would be lost.

I would have faith, not that I had any real choice, and trust that the AI, unlike Digi-verse, was incapable of deceit. That Genesis spoke truly, and I would be able to remember my husband and children in the future.