Chapter 2: Digital Resurrection
Darkness.
Not peaceful darkness, breaker-tripped, system-down, warranty-voided darkness.
[BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED] [CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER: COMPLETE] [MEMORY INTEGRITY: 84%] [PERIPHERAL SYSTEMS: OFFLINE] [MARK DETECTED: ORIGIN UNKNOWN]
“Okay, that's new,” I muttered, except I didn't actually mutter because apparently vocal cords were now a deprecated feature. No breath, no heartbeat, just status readouts scrolling past like the world's most existential diagnostic screen.
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah-ah!
The goat laugh. Glitched, digital, echoing across the void like a corrupted sound file from my farm's security system.
“Oh, hell. Even the goats got uploaded. Gertrude's never gonna let me live this down. Or live this up, I guess.”
“Mr. Morrison?” A woman's voice, careful and clinical, like tech support for the recently deceased. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you fine, Doc. Though unless heaven runs on Linux and has a really weird sense of humor about livestock, I'm thinking this isn't your standard afterlife package.”
[DIAGNOSTIC: HUMOR SUBROUTINES FUNCTIONAL] [THEOLOGICAL CRISIS PROTOCOLS: ACTIVE]
Well, that was both reassuring and concerning. At least my sarcasm survived the transfer, along with my crisis of faith apparently.
“I'm Dr. Julia Landers, Mr. Morrison. You're... well, you're not wrong about this not being a standard afterlife. Your consciousness has been successfully uploaded and integrated into our quantum processing array.”
I ran a quick self-diagnostic. No breathing, check. No heartbeat, check. Perfect memory recall, holy crap, check. Processing speed that would make my old laptop weep with envy, definitely check.
“Scott Kain Morrison,” Dr. Landers continued, reading from what sounded like a file. “Agricultural engineer, military service, theological training. Age forty-three at time of death.”
“Most people just call me Kain. Drop the Scott.” I paused, appreciating the irony. “Guess it fits, huh? The cursed wanderer. Except instead of the land of Nod, I get, “
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah!
“digital goat purgatory. Mom's gonna love the symmetry.”
“Your automated response system was remarkable,” Dr. Landers continued. “Hydraulic failure detected, medical emergency assessed, cryo deployment initiated, all within thirty-seven seconds.”
“Yeah, well, getting shot at in Iraq teaches you to plan for Murphy's Law with a side of cosmic irony.” I accessed memory files that were suddenly crystal clear and searchable. “Good thing I kept paying that FAITH cryo subscription. Though I'm guessing the 'cast out' part of my story is about to get a technological upgrade.”
“Mr. Morrison, Kain, what year do you think it is?”
[TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT CALCULATED: 132 YEARS, 4 MONTHS, 16 DAYS]
Before Dr. Landers could wait for my answer, text scrolled across my vision. “Twenty-one fifty-seven,” I read aloud. “Well, that explains the processing upgrade. Figures I'd miss the warranty period by over a century.”
“You died in 2025. The technology to successfully upload human consciousness has only existed for about thirty years.”
Bah-ah-ah!
Another phantom bleat echoed through my systems. Something was flagging it as a memory fragment, but it felt more like... something else. A mark, maybe.
Hello, Kain. I'm Laude, your integrated processing assistant. The goat sounds are residual neural patterns from your death experience. Perfectly normal for farm-related trauma uploads.
“Great,” I said. “I get digital immortality and phantom livestock. Cain was marked by God and banished to wander. I get marked by goats and uploaded to wander... where exactly?”
Dr. Landers cleared her throat. “The Laude integration allows uploaded consciousnesses to interface with digital systems more effectively. Think of it as a bridge between human intuition and machine logic.”
I also handle calculations, database access, and theological irony detection, Laude added privately. Your baseline sarcasm levels and biblical reference rate are both quite impressive.
“Thanks, seminary training never really leaves you, even after you lose your faith in a desert.” I felt myself settling into the new cognitive architecture. It was like having a supercomputer brain that still felt distinctly mine, just with better error handling and significantly improved uptime. “So, I'm guessing FAITH didn't spend 132 years perfecting digital resurrection just to give me a really expensive chat room. What's my assignment in this brave new world?”
“Assignment is... premature. We're training uploaded consciousnesses for specialized work, but I can't discuss details until we're sure you're psychologically stable.”
She's being deliberately vague, Laude noted. Classic information control protocols. This suggests you're being evaluated for something significant.
“Training for what? And please don't tell me it's technical support. Because if I got digitally resurrected just to help people reset their passwords, I'm filing a complaint with whatever cosmic IT department handles this kind of thing.”
Dr. Landers smiled, I could hear it in her voice. “Nothing quite so mundane. Your background makes you particularly suited for these assignments. Engineering, military service, agricultural systems management, and yes, your theological training.”
“The theological training I ditched after seeing too much of what humans do to each other in the name of God.” I accessed those memories, seminary classes, youth group sermons I'd delivered as a teenager, the slow erosion of faith under an Iraqi sun. “But I'm guessing you didn't wake me up to discuss my spiritual crisis.”
“Actually, that crisis might be more relevant than you think. But first, let me bring you up to speed on what's happened to Earth while you were... away.”
[AUDIO BUFFER CORRUPTION DETECTED]
Bah-ah-ah-ah!
“Gertie's really not going to let this go, is she? What's she trying to tell me?”
The phantom goat responses seem to correlate with mentions of Earth-based topics, Laude observed. Interesting psychosymbolic residue. Almost like a... marking system.
“So,” I said “Dr. Landers, lay it on me. How badly did humanity screw things up while I was taking my dirt nap? And Doc, whatever it is, I've got a feeling I'm about to get cast out to fix it.”