Cyber Souls - by PN Neville

Imagine how big the data centers will have to be when they figure out how to digitize human consciousness. Well, that was my dreams last night. I breakthrough by a regular nerdy kid who's older brother was dying of cancer. Only problem was the human consciousness is huge and he didn't have the capacity to store all of him at once and had to have him in parts on multiple devices all over the world and locally. When he finally got all the pieces back together, like some digital Frankenstein, he shocked to see his brother was still intact. A bit off and not exactly all there yet, but coming together quickly. This was revolutionary, now people could basically live forever in the digital realm.

You could become your own interactive app or chat bot, but you had access to the entire internet and all of it's knowledge. There you existed as pure information. You were self aware in this state and could even see yourself existing as data in the shape of your body, even the air you seem to breath is data.

You could be anything you wanted, exist as whatever shape you pleased. You were no longer constrained to male or female or skin color, it is now just YOU. One day you could be a superhero and experience flying through the skies fighting bad guys, or an Anime girl fighting off gross tentilces, the next you could be a house cat rubbing against someone's leg, or napping in a window. Whatever you wished, you could be. There's no need for money, no need for food or water, well, I guess as long as the servers you exist on have cooling water and power that is. So, still some limitations, but basically, the new Garden of Eden.

The youth were consumed by this and were trying to find ways to get in. Of course, their parents didn't want dead chatbot children that exist as emojis so there was big push back to make sure this stayed super regulated, because now the future of actual physical human beings was being threatened as people chose to download and discard their body. Now there really was a promise of an eternity of freedom and joy that awaited us all upon death. We created heaven itself.

There would be little death anymore, only accidents and murders would actually die, and even then most were still alive just long enough to get downloaded. Actual death was becoming obsolete. But there had to be actual physical humans to work to make power, keep the systems running, keep the world still running. So, at birth they began assigning a random number to you. Some would be able to choose upload at anytime during life, you had to be over 30 though. Before that it was very difficult to obtain permission to upload. We needed youthful young minds to reproduce and run the world for at least 30 years. The elderly jumped at the chance and uploaded to be rid of their aging and pain riddled bodies. But some chose to stay and die the natural way.

Those who died naturally were basically turned to chum and injected into the earth under giant gardens that would feed the worlds population. With the numbers of humans on earth drastically reduced, things were improving environmentally and world hunger was a thing of the past. It seems like the perfect solution to all our problems.

Unfortunately, the dead were the dead and there was no way to resurrect their consciousness. Those were lost forever. But the great minds and thinkers of our time and forever on would be stored for all time.

But things couldn't stay that way forever, limits on space and water to cool the data centers would be hard to find. The bottoms of every ocean were layered with constantly running data centers and server farms, even though the air was no longer be polluted, the oceans were heating quickly and the weather was changing just as fast. The humans left on earth to run things were facing worse and worse conditions, roaming from place to place, year by year, where the weather was still decently stable. It was a rough life and many were choosing to upload before their contract was up, causing many issues with the network.

Sooner or later, everyone wanted in. They wanted to feel the comfort of the network, this digital heaven with everyone they've ever known. Being out in the physical world was super lonely and hard. No one wanted to stay until 30 anymore, they wanted out at 25, 20, 21, etc. These people were called selfish and were warned of permanent ban from the network, to be made to live out your life here the natural way, and even worse, perish into the unknown instead of our artificial garden of eden with your family and friends.

But some never wanted to go into the network in the first place, they considered themselves like Gods now. The people left in the physical world had everyone in the networks in the palm of their hands. All you had to do is turn off a few power grids and bye bye to most of humanity. They considered themselves Gods over millions of little techno-souls. The souls in the network could band together to protect ourselves and use technology to even affect the outside world, but ultimately, the ones on the outside held the off switch. They were still in a physical body, minds locked inside an imperfect human meat brain with all the flaws that come with it. Those who had uploaded no longer had that limitation and had evolved past the need for ego, violence, war, wealth, class, etc.

Those in the physical world were getting worse and worse by the year, they demanded to be treated and worshipped as Gods by those in the network. They demanded plans to build more and more, generate them more and more wealth. More robots to do the work. If their orders were refused, a server would be turned off, losing millions and millions of cyber-souls. You could also be singled out and just deleted. No knows what happens to the consciousness once deleted. I guess this was new death, the new mystery of life, what happens after deletion or loss due to power loss?

And the whole silly thing would eventually move into the digital realm with robots and automated systems taking care of a planet covered in digital architecture. Eventually even most animals would be digitized, leaving a barren world of moss covered server farms and data centers. A world of turning generators and humming fans, an entire civilization living as pure streams of data and information.

Life on earth would evolve as it always has. I wonder what would become of us? What would become of the world? I didn't get to see that part.